Over the past few months, much has been said and written about how much better the Left and Team Obama have been at using powerful new online tools than their counterparts on the Right have been.
The Obama campaign compiled 13 million e-mail addresses, and had 5 million declared supporters on social networking sites, which the campaign used in creative and innovative ways to communicate with a highly energized base of supporters.
And they’re not slowing down. Since Election Night, they’ve opened two-way lines of communications with voters by using YouTube to ask for – and then respond to – ideas and input from everyday people via the free online video sharing service.
In addition, they’ve posted more than two dozen behind-the-scenes videos showing the Obama transition team meeting with a variety of stakeholders on key issues: how to protect the environment, improve education, and help children, for example.
Together, these seek-input-and-respond videos, and the behind-the-scenes videos on the Change.gov website logged an extraordinary 865,725 views within a few days of their postings.
Meanwhile, in stark contrast, most Republican lawmakers have offered very little to potential supporters via new communications tools like YouTube. For the most part, the handful of GOP lawmakers who have been posting videos on YouTube have only posted canned C-Span speeches the delivered on the House floor or Capitol Hill raw news conference footage.
While C-Span is a true national treasure that offers Americans an unfiltered view of how their elected officials are representing them in Washington, it’s not exactly challenging American Idol in the Nielsen ratings. And it’s certainly no match for the engaging input-seeking, almost voyeuristic behind-the-scenes videos that the Obama team is producing.
That said, in just the past week or so, some House Republicans are starting to show some promising signs of life on this front.
On his way home from work recently, Republican Congressman Howard “Buck” McKeon of California stopped at Best Buy and got a tiny Flip video camera for approximately $129.
The next day, one of his staffers filmed and quickly posted a video showing the affable McKeon taking viewers on a completely unscripted, impromptu tour of his Washington office, during which he introduced members of his staff — the woman who sets up Capitol tours for constituents, the staffers who are responsible for different policy issues, for example.
McKeon’s video was an instant hit, generating positive local media coverage in his California district, as well as positive blog reviews nationwide. In the process, McKeon was able to use these cheap, easy-to-produce videos to humanize himself and his staff, so the next time some political opponent inevitably tries to portray him as the Prince of Darkness, many of his constituents will likely give him the benefit of the doubt.
“The response has been phenomenal,” McKeon told me in an interview this week. “It was an interesting kind of thing. I thought the people (in my district) knew me… yet it was like they’d never heard of me before. It was a whole new Me, but nothing changed – it’s just the way we let people see what we’re doing… All of a sudden we’re human!”
Another sign of progress from the GOP came from the new House Republican Whip, Eric Cantor. He recently posted a short, seemingly unremarkable video rising to then-president-elect Obama’s challenge to offer new ideas about how to stimulate the economy. Cantor closed the video by urging citizens to submit their own ideas video YouTube and online comments.
In less than a week, Cantor’s video logged more than 146,000 views — a nearly unheard-of tally for a Republican lawmaker. Just as impressively, Cantor’s video generated 163 text comments and 14 video responses in that time.
Then Cantor chaired a Jan. 15 House Republican Working Group hearing that featured panelists like former Massachusetts Governor and Bain Capital co-founder Mitt Romney and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman. An all-star lineup of Republican lawmakers questioned Romney and Whitman – House GOP Leader John Boehner, Conference Chairman Mike Pence, and others.
But the real stars of the hearing were the everyday American taxpayers who submitted videotaped questions to Romney and Whitman online, which were broadcast on the Budget Committee’s flat-panel screens.
Obviously, the Right still has a long way to go before they catch up with the revolutionary tactics that have been and continue to be executed so brilliantly by the Obama team.
Every Member of Congress should ask for and answer a few constituent letters every week or two on YouTube, for starters. But for perhaps the first time, we’re starting to see small steps in the right direction after months, if not years, of lagging behind.
Ed Frank is president of Frank Strategies LLC, a public affairs consulting firm.
