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(Please welcome author Garrett Graff, author of The First Campaign: Globalization, the Web, and the Race for the White House in the comments -- jh)

Days after graduating college, Garrett Graff began work as a communications staffer in the Howard Dean Campaign. His desk, actually a folding table from Staples, was sandwiched in between the campaign's legendary bloggers, Zephyr Teachout and Matt Gross, and the Web team led by Nicco Mele.

Garrett had a ringside seat to see how the internet was, is, and will continue to change EVERYTHING about how political campaigns will be run and won.

The title, The First Campaign, refers to his central premise that the 2008 campaign is the "first" campaign of the new globalized information age. Just as "campaigning 1.0" with cross country whistle stop train tours and reliance on newspapers and direct contact with voters was replaced by "campaigning 2.0" which centered on advertising in 30 second spots on network television and the filter of the punditocracy, so too will "campaigning 3.0" replace that outdated model.

Garrett describes a phenomenon that will be very familiar to this community: a new democratized information age where anyone can record and "report" the news, thanks to cellphone and digital cameras and the rise of sites like YouTube, anyone can make their own campaign commercial (remember the delightful "had enough"), and presidential debates now feature video questions from real Americans instead of softballs from network anchors.

2008 is the first full fledged campaign of the new 3.0 political world, and one of the biggest factors in it--say it with me folks--the blogs.

Some of the best parts of this book are Garrett's analysis about how the medium is changing Democracy itself. Instead of interest groups and large donors deciding what the platform is and trying to shove it down the throats of their party's voters, the internet with its direct AND TWO WAY communication has changed that paradigm, and in a refreshingly democratic way.

Garrett summed it up with a particularly insightful quote from the speech Governor Dean gave on the opening night of the last Yearly Kos convention [some of you were there and may remember this bit].

Traditional campaigns have relied upon enormous amounts of TV advertising, thirty second spots, aimed at you, telling you what we think, and what we think you ought to do. The new campaign, the two way campaign is: we listen to you before we start talking, and we, throughout the campaign, have a dialogue between the people whose votes we're hoping to get, asking for their advice as we go through, and taking it to heart.... This means real two way campaigns where the views and the opinions of the American people have an impact on the leadership, so leaders are with the people instead of seeking to lead folks that aren't interested in being led by them.

When I first came to the Lake I felt as if I had stumbled upon an old fashioned Village Green, where concerned and engaged citizens talked about the news and events of the day and discussed the problems facing our nation and the world, in other words--government and politics. You know what I liked best? We never got all breathless about missing white girls or who Paris Hilton was dating.

When I come here I think that maybe Edward R. Murrow is smiling down from heaven. Every day we are realizing his dream of a journalism medium that teaches and informs and critically analyzes information.

Let's give Garrett a warm puppy welcome and I'm sure you have lots of questions for him.