What an odd debate last night. It was surely not Lincoln-Douglas 1858. And yet I think it revealed more about the candidates and the shape of the field than any information we had to date. I thought the format was tiresome. The use of live voters asking questions from remote locations seems like a complete waste of time and money; in essence, it's either a gimmick to make the debate look like a 18th century New England town hall meeting, or a pure ratings play because viewers must love themselves some minor connection to the event (look, those questions are being asked by someone in Virginia! I live near there!). In either case, it doesn't produce better (or even more populist) questions. It just creates a forced and obvious fake replication of some sort of community. Allowing questions via Twitter is an interesting concept, but suffers from much the same problem: there are some great follow-up questions running on the ticker via twitter, but those don't get asked. Wolf Blitzer struck me as a weak moderator, but one thing he did well was to let the candidates have some back and forth; there were a few moments where two candidates (notably Romney and Perry) seemed to be almost having a conversation. I don't know what that's worth, but it certainly made for some lively television.
Debate Post-Mortem
Debate Post-Mortem
Debate Post-Mortem
What an odd debate last night. It was surely not Lincoln-Douglas 1858. And yet I think it revealed more about the candidates and the shape of the field than any information we had to date. I thought the format was tiresome. The use of live voters asking questions from remote locations seems like a complete waste of time and money; in essence, it's either a gimmick to make the debate look like a 18th century New England town hall meeting, or a pure ratings play because viewers must love themselves some minor connection to the event (look, those questions are being asked by someone in Virginia! I live near there!). In either case, it doesn't produce better (or even more populist) questions. It just creates a forced and obvious fake replication of some sort of community. Allowing questions via Twitter is an interesting concept, but suffers from much the same problem: there are some great follow-up questions running on the ticker via twitter, but those don't get asked. Wolf Blitzer struck me as a weak moderator, but one thing he did well was to let the candidates have some back and forth; there were a few moments where two candidates (notably Romney and Perry) seemed to be almost having a conversation. I don't know what that's worth, but it certainly made for some lively television.