Rock the vote

Presidential candidate and YouTube devotee Hillary Clinton. (Scott Eells/Getty Images)

Hillary Rodham Clinton is not hip. Smart? Yes. Ambitious? Sure. Strategic? Absolutely. But with her awkward delivery and policy-nerd earnestness, the senator from New York will never be smooth like her husband or cool like her Democratic rival Barack Obama.

Still, give Clinton credit for at least knowing what the kids are into. In the already endless run-up to the 2008 primaries, Clinton has started campaigning on YouTube, weighing in on Iraq and medicare right alongside the lol cats and Dick in a Box.  Expertly lit and shot in a warm-toned sitting room, these weekly “Hillcasts” are as folksy, cosy and tactical as FDR’s fireside chats.

Clinton’s embrace of the internet is savvy. Four years ago, dark horse Democrat Howard Dean became a serious player though his innovative fundraising on the internet, only to be undone by the very same technology when a clip of his girlie and very unpresidential yelp went viral.

Clinton has learned from Dean’s mistake. Since her online announcement of her campaign in January, she has skilfully cultivated the image of a 21st-century candidate who can speak “web” to the demographic progressive enough to consider a female president. (The Hillary-bashers have been busy online too: A clever video by an Obama supporter portrayed Clinton as a 1984 doublespeaker in a mashup of a famous Apple commercial.)

Clinton’s latest gambit is a reality TV-style vote to pick her campaign song. In the video promoting the contest and in the followup, she’s unexpectedly funny and self-deprecating. The project is steeped in the same ironic, smartass tone of The Colbert Report. In the first video, Clinton cuts to a clip of her tin-eared rendition of the national anthem and then promises she won’t sing her campaign song. But most telling of all is her song selection.

When Clinton stood by her man Bill during his 1992 presidential campaign, the soundtrack was Fleetwood Mac’s Don’t Stop — the group even played at the first Clinton inaugural ball. The optimistic hit was from the band’s Rumours album, which had been famously inspired by the bandmates’ breakups and infidelities (awfully fitting given what was to come for the Clintons). It was the perfect choice for America’s first Baby Boomer-in-Chief, a guy so plugged in to the power of popular culture that he was nicknamed the “MTV president.” It spoke to a groovy, liberal establishment that craved a return, after 12 years of Republican rule, to a Kennedy-style Camelot.

Singer KT Tunstall's Suddenly I See is one of the top contenders to become Clinton's campaign song. (Matt Sayles/Associated Press)

Hillary’s approach is different. There’s no Boomer nostalgia here — those hippies-turned-yuppies are, after all, the very people about to drain the social security coffers of the Facebook Generation. Instead, her slate of potential campaign songs reads like the lineup for the Top 12 faceoff on American Idol or the iPod playlist of a desperate-to-stay-hip soccer mom. It’s Clinton’s bid to be the pop culture president of the Download Age.

There’s a little chick power courtesy of Celine (You and I), Tina (The Best) and Shania (Rock This Country); and a little white-girl’s-got-soul Motown and R&B (The Temptations’ Get Ready and Ain’t No Stopping Us Now by McFadden and Whitehead). The edgier vote is represented by U2’s Beautiful Day, Every Little Thing She Does is Magic by The Police and Are You Gonna Go My Way by Lenny Kravitz. There’s even a novelty entry: Smashmouth’s cover of The Monkees’ I’m a Believer from the Shrek soundtrack.

Hands down, though, the song to beat in this race is KT Tunstall’s Suddenly I See, which is sitting at No. 1. It’s an upbeat, adult contemporary hit, with the lite-feminist vibe of a Dove ad (“Her face is a map of the world, is a map of the world/ you can see she’s a beautiful girl, she’s a beautiful girl”).

There’s just one drawback: The song was the sendoff anthem for eliminated female contestants from last summer’s So You Think You Can Dance. It could be a bad omen for Clinton — cue the slo-mo montage as she prepares her concession speech. Or it could just be further proof of the reality TV-ificiation of American politics. If it wins — and the contest is set to end soon — someone on Clinton’s team needs to have American Idol runnerup Katherine McPhee, who performed Tunstall’s Black Horse and the Cherry Tree on AI, record a cover of Suddenly I See for the campaign. That would be some serious Hollywood-Washington synergy.

Of course, Clinton isn’t alone in her attempt to seem plugged in. In the June issue of Vanity Fair, James Wolcott wrote about “the dawn of YouTube politics” and the urgency the presidential candidates feel about having some control over their online presence. After all, before most politicians had even heard of the site, industrious citizen pundits were posting clips that made most of them look like idiots (see: Republican Senator George “Macaca” Allen). Now, even the most obscure hopefuls are posting videos on YouTube’s special You Choose ’08 section.

But no matter how fervently these politicians go virtual, living by the internet means there’s the possibility of dying by it, too. The anarchic internet is nothing like television, with its tightly controlled one-way communication. Online, one dumb slip in front of one camera cellphone can go viral in minutes, undoing dozens of slickly produced, on-message videos. The blogosphere loves a jackass far more than it loves a hero. Let the campaigning begin!

Rachel Giese writes about the arts for CBC.ca.

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