Iowa Govenor Tom Vilsack and former Senator to North Carolina John Edwards have announced their campaigns for the 2008 Presidential election. Both of them are doing something I haven’t seen from other (potential) Presidential contenders like McCain, Hillary, Obama and Kucinich: Vilsack and Edwards are active on Flickr.

Tom Vilsack

John Edwards

A quick glance at both of their Flickr galleries will reveal that Edwards has a better photographer and a better camera.

While I thought it was cool to find both of these candidates using Flickr, I thought it was especially interesting that Tom Vilsack is using Flickr as his photo gallery - like myself and millions of other bloggers. See what I mean by going to his homepage an clicking on “Photo Gallery”. Whereas Edwards calls out his link to Flickr separately (scroll down to the bottom of his homepage). I’m not sure if this is a style thing or a funds thing.

It’s funny, when I first saw that Vilsack had a Flickr account I thought “oh I wonder what types of photos he takes”. I did not expect to find a Flickr account being used to host photos that other people have taken of you - of course I was not thinking like a politician. Flickr is used for self promotion by a growing number of professionals (see musicians), but they usually post interesting photos taken by themselves. So on one hand I’m excited to see Presidential candidates photo blogging, on the other hand I’d rather see the world through their eyes. To me that’s what Flickr is all about, sharing your visual point of view with others.

Update:

I spent some time on Edwards blog and that is integrated with his Flickr account nicely. His whole blog is done very well (by PlusThree).  It conveys a clear message and just looks like the guy gets it - makes me wonder (again) how on earth Kerry ever got the nomination in 2004.