Michael Scherer, Salon, July 24, 2007
0 minutes. CNN host Anderson Cooper welcomes the candidates by admitting his anxiety. “This is something that we have never done before. What you are about to see is — well, it’s untried. We’re not exactly sure how it’s going to work. The candidates on the stage don’t know how it’s going to work either.” He goes on like this for a while. The questions will be asked by normal people over Web video, not by journalists. Democrats will be logging on to the internetting, surfing the series of tubes. Anything can happen.
2 minutes. To demonstrate the danger, Cooper shows some of the 3,000 video questions submitted via wide world web space. There are videos of a singing chicken lady, a kid with giraffes and flamingos, a screaming toddler. There is a guy who says Arnold Schwarzenegger is a cyborg who can stop nuclear war. Cooper tries to calm the viewing audience. “We all know that Arnold Schwarzenegger is a cyborg,” Cooper says, “so there is no need to waste time actually asking the candidates that question.” Huge relief.
5 minutes. Finally, the debate gets going. The first question comes from a guy named Zach in Utah. “What’s up?” virtual Zach says, before asking a good question. He essentially wants to know if any of the Democratic candidates will be any different from all the other pinhead politicians in Washington. “What’s going to make you any more effectual, beyond all the platitudes and the stuff we’re used to hearing?”
6 minutes. Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., answers by reciting the empty platitudes we are used to hearing. “While hope and confidence and optimism are clearly very important, I think experience matters a great deal — the experience people bring to their candidacy, the ideas, the bold ideas that they’ve championed over the years.” Why not bring back the chicken lady? What about the screaming child? How do cyborgs stop nuclear war, anyway?
7 minutes. It’s platitude roll-call time. “People have an urgent desire for change in Washington,” says Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. “We are united for change,” says Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. Only Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, mixes it up. His platitudes sound like Buddhist koans. “Strength through peace,” he says. “The science of human relations.”
11 minutes. A guy named Rob from Irvine, Calif., asks Clinton if she would call herself “liberal.” She answers with an eloquent and concise history of the word, from its 19th-century roots to the current use by conservatives as a synonym for weakness and big government. “I consider myself a modern progressive,” she says.
12 minutes. Anderson turns to the malcontent standing at the right side of the stage. “Are you a liberal?” he asks. Former Sen. Mike Gravel, D-Alaska, dodges the question and decides to attack everyone else’s platitudes. “We’re not united,” he says to Clinton. “And I want to take on Barack Obama for a minute.” Gravel looks unhinged. Cooper cuts him off.