When analysts in the past tried to guess what impact the World Wide Web might one day have on national politics, they naturally turned for their clues to the timeline of an earlier electronic medium, television. In 1960, more than two decades after the first regular commercial broadcasts began, television made its first big political splash, providing a decisive edge in that year's presidential debates between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Most radio listeners preferred Nixon's performance. But the suave, photogenic Kennedy swept away the TV audience and went on to narrowly win the election.
History now seems to have repeated itself.
That is, a new instrument of communications has played a critical role in national affairs. But in a way that few had expected. I'm referring, of course, to last Friday's posting on the Web of special prosecutor Kenneth Starr's entire 445-page report to Congress on the Monica Lewinsky affair. The report , along with White House rebuttals to it, became only a mouse click away for millions of Web-connected citizens. After the report's release, the Web servers of the House of Representatives logged 3 million hits per hour, up from an average of 66,000 per hour.