New York ? Given all that’s at stake in the 2008 presidential race, it’s a bit terrifying to realize that by one measure, a major role is being played by an aspiring model/actress/fashion designer/former beauty pageant contestant named Amber.

Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign is one of several turning to online videos to pass its message on to voters. On this video, Clinton selects a jukebox song in a spoof of the final scene of the popular HBO mobster series The

That’s Amber Lee Ettinger, aka Obama Girl, whose racy Web video “I Got A Crush On Obama” has gotten well more than 2 million hits in the three weeks it’s been online, making it one of the most-watched political videos this season.

Some of us have become so used to our daily fix of Web videos, it’s hard to remember that back in 2004, when President Bush spoke of “the Internets,” there WAS no YouTube.

Three years later, people are calling this the “YouTube Election” – in which anyone with a minicam or even a mere cell phone can conceivably affect the outcome. “Some of the best, the most innovative stuff is gonna come from some voter out there, who changes the entire complexion of the race,” says Joe Trippi, former campaign manager for Howard Dean in 2004, now adviser to the John Edwards campaign.

And that’s a scary thing for campaigns, which are used to controlling their own message, enforcing it from the top down. On the new playing field, “you lose the ability to manage what you want to say,” says Democratic strategist Chris Lehane, a former Clinton White House staffer.

So what’s a campaign manager to do? Fight back, with all the technology available: MySpace and Facebook profiles, candidates’ own online communities, text-messaging networks. On Sen. Barack Obama’s site, you can download ringtones with snippets of his speeches set to a rock or hip-hop motif.

But Web video is the big battlefield. Here’s a brief guide to some must-see viewing – some candidate-approved, and some candidate-definitely-did-NOT-approve:

Going high-tech

Web video has given one candidate, Hillary Rodham Clinton, a crucial chance to try to warm up her image. “Let’s chat,” she urged voters when she opened her campaign online. She’s made fun of her questionable singing skills, because others were doing so anyway. And in her “Sopranos” spoof, her campaign sought to catch the wave of a pop-culture phenomenon, mimicking that famous diner ending (some would say nonending) and even scoring a cameo from the character Johnny Sack.

No matter that the video had nothing to do with any issues. Half a million people viewed it on the Clinton site the first day, another half million the next day, and so many on YouTube and other sites that the campaign estimates several million have now watched it. Not to mention the inevitable spoofs that this spoof has spawned.

The “Sopranos” video was aimed at showing Clinton has a sense of humor. She probably didn’t find it so humorous when the Orwellian “Hillary 1984” video came out earlier this year, a mashup of a classic Apple ad, depicting Clinton as a Big Brother-type figure. The ad, produced by a renegade employee of a company hired to design Obama’s Web site, has now been seen by a whopping 4 million or so on YouTube.

Going low-tech

When the Edwards campaign was doing a fundraising push ahead of the candidate’s 54th birthday this month, it offered his mother’s pecan pie recipe to donors. Trippi and deputy campaign manager Jonathan Prince decided to try the recipe. They baked it, burned it and uploaded their amateur video – with a cameo from Elizabeth Edwards seeking donations – to YouTube. “We brought in close to $300,000,” says Trippi. “All we spent was a couple of bucks for the milk and eggs.”

Oops

Here’s a low-tech video Edwards would rather forget. Most if not all people fix their hair before going on TV – but this old footage shows him primping for two minutes, and is deviously set to “I Feel Pretty” from “West Side Story.” Combined with stories about expensive haircuts, for some it likely plays into characterizations of Edwards as the “Breck” candidate.

Oops again

GOP hopeful John McCain channeled his inner Beach Boy when, asked at a gathering in South Carolina about possible military action against Iran, he replied with a takeoff on the 1965 hit “Barbara Ann”: “Bomb, Bomb Iran :”

Criticized after the amateur video surfaced, McCain responded: “Lighten up and get a life.” The director of his e-campaign, Christian Ferry, says spontaneity is one of the Arizona senator’s hallmarks, and that he’ll continue to respond in an unscripted manner – and to produce his own sometimes quirky content. “Put on your shades and hop on board,” McCain’s announcement video urges viewers. Supporters are invited to join the McCain Space community on his Web site.

Funny at the time

New York mayors love to display their comic skills at the annual Inner Circle dinner. In 2000, Rudy Giuliani outdid himself, appearing in full drag in a taped skit, even letting himself be kissed on the (heavily padded) chest by Donald Trump. Now that Giuliani’s running for the Republican nomination, YouTube users are circulating it with glee.

That girl

She frolics in a bikini, red underwear or a tight Obama T-shirt, lip-synching words like “You’re into border security – let’s break this border between you and me.” Though salacious, the Obama Girl video is unlikely to hurt the candidate and might help: “It contributes to the image of him being the hip candidate, the fresh face,” says Daniel Kurtzman, editor of About.com’s political humor Web site.