Tim Wu talks with Neal Conan on NPR's Talk of the Nation about the possible ways presidential candidates might attempt to reach younger voters in the 2008 election. Wu speculates about candidates battling in virtual worlds (which may prove more "exciting" than real-life rallies, since you can actually blow things up). He talks about the increasing participation in virtual worlds like Second Life, but doesn't really contextualize the still relatively small virtual world population. Wu also speculates that it might become more acceptable for serious politicians to make cameo appearances on TV shows as a way of advertising their brand, i.e. themselves. Although he mentions Clinton, it might be useful to think about Gore's career since he left the White House. Appearances on Saturday Night Live and most recently the Oscars with his film An Inconvenient Truth have turned him into Hollywood's golden boy without detracting from (and if anything, increasing) his political clout. Will candidates still in office be able to garner popularity in this way - without worrying about their reputations as "serious" presidential candidates?

This clip is also useful because it imagines the possibilities for increased voter participation throughout the political process.

11/21/97
Episode 84

A parable of politics and race in America. The story of Chicago's first black mayor, Harold Washington, told on the anniversary of his death. We first broadcast on the tenth anniversary of his death and reran this on the 11th. Washington died November 25, 1987.
Act One. Yesterday. A history of the brief mayoral career of Harold Washington, and its lessons for black and white America, as told by people close to him. Many of them are activists and politicians: Lu Palmer, Judge Eugene Pincham, Congressman Danny Davis, then-alderman Eugene Sawyer. There are people from his administration--Jacky Grimshaw and Grayson Mitchell--and some reporters who followed his story: Vernon Jarrett, Monroe Anderson, Gary Rivlin, Laura Washington (who became his press secretary). Plus a few ordinary voters, and a political opponent of the late mayor. Act One continues after the break.
Act Two. The present and the future. Thoughts about why there are no black mayors in the nation's largest cities today--New York, Los Angeles, Chicago. Plus a visit to a white Chicago ward, to see if ordinary voters have learned any tolerance in the last ten years since Washington's death.
Song: "At Last" Etta James