Did we really have to see Stephanie ask an energy policy question from her Bay Area bathroom? Sure, the compact fluorescent light bulbs she boasted of using in the john are efficient. But so are outhouses.
And why did we — and the Democratic presidential candidates — have to suffer through squirming responses to Anna from Planned Parenthood in Pennsylvania, who audaciously demanded to know just how they’d talked to their kids about sex? On the other hand, had it not been for Jered Townsend of Clio, Mich., who cradled the long, black barrel of his rifle and declared it to be his “baby” in need of protection, we wouldn’t have gotten the most honest answer I’ve ever heard in politics: “If that’s his baby,” Sen.
Joe Biden retorted, “he needs help.” This is supposed to be the YouTube campaign, a time when video images like that of John Edwards primping before a mirror or the rogue “1984” video that cast Hillary Clinton as an Orwellian figure are supposed to upend politics-as-usual with an energizing new element. In keeping with this zeitgeist, CNN on Monday hosted a presidential debate, this one among Democrats, in which questions were put to the candidates not by journalists or even by voters in the studio, but by people who transmitted their queries through YouTube.
The idea was supposed to be revolutionary, a new force of democracy brought to bear upon the insularity that characterizes American presidential campaigns. The point was to pry out of the candidates something other than the utterly scripted, overly strategic responses that they usually give. The videos, in fact, were the stars of the show — the talking snowman from Minnesota who worried about the impact of global warming on his kids’ futures was my mittens-down pick for best actor.
But no revolution unfolded upon the screen. The candidates by and large did stick to their scripts — how many times can Clinton say “experience” and Barack Obama say “change”? Fringe candidates Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich stayed firmly on the fringe. All in all, there was nothing much new in the questions — Iraq, energy, gay marriage, Social Security, taxes, climate change. Who hasn’t heard them before? Certainly the candidates have, which is one reason their responses were so pat.
And the debate simply wasn’t more democratic than the hundreds of “town hall” meetings candidates hold in communities around the country. In general, those who participate in politics through the Internet tend to be more male, more white, have more education and higher incomes than the electorate as a whole, studies have shown. But Democrats who are likely to vote in primaries are, in general, the opposite: more female, less white and with somewhat lower incomes.
Besides, to have produced a question, “you had to be a mini-videographer,” notes Ken Rogerson, director of undergraduate studies at Duke University’s Department of Public Policy. That is, you had to know how to use a digital camera, edit the video, be sufficiently creative to catch the eye of CNN producers, and upload it all.
Rogerson, who’d hoped the debate could “give us perspectives that we haven’t seen yet,” concluded afterward that it turned out only “a little different” in teasing a few more-personal responses out of the candidates.
For me, the novelty of the YouTube debate wasn’t its newness. It was its undertone of crassness.
A chronic complaint about contemporary politics is that campaigns lack civility.
They’re dominated by sneering sound bites, cable-television shouting matches and tactics that can transform an opponent’s silly gaffe into an alleged character flaw. We lament the diminished respect for both the political process and the offices that politicians seek. Not long ago, the infamous boxers-or-briefs question put to Bill Clinton during an MTV telecast brought a national gasp of disapproval — both because the question was asked, and answered. Now we’re unperturbed when candidates are quizzed on whether they’ve discussed sex in a “medically accurate and age appropriate” way.
There is something about the Internet that makes people feel they can be blunt or irreverent or even profane — the language of instant messaging and e-mail. This isn’t the tone at a traditional town hall meeting where candidates take questions, and where those asking the questions are amid their neighbors, co-workers and friends.
Abandoning the electronic town hall and returning to the high school gym or church basement won’t make presidential politics less democratic. Just a bit more decorous.
Marie Cocco’s e-mail address is mariecocco@washpost.com.
