Starting Gate: Bells And Whistles On A Familiar Package
This will be the second debate being sponsored by CNN and YouTube in which voters from all walks of life (providing they have a computer, camera and the know-how) are invited to submit questions to the video-sharing site in the hopes of getting their concerns directly in front of the presidential candidates. For this debate, some 5,000 video questions have been submitted (up from around 3,000 submitted for the Democratic version) and they range from the serious to the silly. The "snowman" is back in the list of submissions, along with one from "Frankenstein" asking Mitt Romney whether Mormon undergarments would help save him from those pesky torch-wielding villagers.
That's one reason some candidates have been wary about participating. Romney earlier said he wasn't interested in participating in the debate, saying the presidency of the United States is too serious a concern for such gimmicks. But he'll be on stage tonight. Campaigns are wary of not openly embracing the newest, hippest media trends of the day. There were politicians, after all, who were slow to recognize the importance of television ads for similar reasons.
Out of nearly 5,000 questions, just a handful (perhaps 30 to 40) will be selected and the vast majority of those to choose from concern the same issues these candidates have discussed throughout the campaign, like the war in Iraq, immigration, health care, energy, climate change and education. The questions can be powerful in this format because they often personalize the issue being addressed, such as the cancer patient who asked Democrats about health care coverage. But, with a couple of exceptions, the substance remains consistent.
Campaign 2008 has already broken the mold of every campaign that has come before. It started nearly two years before the presidential election, has morphed into a nominating system which will see nearly half of the nation's states vote on a single day and has spurred an explosion in innovation. But, just as the compressed primary calendar hasn't changed the importance of meeting and cultivating voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, all the bells and whistles on the Web won't replace the need for candidates to have coherent positions on the issues most voters care about.
Does Bill Trump Oprah? From CBS News Pollster Anthony Salvanto:
Barack Obama has Oprah, who is of course very well-regarded, but Hillary Clinton has Bill, and Democratic voters in the early states tell us the former President's impact is quite formidable. In the latest CBS News/ NY Times Polls of Iowa and New Hampshire, just under half of Democratic primary or caucus voters said Bill's involvement in Hillary's campaign does affect their own vote choice – and by more than a 5 to 1 margin, they said the impact is positive: it makes them more likely to back Hillary.
Bill Clinton's influence is high in part because he gets positive reviews on his Presidency when voters look back (in July, 63 percent nationally approved of how he handled the job) and among registered Democrats nationally, that skyrockets to an astronomical nine in ten.
Time will tell how much influence Oprah's campaigning will have for Obama, but Democratic primary voters nationwide expect her support to move some voters, too. In August, a CBS News Poll found about one-third of them expected most people they personally knew could be swayed by Oprah's endorsement.
Rudy's War? CBSNews.com's David Miller observes: Conventional wisdom is that, in a general election, Rudy Giuliani is the best candidate for Republicans: He has a celebrity factor after serving as New York mayor during and after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and holds centrist positions on abortion, gun control, gay rights that will be palatable to independent voters. But Giuliani is also taking a position that, polls show, many independents find distasteful: strong support for the Iraq war.
At a campaign stop in Manchester, N.H. on Tuesday, Giuliani said he was "even more certain" that invading Iraq was the right decision than he was in the past -- putting him against the grain of public opinion. While other GOP candidates, especially John McCain, have been vocal about criticizing America's strategy in Iraq while supporting the move to invade, Giuliani's has been more steadfast in backing the war and has been less critical of President Bush's handling of the conflict than his Republican rivals.
If you listen to Giuliani, it sounds like he believes that his thoughts on the war will actually pay off in the general election: "I actually believe that Democrats are going to agree with me on that by the time we get to the general election," he said Tuesday, according to the New Hampshire Union Leader. However, there's little reason to believe that -- Democratic voters indicate they still want troops pulled out quickly, and independents largely agree with them.
For Republicans with electability on their minds, Giuliani raises an interesting dilemma: He inhabits the political center on many issues, but on the one that ranks highest on the list of voter priorities, he may be further to the right than any of the other top GOP candidates.
Around The Track