YouTube questions and boob-tube answers

On St. Patrick’s Day, a friend dragged me to a Barack Obama appearance in Oakland. As typical Cal students, we were both left-leaning and late, and ended up at a spot where no one could see a thing and everyone complained noisily about it. Meanwhile, an enterprising teen climbed onto her friend’s shoulders and started taking photos. To my surprise, the crowd began pulling out digital cameras and passing them along a sea of hands to the girl, who would snap a couple, call out, “Is this OK?” and, after bellowed confirmation, return them into the current.

How the cameras all floated back to their proper owners again I’ll never know. Perhaps it’s a testament to the cooperative spirit of humanity, but what struck me was how, in the quest for a picture of the pretty-faced presidential hopeful, the audience was drowning out what he had to say.

There wasn’t much to hear, anyway: a good helping of criticism about the war, a small portion on foreign aid, an overgenerous slice about machinery in hospitals — Obama picked and chose from the buffet of liberal issues, and left me with indigestion.

The first YouTube-infused presidential debate is now part of history — an event that has been described as not only “groundbreaking,” “unprecedented” and “first of its kind” but also “revolutionary,” “historic” and “more democratic than ever.” It’s a relief after all the buildup that the event did not actually bring on the Singularity , but watching it left me with the same feeling I had in March: that the applause has rendered the show itself superfluous. That’s a shame, given how much more thought and energy YouTube users put into constructing their questions than the candidates put into answering them: John Edwards’ references to “bold change” in as many responses as possible — no matter how irrelevant — demonstrated how hard it is for even candidates who ostentatiously embrace new media to keep up in an environment where more points of view are being heard every day.

Candidates and their supporters have been trying desperately to hitch a ride on the comet of cyber-coolness — but this has rarely progressed beyond a vague notion that new media are somehow wrapped up with show business. The rush to entertain voters has spawned Sen. Hillary Clinton’s flat-footed spoof of “The Sopranos” — which is content-free and rather disingenuous given her hard-line stance on gun violence — and propelled to fame Obama Girl’s YouTube video, which slyly extolled the candidate’s physique as much as his platform. (That’s not to say the Democrats have a monopoly on sex appeal; Obama Girl’s standoff with Giuliani Girl made for some riveting and scantily clad debate, and McCain Mama‘s spoof is fascinating, in a gruesome sort of way.)

The idea of politics as entertainment isn’t new. But now it’s going out of its way to mimic contemporary entertainment by adopting sex, violence and pop culture references. The problem is that pols often forget to include those old-fashioned things called ideas.

For all the hype, the CNN/YouTube debates are a step toward updating the message to go along with a new and improved medium. YouTube users submitted nearly 3,000 video questions for candidates, covering topics that include the radical and the philosophical, and as diverse as predatory mortgage lending in poor neighborhoods and getting our broadband up to par with that of other nations.

In fact, they’re generally much better than the candidates at combining entertainment and issues to create compelling messages. The innovation certainly ginned up interest in last night’s Democratic debate, and will probably make September’s Republican debate richer and more widely viewed than previous outings.

Granted, only a handful of user questions made the cut (and CNN cutely stoked the controversy about whether its selection process negated the value of user-generated content), but all of them are available for viewing. If the candidates have any sense, they’ll take the time to peruse them and see what Americans are really worried about. Maybe they’ll even learn a thing or two about crafting high-quality campaign media in the process.

Amina Khan is a recent UC Berkeley graduate and an intern for the Editorial pages.