The stage was something out of a bad dream -- a gaudy combination of the center ring at a circus and the mothership from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I kept expecting a small clown car to come whizzing on stage at any moment, and for a score of tiny gray aliens to rapidly emerge.

The seven participants arrayed along the platform spouted talking points from carefully memorized scripts, with nary a genuine argument between them, while their interrogator lobbed queries of national and global importance: "Elvis or Johnny Cash?" "Coke or Pepsi?" "Leno or Conan?" "Deep dish or thin crust?" At one point, the discourse deteriorated to an apparent contest between who could boast of having the most children (foster or otherwise).

And somewhere, the late Don Hewitt, who directed the first Kennedy/Nixon debate in 1960, was probably spinning in his grave.

CNN's GOP Presidential Debate last Monday evening was a study in the worst sort of coupling between politics and show business, an entertainment venue masquerading as a news program, the embodiment of Paddy Chayefsky's 1976 Network satire materialized as a sickening reality.

Of course, with seven presidential aspirants competing for air time during the show, the opportunities for real debate were safely suppressed from the word go. And after all, CNN (who spent the weekend prior to the program hawking the expense and complexity of the staging, even showing the construction repeatedly in time lapse), wanted to get the most entertainment impact bang for their bucks.

Post-debate pundits suggested that none of the participants had too badly screwed up, especially given the low expectations in place. Nobody started stammering in confusion, drooling was kept to a minimum, and fortuitously for the would-be presidents, nobody was asked the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow -- or about favorite colors, for that matter (how did CNN debate moderator John King miss that last question, I wonder, given his other penetrating inquiries?)

In the end, as expected, the "debate" was more carnival sideshow than pre-presidential performance. The ratings were reasonably rad, but the value was virtually vacuous.

It seems ironic that at this point in the 21st century, we're still mainly relying on this archaic formula for learning about presidential candidates, especially this early in an election cycle where too many cooks on camera really do seriously spoil the broth.

Most candidates have now learned the value of services like YouTube to widely disseminate their own purpose-built "commercials" to potential voters.

Live versions of these services are now becoming mainstream. Devices like Google TV (and others) can easily stream such Internet-based programming to the same screens where CNN and other conventional channels would traditionally be viewed in households.

It would make enormous sense for us to devote considerable effort toward leveraging YouTube and other live Internet streaming systems toward the production of many more, but individually less "crowded," genuine debates, with politicians' feet held at least a bit more to the fire by the real-time feedback of viewers.

This would not be a panacea by any means. Most politicians can't resist the urge to try turn any camera or mic into an opportunity to parrot their party lines. But there exists at least the real possibility that the elimination of many time and expense issues associated with traditional television, would provide far more opportunities for a variety of truly substantive Internet-based "get to know the candidates" debates and other formats, with far less pressure for the sorts of theatrics that turned the CNN "debate" stage into a performance that the casual viewer might have mistaken for a Saturday Night Live sketch.

Our need for actual, meaningful knowledge regarding those persons who seek to lead this country is too important to be left at the hands of "style over substance" productions as exemplified by Monday's sordid CNN spectacle.

And who knows, with the range of opportunities that would be opened through the ever broadening use of YouTube toward the goal of a serious and engaged democratic process, there might even be time for those in-depth interviews where we could ultimately explore such critical queries as preferred pizza crusts, beloved colors, and even the velocity of those unladen swallows -- be they Democratic, Republican, African, or European!

There is still time to save democracy from the creatures in the clown cars.

--Lauren--