We like to think that there's something super special about campaigning on the internet, some sort of special sauce that allows a candidate like Howard Dean or Ron Paul to raise millions of dollars as if he'd turned on a fire hose. In my new book, "The First Campaign: Globalization, the Web, and the Race for the White House," I argue it's much simpler than that.

The book's title comes from my thesis that the 2008 campaign will be the first campaign of the 21st Century—the first where the race is defined by technology, with technology serving as both a medium and a message. Over the past twenty years, we’ve seen technology and globalization weave themselves into the fabric of our culture and our society such that the two interconnected issues now drive everything from our debate over health care or energy and the environment to our political campaigns.

But some important aspects of politics haven't changed, even with the fantastic fun tools and videos we now have at our fingertips.

What's perhaps most striking and interesting about this race online is that in previous elections we've seen a single campaign take off on the internet—Bill Bradley on the Democratic side and John McCain on the Republican side in 2000, Howard Dean in 2004. This year, though, all of the campaigns are competing online to win money, support, and momentum. From Hillary to Huckabee, Obama to Romney, Biden to Paul, everyone in the race understands just how powerful the internet can be in this election to sway the outcome. Often lost, though, in the sexy tools and the flashy viral ads is a fundamental point alluded to by Zephyr: It's not really about the internet at all.

What was incredible about the legacy of the Dean campaign is that the end of the campaign was kind of like what happened Christmas morning in Whoville after the Grinch stole Christmas: It turned out that Christmas wasn't about the stockings, the presents, the tress, or lights or even the roast beast. The Dean campaign's energy and enthusiasm didn't dissipate because its candidate was gone—it kept going, as witnessed by later events like the success of Democracy for America, Dean’s successful bid for the chairmanship of the party, and gatherings like YearlyKos. The energy is still out there, still building, still revolutionizing the political landscape and the way we campaign today.

As Michael Bassik, who heads the online advertising division for the Democratic firm MSHC Partners, told me, "Howard Dean's website wasn’t what made Howard Dean a fundraising phenomenon online. It was Howard Dean. He could have had a website that was a fundraising page and a few 'About Us' pages. It wasn't about the fact that he had a blog, it was that Howard Dean spoke to so many people and that he spoke in a voice that so many people hadn’t heard in four—if not more—years."

Bassik's view is almost universal among internet strategists. "If you look at the candidates who have all done well online—John McCain in 2000, Howard Dean in 2004, even Jesse Ventura going back a while—what they all had in common was they all had a core message that was really resonating with people," explains Mark Soohoo, who oversaw the 2004 Republican National Convention website and was one of the early staff tapped for John McCain's 2004 internet team. "You become president because you have a vision, you have a message…. You don't become President because you have a website. Howard Dean did well online not because he had a cool bat but because he had a good message."

Phil Madsen, who served as Ventura's webmaster, posted the same response after his candidate won. "While it's true that we could not have won the election without the internet, we did not win the election because of the internet. We won because our candidates, campaign staff, and volunteers engaged the voters in a number of meaningful ways," he wrote on jesseventura.org. "The internet is not about technology; it's about relationships."

It's easy to think that what has kept Barack Obama neck-in-neck with the powerful Hillary Clinton operation this year is his sexy suite of online tools on my.barackobama.com, but looking at this lesson from 2004, we can see there's something more important and more fundamental going on here: People are responding to his message of change and optimistic hope. That's a lot harder to stop or overcome than simply by building an equally great set set of online organizing tools. Ditto on the GOP side, where Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee actually have some of the least developed online presences of any Republican candidate. It's not about the toolbox. It's about how a campaign listens to and welcomes its supporters. Obama, Huckabee, and Paul all have one key thing in common with Dean: They're listening and learning from their grassroots supporters.

As part of my book research, I spent a long time talking with blogger Robert Scoble, who actually rode on John Edwards’ campaign plane during Edwards' announcement tour last fall. We kicked around just what the internet meant to politics and how this first campaign was different from all that had come before. Scoble's conclusion: It's about listening. "I think it's healthy for democracy to have leaders who understand how to listen to the people they're serving. I'm certainly attracted to someone who understands how to listen to the world," says Scoble, who, ever eager, almost tripped over his words as he discussed the transformation. "That'll make this country a better place."

I couldn't agree more. The question is: Which candidates in this first campaign of a new era will understand that message and be able to ride it to the White House?