Unfortunately, I don’t have as much time as I’d like in order to get into the topic of Barack Obama’s official presidential campaign launch this morning. The more I learn about Obama, the more that I feel he is, indeed, a viable contender for the 2008 Democratic Party nomination. That doesn’t mean I think he’ll ultimately win, or that I’ll even support him when it comes time to finally choose sides. What I do think is that his campaign will be an interesting study in media reporting and the spinning of a candidate.

Many of us have been bitching for years about the coverage of presidential campaign politics. There’s no question that as the season wears on, reporting on individual candidates becomes more personal and an attempt to define a candidate in the eyes of the reporter who’s covering the campaign trail.

Timothy Crouse’s Boys on the Bus, from 1972, was one of the first books written that described the campaign trail mentality of reporters assigned to cover candidates. It’s still relevant 35 years later, because it describes the scramble to define not only the candidate, but the individual reporters themselves. Now, the blogosphere is getting into the act. Mike Allen at Politico.com has penned what can charitably be described as a conservative hit piece on Obama’s candidacy, but as Matt Stoller notes in an excellent article this morning on MyDD:

Whoever gave Allen the smear sought him out because they are building a political narrative around Obama divorced from important political issues.

Matt, Matt, Matt. Divorcing coverage of presidential politics from reality is as old as presidential political campaigning itself. It doesn’t matter who has the best ideas, or the political moxie to actually shuttle those ideas into a direction for the country or legislation to improve our common national lot. No. In this age of the internet, it’s about the sound bite, the visuals, and a candidate being as “cream of wheat” as possible so as to minimize controversy and survive the media wars that erupt around each candidate. The one who manages to survive this challenge, wins.

The internet and web are dramatically changing the dynamics of presidential politics , and will continue to become an even greater influence on the actual process of selecting a winner than the guardians of the old school media and the Washington beltway punditocracy. In the progressive blogosphere, all of us now have the responsibility to be the “boys on the bus” over the next 20 months.

To me, it goes without saying that the progressive blogosphere is much better tuned into actually supporting candidates than is the right wing online noise machine. The noise machine is primarily being used by GOP handlers to push negative narratives into the mainstream media, whereas the progressive blogosphere is being utilized to actually support specific candidates. That’s where the difference is, and in 2008, that’s where the rubber will meet the road in terms of electing the next POTUS.

Allen’s hit piece on Obama is just an opening salvo, as was Bill Donohue’s screed on John Edwards’ selection of who would drive his netroots outreach. But things are changing. We’ve learned. There will be no swiftboating of Democratic Party presidential candidates this time around - at least, no swiftboating without a rapid response.