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no_newt.pngI never thought I’d ever say a thing like this, but I agree with Newt Gingrich.
He told Fox News yesterday that it’s nuts that politicos have already announced their candidacy for the 2008 Presidential elections. They will, he says, soon bore the electorate to complacency.

“…these candidates running for an entire year to get into a campaign to run for an entire year. This is going to be like watching bad re-runs of “Survivor.” People are going to be saying ‘Get him off the island, I don’t want to see this anymore.”

Given the immediacy of the online world we live in, that horrible old man really does have a point. How many Clinton chats, Obama blog posts, and Giuliani denials can we abide before we say “enough already!” and stop paying attention?
And that’s the real danger here. My grandmother, who survived the Pogroms of the Russian Revolution, taught me that complacency is the enemy. It is the enemy of change. It is the enemy of reason. Complacency is the enemy of freedom.
I wrote in July 2003, “Activists’ mighty tools can be turned on a dime against a corporation whose actions or products are seen as reprehensible. Yet there is not a single politician or corporation ready to mobilize with equal force.” That’s still true.
What this election needs is a political team that understands the power of the Internet to quickly spread a message and generate action.
I’m hoping there’s a dark horse Democratic team who’ll announce on July 4th. And damn, I hope it’s Bloomberg and President Al Gore.