Today I saw a rather serious twitter post, an argument in the form of a debate response. This struck me for two reasons: first, I’m used to seeing “tweets” (twitter posts) about what shaving cream a person uses or how they just ate a twinkie. This tweet was different – it was an intelligent comment on a serious topic (gasp!)! Second, the tweet stood out as something you might see in a fast debate. It was brief, efficient, and direct. Kind of the opposite of what we’ve grown accustomed to witnessing in political debate.
This raised the question – what if candidates agreed to conduct a debate over an online medium like Twitter, their answers limited to 140 characters (or some other apposite number)? We might see something unprecedented – straight answers about issues. Given that Twitter is already being used by a presidential candidate, maybe it’s not that absurd.
