Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics

Chapter 10: Winning the Technology Arms Race

Chapter 10 Winning the Technology Arms Race The Hardest Thing FOR those enjoying success is to abandon their perches on the mountain top and to go back down into the valley to look for new mountains to conquer.The rewards for doing so are neither certain nor easily obtained.The pressure to stay and collect the rewards for being on top is so intense that most organizations fail to embark upon the transition, let alone duplicate their successes on a different peak.The annals of corporate bankruptcy history are replete with former industry leaders such as the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, Montgomery Ward, and the Packard Motor Car Co., who were unwilling and therefore unable to change to meet the demands of a new set of customers. Political history contains the names of extinct parties, such as the Federalists and the Whigs, who also failed to change with the times. Today, the challenge for both parties and their candidates is to find new ways to reach new voters with new messages, before their competitors beat them to the top of the next mountain and dominate the political landscape of the twenty-first century. The challenge is made doubly difficult by the dynamic nature of American society. Immigrant populations are spreading throughout the country; families are moving out of traditional suburban and urban environments to find better schools and more open space in “ex-urban” communities and small towns; information technologies are creating a mosaic of “virtual communities,” populated by those who share an affinity for a music genre or a hobby or even a political point of view (Kotkin 2006). The notion of stable political outcomes in a given location, let alone an entire country, in such an environment is becoming rapidly obsolete. Instead, the changes America is experiencing look more like the behavior 174 Chap-10.qxd 11/23/07 4:36 PM Page 174 of complex, adaptive systems that evolve and mutate, based on a continuous process of rapid responses to what is working at any given moment in time. In this environment, best described by the science of “chaos,” the future will belong to those who learn to use information and communication technologies to enroll others in shaping a jointly envisioned future, rather than to attempt to control the outcome from the top. In other words, the way to win the next political technology arms race will be to learn to let go and, to paraphrase Obi-wan Kenobi, “let the Force be with you.” Seeking a Web 2.0 Technological Advantage The 2006 election results suggested the Republicans were having trouble mastering the new media.TheYouTube-induced losses of George Allen and Conrad Burns cost Republicans control of the Senate, and those two elections were just the most prominent examples of Republicans ’ lack of awareness that the world of communication and media had substantially changed. According to campaign expenditure reports filed with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC), in the eighteen months leading up to the midterm election, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) spent almost $7.4 million on web-oriented campaigning. Over the same period, the Republican National Committee (RNC) and its House campaign counterpart, the NRCC, spent $600,000 on such efforts.That meager expenditure represented only 6 percent of what the two Republican entities spent on consultants and related mass media strategies, while the Democrats spent about one dollar and fifty cents on web tactics for every dollar they spent with consultants. The Republicans’ aversion to interactive campaigning on the Net became even more evident when the first campaign fund-raising reports by the 2008 presidential prospects were filed with the FEC at the end of March 2007. Democratic candidates had raised $78.1 million, the Republican candidates only $50.6 million. Much of the Democratic Party’s advantage came from the greater number of small donor contributions they were able to solicit and collect over the Net. Senator Barack Obama led all such efforts with $6.9 million raised online from over 50,000 donors (out of a total of more than 100,000 small donors). Almost Winning the Technology Arms Race 175 Chap-10.qxd 11/23/07 4:36 PM Page 175 one-third of all reported Democratic contributions came from online fund-raising. Meanwhile, the Republican candidates refused to share the percentage of their funds that had come from...