Opinion: Hello, I’m Chris Dodd...

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Hillary Clinton is using funny, quirky videos to break through her enduring image as a cold, calculating woman. But she’s a frontrunner. How do you use videos to simply break through?

That’s the quandary facing second-tier candidates in both parties. Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, who’slanguishing way back in the pack of Democratic presidential wannabes, is trying an end run around the traditional media, who traditionally focus on the horserace and the frontrunners. He’s got a new video up on YouTube that shows him without a tie talking straight into the camera.

With so much at stake these days, he says, you’d think the media would be talking about the ‘profound problems’ confronting America--’someone else’s civil war in Iraq,’ the nation’s global reputation ‘in tatters,’ the rising costs of energy, health care and education.

Quick cut to some actual TV news clips on, you guessed it, Hillary Clinton’s new campaign theme song, Paris Hilton’s jailing, John Edwards’ $400 haircuts, the Obama girl video and Anna Nicole Smith’s will.

The media, Dodd says, wants to talk about haircuts instead of troop cuts, Paris instead of Baghdad. But now thanks to YouTube, email and the web, Dodd says, he will bypass the traditional media filters to open discussions with voters about important matters such as the Dodd Amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill, which would require President Bush to begin withdrawing American troops from Iraq within 30 days of passage.

Dodd wants supporters to tell their senators to vote for the Dodd measure, to videotape their meetings and upload the tapes for the world to see. No doubt those tapes will outdraw the Britney Spears video within hours.

--Andrew Malcolm