One of the big questions of the presidential campaign has been when the first YouTube moment–the seemingly superficial event that takes on a campaign-altering life of its own once it’s posted to YouTube or other video sharing sites–of the 2008 elections would surface. Like (I would imagine) a lot of other people, I had been working under the assumption that it would be a gaffe along the lines of George Allen’s “macaca” slip or Howard Dean’s scream in 2004.

Thankfully, there’s still plenty of time for one of the candidates to say something bizarre and/or offensive. However, I think that in the meantime we’ve officially found an early frontrunner for political YouTube moment of the year, and it’s something altogether more substantive–namely, Barack Obama’s Iowa Caucus