Presidential debates are coming to the Internets thanks to Yahoo, HuffPo, and Slate. Nobody knows when – sometime after Labor Day, we’re told – because there are platforms to decide, technology to de-bug…that sort of thing. The major points of negotiation in these deals used to be the height of the podiums, the format, the moderator, the sponsor; now it’s…Windows Media Player or Quicktime.

Whatever. As long as it’s not simply a webcast, because we’ve already suffered through enough of those. New technology should have something new to offer in the same way The Nixon/Kennedy debates of 1960 did. People who saw it thought Kennedy won; people who only heard it gave the points to Nixon.

So the real question is what can the Internet do that old media can’t, and how can those technologies enhance what has become the most over-scripted, boring, and seemingly pointless exercise of the campaign season? If you’re the type who watches stockcar racing for the crashes, you might see one in a presidential debate every twenty or thirty years. If you watch hockey for the fights, same thing. I don’t think anybody’s landed a punch since Lloyd Bentsen dropped the gloves and pummeled Dan Quayle in 1988.

Speed and interactivity are the keys to making an Internet debate livelier than its TV counterpart. Imagine a thousand live bloggers doing real-time research to determine if the Social Security factoid someone just threw out has any basis in reality – and then posting it on a sidebar before they even finish answering. Or a function that puts the question on a crawl so viewers will know – and note – whether it was actually answered.

The questions themselves will come from viewers, filtered through the Internet equivalent of call-screeners, and then posed by moderator Charlie Rose. But what if the producers step it up a bit and use the third-party information coming in from other viewers to feed the moderator impromptu follow-ups? As in: Excuse me Senator, but you just said “X”, and according to “Ben in Mamchester” you said “Y” just three weeks ago in New Hampshire. Which is it?

That’s another thing – follow-up questions aren’t normally part of a presidential debate. The traditional format could use a fundamental overhaul to match the new technology. Until now, debates have followed the old-school form and have been about as much fun and informative as the Latin Mass.

Bloggers should be in the seats for the post-debate scrum – we see plenty of the old media talking heads everywhere else. Candidates should choose their spinmeisters from the online divisions of their campaigns and the points they make should be subjected to the same real-time scrutiny as the candidates’.

Arianna&Co could have a lot of fun with this idea, create a forum that actually informs, and set a new standard for how the Internet covers and conveys politics. But they’ll need lots of ideas – so take a moment and give them one or two in the comment section…