As I said below, I think this debate turned out pretty well — but perhaps a little less well than I thought an hour ago. At some level I think CNN/Youtube still treated this as a novelty. I’d say 2/3 of the questions were pretty good — in as much as ‘good’ means questions that are off the beaten path and yield productive answers. I agree with a lot of viewers who have said that having actual voters posing the questions made it harder for the candidates to duck the questions. Perhaps a third or maybe a quarter, though, were just silly. I don’t know how else to put it — songs, corny jokes, etc. That can be fun for viral video. But I thought it cheapened the exercise a bit.
The real problem is that there was no follow-up from the questioners, though Cooper did a decent job playing that role. But conventional debates almost never allow for real follow-up, even though the questioner is live and in person.
Ideally, you’d have two candidates actually debate, as in really have a structured argument for an hour. But you’re never going to have that. So I thought this was fairly good.
Late Update: I always try to get my thoughts down in a post before seeing what other commenters and bloggers said. Having done so now, it seems others were even more positive than I was about how this went. As I look back on some of the Youtube questions, I guess it’s perhaps growing on me too. But I still think it would have been better still without a few of the more antic and over-the-top vids. Call me old-fashioned.
