A fascinating post from Micah Sifry at techPresident on video in campaigns, and the essential problem of authenticity in campaigning. I’ve been very sceptical of the buzz about online video in campaigns, simply because I can’t imagine campaigners being willing to surrender control. Jeff Jarvis has been relentlessly telling the campaigns that they need to speak to us through video, but when I saw Hillary telling us she wanted to have “a conversation” (it’s what all the kids are doing, don’t you know?) with us, I felt momentarily unwell. And so far, nothing that any of the campaigners for U.S. President has done with online video suggests to me that this is seen as anything other than a channel for TV-type promotion.

Sifry links to a column that he and Andrew Raseij penned at Politico on the topic, with some interesting observations from a campaign that is trying something different, across the pond:

Picture this: Every day, a major candidate for the highest office in the land spends a few minutes talking into a video camera held by an aide. Then the recordings are posted, with very minor editing, to the his Web site. On some days, they show him on the street, talking casually about the visit he’s making to a local business or a day care center. On other days, he’s sitting in his office, giving candid responses to the top five questions that have been posted to his blog, as chosen by visitors to his site.

The videos are all generally unscripted; the settings are unencumbered by props; and the camera work is about as good as any tourist’s visiting the zoo.

If you think this is a fantasy, don’t. This, in a nutshell, is how David Cameron, the youthful leader of Britain’s opposition Conservative Party, has been taking advantage of online video since he launched his “Webcameron” site last fall. His casual and extended videos have not hurt his popularity; right now, Cameron’s Conservatives are leading the ruling Labor Party by 13 percentage points in a recent poll.

For all the talk of this being the “YouTube Election,” however, none of the current candidates for president of the United States is doing anything close to what Cameron is doing. Yes, they know they can use their Web sites to broadcast video to potential supporters. But so far, not one presidential campaign has demonstrated that it understands the difference between video online and video on TV. That’s because they all apparently think video online is just television on a smaller screen.

Yes, exactly. If I see another video with a warmly Presidential candidate earnestly leaning in to me assuring me that this is “a conversation”, I think I’m going to plotz. But more to the point, I suspect that there’s simply too much at stake for the candidates in the U.S. Presidential election to “risk” taking a truly new approach with online video. I was very impressed with the Obama site and hopeful that he would do something truly new with social media, and it still seems to me that he more than any other candidate has the latitude to take video in the direction that Sifry describes, but it hasn’t happened yet.