The Stephanopoulos/McCain Twitter Interview: For People Who Find TV News Soundbites Too Complicated

It wasn't exactly the Frost/Nixon interview, but it was entertaining enough. ABC News Washington correspondent George Stephanopoulos interviewed Sen. John McCain for 15 minutes on Twitter today, an exchange that covered 10 questions on the AIG bailout, Iran and Iraq, and McCain's daughter Meghan's feud with Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham.@GStephanopoulis, who has 175,000 followers, and @SenJohnMcCain, with 224,885, invited the public to follow the interview in advance. The interview went about two dozen tweets.

I went into it thinking it would be an empty publicity stunt. How much depth could you actually have in a 15-minute Twitter exchange? The 1977 Frost-Nixon interviews aired for four, 90-minute programs, culled from 24 hours of interviews. The Stephanopoulis-McCain interviews, on the other hand, would last for less than the amount of time of an average TV sitcom, with questions and answers limited to 140 characters.

Still, they managed to get some points across, and even have some back-and-forth:

On the AIG bailout:

I re-tweeted that last message from Stephanopoulos, with the comment, "Oh, snap!" But I snapped too soon, because Sen. McCain had a response:

On foreign policy:

On the family feud between McCain's daughter Meghan and conservative commentators Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham:

The exchange illustrates a drawback of Twitter as an interview medium: It's unsuited for nuanced discussion and doesn't permit a journalist to press an interview subject who's being evasive. McCain doesn't actually answer Stephanopoulis's questions about AIG and Iran and Pakistan. He doesn't even take his own daughter's side in an argument. McCain has clearly learned from Charles Durning's performance in the movie The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas:

(Reporter: "What do you think of the crisis in the Middle East?" GOVERNOR: "I was saying just this morning at the weekly prayer breakfast in this historic capital that it behooves both the Jews and the Ay-rabs to settle their differences in a Christian manner.")

On the other hand, Twitter, does, surprisingly, have advantages as a forum for political discussion. It's convenient. The same ease-of-use and ubiquity that lets you post complaints about your airline being late also allows you to skim a political discussion while doing other things. In my case, I kept one eye on the Stephanopoulos-McCain exchange while also proofreading the InformationWeek Blog Newsletter.

And the novelty value of holding a debate on Twitter -- let's face it, it's a publicity gimmick -- can draw attention to political movements that are having difficulty getting attention through conventional channels. Like, for example, the Republican Party.

Follow InformationWeek on Twitter and other social networks:

Twitter: @InformationWeek @MitchWagner

Facebook: InformationWeek Mitch Wagner

LinkedIn: InformationWeek Mitch Wagner

Learn about all the latest Enterprise 2.0 technologies at TechWeb's Enterprise 2.0 Conference, Boston, June 22-25. Join us (registration required).