QUICK VERDICT, THE VIDEOS. This was a fantastic, fascinating, illuminating, moving debate -- a true realization of the potential of the new technologies to bring the voices of ordinary citizens into the political process. The citizens in the videos made every issue more real, and every answer more serious. They added levity, and creativity, and concrete examples that cut through the bland anecdotes that candidates tend to trot out at these things.

But the candidate videos were a waste of time. The identifying side print saying which video was which was too small for me to tell whose video was whose for all the candidates, except in retrospect, by process of elimination. Joe Biden's was clear, as were BIll Richardson's and Barack Obama's, which was the best video overall. Hillary Clinton's video involved hand-drawn flash-cards that passed so fast that I couldn't read them, however, because of the size, speed, and font. Ditto for the citizen-videos with text or signs. Trying to read rapidly shifting hand-drawn text on a three-inch square, which is the size the text boxes were on my TV, from 14 feet away made some of the videos feel like eye tests.

So, a word advice for next time: Get rid of the flash cards. Oh yeah -- and Mike Gravel, too. That guy has got to go.

--Garance Franke-Ruta