Democratic presidential candidates take questions from YouTube in South Carolina last night. Photograph: Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images
Four years ago political pundits marvelled at the idea that parties of all stripes were seeking funding through the internet. Well yesterday evening something far more seismic happened. CNN, the biggest name in global news, teemed up with YouTube, which 18 months ago barely existed, to host an online debate in which citizens could question all the Democratic presidential hopefuls.
It was a bizarre occasion. A bloke dressed as a snowman and sounding an awful lot like Robin Williams in one of his more cloying roles asked about global warming; two men claiming to be from Tennessee managed to alarm all the candidates by asking a question about immigration in deliberately dire Spanish; and someone in a George Bush mask appeared to be asking a question about torture but ended up making a very different point about America's so called Culture Wars.
Of course a great many people asked serious and pointed questions and some of them even received serious and pointed answers. At the end of it however I was left with a very uneasy feeling about the whole concept. If over the coming days the debate proves, via YouTube hits, to be a success then what does this say about the future of politics? The candidates who got the loudest applause were those who were able to emote most easily and convincingly. With the internet being an even more intimate medium than television this suggests that politics will become less and less about issues and more a more about a certain warm but vapid touchy-feeliness. Or to put it another way, Tony Blair would have been brilliant on it.
