So Caroline Kennedy wants to be the junior Senator from New York. Great brand. Amazing political heritage. There’s a lot going on there, and absolutely zero going on there, simultaneously.

But it’s not the political pros and cons I want to get into. Let’s stick to the interesting role digital PR will play in this drama…..or will not.

Right now, Kennedy is running without running. Her advisers are shuttling her from honcho to honcho, media opp to media opp-in a window dressing whistle stop that has no substance. It doesn’t have to, really. She simply needs to show the governor that she is popular enough to get the nod and equally important, that she can be of value to him when he has to face the electorate instead of filling in as he did in round one after the Spitzer scandal.

Right now, the media has almost no access to Caroline. That’s the way it was planned and it’s perfectly legal and perhaps a perfectly sound strategy.

But, if Kennedy is granted the seat to America’s House Of Lords, in two years she will have to run the old fashioned way. Greeting real people. Engaging in debates. Appearing on talk shows. Answering tough questions. Revealing parts of her life the world has allowed her to keep wrapped in a cocoon of privacy for a generation.

The Web doesn’t matter now because there is virtually no media access and Governor Paterson will make his decision for reasons that have little to do with what the bloggers and the political sites say. But once Caroline steps off the Kennedy pedestal and becomes a free market candidate, if she does in fact take this turn, the Web will be where the action is.

Think about just one aspect of this horse race in the making. The entire youth vote in New York, the same kids who voted for Obama en masse, have no connection with the little girl who pranced through the White House with her Presidential father or who was the adorable innocent at his sudden and shocking funeral. They don’t know her. But they will learn about her, talents and warts alike, where they turn for election information: the Internet.

You can be sure that those who want to stand in the way of the Kennedy dynasty, who want to paint it as the world’s most exclusive entitlement program, will be leaking all kinds of myths and realities to Drudge and Huffington.

Caroline Kennedy is hardly a creature of the Web. And I’m not sure her advisers are either. Or that it is central to her thinking, as it was to the President elect. But her actions to embace the Web or not, digital PR will play a pivotal role in the ultimate campaign for the six year term as Senator from New York.

The Internet doesn’t care if you embrace it. And unlike Meet The Press, if you are not on the show you are on the show.

The internet puts you front and center without asking if you want to

appear. There’s no place to run. No place to hide. There is simply nothing more important in politics.

Mark Stevens

CEO