Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO, who just endorsed Barack Obama, tells Arianna Huffington, another Obama supporter, that "We are witnessing the end of Rovian politics," thanks to the internet and tools like YouTube. And Huffington amplifies his point, writing today:

Thanks to YouTube -- and blogging and instant fact-checking and viral emails -- it is getting harder and harder to get away with repeating brazen lies without paying a price, or to run under-the-radar smear campaigns without being exposed.

Leaving aside the fact that both Schmidt and Huffington are both rooting for Obama to win, and therefore are inclined to color every McCain attack in the darkest terms possible, I think they have a point. Something significant has changed in just the last four years. We are collectively witnessing, and simultaneously creating, a networked public sphere that continuously scours the world for interesting information and collectively bubbles the most important stuff to greater view.

Karl Rove and I do not agree on much. Yet, his op-ed in the Wall Street Journal does provide an opportunity for overlap, and an affirmation that all politics is local... and social.

Karl Rove joins Markos Moulitsas at Newsweek, dogs and cats live together; does Media Matters favor Hiillary Clinton over the other dems?; the Iowa Independent predicts the winners of the Iowa caucuses; a video from Brave New Films criticizing Fox News gets banned on Digg; John McCain is up next in the MTV/MySpace Presidential Dialogue series; bloggers galore at the 2008 Democratic convention; get yourself a "We Look Like Facebook" t-shirt today!; and Barack Obama's tech policy is up in super-accessible HTML format.

Karl Rove and Max Cleland spoke to over 100 online political consultants today in Washington, DC during Yahoo's The Rise of Citizen 2.0 event. Yahoo's Citizen 2.0 is not much unlike IPDI's Poli-fulentials , Roper's Influentials, or -- as Cleland noted -- the "attentive elites."

They're news-hungry voters with a heightened sense of civic responsibility and a penchant for online discourse. They’re involved in their communities and are the people "who get my friends to pitch in." They're more likely than others to agree with phrases such as "knowing what is going on politically is the responsibility of every citizen" and "the Internet empowers groups of people to get together and act."

For most of us in the audience, the presentation was an elaborately-delivered (think Tom Cruise as Frank T.J. Mackey in Magnolia) compilation of overused Pew research points and carefully-selected stock photos.

Clearly, we are not the intended audience. Those who would find this presentation helpful are those who still think internet users are 12-year-old kids in their mother's basement posting visceral blog comments in virtual echo chambers. In other words, Karl Rove and Max Cleland.

What do William Gibson, George Orwell, Karl Rove, Chris Shays, Wikipedia and the rise of YouTube have to do with each other? Browsing today's news offerings, I find a connection.