Debates exclude some candidates

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What is a debate supposed to look like, anyway? Dictionaries tell us, by definition, a debate is an argument where different, opposing viewpoints are deliberated, usually in the format of a formal discussion.

The spectacle that the Commission on Presidential Debates, or CPD, puts on three times during the presidential campaign, however, is a bit different from what this definition would suggest. Unfortunately, last week’s debate between Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and Republican presidential nominee John McCain was as staged, frustrating and useless as each we’ve seen in recent elections.

Part of the reason for this is that since the late ’80s, the Republican and Democratic parties have colluded to control all aspects of the presidential debates through the CPD, an organization funded by those two parties and their corporate sponsors, such as Anheuser-Busch, and headed by lobbyists and former party leaders.

The CPD was formed after the League of Women Voters, which had sponsored and organized the debates in previous elections, withdrew its support because the campaigns of George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis had conspired to keep candidates and issues they didn’t like out of the debate. As then-President Nancy Neuman said, the “League has no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public” as she accused the candidates of “campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and honest answers to tough questions.”

The CPD designs every detail of the debates exactly as they desire, choosing who can participate, who asks the questions, what they can ask and which members of the press can be present. The CPD even maintains that the audience must be silent and not react to the candidates’ statements.

One way the CPD controls which candidates can debate is by setting up ridiculously high requirements for participation. To debate, a candidate must achieve 15 percent support in five national polls. That way, the CPD can guarantee the Republican and Democratic candidates that they will not have to debate third-party or independent candidates, and that the American people will not hear their views.

As interviewees, the candidates fail to actually debate real issues and instead revert to a self-promoting, image-based contest to see who can drop the most names, questionable figures and ludicrous dodges to the tough questions.

When answering a question about sending more troops to fight the war in Afghanistan, McCain jumped off topic and went into a story of the mother of a fallen soldier who at a town hall meeting gave him a bracelet to wear in her son’s honor. Instead of recognizing this exploitative story for the emotional ploy it was, Obama’s response was that he, too, had a bracelet given to him by the mother of another fallen soldier.

And so it went: In an act of great disrespect to the voting public who watched with the intent of learning more about the candidates and their differences on the tough issues facing our country, the candidates instead played a game of tit for tat over bracelets.

The fact that both candidates are complacent to play these silly games is directly attributable to their parties’ monopolization of the debates through the CPD. Imagine if Nader, Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney or Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr were allowed to participate. In addition to hearing a greater variety of voices and choices, voters also would likely hear a much more spirited debate where the contestants would not allow one another to get away with cheap pandering.

Imagine if the debates allowed the candidates to actually argue one another with cross-questioning, follow-up questions, rebuttals and candidate-to-candidate questions.

As a result, voters would be able to see the actual differences between the candidates as they relate to policy, rather than the differences in their abilities to project images through practiced lines.

Unfortunately, as long as the CPD maintains its iron, monopolized grip on the debates, democracy will continue to suffer and voters will continue to be disrespected as mindless beings who will vote for a candidate because of the bracelet he or she wears rather than on the real issues.

Ryan Dinkgrave is a State News columnist and a public relations graduate student. Reach him at dinkgrave@gmail.com.

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