Snakes on a Campaign ...

I've been saying all along that the internet is a terrific tool for political campaigns -- but that the media has over-hyped it. Reporters love to talk about blogs, primarily because it's an interesting story. But the question remains: Do they deliver?

The debate over the efficacy of blogging has now moved from Washington to Hollywood. The movie, Snakes on a Plane -- which received a ton of internet promotion -- has taken center-stage. Except, instead of asking if blogs deliver votes, the question is: Do they put bottoms in the seats?

In terms of last weekend's ticket sales, SoaP came in first-place. It's hard to imagine a movie called Snakes on a Plane coming in first-place without the blogosphere, so how can they complain that it didn't do better? That's like saying your candidate won the election, but only got 51 percent of the vote ...

The bottom line is that, without blogs, this movie would have never been made. Promotion is good, but at the end of the day, a movie has to be worthy of the hype.

The same is true on a political campaign. If it weren't for blogs, nobody would have even heard of Howard Dean. Blogs got Dean in the race, but he couldn't live up to the hype.

SoaP's problem isn't that they utilized blogs to promote it -- that was smart. Their problem was that they had "Ronald Reagan promotional effort," but are stuck with a "Howard Dean movie".

That's not the fault of blogs.

We've yet to see what happens when we marry a great candidate -- with a top-notch traditional campaign team -- and a cutting-edge internet eCampaign. When we do, watch out!At the end of the day, America needs to churn out more real leaders -- and Hollywood needs to put out more movies worth hyping. Now that would be a good story.