February 7, 2007

Image has always held sway over American presidential politics. Lincoln was elected in large part because of the appeal of a photographic portrait, taken by Matthew Brady, that was published around the country on the eve of the 1860 election. A century later, Colorado Senator Gary Hart’s presidential aspirations were forever dashed when a snapshot emerged showing the married Democratic candidate frolicking with a comely young companion named Donna Rice – on a pleasure boat called Monkey Business.

Now we have not just snaps but videoclips -- snaps that move, crackle, and pop, politically. As columnist Stacy Schiff observed in yesterday’s Times: “As with most sports, technology has transformed this one. Jon Stewart and Oprah are its umpires. YouTube its steroids. Never have we and our words [and pictures!] had to live in such tight quarters. Blurting just isn’t what it used to be in the days of Daniel Webster or William Jennings Bryan.”

One wonders just how much damage this already highly trafficked YouTube-hosted video will do to the chances of candidate John Edwards fussing with his mop. Or this compilation at therealmccaincom, purporting to show John McCain as a serial fabricator.

Which brings to mind Joe Biden.

Delaware senator Joseph Biden entered the 2008 presidential marathon last week with the pointiest elbows in recent memory, lambasting fellow Democratic candidates, making arguably racist comments (dubbing Illinois senator Barack Obama “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean”), and setting loose a storm of counter-criticism. Soon, supporting videos were dusted off and trotted out of the vault showing vintage Biden in all manner of bloviation.

As it so happens, Biden -- even beyond the racial-profiling remark -- comes with plenty of baggage from his most memorable foray into the presidential fray, in 1988. Back then, he dropped out of the race after conceding he’d lifted portions of his campaign speech from that of Britian’s labor-party leader, Neil Kinnock. Around the same time, he also underwent two rounds of brain surgery.

Putting aside Biden’s recent comments, it is interesting to note that in years past a plagarism charge or a previously grave medical condition might have been enough to upend a politician’s presidential aspirations. But no longer. Such shopworn facts are hardly impediments to a candidate like Biden; they amount, instead, to political trivia, mere froth in the Google deluge.

Indeed, Biden joins a crowded field that already includes one candidate who has admitted trying cocaine (Senator Barack Obama), another tainted though cleared in a real-estate scandal (Senator Hillary Clinton), a third (Senator John McCain), who is a cancer survivor and whose formative experience came from years of internment in a Vietnamese prison camp, along with potential contenders Rudy Giuliani (a cancer survivor who had an affair while serving as the mayor of New York City) and Newt Gingrich (a man with his own history of infidelity, who resigned as House Speaker after losing his grip on the Republican party).

This is not your father’s — or stepmothers or surrogate’s — presidency. The last two commanders in chief were elected despite their having been, respectively, a reformed drinker and an alleged womanizer. Gone are the days when FDR’s and JFK’s physical ailments were shielded from public view with the stoic complicity of the White House press corps. (Imagine if Kennedy’s dalliances had occurred during the age of the cell-phone camera. Or if Nixon had hatched his political plots in the era of 24/7 spin. The Watergate tapes might have made it into the electronic ether via leakers, not subpoenas—the damning sound bytes ours for the clicking, on iTunes.)

If there’s any upside to a culture of perpetual revelation, remorse, and confession—played out in real-time video snippets—it is the fact that our would-be leaders are viewed as true representatives of the American people, replete with all-too-human flaws. Our potential presidents are not mythic, outsize characters or screen stars beyond our ken (though we did elect one of those, way back in 1980), but men and women who must go through the same crucible of mishaps, tragedy, and raw life experience that every member of our species must endure. One person, one vote means we vote with our eyes wide open, and our consciences clear, for people full of foibles, people of resilience, composure, moral judgment, and, hopefully, something resembling stature—an attribute Biden surely seemed to lack last week.

And we can thank YouTube and Oprah and, well, democracy, for that.