The YouTube debate format was certainly entertaining. But while there’s nothing wrong with levity, the instrusion of entertainment values into politics is a problem, and the YouTube concept seems to encourage it. Some of the questions were pure throwaways. At the risk of sounding humorless, this election is serious. Airtime is too precious to waste.
Soliciting questions from ordinary citizens is a laudably democratic move. But as I noted in my previous post, one YouTube question contained an egregious historical inaccuracy. At the least, it should have been corrected by the moderator. Otherwise, Anderson Cooper did a good job — pointedly noting, for instance, that Chris Dodd supported the Defense of Marriage Act, or that Bill Richardson has one of the highest NRA approval ratings.
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