CNN filtered about 40 questions from the almost 3,000 submitted and left candidates ample opportunity to stump and be stumped. Photo/CNN.com
By Justin Hemlepp TheSequitur.com Executive Editor July 25, 2007
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Presidential politics have crossed the Rubicon. If U.S. citizens must be forced to endure a perpetual presidential election, the format showcased in Monday’s CNN/YouTube Democratic Debate should and must be the way candidates face those citizens from this point forward.
It wasn’t perfect – not even close. The MTV-style camerawork was horrible, the mismatched sound was more than distracting and some so-called fringe candidates were virtually - and rudely - ignored. Nonetheless, average Americans finally were invited to participate directly in presidential politics, and there is no turning back.
YouTube users submitted to the candidates short video questions from which CNN execs selected several for presentation during the debate.
Some videos were serious. Some were funny. And some were stupid. That is America, and those were Americans making those videos. It is those Americans the candidates seek to govern, and it is only right that the candidates face the serious, the funny and the stupid in this country - not simply the scripted, the vetted and the polished - before occupying that fabulous mansion on Pennsylvania Avenue.
[A]verage Americans finally were invited to participate directly in presidential politics, and there is no turning back. Those gunning for that prime real estate reportedly were nervous about the debate format, as if CNN actually was going to allow just any Internet kook to embarrass everyone on stage - and the network itself - with videos unbecoming of such a forum. CNN filtered about 40 questions from the almost 3,000 submitted (That’s all?) and left candidates ample opportunity to stump and be stumped. This new debate format yielded tangible policy differences between candidates as well as a levity absent in previous encounters.
While CNN focused most of its attention on former Sen. John Edwards and Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama –– candidates like New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden and Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd proved themselves worthy of much more serious attention. And in the paltry time CNN gave to Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich and former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel, the two behind-the-pack candidates managed to both bring serious policy positions to the foreground and bring down the house with laughter.
At one point, moderator and CNN anchor Anderson Cooper finally allowed Gravel to answer a question, this one regarding the candidates’ favorite teacher. Gravel responded, “A brother by the name of Edgar Burke … he recognized me as a very failing student because I was dyslexic and couldn’t read very well. And so he gave me some attention and taught me to speak, and that’s what little chance I get to use it today.”
As for Kucinich, he actually gets an assist for unwittingly setting up Cooper for the best, and last, line of the night. Asked to identify something they like and something they dislike about the candidate to their left, Kucinich noted, “You notice what CNN did. They didn’t put anyone to the left of me.”
Cooper’s reply was a prescient as it was priceless: “I’m not sure it would be possible to find anybody.”
Otherwise, the debate was more of the same old, tired politicking we’re used to, with the exception that the candidates often answered the questions posed.
Gravel used his limited airtime to attack the other candidates as kowtowing to money interests, propose a consumption-based tax to combat climate change and make his case that “[t]here is only one thing worse than a soldier dying in vain. It is more soldiers dying in vain.”
To Gravel’s left, literally not figuratively, Dodd touted his decades-long Senate career and complained that the response to Hurricane Katrina disaster would have been different has the storm crashed into a city more white than New Orleans. He also noted that America’s choices in the so-called “War on Terror” have eroded the nation’s moral credibility on the world stage. “No one listens to us when it comes to foreign policy,” he said.
Otherwise, the debate was more of the same old, tired politicking we’re used to, with the exception that the candidates often answered the questions posed.Usually ranked third in the polls, Edwards and his stupid yellow bracelet were closer to center stage. (The candidates appeared to be lined up in order of popularity, with poll-toppers Clinton and Obama situated in the middle.) The former vice presidential nominee is clearly more comfortable discussing domestic issues like poverty and health care than U.S. foreign policy issues or his $400 haircuts. Blaming the pharmaceutical and insurance company lobbyists for the failure of universal health care in America, Edwards boomed, “The only way they are going to give up power is if we take it from them.” His hair did look great – though it would have been precious if he moussed up a spiky do like those featured in his hilarious campaign video, which, incorporated the soundtrack from the musical “Hair.”
And then there was “Hill-Bama.” The frontrunners, Clinton and Obama, circled each other throughout the debate without actually throwing a direct political punch and endured the YouTubers' most inane questions, such as whether they were “woman” enough or “black” enough candidates.
Pretty-in-pink Clinton sidestepped calling herself a liberal, choosing instead the “progressive” mantle. For her, climate change is an opportunity for job creation and it is a “national disgrace” that “universal health care is not a universal value.” Clinton also wants NATO troops to intervene in the genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region, and she said it would be “quite appropriate” to have a woman represent the United States in Muslim countries, where women are often treated as inferior beings.
Obama, on the other hand, attacked special interests’ iron grip on Washington and supported increased national education funding, citing failing schools in South Carolina, where the debate was held, and elsewhere. (Disclosure: I attended South Carolina schools for a couple years, and they are abysmal.) The Illinois senator said he would meet with frowned-upon world leaders, like North Korea’s Kim Jong-il, in his first year in office and accurately noted that the viewer-submitted YouTube questions reflect “cynicism about the capacity to change the country.”
The only Hispanic candidate, Richardson, said American troops can be removed from the Iraq theater within six months, leaving not one soldier behind. He also added that he wants Muslim U.N. troops to take the lead in Darfur. He favors civil unions with full marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples and insists on a $40,000 a year minimum wage for public school teachers. Richardson’s best quip about the other candidates? “I think they would all do great in the White House as my vice president.”
The forceful Biden referenced his Senate, foreign relations and consensus-building experience and said he wants American troops in Darfur. He said that whenever the United States decides to leave Iraq, it would take at least one year to fully and safely redeploy – reminding the others that a full withdrawal would leave American civilians in Iraq and vulnerable to attack. But all the years on the Senate floor haven’t dimmed Biden’s trademark bite. In one man’s video, he asked how the candidates would protect his “baby,” an all-black assault rifle the man brandished for the camera, Biden replied, “I tell you what, if that’s his baby, he needs help.”
Finally, Dennis “Department of Peace” Kucinich actually acted like a serious candidate for once, except, of course, for that damn perennial smirk. He rightly claims that the United States should be a more “green” nation and that all Congress needs to do to stop the Iraq war is cut off the funds. (That is want the Constitution says, after all.) Unfortunately, his support of reparations for slavery is just one of many positions he takes that scuttles all chances of a Kucinich Administration.
Republican presidential candidates will be challenged by YouTubers on Sept. 17 in Florida, and, considering Monday’s performance, it is anyone’s guess what type of questions the GOP field will face.
Nation 
