I haven't yet surveyed the blog for a reaction to tonight's "historic" CNN/YouTube Debate,but for my money it was - surprisingly, I must admit - one of the best debates I've seen in quite some time.
At first I was annoyed by AC's attempts to hide behind the concept. At one point about half way through the whole thing he even defended himself by saying "hey, these aren't my questions!" But the longer it went on, the more I realized that really wasn't such a bad thing. By allowing citizens to speak directly to the candidates, he was "forced" to ask questions he never, ever would have asked on his own. That, in turn, forced the candidates to think on their feet, avoiding the endless repetition of prepared slogans and scripted remarks.
Take the question about reparations for slavery, for example:
There is no way anything like this would ever have been asked by AC. And there's no way any of the candidates prepared for it. So not only were they forced to think on their feet, they were also forced to stay fully engaged. By the end of these things I'm usually not sure who is more tired - me or them - but at the end of this one it didn't seem like anyone was all that tired.
As for my Media and Politics class, not only were they were forced to watch the debate with me tonight, their writing assignment this week will also be on the debate. A summary of their collective analysis will have to wait. For now, the near universal reaction was that even if this debate wasn't necessarily more informative, it was far more interesting than the ones they had watched in the past. And that's gotta be a good thing, right?
UPDATE: Forgot to mention this... Edwards and Obama had the best candidate prepared videos, bar none:
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