Comments: My _Guardian_ column on the CNN/YouTube Debate

Interesting analysis.

If I understand it right you're arguing that Republicans won't pick CNN again for such a debate in the future, should CNN pick those "campaign-killing" YouTube contributions. But right now the Republicans still agreed to it, right, meaning that CNN pickl the videos? So it remains to see if any of those videos get through.

> Whether any of the candidates would be
> pressed on their answer depended entirely
> on the debate's moderator.

You started that sentence but didn't conclude whether the moderator did push the candidates to answer the questions indeed. I know that once he pushed Barack Obama, who gave an evasive answer to the questions "did soldiers die in vein in Iraq" (it was a lose-lose question, as either way you answer it will open you for heavy rhetorical attack), to actually give a to-the-point answer. But I didn't watch the whole thing, so I can't come up with anything conclusive...

Posted by Philipp Lenssen at August 3, 2007 07:28 AM

I thought they'd propose a similar debate - but with the questions selected by Fox News. Or maybe they'd get some sort of deal to have an ally pick the questions. There's plenty of time for them to come up with something.

The moderator did push the candidates a few times. But my point was that whether to push, and how far, was entirely up to that moderator, and the "citizens" had no say in the matter.

Posted by Seth Finkelstein at August 3, 2007 08:26 AM

> I thought they'd propose a similar
> debate - but with the questions selected
> by Fox News.

But the Republicans (or some?) already have it scheduled with CNN/ YouTube for Sept. 17th...

http://www.youtube.com/debates

Posted by Philipp Lenssen at August 3, 2007 12:19 PM

That was the plan, but after the Democratic debate, some Republican candidates started having "scheduling issues" with the September 17 debate. We'll have to see if they continue to have conflicts, or they suddenly get resolved, or if there's an alternate event.

Posted by Seth Finkelstein at August 3, 2007 09:30 PM

> That was the plan, but after
> the Democratic debate, some Republican
> candidates started having "scheduling
> issues" with the September 17 debate.

But then they'd be losing hip-appeal and votes from the younger generation, right?

Posted by Philipp Lenssen at August 4, 2007 05:56 AM

I think the web echo chamber has a very inflated sense of its own importance.

And if the Republicans have a Fox News "debate", very few votes will care about the distinction.

Posted by Seth Finkelstein at August 4, 2007 06:11 AM

> I think the web echo chamber has
> a very inflated sense of its own importance.

The "web"? Nah. This YouTube debate was marketed on CNN International as the "hip" thing quite heavily. That's primetime, mainstread TV. (I don't have "normal" CNN here, but I could imagine its YouTube promotion was along the same lines as CNN International.)

Posted by Philipp Lenssen at August 4, 2007 08:08 PM

It's being marketed heavily because this is the slow news season, not because it's important.

How "hip" was George Bush?

Posted by Seth Finkelstein at August 4, 2007 08:28 PM

Good piece, Seth. I missed out on the hypeful pieces you charged against, but I suppose they existed.

It made for fun TV...

Posted by Jon Garfunkel at August 7, 2007 02:15 AM