Open the Debates

An anonymous user writes, "It's time to let the George W. Bush and John Kerry campaigns know that the American people want them to participate in real, democratic and engaging presidential debates hosted by the Citizens' Debate Commission." Briefly, Presidential debates have been run by the Commission on Presidential Debates since 1988, and the CPD is run by the Republican and Democratic parties, which has resulted in less informative and less watched debates that exclude third parties and anything else that could hurt the two parties. The CDC, in cooperation with Open Debates, is trying to improve the debates by removing the bipartisan control. "Please do not be shy. Senator Kerry and President Bush are campaigning to be your public servants, and you should not hesitate to remind them of your wishes. Kerry campaign: 202-712-3000; Bush campaign: 703-647-2700. Please call this week! The major party campaigns have assembled their high-profile debate negotiating teams, and they will soon begin debate negotiations. Finally, Open Debates' Executive Director George Farah will be appearing on ABC World News Now tonight (sometime between 1am and 3am EST, for those of you still awake), and on ABC News Now Thursday morning at 6am EST. (They are different programs.)"

Comments

Re:And this is an issue because?

[VultureMN]

Unfortunately, every debate I've watched (since I hit voting age in 1990) has been nothing -but- attempts at setting up sound-bites. When's the last time any candidate actually tried to show some meat instead of dodging questions? And, hell, the average American voter doesn't seem interested in any answer more than 15 seconds long. Hooray for anti-intellectualism; if it doesn't fit on a bumper sticker, people aren't interested.

Re:This is much needed!

[captnitro]

while people are not enthused about John Kerry, they are voting for him because they don't want to vote for Bush

This may be true, but remember that many Presidents have been more passive than Bush and rode the wave of the economy, war, treaties, congress, and so on.

Bush, on the other hand, has been very busy from day one. Literally, I mean the man issued how many executive reversals of generally assumed public policy in his first days? ::sigh:: How I wish he would have taken MORE vacation time..

Let's also remember that many people voted Bush not because they wanted to vote Bush, but because of what they felt was a trust issue with the Democratic Party after Clinton. So they were voting for not-Gore. (For those that say Clinton's indiscretions weren't anybody's business but his, remember that his primary indiscretion was never, ever Monica. It was when he lied to the American public in prime time, and made people embarassed for the Office. My father, a straight-down-the-middle moderate, wouldn't vote for anyone from that administration for exactly that reason. I know, I know.. bad reason to vote. But to him, it was immense.)

I don't feel this is totally different from other elections, remember, the presidency is like a four-year term with an option for four more. If it was 2008, it might be different, but this is an election for an incumbent. OF COURSE it's voting for who you don't want.

Just allow the viable candidates

[ElForesto]

I think that the basis of a presidential debate should be viability. If a candidate will be on the ballot in enough states for it to be possible of a victory in the electoral college, then they should be let in. Right now, that includes Bush, Kerry, Badnarik, Cobb and Peroutka. Nader, though well-known, doesn't have a chance at an electoral victory due to ballot access issues.

If a debate stays focused on a few key issues and enforces strict time limits, they should be able to whip through 5-6 big issues in a 2-hour debate.

Re:And this is an issue because?

[rhakka]

first off, the bipartisan (not non partisan) commission has set 15% as the bar for entry to the debates. This is staggeringly beyond any kind of ballot access or entrance requirements in any state. It's also blindingly high for any non major party candidate.

As Jesse Ventura shows, however, if allowed to debate, one can go from below that 15% marker to win an election.

There is no reason why there cannot be multiple debates. There is no reason why any debate should suffer the agreements and back door dealings of the two major players as to format, content, LACK OF FOLLOW UP QUESTIONS, and innumerable other deals made by the D and R coalition here, designed to reduce the debate into a two hour recital of practiced sound bites as it currently is, because the major parties want it that way.

Remember Perot? 3 person or larger debates are doable. Even if we still only had two candidates in the debates, at the very least we could pretend it was a format for real question, answer, you know, DEBATE, instead of a recital on prearranged talking points.

Debate? Debate what?

[FFFish]

I'm just a lowly Canuck, so I can't claim as to have been paying a great amount of attention to what's going on with that smaller country beneath us, but my general impression is that the two US candidates are far more focused on 30 year-old war records instead of things like, oooh, say the economy, or healthcare, or foreign affairs, or education, or...

So, what exactly would they debate?

Re:And this is an issue because?

[pudge]

The 5% bar is hardly onerous or unreasonable. Anderson and Ross Perot both managed to qualify and were present in the debates.

It's not 5%, it is 15%! Which would exclude Perot in both 92 and 96, and Anderson. Anderson is on the board of the CDC, FWIW.

It also, if applied at the state level, would have prevented Jesse Ventura from becoming governor, as he would not have been included in the debates (pre-debates he was 10%).

And it also means your tax dollars go to candidates (which IS a 5% barrier) whom you're not allowed to hear in the debates.

What is a much bigger issue is who gets to choose the questions. In a true debate the candidates would face off against each other. Instead the US media insists that it get to ask the questions. It would make much more sense to have the candidates question each other.

There is no "true debate," but that said, direct questioning of candidates to each other is one thing many people want. But the candidates negotiate that away, under the CPD. We would have it if the CPD weren't in control. But direct questioning makes candidates look bad, so the CPD and the candidates don't want it.

Awesome write-up on the history of the debates.

[St. Arbirix]

Commission on Presidential Debates

I found this a few months ago and I think it's an awesome little history of how the debates were wrestled from the control of the League of Women's voters. Please read this before complaining about third party candidates entering the debates.

There are more brief histories on Wikipedia and Disinfopedia. If you are at a university with access to bigger encyclopedia that cost money I suggest you poke through the history of the debates on one of those.

The overall lesson you'll learn is that the United States Commission on Presidential Debates is completely unfair to everyone but the two big parties... and how many of us completely agree with either or those?

For those of you who don't like Bush, check here and notice that all the midwestern states that support him are also the larger supporters of Nader. All those complaints that Nader is taking points from Kerry are self-defeating. Those complaints are just causing the conservatives who don't like Bush to vote for him anyway since they really don't like Kerry and they don't believe there's anyone else available since the other options get downplayed so heavily.

America needs debate reform, and that's a requirement before we'll get more parties.

--Matthew

Re:And this is an issue because?

[rhakka]

again, you show you have no idea what democracy is about. It's not about what high profile candidate we can elect this year. It's about who would be the best candidate for the job.

Let's point out a few more facts. You don't need 50% to win. You need 50% of the populace who bothers to vote, which is about 40-60% of the populace. So let's be charitable and say you need about 30% to win; IN A TWO PARTY ELECTION.

15% is a very sizable base to start from. Debates can swing entire elections, if they are actually debates, and if they actually have candidates in them.

You seriously need to read this report: http://www.opendebates.org/news/pressreleases/pro- democracy.html

This belief that you only matter if your party can start you off at 30% of polled people or higher is total bullshit man.

Take another look; as the previous poster said, 15% would have eliminated Perot. Perot could have won an election. He was very close to doing so. What more will it take for you to realize that 15% is truly detrimental to democracy?

Take the flip side: what's the worst that would happen if there were more people in the debates? HEY, DEBATES WOULD BE LONGER OR THERE WOULD BE MORE OF THEM, O NOES, I WON'T GET TO WATCH "FRIENDS"!!!!!

Suck it up.

no shit they should open up the debates

[radarsat1]

of COURSE they should open up the debates.. why is this even in question? One thing that never ceases to irk me is that the US goes around talking about democracy and how great it is and goes as far as starting WARS in the name of democracy, when they BARELY EVEN HAVE ONE. I'm sorry, but a two-party system is NOT my definition of democracy. Democracy is supposed to represent CHOICE, and when you're forced two choose between the lesser of two evils, in what way does that represent freedom? And as to whether or not it is doable: We have 4-party debates in every election in Canada and although granted the votes usually fall mostly on two of the more prominent parties, at least we give people the option. (Consider that if a party has no voice, it's not really an option, is it, since no one will have any idea what their vote would be representing.) Frankly I was apalled this year in our election debates when I discovered that the Green Party had a candidate in almost every riding, and yet was not invited to the debate. I'm not a Green Party advocate, but I think if you've got something to say, and you're willing to say it all over the country, you should be given a chance to do so. Face it, the "democracy" in the states is nothing more than two huge power groupings fighting over control. It is focused entirely on collecting votes, and has nothing to do with actual issues. It has nothing to do with what's good for the people, which is supposed to be what democracy is all about. The American political system doesn't consider votes the be the expression of peoples' opinions on various issues, it considers them some kind of currency, and the political parties are nothing but profit-centered corporations that use commercialism and subversive techniques to make as much "vote-profit" as possible.

Re:And this is an issue because?

[NateTech]

Of course I would. It'd be more important to me than watching six days of the Olympics, and people did that.

Even one full good day with normal breaks would be a plus over what we now get.