Tubular

Sadly, I missed the CNN/YouTube debate last night and am now dredging through the galaxy of video clips floating in Cyberspace in an effort to piece everything together.

I'll pass the conch to David as far as offering a more succinct and relevant appraisal of the Guv's performance but my general first impressions are that the format was brilliant.

Sure, you can't have melting snowmen ask questions about global warming at every debate (although I strongly encourage it). Nevertheless, this go-around seemed to be refreshingly devoid (as much as humanly possible) of the usual canned questions = canned answers format. It's good to see presidential candidates showing a pulse every now and then, even if it takes some guy dressed as a redneck lumberjack asking about Al Gore in order to do it.

On paper (literally, looking at the transcript), Richardson seems to have held his own. Although, true to form, it looks like he struggled for face time with his answers appearing few and far between. Once again, Big Bill earned the unanimous "most disappointing performance" nod from CNN's online panel of experts. But, from what I've seen, it probably wasn't that bad. Or was it?