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Washington Post reporters Chris Cilizza and Dan Balz offer insight into the impact that electronic communications is having on politics. Of course, there is the famous “macaca” video that brought down former senator George Allen, the blog that exposed the dirty emails and IM messages that Mark Foley sent to teenaged pages and now you have video surfacing of Mitt Romney wen he was not trying to sucked up to conservative blowhards and a slew of candidates making the announcements via web video. Any candidate who does not a smart and aggressive new media strategy is not serious about being elected president.

The internet and the explosion in the use of video, email, blogs and social networking sites have changed the rules of the game in ways that we won’t fully understand for years. Let’s be clear though, electronic communications is not replacing face to face campaigning. It is adding a rich new way of engaging people that no serious candidate can ignore.

Not long ago, an anonymous video on the Internet would have elicited little more than amusement from the candidate under attack. But the 2006 midterm campaign — in which then-Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) saw his hopes for reelection, not to mention the White House, torpedoed by his now-infamous “macaca” moment captured on a widely seen video — changed the rules.

But if last year was the year of the rogue videographers, the already-underway 2008 presidential campaign is likely to be remembered as the point where Web video became central to the communications strategy of every serious presidential candidate.

Great examples of using the medium include Senator Clinton is holding three online chats beginning tonight in which she will take questions from participants and Romney responding to the posting of footage from a 1994 debate with a video on Youtube less than eight hours later.