I've had some time to mull over the great YouTube Democratic debate on CNN, and I've decided I'm less than thrilled with the results.
CNN, understandably, promoted this event as the next great breakthrough in the theater of presidential politics. I'm sorry to say that was not my impression. Theater, yes; but a breakthrough or enlightening, no. I almost expected Chuck Barris to bang a gong on a couple of occasions.
First of all, most of the candidates had their campaign speeches on every imaginable subject prepared for delivery. Their staffs had brainstormed every possible question the public might ask, and they had canned responses designed to sometimes answer the question, and to always present the candidate as the only one on the stage qualified to be our next president.
None of this comes as a surprise to anyone who has watched politics in this country. We are presented with talking heads programmed by a bunch of political hacks lest they stray from the all-encompassing and nonthreatening message of their campaign. The days of politicians speaking candidly are over, if they ever existed.
Modern politics seems to be about the candidates convincing us that they are the right leader, rather than entering into true debate on issues, offering solid arguments on how to resolve problems, letting us decide who is most qualified. It's a bit like selling laundry detergent - they don't give you any facts, just a lot of marketing mumbo-jumbo, and you don't know the truth until you purchase the product and find out if it works as presented.
An interesting side note about the word candidate, and candid; both come from the Greek word candidus, meaning white, evolving to mean pure and without malice (Right!). Candidate, or candidatus, a derivative of the original, means white-robed.
There were a couple of candidates who seemed to try to answer more directly, Sen. Gravel and Sen. Biden, specifically. While I found their seeming extemporaneous comments refreshing, they both scare the bejeezus out of me. Gravel, who has served distinguishably in the Congress, comes off as a wing nut, and Biden, while refreshingly honest, is too hawkish for this liberal.
Biden made a good point or two, and Obama and Clinton did OK on a couple of issues, but it was still two hours of stump speeches more than shining new light on what anyone would do as president.
Of course, Kucinich was his usual Chihuahua-like self, smiling and snarling, and becoming as irritating as the Head-On commercial when he wouldn't stop saying "text peace on your cellphone."
The videos, some moving, some clever, and some funny, did little to contribute to the CNN-hyped new direction in politics - it was more like a sideshow, or perhaps Super Bowl commercials. It did show how creative, and sometimes shameless on national television, we Americans can be.
Once we'd seen one or two of the videos, the focus became more on what the people in the videos might say or do, or what costume they might don, rather than the content of what are serious questions facing our country. It was like waiting for the next SB commercial. I simply wanted the candidates to shut up - at least in part because it was a repeat of what I've heard before - so that we could get on to the next YouTube video and see what someone had cooked up.
Our household had another criticism for CNN, which I sent to their feedback page on the Web. When some of the videos were playing, someone in the director's booth had the cameras wandering around the auditorium, showing us the candidates' faces, or the audience, or a distant shot of videos that were not of the highest quality to begin with. We would have preferred that the camera fill the screen with the video so we could focus on that.
I suppose that, with this first experience behind us, the Republicans may gain a small advantage if they, and the TV newspeople, find ways to make the approach more interesting and hard-hitting, and possibly even present us with some facts that will help in our deliberations about who will be the successor to Emperor Bush.
The subsequent Republican debate was televised Sunday on ABC's This Week With George Stephanopoulos. -Ed.[[In-content Ad]]
