TIMES DEMAND SUBSTANTIVE CAMPAIGN
DEBATES
San Diego Union-Tribune
Editorial
Monday, August 9, 2004
War and the economy, and
so much else. Serious issues for serious times.
They beg for serious debate by the candidates who would be the next president.
But will Americans - indeed, the world - get serious debates this fall?
Lamentably, that remains an open question.
The Commission on Presidential Debates, which has sponsored all presidential
debates since 1988, has again tentatively organized debates for this year.
Three presidential debates are scheduled for late September, early and
mid-October, with a vice presidential debate in early October.
The Kerry-Edwards campaign has accepted the commission's schedule, but
detailed talks with the Kerry-Edwards and Bush-Cheney camps won't even
begin until after the Republican National Convention Aug. 30-Sept. 2 in
New York City.
Meanwhile, an upstart organization, the Citizens' Debate Commission, has
set itself up as a rival to the CPD and has proposed its own series of
six debates in September and October. This new group has been highly critical
of the old commission, calling it "a shell organization" of the Republican
and Democratic parties and alleging that the parties control the debate
schedule and format to the exclusion of legitimate third-party candidates.
The result, the new group says, "is a series of scripted affairs at which
the candidates rarely engage in anything close to a debate." Public viewership
of the debates has dropped dramatically, they add, from 60 percent of
households in 1980 to just 30 percent in 2000.
Some of that is true. The debates have become increasingly scripted. The
candidates have not been challenged with follow-up questions. Viewers
have been cheated out of a chance to see how the candidates might challenge
and interact with each other in a real debate. And public viewership has
declined, though by how much is hard to tell, because of the fragmentation
of television into many more channels on cable.
What the new commission fails to recognize is that it, too, could easily
fall victim to candidates' demands for bland, politically safe debates
that do little to help voters judge the candidates and their ideas. There
is no law requiring debates; the candidates are in control, no matter
who the sponsor.
Another reality is that most of the differences between what the old commission
and the new commission want to do are just so much inside baseball. Aside
from the number of debates, three vs. five, the only significant difference
is in how the two groups would determine which candidates are allowed
to participate. Both groups would require that all candidates appear on
enough state ballots to have a mathematical chance of an Electoral College
majority. The old commission would also require a candidate to have at
least 15 percent public support in five national polls - likely meaning
no Ralph Nader - while the new group would require a candidate to have
only 5 percent support - giving Nader a shot at participation.
The good news is that there will almost certainly be at least one presidential
debate this fall and hopefully more. The public demands it.
The public also needs to demand, and the candidates need to accept, that
in this, the first post-9/11 election, the stakes are too great to allow
pablum as debate.
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