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.)"

And this is an issue because?

[CrimsonAvenger]

C'mon, if you want to have a debate, invite whomever you like to it - Bush, Kerry, Nader, Gore, me, your grandmother.

Don't expect people to come just because you invite them, or to stay away just because you don't (as witnessed last time through).

Yes, the debates are organized and run by the Republicrats. Or the Democans, I forget which.

Ostensibly, the reason they refuse to allow minor candidates (defined as doing really poorly in the polls, less than 5%, I think) is because having fifteen candidates in a two hour debate lets you give each candidate ~6 minutes to talk (after subtracting time for commercials). Which means that you'll get a few sound-bites suitable for the evening news, and nothing else worthwhile.

Realistically, Presidential debates would need to be days long, if you allowed all the candidates.

And frankly, if this new bunch just wants to lower the bar far enough so that THEIR favorite gets in, why should they have any legitimacy at all? And why should they expect anyone serious to pay attention to them?

This is much needed!

[jared_hanson]

A sentiment which seems to be quite prevalent in this election is that, while people are not enthused about John Kerry, they are voting for him because they don't want to vote for Bush. It's a pretty sad state of affairs when you can't cast a reasonable vote for the candidate who represents your issues, and have to resort to voting against the candidate who doesn't.

Things may start to change if the third-party candidates and independants were given enough media coverage to actually present their views to the public. This simply doesn't happen, but allowing them to take part in nationally televised debates would be a step in the right direction.

Re:And this is an issue because?

[KilobyteKnight]

Realistically, Presidential debates would need to be days long, if you allowed all the candidates.

And this is a problem.... why?

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.

Upside and Downside

[RobertB-DC]

There will be no change until, for some reason, the two major parties both think it's in their best interest. And I can't imagine how that would come about.

Everything in an election of this level is measured by how it will affect the candidate's chances. If the upside of staying away is greater than the downside of attending, then the candidate will stay away, period.

Former CIA Director George H.W. Bush lost, in no small part, because he let Perot go over his head to talk directly to the American people. Armed with the facts, the people voted against Bush Sr. That's called "democracy", the same thing we pay lip service to in Iraq and Afghanistan these days.

Of all his daddy's mistakes, this is the one that former Texas Governor George Dubya Bush won't make again. He knows better than to trust the people to make an informed choice.

And to be fair, I don't see an upside for Kerry, either. The Greens' candidate (David Cobb, dude, NOT NADER!) will be happy to call Kerry to account for his own sins.

Re:And this is an issue because?

[Zeinfeld]

The Democratic primary debates were hopeless. Only five candisates stood any chance of winning the nomination but instead of hearing from them we have to hear from Al Sharpton and co.

If the minor party candidates want to have a debate then let them. I am sure that CSPAN will cover it and anyone who is interested will watch. But just because Ralph Nader wants to talk to us does not mean that people are interested in listening.

There have been serious third party candidates in the debates. The 5% bar is hardly onerous or unreasonable. Anderson and Ross Perot both managed to qualify and were present 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.

If left to its own devices the media will only ask Kerry questions about his service in Vietnam and Bush questions about the Texas Air National Guard. The economy, iraq, health care, education, forget those they won't come up.

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?

Remember this past Democratic Primary?

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

This is an awful idea. Doesn't anyone remember the Democratic debates we just suffered through? They'd have ten people up there--half of which were clearly just up there for publicity (all the ones who didn't have Senator, Governor, or General in front of their name were just shameless attention grabbers with no hope of winning) and you'd only hear about five minutes each from the candidates who were serious about running. It was a complete waste of their energy and the viewer's time. I'm sorry, but in a country of 270 million people, there is simply no possible way to hear from every single idiot who wants to be president. Debates are not supposed to be excuses to get your name out or for radicals to "send a message" to the establishment--it's how we pick the leader of the United States of America.

While Kerry is certainly infinitely better than Bush, I think a lot of Democrats are starting to rethink their belief that he was the most electable candidate in the pack--and no wonder, they only listened to him talk for five minutes, with a soundbite or two on the evening news every day.

Sure, I hate the two party system--but that hatred does not extend to two-person debates. I mean, they don't invite every single baseball team to the World Series, do they? It's not fair to rely on the debates at the end of the election season to boost yourself out of single-digit territory.

Questions.

[khasim]

We need multiple sources of questions:

#1. A popular vote (/. style).

#2. The media's picks.

#3. The candidate's picks. This way they can focus on their strengths or pick at their opponents weaknesses.

I'd even break #1 down by region ("Detroit wants to know ....").

Any other sources of questions?

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?

[PoisonousPhat]

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.

Oh my, did someone else just say that? These are my sentiments exactly. I recall seeing Mario Cuomo on CSPAN making the case for multiple debates. I thought it would be a marvelous idea: have the candidates spend some of that TV money and "stump speech" time to instead debate 5-10 times. Each debate could have a different set topic, such as "The Economy", "Healthcare" or "Iraq and the Middle East", along with different multiple moderators each time, some of whom would be experts in the field of discussion. Try as they might, I doubt that either (or any, if we have more than two) candidate could "sound bite" his way though two hours of a single topic. Then again, these guys are masterful spin doctors.

Re:And this is an issue because?

[rhakka]

No, they aren't. They are masterful spin doctors when they have a captive spoonfed moderator who will not challenge them when they REFUSE TO ANSWER QUESTIONS over and over and over again, spitting out tired, irrelevant rhetoric instead and never getting called on it.

Having a moderator with the balls to call a spade a spade would make a huge difference especially, as you've mentioned, if they are educated in the field being questioned on. I really, really like that idea of set theme debates or a couple of set themes per debate with an open Q and A or "miscellaneous" debate.

Re:Come on, now

[JavaRob]

Well, everyone keeps saying 5%. That's pretty freaking low--a theoretical maximum of 20 candidates.

Okay, I know math, too, and you seem to be claiming that it's *likely* that we'll have 20 candidates, each with precisely 5% of the vote. Huh? Check some actual polls -- once you cut Bush and Kerry voters out of the numbers, you only have somewhere between 3-11% left, including undecideds (most of whom are deciding between Bush/Kerry). In the 2000 election, candidate #3 (Nader) got 2.75% of the vote. Candidate #4 (Buchanan) got 0.42%. So... we're going to get 20 debate candidates? We might not even get 3.

That's why I called straw man. I'm not saying the Democratic primary debates were "imaginary" -- I'm saying it's disingenuous to claim that's what we'll get if we try to make any changes to the current presidential debate system.

It's not unfair that you roar out to the front, what's unfair is that you only had single digits and you expected equal debate time with other candidates running 30, 40, or 50 or 60 percent.

I don't agree, because I think the system's weighted from the start against the smaller candidates (and the debates is finally a place where your facetime doesn't depend on how much you pay!), but I understand your point here.

It sounds like you want a much more complicated, time consuming debate--which is cool, but if that's the case, it sounds to me like all the more reason we need to exclude single-digit candidates.

Well, see above re. the "much more complicated, time consuming" bit... but there are other arguments for the 5% bar. Another poster made a good point that seems relevant here -- your party can get federal money to support your campaign if you got more than 5% in the previous election. If our money is paying for these campaigns, shouldn't we get to hear them speak on even ground, even if only for a couple of hours out of the entire campaign?

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.

Re:And this is an issue because?

[NateTech]

That he's not doing.

His RNC speech was full of "If you elect me I will do... blah." Count them. There's a lot of them.

Of course, none of his followers (yes, followers... not leaders) are asking why with the chance of a lifetime (a Republican House and Senate) he hasn't told the Party folks to get off their asses and draft some legislation he'll happily sign.

Nope, he doesn't really want to cut taxes, simplify tax law, or any of the other multitude of things prefaced with those words during his speech... OR THEY'D ALREADY BE DONE!

He's either lying or completely ineffective as a leader. Even with the War to run, the Republicans could have proposed massive sweeping changes to Tax law, since that's one of the promises. They haven't.

Of course the real reason it's not getting done is because he isn't in Washington enough to actually work with legislators. Go figure.

Re:There's a reason for two parties -

[jpop32]

The reason we have two political parties is to foster the middle path.

Yeah, a great idea, indeed. But, why stop there? Two party system still allows for some dissent and fragmentation! I think that a clearly superior system would be a ONE PARTY system! Then the nation would be united all the time, no dissenting views, no confision, no tiresome politicking!

That's definitely the way to go, right? One nation, one party, one leader? Hmmm... Sounds vaguely familiar...

Re:And this is an issue because?

[ChristTrekker]

And frankly, if this new bunch just wants to lower the bar far enough so that THEIR favorite gets in, why should they have any legitimacy at all?

The only requirement should be "are you on the ballot in enough states to get the 270 EC votes you need to win". That's the only requirement that matters, and it's the only criteria that should be used. Anything else is just the Duopoly scheming with itself to avoid competition. If they're really as dominant as they appear, why are they afraid?