KEY POINTS:
It may not have greatly affected the dynamics of the 2008 Presidential race. But a ground breaking Democratic candidates' debate has made official what has long been evident here : that the free-for-all of the internet - in this case the video sharing site YouTube - is something none of them can ignore.
For two hours, the eight declared candidates fielded questions in the form of YouTube clips submitted by ordinary Americans.
The tone shifted from earnest to anguished, from angry to mocking, from deadly serious to outright humorous.
The subjects, though filtered by the CNN network which co-sponsored and broadcast the debate, provided the most varied and unvarnished fare yet in this debate-laden campaign season.
In one clip, two lesbians pleaded for the right to marry. In others the candidates were quizzed about reparations for slavery, how families should cope with Alzheimer's sufferers, the iniquities of the voting system - and, in the case of Ms Clinton, whether the US didn't deserve better than the prospect of up to 28 years of unbroken rule by a Bush or a Clinton, were she to win the White House next November.
On a lighter note, a man strumming a guitar sang a ditty about his problems with the tax system, ending with a plea for "one of y'all" to give him a Scooter Libby-like pardon for a recent parking ticket.
The answers, predictably, were mostly less illuminating that the questions.
After a nod to the original topic, candidates usually veered back to the comfort zone of standard campaign pitches. Front runner Hillary Clinton touted her experience, her closest rival Barack Obama sought to project freshness and innovation, while John Edwards, the party's defeatedvice-Presidential candidate in 2004, was as populist as ever.
Almost all said they would be happy to serve as President, even if thesalary was the minimum national wage (which increased to $5.85, or $NZ7.25, an hour).
Only Denis Kucinich, the leftwing Congressman from Ohio and rank outsider, replied an unequivocal yes when asked by a black questioner whether the US should pay reparations for slavery.
Who won? The spotlight as usual was on Ms Clinton and Mr Obama. As usual too, they squared off over Iraq, with the first term Illinois senator none too subtly reminding her of her vote in 2002 authorizing the war, while Ms Clinton implicitly accused her rival of naivety in pledging to meet the President of Iran and Syria during his first year in the White House.
"I don't want to be used for propaganda purposes," she declared.
Asked by a student from Kansas whether she was not "satisfactorilyfeminine," the former First Lady drew laughs by replying that "Obviously I couldn't run as anything other than a woman."
But, she added in the next breath, "I'm not running because I'm a woman...but because I think I'm the most experienced and qualified person to hit the ground running in January 2009."
To the uncommitted observer, Ms Clinton if only because of her present handsome lead in the polls, seemed to dominate proceedings, despite the barbs from Mr Obama and Mr Edwards, her two closest pursuers.
If Mr Obama sometimes sounded a little lightweight, the same could not be said of Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, but thus far stuck in the so-called 'second tier' of candidates.
Though a fierce critic of the war, Mr Biden rounded on colleagues who called for a complete pull-out of US troops from Iraq by next spring.
Every military man knew that an orderly withdrawal would take at least a year, and probably considerably longer.
And Mr Biden drew arguably the biggest laugh of the evening when a man cradling his "baby," a semi automatic assault weapon, asked for the candidates' views on gun control. "If that's his baby, he needs help," Mr Biden declared.
But in the end such wit mattered little - the questions were illuminating, not the answers.
- INDEPENDENT
