July 26 (Bloomberg) -- If you put all the debates and all the candidates end to end, you would have the lowest ratings of any series since Nielsen started tabulating TV viewership.

Yet Monday night's debate among Democratic presidential candidates, a union of CNN and YouTube, had its moments. When Jen and Mary from Brooklyn asked about gay marriage, the candidates gave stock replies. But it served as a reminder to jaded viewers that what politicians say matters to real people.

Having ordinary citizens armed with Webcams interrogate the candidates proved that some members of the public can be as predictable and pompous as your average cable anchor. Still, I'll always be grateful to the person who posed the evening's most cloying challenge: asking the candidates to name something they liked and didn't like about each other. Depending on your reason for tuning in, that -- along with a dustup over whether a president should talk to the planet's five worst dictators -- was the high or low point.

On his turn, Senator John Edwards threw caution to the wind and tried a little humor. First, he expressed admiration for the public service of former President Bill Clinton and Senator Hillary Clinton. Then he gamely eyed Hillary and said, ``I'm not sure about the coat.'' He was referring to the quilted, collarless jacket she wears in every color of the rainbow. On my low-definition TV, this one looked orange.

You had to feel sorry for Edwards. He thought he and Clinton had bonded, that he would kid her and she would kid back.

Mr. Haircut

Mr. Haircut, who posed for a Men's Vogue cover and was already a YouTube star for a clip capturing him in two unguarded minutes of primping for a TV spot (to the tune of ``I Feel Pretty''), can't risk appearance-related remarks.

There was little chumminess in Clinton's response. It was the kind she might have used on her errant husband, up too late with his young staff solving the world's problems, eating pizza and playing Hearts. ``Yes, John, it's a good thing we're ending soon,'' she said.

Senator Barack Obama chimed in. ``I actually like Hillary's jacket,'' he said. Lest anyone think he knows one fashion statement from another, he quickly added, ``I don't know what's wrong with it.''

Obama was pretending that Clinton and Edwards had just had a real disagreement. It reminded me of the joke about the cloistered monks who get to speak once a year. The first year, Monk One says, ``I hate the mashed potatoes.'' The next year, Monk Two says, ``I like the mashed potatoes.'' The third year, Monk Three says, ``I can't stand all this arguing.''

Acing the Test

Pretending is what a candidate has to do when competing against someone who never makes a mistake that an opponent can capitalize on. Clinton always does her homework. She aces every exam. If there were erasers, she'd clap them.

When the camera turned to her, the senator from New York said of the senator from Illinois, ``I admire and like very much Barack,'' proving that English can be a second language for someone born in Chicago who graduated from Yale Law School.

She absolutely doesn't admire and like very much Barack. Clinton can say the opposite of what she feels with total conviction and be admired for coming up with it. Pulling off inauthenticity is just another way of seeming presidential.

Under Hillary's Skin

In fact, Obama is the only candidate who gets under Clinton's skin, and the aftermath of a mild exchange at the debate shows just how much. Obama said he would meet with five leaders hostile to America upon becoming president. ``It's a disgrace that we have not spoken to them,'' he said, referring to President George W. Bush. He cited approvingly Ronald Reagan's public denunciation of Soviet leaders while negotiating with them privately.

Clinton hedged the circumstances under which she would talk, citing the complexities of diplomacy.

On Tuesday, the staffs went back and forth, Obama claiming Clinton had flip-flopped because she had repeatedly criticized the Bush administration for insisting ``he will not talk with bad people,'' and Clinton pledging vigorous diplomacy but being smart enough to avoid being ``used for propaganda purposes.''

Finally, in an interview with the Quad-City Times in Iowa, Clinton -- not by way of her staff -- called Obama names, saying he was ``irresponsible and frankly naive'' for his readiness to negotiate with leaders like ``the president of North Korea... until we know better what the way forward would be.''

Hillary's Surprise

To emphasize her point that you shouldn't talk to Kim Jong Il, Clinton sent out her husband's former secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, who had gone to North Korea to talk to Kim Jong Il. Albright did more than talk, bringing along a basketball for the Dear Leader signed by Michael Jordan, which must be worth the starving country's entire gross domestic product on EBay.

Albright did as she was asked, but wouldn't go as far as Clinton's staff wanted and say that the dangerously jejune Obama would be negotiating with Satan shortly after moving into the White House.

This all served to reiterate Clinton's major push of late to show herself as ready on Day One to sit in the Oval Office and Obama as wet behind the ears.

This requires a rewrite of history. She has to ignore her claim during the years after her health-care debacle that she was far too consumed with entertaining, historic preservation and book writing to make much out of being a pillow away from the presidency.

It's too bad the debates are such kabuki theater, rewarding memorization, footnotes, neatness, and getting along well with others. It sharply reduces the chances of anything memorable happening. So far, what matters happens off stage and in the pages of the Quad-City Times.

(Margaret Carlson, author of ``Anyone Can Grow Up: How George Bush and I Made It to the White House'' and former White House correspondent for Time magazine, is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Margaret Carlson in Washington at mcarlson3@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: July 26, 2007 00:06 EDT