Wednesday's political drama pinballed from John McCain to Barack Obama to Sarah Palin and Katie Couric and George Bush and ended with . . . David Letterman?

All of their speeches and commentary, faux pas and bon mots were sliced and diced into tiny video moments that YouTube and other Web distributors, like Internet Johnny Appleseeds, strewed far and wide, dramatic examples of "viral video" - clips spread globally by folks who share them through e-mail, cell phones, or other means.

Politics and media have converged in this campaign as in no other. That convergence has changed how people get their news, what the news looks like, and perhaps what they think about it.

Eric Burns, president of the Web site Media Matters for America, says that "the Internet has leveled the playing field - viral media can have a tremendous impact, not just on political figures, but on the mainstream press as well."

It was an amazing "confluence of two media," says Robert Thompson, professor of television journalism and popular culture at Syracuse University. "First, the 'older medium,' TV, had a great day, especially Katie Couric and David Letterman. On the other hand, you had the Internet playing a huge role."

On Wednesday afternoon, the McCain campaign made its dramatic call to suspend Friday's presidential debates in Oxford, Miss., so that he could jet to Washington and make Congress pass a Wall Street (or is it Main Street?) bailout bill. McCain's talking head was probably already spiraling through cyberspace by the time Obama said, no, let's debate. Obama, who later agreed to join McCain in Washington, instantly became a video clip for YouTube, CNN.com, MSNBC.com and brethren.

Like a Hell's Angel on a Harley, mainstream nightly news opened the throttle: CBS' Couric interviewed both GOP vice-presidential pick Sarah Palin and, later, McCain himself. Palin appeared to claim that McCain would employ federal regulation if the economy tanked, so Couric pressed her to "list specific examples" in McCain's 26 Senate years of "pushing for more regulation."

Palin, stuck, said: "I'll try to find you some and I'll bring them to you." Palin also tried to rescind previous comments about a Depression coming on, but her words seemed only to repeat that toxic lapse. Couric fed that back into her chat with McCain, who floundered to undercut them ("I, I don't know if, if, if it's exactly the depression . . . ").

Here's the thing: Each one of these moments - McCain's announcement, Obama's counter, Couric and Palin, Couric and McCain - had already morphed to a viral aerosol of video clips and strewn over cyberspace by the time President Bush took the podium for his crucial 9 p.m. speech on the bailout.

The nation should have watched: Bush was trying to push Congress into action and also help McCain. But like the Lilliputians hog-tying Gulliver with thousands of tiny ropes, the little stuff apparently has overwhelmed the bigger.

To be sure, Bush's speech was shared all over the world, but with many fewer senders and receivers. (As of noon Thursday, YouTube clips of the Bush speech were drawing around 200 views apiece, compared to 5,000 to 7,000 apiece for the Couric-Palin interview; indeed, as of midday Thursday, Couric/Palin clips had been blocked on YouTube.)

"Think of it as horizontal communication, meaning peer to peer," says Jay Rosen, associate professor of journalism at New York University. (Rosen himself sent a clip of Couric/Palin to his wife.) "Because it's so potent, and there are so many different ways to search for, find and send these clips, it creates a potent new way for a narrative wave to break."

McCain was scheduled for Late Night with David Letterman on CBS but canceled, saying he was in a hurry to get to Washington. Letterman, ticked that McCain had ditched him for Couric, took memorable revenge: He harangued McCain in absentia, replaced him with white-hot critic Keith Olbermann, and, finally, ran a video clip of McCain getting make-up for the Couric interview. While McCain was having a powder, Letterman powdered him with a caustic voiceover: "He doesn't seem to be racing to the airport, does he? . . . Hey John, I got a question! You need a ride to the airport?"

All these, too, were turned into YouTube video bits.

Thompson says, "I think Letterman showed journalists how to go after a candidate, something journalists have become afraid to do. But in the Comedy Central era, some of the best political analysis out there is happening on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." Sure enough, on The Daily Show host Jon Stewart riffed on Letterman's riff on McCain. And, yes, you now can find Stewart's riff on Letterman on the Web.

In truth, we've been living in a quickie/soundbite/gotcha world for generations. Sound- and videobites have besmirched reputations and felled whole campaigns. Sen. Edmund Muskie's tears on camera may have wrecked his bid for a presidential nod in 1971. Gerald Ford hit his head or fell down on icy European sidewalks on TV throughout his quick turn in office, cementing unfairly his reputation as a klutz. In 1988, the elder George Bush used images of convict Willie Horton to hamstring Mike Dukakis - who should never have gotten into that tank, or put on that helmet.

What's different now? Access, for one thing. "Only a certain number of people could see the Couric interviews," says Thompson, "but the viral media brought it to many more people. It used to be you had to hear about the news the day after from someone else - but now you can see the original source for yourself."

The scope and pace of it all are also different, the lightning manner in which huge, sweeping events get atomized into unsorted bits and pieces. Wielding the instant impact of the image, viral video can overwhelm larger, more complex facts and issues. Palin, for example, was trying to take back her "depression" remarks - but ended up cementing the impression she was trying to correct.

Big and little become equal, important (Bush speech) equal with trivial (witchcraft), impression (Palin says there'll be a depression!) with fact (both she and McCain know she shouldn't have said that), rant (Letterman) with measured response (Obama, Bush, McCain).

As of this morning, print media got into the act: The print edition of the New York Times ran three heads - Bush, McCain, Obama - each flanked by a single quotation to the left and stories to the right. That's what print looks like when it wants the bite-sized freshness of the Web. And of all media, it's the Web that goes stalest fastest of all.

Contact John Timpane at 215-854-4406 or jt@phillynews.com.