Nevada Governor Gibbons password to his Outlook posted to Web; Unconnected 1.0 Politics Still the Rule

By David LaPlante • on July 31, 2007

OK…so this is kind of old news (from CNET). Somehow I missed it…and if it did hit the local headlines, my apologies for my Google alerts to fail me. Anyway, since it’s not in Myrna’s RSS feed I’m wondering if the usual suspects for ballyhooing this about are too focused on John Edwards hair hahaha!

I was listening to this week’s episode (#107) of TWiT (This Week in Technology) while eating a bowl of Pho noodles and almost started choked when Leo LaPorte started talking about this news story. If it weren’t for TWit, I would have totally missed it. Listen to this clip of the banter of TWiT…too funny hahaha! (BTW, you should subscribe to TWiT. Best tech podcast.)

In what could be a whopping security hole, Nevada has posted the password to the gubernatorial e-mail account on its official state Web site. It appears in a Microsoft Word file giving step-by-step instructions on how aides should send out the governor’s weekly e-mail updates, which has, as a second file shows, 13,105 subscribers.

And just before anyone goes off claiming that this is endemic to a particular political party or something snidely silly like that, let me tell you first hand that for the last 16 years I’ve witnessed this type of stuff go down at pretty much every level of government on both sides of the aisle. For the one or two times that make it to the headlines such as this, there’s the ninety-nine other times that it does not…which is ultimately a good thing. It does get depressing when you think about all the folks who “run this place” who can’t even send or receive a simple text message or an email for that matter!

What we’re witnessing is the last days of the “un-connected” political elite. It’s still possible for folks to get elected without a Blackbeery in hand. But those days are numbered. The 2008 election cycle will prove that the luddite politicos are on the decline. Facebook and MySpace friends count more than ever. Luddlite politicians who can’t compete for the mindshare of the “media consumer voter” may not swing a lot of elections in 2008, however, by 2012 that will change. I predict it will be folks like Reno 911!’s stars (who partnered with Declare Yourself to produce satirical video shorts) that will begin to dominate the voter’s attention. Simply put, by 2015, Gen-Y will account for 1/3rd of the voting population.

Lastly, what is missing from most of the elected 1.0 is the self depreciating sense of humor about themselves that develops personal brand trust and connectedness with the media consumer voter under the age of 40. Al Gore’s figured it out…see that post here. John Edwards’ campaign should jump on the hairdo PR wagon and hand out mini-shampoo bottles with his mug on them driving them to his Facebook page. But alas they’re probably too busy fighting off hackers in Second Life!