Political Debates

We have campaigning going on for the next presidential election, the one that will enable us to get rid of George Bush. Thank God a president can only server two terms in office and that our democracy allows us the chance to vote another time to correct a mistake after it has elected a worthless president like Bush. So we are now in the midst of the year long campaign with "presidential debates".
These presidential debates are complete waste of time because candidates never really say what they believe (if they even have a belief) or want to do. And even if they did, it is doubtful they would act accordingly, since most presidents and other politicians only do what they think the majority of voters ant them to do. I think that most voters don't care what the politicians say. They don't believe them and they more often look for the candidate who says most what they want to hear.
Politicians know this and spend all their time avoiding questions and never specifically stating a belief. They dance a mean tango when asked to define their view because they knows that doing so is not going to win any new votes. It will only lose their supporters by saying something the their voters might not like. So a good politician answers the questions without answering them,....uh....I mean, appears to answer but doesn't, all the time sending a message to the voters already on his or her side that "I am still with you on this issue, don't change your vote because of anything I say now."
So debates are a waste of time. As much as I hate those TV reality shows I think a person will gain more knowledge from watching that garbage than from listening to a political debate or political speech. In essence the candidates attend those debates to win support form their supporters (not lose them) by saying what their voters want to hear and they participate to make it appear they are viable candidates that corporations no corporation ever turns down a candidate's request for a contribution because they will want the winner's help to enrich the corporation with favorable policy after the election) and supporters should finance with donations.
But now there is a new debate style driven by you guessed it....the internet. For the first time in presidential debate history, user-generated video is being used in two of the 2008 unprecedented debates. CNN and YouTube’s live forum will feature video questions submitted to YouTube to be broadcast and answered by Democratic and Republican candidates on CNN. Can you believe it? Ordinary people, not journalists, submitting their questions for the candidates to answer....
Direct with questions from real people, like tow gay people asking the presidential candidates if they would allow them to marry. Yep! That was one of the questions used for the first debate. CNN chooses the questions from the You Tube submissions, but they all are more direct than the usual softball theoretical ones journalists ask and candidates prepare for, I think it much more difficult to evade questions like "What prescription medications are you taking and how much do they cost", than "What is your position on the war in Iraq". The politicians just can't anticipate or prepare non answers for the questions they get from ordinary people.
I like the idea very much, but think they candidates will still dance around most of what they are asked. It will show which candidate is trying most to answers presented, and that in itself may persuade a few voters to side with that one. But it is a start in trying to make politicians really address issues that common people want them to pay attention to.
Maybe such debate questioning will become more common and force more politicians to be direct with voters. And if it gets some people to turn off the regular TV garbage he or she watches for a few hours, maybe a few brain cells can be saved from the Reality TV menace.