media love affair

As the Wall Street Journal reports, there's a noticeable difference at Camp McCain since Steve Schmidt took the reins.  

I think some of the recent initiatives, what some might call gimmicks, out of the RNC and Team McCain are results of the campaign power shift, and they mark a positive difference. Although it's possible that I'm being overly optimistic, or too engaged in the day-to-day war games of the presidential race.  (I'd love to hear your thoughts)

 1. Just yesterday, the McCain campaign launched a video, make that two nearly identical videos, highlighting the media's love affair with Barack Obama.  Using real media footage of the media expressing their profound love and adoration of Obama, the campaign video(s) send a strong message.  

They could have stopped there, and the videos would likely have received average media coverage.  However, what makes the effort standout is the reason for the two videos -- two distinct audio tracks with a request for folks to vote on their favorite (after they provide their email address of course).

What makes this more than a gimmick is that by prompting a vote on the favorite audio track, folks are motivated to watch the video not once, but twice.  Two impressions of a message are always better than one.  Schmidt's reputation for hammering a message home through repetition is well-earned.