The CNN/YouTube debates add a new dimension to political infotainment. Edwin Fotheringham

In the early moments of the CNN/ YouTube Republican debate on November 28th—the follow-up to the CNN/ YouTube Democratic debate last July—the often useful phrase “the minutes seemed like hours” suddenly felt inadequate. The phrase lacked an essential active component, some indication that the universe had been violently disrupted and damage had been done. Ever since I watched the musical video that was used to introduce the Presidential candidates, in which a bearded, baseball-cap-wearing fellow named Chris, from the state of Washington, sang a countryish song that provided thumbnail sketches of the men (“Ron Paul would end the F.D.A., and that is just a start. Fred has just begun to run but sure does look the part. Hunter tells us what to do in foreign-policy debates. Huckabee’s compassionate and lost a lot of weight. . . .”), I’ve been wondering, Can a minute last longer than sixty seconds? Can a minute, as it is elapsing, reach larcenously into the future and grab more than its designated sixty ticks, and thereby steal time from your personal allotment? Can time stand still and devour itself at the same time? Yes—in the ninety seconds that it took for Chris to sing his witless rhymes, I became a grandmother, and I don’t even have children. I was on the verge of becoming a great-grandmother by the time the song was finally over and Anderson Cooper, the debate’s moderator, said, “Enough of the singing, enough of the snowman. Let’s begin the debate.” The snowman, it should be said—a talking model snowman that appeared in a montage of videos that were rejected from among the more than five thousand submissions—almost prevented the debate from happening. (For the YouTube debates, questions were generated not by the moderator or the live studio audience but by people all over the country who submitted them in short video form.) The iceman first cameth in a video in the Democratic debate, when, speaking in a high voice that called up the old “Mr. Bill” shorts of “Saturday Night Live,” he asked a question about global warming. It was humorous—not exactly funny, but humorous—and effective, but Mitt Romney thought the whole thing demeaning and used it as an excuse to bow out of the planned Republican debate; eventually, he came around. This time, the snowman’s appearance was, of course, a joke on Romney, and Romney, to show that he could chillax and laugh at himself, made sure to smile—or to force his facial muscles to contract in such a way that viewers would perceive the result as a smile—when the little guy appeared on the screen.

The YouTube debates were a new thing this year, but they aren’t revolutionary. Candidates are used to taking questions from “regular people”; what must have been a little odd, though, was watching someone on a huge video monitor (Circuit City, $12,000,000,000.00) ask a question from his living room and then disappear. Where were the candidates supposed to look while responding? At the audience? At the moderator? And many of the videos, as YouTube videos usually are, were of poor quality, with the sound and the image out of synch. CNN would have you think that these were “the people’s debates,” but, with so many videos to choose from, the network actually had more control over the direction of the event than the usual format affords—though no control, evidently, over whether the questioners dressed for the occasion or straightened up their rooms.

These Q. & A.s—they can’t really be called debates—are mostly just a chance for the candidates to reënact their schoolyard days with taunts about their rivals’ past policies or statements: “You did this”; “No, I didn’t”; “Yes, you did”; “Did not”; “Did so.” The best example of this in the November debate came with the very first question, and it was something to see. Ernie from Brooklyn addressed his question to Rudy Giuliani, asking him whether he would “continue to aid and abet the flight of illegal aliens into this country.” This led to a back-and-forth in which Giuliani and Romney talked not to but over each other. Giuliani is now richer and better-looking than he was when he was the mayor of New York, his comb-over having been replaced by a more distinguished combed-back look, complete with Paulie Walnuts-style Nike swooshes of white hair on the sides. Romney, for his part, is freakishly, unreally handsome, though handsome is as handsome does, and the exchange didn’t exactly bring out any Presidential qualities in the pair. (What it did bring out, the following week, was the truth of Gotcha Giuliani’s accusation, when, smiling his mean smile, he said, “You did. You did. You did have illegal immigrants working at your mansion, didn’t you?” It came to light that Romney, unknowingly, still did. Of course, it would be hard for Romney to know everything that’s going on at his house: it’s the size of Rhode Island.)

CNN must have been delighted. Anyone who caught this unpleasant, crackling exchange, just minutes into the proceedings, would surely have stayed to watch the entire two-hour spectacle. Nothing else matched this squabble, however—certainly not the candidates’ own thirty-second promotional videos, created for the occasion. Tom Tancredo’s video featured the risible boast “He took on Geraldo. Now he’s ready to take on Hillary.” (This is as good a place as any for me to ask, Could we please turn back the clock about twenty years and revert to calling people in public life by their last names? We’d all feel, and possibly act, more grown-up.) Some questions were posed in ways that were far more dramatic than would be acceptable in a live setting. There was a man from California who didn’t do much to bring the country’s gun lovers and gun-control advocates together when he asked the candidates to state their opinions on the subject. A clear enthusiast (“I’m from a small town, and, as in any small town, we like our big guns”), he held a shotgun, and said, “Don’t worry,” pulled on the forestock to make a lock-and-load noise, and then finished the sentence: “You can answer however you like.” Many people laughed at what they may have taken to be the man’s guts and cleverness. It’s too bad the debate didn’t occur the following week, when the candidates could all have given the appropriate answer to the question with one word: Omaha.

There were no questions about health care (there were in the Democratic event), but not every subject can be covered in two hours, even if there are only three commercial interruptions. It was, as they say, good TV. What fun to see the candidates asked by a man from Texas holding up a Bible if they believed literally every word of it. Giuliani answered first, and Mike Huckabee, in an approximately amusing, snide move, called across the stage to ask him, “Do I need to help you out, Mayor, on this one?” Giuliani, it turned out, needed less help than Romney, who had a more jesuitical response, which didn’t precisely answer the very precise question. Huckabee, the minister, managed to avoid answering a question concerning what Jesus would do about the death penalty with the Catskillian rejoinder “Jesus was too smart to ever run for public office,” and also ungallantly made the suggestion, in his soft, measured voice, that if the space program were to send a manned flight to Mars “Hillary could be on the first rocket.” Mike, you card—you kill me! One priceless exchange occurred between Romney and John McCain, on the subject of torture. Romney, of the hard, piercing voice and evasive, crumbly words, refused to say whether he considered waterboarding to be torture, and as he did so the camera, moving close to McCain’s face, captured his temporomandibular muscles pulsing with frustration and anger.

The CNN/ YouTube debates were a great promotional device for YouTube, which doesn’t mean that they were a gimmick. They got good ratings, and it’s safe to assume that they’ll be repeated in four years (unless YouTube has been supplanted by some other, unforeseen means of communication). The debates do help you pick up on whether a candidate has a sense of the big picture, is a good listener, tells something like the truth, or is possibly unbalanced. They can help you cull certain candidates, though they may not help you figure out which is the one for you. I’m not sure that the best candidate isn’t one who became famous on YouTube long before the debates. He’s someone who can hold his own on the screen for almost three minutes, and who behaves consistently, thoughtfully, and with resolve: Gizmo, the toilet-flushing cat. ♦