The latest New York Times/CBS poll finds 65 percent of those under 30 already paying at least some attention to the 2008 presidential campaign. What these young voters are witnessing is the struggle of candidates roughly twice their age to come to terms with a new world of disintermediation, bottom-up media and user-generated content. The results so far have been decidedly mixed.

On one hand, the Democrats — who won their Senate majority thanks in no small part to Former Virginia Senator George Allen's YouTube-friendly Macaca moment — have managed at least to pretend to be comfortable with the new grass roots reality. Hillary Clinton let an Internet poll decide her campaign theme song, even feigning enthusiasm over the choice of a sappy ballad by a singer once described by The Onion as a "bony Canadian foghorn." While Howard Dean was looked at askance by the party's establishment in 2004 for his embrace of liberal bloggers, this week's YearlyKos Convention in Chicago will bring the entire Democratic field together to face virtually any keyboardist who feels like lining them up against a wall. Not only are campaign ads released on YouTube, but third-party parodies are embraced by the candidates themselves. Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards has made Web traffic a key measure of his campaign's health. (Of course, the news isn't all good; Barack Obama waited until a supporter had built a robust presence in his name on MySpace, then muscled him out and took it over in classic Chicago Democrat style).

And then we have the GOP. While not every party leader has been as outspoken as right wing standard-bearer Robert Novak, who has described Heaven as "a place where there are no blogs," they are clearly out of their element in the wild and wooly culture of the Internets. Former Massachusetts Governor and sometime frontrunner Mitt Romney of Utah recently confused MySpace with YouTube. The inability to effectively mobilize "netroots," a word that would be paradoxical in a right wing context, has contributed to the party's dismal fundraising performance (along with a demoralized base and that war thing). Although the party has finally mustered a credible online presence — a spiffy GOP.com, a smattering of hands-off blogs maintained by legislative staff members — and in spite of a robust right wing of the blogosphere, it's hard not to feel like everything about the Internet just bugs old Republicans.

When you've already aligned yourself with Bible-thumping moral crusaders, creationists and other deniers of science and enlightenment, an aversion to digital communications hardly reassures voters outside that base about your ability to co-exist with the modern world.

Matters came to a head in the wake of CNN's first YouTube debate, in which voters (and other computer users) were invited to submit video questions of their own, rather than leaving the Fourth Estate to botch it on their behalf. While Election Day is still well over a year away (God have mercy), one such questioner has already made a strong bid to follow in Flip-Flop Man's shoes as the non-human face of Decision 2008: Billiam the Snowman. The creation of Greg and Nathan Hamel of Minneapolis, Mr. Snowman's plea for a sound global warming policy would melt the heart of any politician — on the left side of the aisle.

On the "series of tubes" side, the affair only hastened the flight of already-squeamish Republican candidates from their own impending YouTubation in a planned CNN debate. Romney came out and said what they were all thinking: "I don't know that it makes sense to have people running for president answering questions posed by snowmen." To think, a presidential debate reduced to political theater! Former New York City Mayor and ferret-lover Rudy Giuliani weaseled out with a scheduling conflict. Former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson, not having declared, got a free pass. In fact, the only GOP candidates to embrace the concept were those whose prospects were fading or had never existed: Arizona Senator John McCain, Texas Congressman Ron Paul and Former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson. (Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee was subsequently talked into it).

A few of the more 21st Century-familiar GOP bloggers, seeing yet another misstep in the making, are pleading with the candidates to loosen up with a petition that helpfully points out, "Republicans cannot write off the Internet." But old media heavy-hitters of all ages came through with predictable outrage, from the National Journal to Tucker Carlson. "I thought it was really disgusting," said Robert Novak, who used the incident to voice the indictment of democracy one suspects he's waited all his life to issue: "You know when we did away with the monarchy and went through democracy, there was a lot of fear that this sort of thing would happen. It took 200 years but we got there."

As if they would have answered a global warming question from a human being with any more seriousness.

Looking at all these tired old white men stretched from one side of the stage to the other, one thinks again of the many mistakes their kind has made to get us into our current national morass. It's all too clear where deference to "leaders" and "experts" in fields from politics to journalism to war has got us over the past few years. Just as YouTube, blogs, social networks and cheap digital media tools have shattered the cultural hegemony of big business, it's people like the Hamel brothers who offer the best hope of sapping and undermining the police state. It's not just demanding that an ordinary American voice be heard and responded to. It's demanding that the candidates do it on our terms, with no false claims to a priori respect or dignity. From now on, it's got to be earned.

In 2007, if you want to run for president, you've got to answer to the snowman.

E-mail J. Daniel Janzen at jdaniel at flakmag dot com.