As the midterm elections quickly pass into memory, focus is now switching to the 2008 presidential question and what role the Internet will play.

That’s no longer a negative thing.

At a panel discussion on “Trends in Political Blogging,” sponsored by the George Washington University Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet Wednesday, there was the usual debate over who is a blogger, who is reading blogs and whether or not blogs are providing a real revolution in communication.

Not much new there.

But one word that was mentioned several times—and we at NewAssignment.Net applaud this—was “transparency.” While professional campaigners may not necessarily welcome the onset of more transparency, this cycle will likely require them to be more open with the peeking public. “Blogs have forced the media and politicians to be transparent; you can’t get away with much anymore… you get called on it immediately,” said CNN’s Jacki Schechner.

There also seemed to be agreement that blogs will not be the only Web tool in use during the upcoming election cycle. User-generated content, video and podcasting were also mentioned.

“We have no idea what is going to happen,” said Patrick Ruffini, the ECampaign(s) director for the Republican National Committee (no representative from the DNC was present.)

“Campaign professionals are going to have to learn how to turn on a dime and be able to change when the tools change.”

One of those tools will likely be the “power of the people,” or what Bill Allison of the Sunlight Foundation described as “citizen oversight.” (Sunlight is a funder of NewAssignment.Net.)

Sunlight began its Congresspedia project, said Allison, as a way to “harness the potential of the internet to change relationship between constituents and members of congress.” By providing citizens with the tools to do their own investigations of members of Congress, Allison said he realized people really do care about transparency.

What has been interesting to watch, says Allison, is that you start with a drop in the ocean, and then watch as the “ripple effect” turns that little drop into a wave of action.

“The expertise of you audience drives the story and attracts a much richer amount of information,” said Allison. “You can actually see the story develop. In Internet time, new information comes out within hours after you have posted something.”

Allison was laying out the framework for distributed, networked, open source journalism but the concepts didn’t seem to resonate with the political professionals and academics in the room.

Much of the discussion had a circa 2000 feel to it, with one student next to me shaking his head at the end, wondering how so many professionals seemed to be missing the point by focusing on narrow questions like “who is reading blogs?”

Robert Moran, the director of research for Strategy One who said he was involved in Republican campaigns in the past, said that blogs and talk radio could be paired together by candidates in an effort to bypass traditional methods of getting information out.

Will blogs become another political tool by Republicans and Democrats? Those on the panel kind of danced around the issue but CNN’s Jacki Schechner did say the ’08 cycle could see more and more bloggers latching onto candidates and pushing them.

As in all election cycle, candidates and campaigns will look to get their message out anyway they can. Bloggers will likely play a larger role this time, working with campaigns. But a new twist will be the role of voters and constituents, who will have the tools and the motivations to watch and keep everyone honest. It’s going to be fun to watch.

Steve Fox is a contributing editor with NewAssignment.Net. In a previous life, he worked on the politics team at washingtonpost.com and was the politics editor from 2001-2003.