Splicetoday

Politics & Media
Jul 29, 2008, 07:12AM

The Facebook Candidate

What's going to happen in 20 years to those embarassing party pictures and immature comments our generation leaves all over the Internet? A colmunist speculates on how the political environment will change as we grow up, when everything from underage drinking to angry political rants will be harder to hide.

Still think you might want to run for president someday? It may already be too late.

Last Wednesday, the Austin American-Statesman ran a syndicated commentary by Maureen O'Connor and Jacob Savage of the Los Angeles Times reflecting on the role the Internet may play in future elections, especially in regard to what it may reveal about candidates' pasts.

In an extremely insightful piece, the two provoke a hypothetical scenario asking what today's presidential election might look like if the candidates had used Facebook in their teens. The two write, "It's one thing to hear that your elected representative had a wild time in college. It's entirely different to have pictorial proof." Many of us would rather our parents not see photos of last night's embarrassing escapades, much less an entire nation. But for those few of us who aspire to live in the public eye, especially the harsh scrutiny of the political world, that may someday be the case.

As much as a candidate would suffer from an embarrassing picture at a fraternity party, the bigger political fire storm could come from an angry rant on a blog or discussion group. It makes one wonder what a debate between younger versions of John McCain and Barack Obama would look like. Would one of them grow frustrated and type something regrettable? That exact scenario may be happening right now between the 2036 election candidates.

Discussion
  • I think all this technology will actually lead to refreshing period of honesty and openness from our politicians. Look at Obama. Because he told the world about his experiments with drugs and his struggles through different identities in college, those things couldn't really be used against him. He actually appeared more genuine and easier to identify with because he didn't try to hide some of the dumb crap he did in college. Hopefully in the future we'll focus more on a politician's ideas and policies, and less on their personal life since all of their skeletons will be out of the closet.

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  • I'm in complete agreement with Mr. Deities on this subject. In the future, the older voters who today may or may not hold youthful indiscretions against candidates will have died out, and the Facebook generation will be middle-aged and probably impervious to any past youthful behavior. Obama deserves a lot of credit for his candid admissions of drug use, and proves that it's irrelevant in his ability to be a leader today.

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