This past Saturday in Chicago, I had an experience that changed my life: I asked questions on behalf of this community and the netroots at large to the next president of the United States. While the chance to be on stage and speak to the candidates was amazing, it was the trust given to me by all of you as I stepped into that role that hit me the most. Even a few days after the YearlyKos Presidential Candidate Forum came and went, thinking about it sends my heart racing.
Many of you spoke to me before, during and after the event about the questions I asked, what went well and not so well, and how it could have been better. It has been a great discussion so far, but I wanted to give it a bit more structure as a diary.
So, this diary is my perspective, and another opportunity for everyone to share their views. Please join me...
Picking the Questions
The YK committee set up an online submission system via the YK official website, but the job fell to me to pick the final questions asked. There were about 500 questions total from which I had to pick about 10 and then fit those into the structure of the forum. To aid in that process, I had two main resources. The first resource was conversations with the other two moderators for the forum--NYT journalist Matt Bai and DailyKos front-pager and editormcjoan. The second resource was an an advisory board assembled by the YK team, which included a wider range of journalists, former elected officials, organizers and bloggers.
To pick the questions, the first thing I did was create a file that did not include any names of those who had submitted them, my goal being to pick questions on their merits, not because I recognized a name.
With that in mind, I did an initial read through of the questions to see what we had and to highlight anything that seemed interesting, distinct, representative, timely, novel.
Now, let me say up front that prior to reading the questions, the moderators had made an initial decision about the frame for the forum as a whole. We wanted to have a conversation that looked forward, instead of looking back--that pushed the candidates to discuss their vision and plans for the next 8 to 10 years, rather than a discussion that pressed them on things they had done in the past. Ultimately, as I turned to the tough job of picking the questions, that initial decision helped me distinguish between a great questions and a great question that I wanted for my list.
Next, I went through and I reduced the list of 500 to a shorter list of about 50 using these three criteria to choose:
- Is the question a dominant concern (e.g., did many people ask it)?
- Is the question representative of the progressive netroots?
- Is the question important for us to ask?
Obviously, there are no objective answers to these questions, and I wanted it that way.
The next challenge was to fit the questions I chose into the 3 segments for the debate: 20-24 minutes each for (1) Domestic Issues, (2) Foreign Policy, and (3) Philosophy and Experience.
Finally--after I reduced 500 questions down to about 10, then fit them into the three segments, I had to somehow rank them such that if time became a problem, the top questions would come out first, then the second question and so forth.
Also at this point, I made three decisions that I felt were critical to the success of the forum.
First, I decided to edit the questions to make them shorter. Second, I decided to synthesize lots of questions into a single question when I felt the issue warranted it, but there was not one question in particular that hit the topic perfectly. Third, I decided to add questions that were, in a sense, not asked directly but I felt were, nonetheless, "in" the submissions.
Beyond the questions, the three moderators decided that we would each be given opportunity to pose follow ups to the initial questions. For my follow ups, I tried to pull concerns from the list of submissions wherever possible,but also inject my own contributions based on my understanding of what people would want to hear, what people should hear and what would add to the value of the forum discussion as a whole.
An impossible task!
Here is what happened, followed by some observations about the whole thing at the end.
Domestic
Since we are first and foremost bloggers, the question I ranked at the top of my Domestic list was "Will you hire a White House blogger?". After a discussion with Matt and mcjoan, we decided that question belonged in the Philosophy section of the debate, which moved me to the question about media ownership:
(to Doddd)"With only a handful of companies controlling the majority of news and information Americans consume, media consolidation and a lack of diverse viewpoints in the news is threatening American democracy. How do you plan to do to support equal access to broadcast media?" (from Jason Rosenbaum)
To this, I had two follow up questions:
(to Clinton) "If equal access to media is so important for maintaining Democracy, do we need more government regulation of the media?"
(to Richardson) "If access to the media is so important to maintain, how will you get more people to participate?"
I only had a chance to ask the first follow up, as at that point the time constraints of the first segment were already upon us and Matt made the kind of decision that we had asked him to make by putting him in charge of the time clock.
The next question was about the "unitary executive"--by far the largest Domestic concern in the pool of submitted questions. To hit this issue, I synthesized this question from the submissions:
(to Edwards)"The current administration has done so much to consolidate power to the Executive branch at the expense of the other two and in violation of the Constitution. As President, what will you do to restore balance amongst all three branches of government?"
To this question, I had two follow ups which I did not have a chance to ask:
(to Obama)"Which undermined Constitutional principle would you restore first?"
(to Dodd)"How should we hold the current administration accountable?"
That question ended up being my last in the Domestic segment, but I had one more on "health care" (from Nora Handler):
(to Obama)"As the sister of three men with developmental disabilities I would like to know how you will address the coming crisis of health care for people with disabilities. As the baby boomer generation ages and are no longer able to be caregivers who will care for people like my brothers?"
These would have been my follow ups:
(to Clinton) "How will you ease the fear in many Americans that a health crisis in their lives will lead ruin their families?"
(to Edwards) "As President, will you convene a national health care summit?"
I was sad that we did not get to Nora Handler's question, as it was an important aspect of healthcare that had not been discussed yet. But the segment ended and we moved on to Foreign policy.
Foreign Policy
At this point, I knew that the the stage moderators would pose questions about Iraq, so I wanted to pick a question from our submissions that covered another concern in our community: the question of China and poison food that had been such a large and important discussion on DailyKos over the past few months. I picked and asked this question from R M "auros" Harman:
(to Obama) "Americans worry about China--poisoned pet food, slave labor, and shooting bureaucrats in the head. At the same time, Americans see China as the next economic superpower that we must work with in the new global economy. How do you propose we reconcile this conflict?"
I had two follow-ups for this question, and managed to get in the first:
(to Dodd) "Is the experience of living abroad enought o prepare young Americans to be leaders on tough issues like China?"
(to Clinton) "As President, which developing nation would you invest in more than the U.S. currently is?"
I had two other great questions for this segment, but the flow of the discussion was such that we did not get to them.
The first was a question I posed about foreign intervention, based on ideas across many submissions from readers:
(to Kucinich) "Using Darfur as a real-time example, outline how you would decide the time was right for Americac to step into the violence of another country."
And I had two follow ups for that:
"What single step is the most important when confronting an internal conflict in another nation?"
(to Edwards) "What foreign policy hot spots are you watching that would be your top priority if elected President?"
I was particularly interested in eliciting the contrast between Richardson and Edwards on foreign policy.
Lastly, I had a great question ready as submitted by Henry Hamm on "nuclear weapons":
(to Clinton) "The Bush administration has voided the ABM treaty and proposed new nuclear weapons. Would you continue these programs and reinstate these old treaties or do we need something new to address the problem of nuclear weapons?"
That was a great question and had this follow up:
(to all) "In a word, how does your approach to dealing with nuclear weapons differ from the current idea of 'pre-emption'?"
Those questions stayed in my notes, though, as we pushed on to the last segment of the forum.
Philosophy and Experience
As it happens, the top question about a "White House blogger" on my list came up in this segment, as submitted verbatim by Jon Pontificator:
(to all) "If elected, will you hire an official White House blogger?"
I actually had two follow ups on this question which opened it up beyond the initial remarks:
(to Clinton) "We know the "conversation" is important--but do you believe citizen-driven, open internet forums should be part of the Executive branch?"
(to Obama) "Beyond blogs, how would you make the internet part of your administration?"
Even without the follow-ups, the "White House blogger" question was a great moment in the forum.
This then led me to my next question about "changing government after 9/11", adapted from a question submitted by Shannon Holbrook to become this:
(to Edwards) "Was it right to change the structure of government after 9/11--did that change keep Americans safe or just harm civil liberties? Specifically, would you change the department of Homeland Security?"
Initially I had planned to make this question a general one with a follow up about homeland security, but I wanted to make sure I got everything out there, so I just lumped it all in together. The follow up I had for this that was left out:
(to Obama) "Has the NSA become a problem for American Democracy?"
That follow up stayed in my notes as the discussion turned back to the stage.
But I did have one more question for this segment on "big change," pulled together from a variety of questions on "climate change" and a few other topics::
(to Richardson) "Beyond healthcare and Iraq,--name one bold change that you would introduce in your first term tht would embody your progressive values."
To focus the discussion, I had this follow-up:
(to Obama) "Are you being bold enough on climate change if your vision includes coal?"
That would have been my last question, had time allowed.
Overall Impressions
In general, the questions from the readers made the candidates think to a degree that I had never seen in a Presidential forum or debate anywhere. The candidates were forced to think not just because of the content of the questions, but because the questions were posed to them in a way that was new--in the real language of citizens rather than the insider-talk of journalists.
In their answers, a populist frame dominated. There were many attempts by the candidates--in particular Edwards, Dodd and Clinton, to claim the "people" frame by suggesting that their policies or their vision represented what was really real about any given topic--that a President must represent the people first. We saw very different approaches to this frame. Edwards and Dodd framed current government practices as being wholesale against the people, while Clinton made the case that current government practices were in fact in the interests of the people when done well.
The other broad frame was that of "experience." Obama and Gravel each made the case that too much experience was a negative for the next President, while Edwards, Clinton, Dodd and especially Richardson made the case that experience was the key for a good President.
The "difference" frame was also leveraged in a range of attempts to define a conversation about leadership. At one extreme, Kucinich and Gravel made the claim that there was no difference between the other candidates and the Republican candidates. Edwards, Dodd and Obama each made the strongest claim that Democrats were different from Republicans and that they were each distinct from the rest of the Democratic field. Meanwhile, Clinton framed the entire field as being similar in many respects.
In the end, what made the forum so interesting was the presence of (1) a new kind of voice posing the questions and (2) a high-level of immediate and constructive feedback from the room.
Those two elements are distinct to the kind of communication that distinguishes progressive blogs from other political arenas in America and they were very present in the YearlyKos candidate forum.
Watching the forum from the floor, I had a sense that the candidates had been forced onto new territory--pushed out of the comfort zone that envelops them and and the press corp that follows them.
The candidates were still very good at finding ways to push the discussion back into the well-worn grooves of their talking points. They are, after all, disciplined and highly practiced communicators to the last one. But there were key moments when the structure of the forum broke through their plans and revealed who they are.
For me, one such defining moment was Clinton's attempt to define contributions from lobbyists as representations of ordinary Americans. In another context, that concept would have been left unchallenged, but in our forum the room instantly gave the negative feedback that idea deserved and Sen. Clinton was forced to make a plea to the audience that she be seen as a potential president for all the people. Many might argue that this was a moment that brought the Clinton campaign down a few notches, but I am not so sure that will play out to be true. An equal number of people have commented that this moment both revealed courage by Clinton in confronting her strongest critics and weakness in her attempt to spin industry influence as people power. Time will tell.
The other defining moment was Chris Dodd's passionate plea for the public financing of elections. Up to this point in the primary season, the question of public financing has suffered the same fate as the Dodd campaign: low poll numbers result in political journalists not taking them seriously enough to give them a place. In our forum, Dodd was able to make the point and the American public were able to hear it in a way they had not up to then. We saw in that moment what political debate sounds like when the filter of traditional media is lifted off and the actual discussion bursts forth. I would be surprised if both the Dodd campaign and the advocacy movement working for the public financing of elections did not take a big leap forward as a result.
In the end, then, I was disappointed that I had so many questions left on my docket, but very happy with the results built on the questions that I did get to ask.
And I know it will be difficult for the traditional media to plan another candidate forum without taking these lessons into account. The newsrooms of American can be stubborn, but if there is one thing I know for sure, they are all watching the tapes to try to figure out how we did it.