CNN/YouTube presidential debates

The CNN/YouTube Debates were conceived of by David Bohrman, the Washington Bureau Chief of CNN, and Steve Grove, the Head of News and Politics at YouTube.

YouTube was a new platform on the political scene, rising to prominence in the 2006 midterm elections after Senator George Allen's Macaca Controversy, in which the Senator was captured calling his opponent Jim Webb's campaign worker a "Macaca" on video, which went viral on YouTube and damaged a campaign that narrowly lost at the polls.

Media companies were looking for new ways to harness the possibilities of web video and YouTube was looking for opportunities to give its users access to the national political stage, so Bohrman and Grove formed a unique partnership in the CNN/YouTube Debates.

He challenged the candidates at the debate (Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Mike Gravel, Chris Dodd, Dennis Kucinich, Bill Richardson, and John Edwards) to "actually answer the questions" instead of "beating around the bush."

After the debate ended, CNN interviewed their focus groups, and they thought that Barack Obama was the candidate who most understood their issues.

A memo issued by a Hillary Clinton presidential campaign spokesman stated that Obama said he would meet with some of the world's worst dictators during his first year of office without preconditions.

In a Newsweek article written by Brian Braiker, he indicated that many YouTube users would have preferred that CNN select the most popular video questions.