Katherine Q. Seelye from the New York Times goes to town analyzing the planned event, imagining various scenarios of how a questioner could pose their debate question: "Maybe he or she will ask about the war in Iraq -- and show clips from a soldier’s funeral. Or a mushroom cloud. If global warming is the issue, the videographer might photoshop himself or herself onto a melting glacier. The question might come in the form of a rap song or through spliced images of a candidate’s contradictory statements."

She of course gives props to the "Macaca moment," which, it was revealed yesterday by the Politico, has now been codified into the GOP's political playbook under "things not to do." And it also gets the obligatory quote from frequent Web video quote-giver Andrew Rasiej:

“We’re moving to a society that is video-based from one that is text-based, whether we like it or not,” he said. “Candidates are starting to recognize that the only way to fight the potential of the tsunami of voter-generated video is to produce lots of video themselves,” he said. “The Internet culture recognizes that Internet video is more authentic, more granular, less scripted than television, and it is an antidote to sound-bite politics.”


Seelye's article is fun because it's got an breathless sort of enthusiasm for the idea that politicians might actually have to come off-script when faced with questions from real, live voters and their creativity rather than the usual Tim Russert boilerplate:

The video format opens the door for originality and spontaneity — elements usually foreign to the controlled environment of presidential image-making. Because visual images can be more powerful than words, the videos have the potential to elicit emotional responses from the candidates and frame the election in new ways.

And she gets similarly breathless quotes to back her up:

“The impact of the YouTube debate can’t be over-estimated,” [Michael Bassik, a Democratic consultant with MSHC Partners] said.

“It’s one of the biggest innovations we’ve seen in politics,” said Mike Gehrke, director of research for the Democratic National Committee.

Ech, maybe she's right. Maybe it's a watershed moment in the history of politics or something like that, and maybe politicians will be forced to be more genuine in their interactions with the public and less reliant on vacuous soundbytes. Yeah, um, maybe.