YouTube Debate Performance

Cillizza and Politico decide that, although the American People won the debate (as usual), the boldest moves of the night belonged to John Edwards.

From his campaign's video that showed various hairstyles side by side with images of real suffering and problems in the world while asking "What really matters?" to lines like "We can't trade our insiders with their insiders," the feeling is that Edwards stepped farthest outside the usual debate comfort zone and took advantage of the format to give some challenging answers to challenging questions. In an environment where all three front runners applied pressure to each other, Edwards was fiery but artful. Politico's Roger Simon picks this as the response of the night:

“Do you believe that compromise, triangulation will bring about big change? I don't. I think the people who are powerful in Washington — big insurance companies, big drug companies, big oil companies — they are not going to negotiate. They are not going to give away their power! The only way that they are going to give away their power is if we take it away from them!”

Cillizza also points out in his scorecard post that Edwards is "feisty" and so too are Democrats in general.

I felt like, although the cute/hilarious video ratio was a little high for a presidential debate, there were plenty of real questions from real people, which surprised me. Cillizza points out that Edwards had a nice moment in which he communicated geniune emotion and empathy, which is usually not a prime goal in a debate setting:

Edwards also powerfully seized a question on health care to talk about a man in West Virginia who had been unable to have a cleft lip surgically repaired until he was 50 years old. While anecdotes can be too cute by half, it was clear Edwards was affected by the man's story; it was a moment of real emotion for the former Senator, and a good one.

To my mind, one of the best moments of the night for Edwards was his answer on same-sex marriage and, by extension, religion. I have been waiting for a long time for someone to say, candidly and genuinely, that how they personally feel about an issue or what their personal religious beliefs are do not define the issue for all Americans; that a President's opinion, especially on social issues, may shape his policy direction but does not (or at the very least should not) automatically become unassailable moral law. Sure, I liked the idea because I agree with the principle, but I also think it is an aspect of public service and the presidency that has been lost in the last few years and that someone should be talking about it.

I think many of the questions and plenty of the other refreshingly candid responses would not have occurred in a standard debate format, and I am surprised to feel that way. I will admit it to you — I don't relish the thought of the upcoming debate schedule, and I don't have a problem understanding why some people, including the candidates, are getting burnt out on the debate scene. But I was pleasantly surprised last night by most of the candidates, not just Edwards, in that the top five seemed to reveal more about who they are without doing anything to wreck the store.

My wife asked me if I thought CNN might use the user-submitted questions to ask about things they wouldn't normally ask, and I think there's some truth to that. At any rate, it worked, and while I think Edwards had a really strong showing, I think the Democratic field in general did itself a service with last night's debate.