The YouTube Debates: Whose Platform Is It Anyway?

After a plethora of user-submitted videos that served as fuel for the banter among the eight Democratic presidential candidates at yesterday's CNN/YouTube political debate at the Citadel in South Carolina, the unasked question today remains this: Is it really a debate?

Granted, the task of situating eight candidates together for a two-hour political spectacle is in itself a logistical nightmare. In the interest of fairness, time has to be precisely allocated. Thus, producers measure the intervals they allot for candidates' responses in seconds rather than minutes. That fact alone prompts candidates to practice appropriate, attention-grabbing responses to questions well ahead of time. Spontaneity typically languishes after having been encapsulated within sound bites.

This leads TV producers to ponder, how can the magic of television be used to enliven an eight-candidate gabfest? Wrapping itself in the popular motif of the Internet, with its raw and unfinished exterior and its hip and hyperactive attitude - a false motif, as anyone who's worked in this medium since its inception knows too well - CNN yesterday evening attempted to enliven an overcooked debate format with a generous infusion of original debate questions, in convenient 30-second video capsules submitted by YouTube users.

On its face, there's nothing wrong with it. The people should be the ones asking the questions. And if they get to produce and decorate the way they ask those questions, then more power to them. But as debate moderator Anderson Cooper explained at the start of yesterday's proceedings, producers chose the questions for yesterday's debate from a pool of about 3,000 videos. After those which were too impertinent, too corny, or too cute were eliminated from consideration (though some were excerpted anyway just for effect), the remainder were categorized by topic.

Even if you didn't watch the debates yesterday, you can see where this is going. The producers chose the topics ahead of time, and chose what they believed to be the most poignant videos representing the topics at hand. As a result, the questions weren't really about the questions, but rather the one- or two-word categories which best exemplify what they were mostly, or even partly, about.

For example, Davis Fleetwood of Groton, Massachusetts, posed a question for Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D - Ohio). "After watching the first several debates - which seemed more like conversations than actual debates," Fleetwood said, "we're all clear out here that you Democrats are 'united.' We get it. But we have a very important decision to make, coming up very soon, and Americans desperate for change need to know: Congressman Kucinich, how would America be better off with you as President than we would be if either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama became President?"

At this point, the congressman appeared to locate his own personal Play button, not unlike the one which appeared beneath Mr. Fleetwood in CNN's overhead graphic. Kucinich's memory tape consisted of a 30-second recital beginning by reminding listeners of his voting record against the Iraq War, as contrasted against Sens. Obama and Clinton.

The tape then continued: "You know, we're here at the Citadel. I want the people of the Citadel to know that I mourn the passing of those people who gave their lives. But I also would not hesitate to call upon you to defend this country. But I'll never send you in pursuit of a political agenda or a lie."

At the end of that little recitation, one might have wished CNN had inserted, "Portions of this program were pre-recorded." Clearly for many candidates, if not all, the eight- or nine- or ten-way format that cable news channels prefer this year - with topics tossed around like jump balls and not all candidates getting a whack at them - becomes a mere opportunity for them to squeeze their pre-existing sound bites into whatever openings they can find.

The trick is to make it all sound convincing, as though the recorded questions and the memorized responses were part of a single, contiguous thread. That trick never gets pulled off. Like the abbreviated discourse between participants in a public IRC chat room, the modern "debate" format is typified more accurately by the disconnect - not only between the respondent and the questioner, but also between the moderator and the entire process.

Anderson Cooper's job could perhaps have been conducted more effectively by Wink Martindale. First, he repeated YouTube users' questions in a form that was more gelatinous and digestible than was originally asked. Then he reminded candidates to stay on topic, and cut them off when their responses ran over the allotted intervals. For this, he gets paid way more than most of us.

So if anyone were to "win" this debate, it would have to be someone whose responses seemed congenial, heartfelt, and even moderately thought-provoking. This is where Sen. Obama (D - Illinois) seemed most ill at ease. He has an intense and honorable desire to attain Kennedy-esque eloquence. But with a metronome ticking away like the background timer on "Family Feud," he often ends up stammering, even starting one sentence and finishing another.

Sen. Clinton (D - New York) seems more comfortable with the format, especially knowing that if she can get in a good zinger, at least ten seconds of her interval will be filled with audience applause - which always sounds good on a replay. Her response about being uncertain who really won the 2000 election was a key example of splendid execution given the circumstances.

Gov. Bill Richardson (D - New Mexico) may have dropped the ball this time around. It didn't help that he was often pictured from the same camera angle - a by-product of where he was stationed with respect to the stage. CNN's headache-inducing barrage of handheld camera angles tend to be magnetized around the most convenient spots on the stage where a cameraman can dance around without tripping the moderator.

Thus, former Sen. Mike Gravel (D - Alaska) got the seat of honor, as the handheld orbited his haggard face like a lunar satellite, on at least three occasions peering up from the floor straight up his nose - which is not a part of your president you want to think much about.

Richardson, meanwhile, was only accessible from a few positions - a fact which may have directly contributed to post-debate commentary that he seemed unyielding, hitting the same note. In fact, his comments were actually quite circumspect; but, like Kucinich, Richardson stuck to memorized statements, whose content hadn't changed much since the previous two debates.

Surprisingly, Sen. Chris Dodd (D - Conn.) seemed to be the most directly responsive to and welcoming of users' questions, even though his responses were often monotonal. It was Sen. Joseph Biden (D - Del.), though, who made the most concerted effort to break down the walls of the format and start a genuine discussion. It may have been a futile effort, but he did his best, especially by distinguishing his diplomacy-plus-military strategy for Iraq against Gov. Richardson's plea for a six-month pullout.

That plea came in response to a direct YouTube user question asking candidates how soon after inauguration day in 2009 would they bring troops home from Iraq. Richardson had responded, by the end of 2008...providing the most concrete evidence of the night that it doesn't matter whether Cooper or YouTube or Martindale was asking the questions, they weren't really being heard. When the format forbids any opportunity for true rhetoric, the debate becomes a Pavlovian exercise in responding to keywords. Granted, the governor's hearing problem must be taken into account, though all he appeared to have heard was, "...Iraq...pullout," and from there he took off.

Sen. Biden repeatedly urged candidates to start speaking the truth. The same request could be made of the producers of this debate. Town-hall style debates are not at all new - the first presidential debate with audience-submitted questions came in 1992. There, President George H. W. Bush demonstrated his relative illness of ease against both H. Ross Perot and then-Governor Bill Clinton, whose remarkable skill with communicating directly to the questioner may have catalyzed his last big surge in the polls.

With the YouTube questions being pre-recorded, submitted in advance, screened, and in many cases obviously edited, there isn't much left with which a candidate could hope to connect (but for two exceptions in which CNN invited the questioners to appear in the audience anyway).

Sen. Clinton tried her husband's technique of initiating her responses with first-name references to the questioners. But usually by then, CNN had replaced the questioners' overhead graphic, leaving her to direct her personal greetings toward the audience, calling them all by someone else's first name. It was a disconnect, it wasn't her fault, and yet it still didn't work.

There's absolutely nothing more open about the YouTube format for the presidential debates than had all the questioners been flown directly to the Citadel to deliver their concerns through an open microphone. In fact, that might have been preferable.

And any notion that it is somehow the Internet that is breaking down this important element of political discourse into a nightmarish reincarnation of "The Match Game," is entirely false. CNN is, and remains, an agent of television. Its misinterpretation of the power of the Internet once again establishes it as a child of the television era. When the Internet works well, it doesn't break down candidates' viewpoints into digestible Jell-O chunks.

Instead, it demolishes the time barrier completely, giving candidates ample space and time to clearly articulate their stance on all the issues. Since today's debates' formats aren't discussions anyway, nothing is lost by users juxtaposing one hour-long (or longer) candidate's interview next to that of another.

Besides, partnerships with CNN tend to bear the dubious distinction of on-demand disavowal. When they fail, CNN can always blame the partner in the deal, as it did when it blamed Time Magazine for the failure of "NewsStand." When the user submission format inevitably fails to resurrect a production formula whose recipe has already been tampered with to death, YouTube will probably be blamed.

But it won't be YouTube's fault, nor that of the broader Internet which CNN believes YouTube represents. Nor will it be the fault of YouTube's many users, whose faith in the political process is worth praise. Nor the viewers at large, whose patience with the televised political process may have been completely extinguished after Florida was called for Gore.

The problem rests with the producers who continually underestimate the intelligence, the tolerance, and the wisdom of the American voter. If they truly cared about what you, the viewing audience and the Internet user, truly thought, they would situate all eight candidates together in front of black curtains for three hours with a single microphone and no moderator. The people don't need buttons and gadgets to become empowered. They don't need a Play button. They need a vision.

[Viewpoints expressed here are those of Scott M. Fulton, III, who is solely responsible for his content.]