Could presidential debates be more Internet friendly?

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You can "Twitter" Friday's presidential debate on your cell phone. You can watch live streaming video of Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain jousting about Iraq or Wall Street -- and then rewind it. You will even find searchable clips of the event online.So what's not to like about this year's long-awaited face-to-face meeting between McCain and Obama at the University of Mississippi on Friday?There's a lot to be unhappy about, actually -- if you're Andrew Raseij or any of the other bloggers, techheads and "new media" advocates for a more Internet-friendly presidential debate.This year's format for the three debates has been touted by the Commission on Presidential Debates as a "historic breakthrough" -- mainly because it allows the candidates to actually address each other. While the first and third debates follow a traditional model, with a moderator asking the questions, the second will feature a town hall format, complete with the candidates on directors' chairs taking questions from both the audience and Internet users who log onto MyDebates.org.Some private entities are also jumping in with their own bells and whistles. CurrentTV.com, a Web-based television service, will be using "Twitter" technology to allow voters to send "tweets" -- short text messages of 140 characters or less -- throughout the debates that can be viewed online or on mobile devices.But Raseij -- a founder of TechPresident.com, which covers how the presidential debates use the Web -- remains underwhelmed.This year's format, he said, "is really a step backward from the innovations we saw during the primaries," he said. Gone are the real-time "feedback loops" from Internet users that helped shape debate questions as they were taking place, and gone are the unfiltered questions, screened for topic but not content."The commission is sprinkling Internet stardust on itself hoping to placate the legions of Internet activists who know that the debates could be made better if the Internet was fully embraced instead of tangentially," said Rasiej.It's a far cry from the first-ever televised debate between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy, which will mark its 48th anniversary on Friday. It's even a far cry from this year's primaries.In the MTV debate, for example, questions from the audience were always unfiltered, noted Michael Connery, of FutureMajority.com, a blog that tracks young voters' involvement in progressive politics.During that dialogue, the Internet audience was polled for a response and could rate answers six different ways, with results viewable by the live audience, the moderators and the candidates. The moderators then used the feedback as a guide for follow-up questions."It was that feedback loop which forced the candidates out of their talking points and into a real conversation," said Connery. "That unfiltered reaction between the candidates and the public is what made the (MTV debate) interesting and informative."Then there was 10Questions.com, created by TechPresident.com in partnership with the New York Times and MSNBC, which allowed voters to submit questions online -- on Yahoo, MySpace and You Tube. The top 10 questions were then forwarded to the candidates, who were given six weeks to respond on video.That approach may not be a debate-as-event, with both candidates in the same room, under pressure, but it was just as useful and important, Rasiej said, "given that we have, in the past, picked presidents based on 60-second answers that they give on national television.""Video streaming? That's like, so year 2000," added Connery. "How about greater, unfiltered interaction between the candidates and the audience? Web 2.0 is about social media, meaning we talk to each other, not at each other."The choice to go with a traditional televised format with a moderator vetting questions could also been the product of an unusually time-crunched general election -- where there is more for a candidate to lose."I think candidates were more willing to take risks during the primaries," said Connery, "but now both campaigns are more cautious."Last year's primary debates may have more fully embraced Web 2.0 technology -- a general term for the expanding and evolving role of the Internet -- but they didn't always mean voters came away more well-informed."If we look back at the YouTube debates of the primaries, many of the questions became quite silly," recalled Benjamin Bates, a professor of communication studies at Ohio University. "You had someone dressing up as a polar bear to ask about global warming, for example."E-mail Mackenzie Carpenter at mcarpenter(at)post-gazette.com.(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)