A virtual foot forward

We8217;re speaking, of course, of former Senator Fred Thompson, a Tennessee Republican, and Oscar darling 8212; incidentally, ex-vice president of the United States 8212; Al Gore, a Democrat. Both have held themselves apart from the predictable give-and-take of national primary politics and yet both remain every bit a force in this season8217;s campaign.

And both have done it by holding themselves apart from conventional campaign and journalistic expectations and speaking to potential voters through new and unconventional media channels.

Gore, for example, has created a virtual textbook example of a multimedia candidacy. His jeremiads on global warming began as a lecture hall slide show, became an Oscar-winning documentary and an intricate series of mutually supportive internet links and is mutating into a Globe-spanning series of rock concerts that will be watched by billions. Not bad.

Thompson8217;s example is, if anything, even more intriguing.

Gore has availed himself of media by ways that are, in the context of presidential politics, untrodden, if well laid out. Thompson is blazing entirely new trails. For one thing, he generally avoids conventional political interviews, speaking mainly to commentators and analysts who distribute their work online to ideologically sympathetic audiences. That8217;s interesting, but self-limiting. His foray into what might be called new media image advertising is something else entirely.

It8217;s worth taking a look at the brief and readily available piece of image advertising Thompson produced as an ostensible reply to the documentary filmmaker Michael Moore.

Moore took a poke at the senator-turned-actor-turned-senator-turned actor for smoking Havana cigars, possibly a violation of the trade embargo. Thompson responded with an utterly brilliant brief video, which begins with him sitting at his desk, back to camera. He swivels in his chair, a good-sized cigar 8212; possibly, a Churchill or double corona, for the male voters prone to notice such things. Thompson looks directly into the camera and, in a few relatively good humoured, but pointed remarks, he eviscerates Moore, plants the cigar firmly back between his jaws and swivels back to the desk and, presumably, to work.

The amusing little home movie has spread across the internet in what the cyber cognoscenti call a 8220;viral8221; fashion. So-called viral advertising is the current darling of commercial media 8212; little snippets of embarrassing human moments that people reproduce and are spread across the web.

On the blue side of the political divide, an increasing number of politically involved filmmakers have begun spinning out issue-oriented viral video spots. It8217;s a new kind of political advertising that well might outrun all current regulatory constraints. So far, the thinking has been that its potential is mainly as a negative form of advertising.

Thompson is the first candidate to demonstrate that this potent new media format has the potential to create what conventionally is called 8220;image advertising8221; 8212; the sort that introduces a candidate to voters and helps shape their impression of his or her personality.

That the obvious viability of Gore8217;s and Thompson8217;s candidacies suggests that something novel is occurring in this year8217;s election cycle. Traditional media remain wedded to familiar notion of process 8212; choreographed media events masquerading as events, regularly scheduled caucuses and political beauty contests. At the same time, a parallel force that might be called 8220;politicised media8221; 8212; mainly reliant on new and unconventional channels of communication is emerging as a coequal force.

How, if at all, will the political media cope with this new presence?

It might start by asking itself this question: If you were advising Fred Thompson on his shadow campaign, would you tell him to spend this Memorial Day weekend prowling the cornfields of Iowa or heading back into the studio to shoot another of those videos?