presidential debates-who should be invited

Great Debates
21

Who is this “they”? a government group or a private group?

And gonzomax, debates, like every other step in a campaign, are about winning. If you are just looking for information, look at the party and candidate web sites. Debates are 100% about seeing who will trip up, say something stupid, or flame out. And that’s a good thing- all of the platitudes in mission statements and platforms are worth nothing without opposition. A candidate must be able to show they can articulate their point and stay on message in the face an opponent(s) of the same caliber (i.e. a statesman).

However, I don’t think that even the best candidate will shine through if you toss them in a room full of crazy people. And a debate involving multiple fringe parties would resemble just that.

22

They are not crazy because you don’t agree with them. I am sure a few libertarians on this board would disagree. You are marginalizing them before it starts. Do you not think Nader would crush them? That is why he is not there. The message must be pushed not seriously questioned. The Green party has some very valid points and was way ahead of the Dems and Repubs.
If it is about winning then give them a chance to win too. Is this America or what?

23

Have you seen Nader speak? He’s not exactly captivating. I don’t know how he would do at a debate.

24

I am not marginalizing them- the voters have, as have the 2 major parties, by co-opting any of their ideas that are politically viable.

  1. No, I don’t think Nader will crush them.

  2. No, I don’t think this is why he is not in the debates. I think he’s excluded, as with any other 3rd party candidates, because he would end up taking time away from the 2 viable candidates and the end result would him sniping as the two faced off. the smaller the party, the louder the candidate can afford to be, since he really doesn’t have anything to lose. While the comic relief would be entertaining, it wouldn’t be productive.

You’d need to show me that he’s actually a contender before I’ll expect whoever is producing these debates to waste resources on him. We can quibble about what that threshhold is, but there has to be one.

  1. Define ‘way ahead.’
    FYI- political parties currently in existence in the US on the national level. These are all of the ones who’ve actually fielded candidates (mostly US Congress and Senate, but some president). Taken from Politics1 - Director of U.S. Political Parties

America First
American Party
American Independent Party
American Nazi Party
American Reform Party
Christian Falangist Party of America
Communist Party
Constitution Party
Family Values Party
Freedom Socialist Party/ Radical Women
Green Party
The Greens/Green Party USA
Independence Party
Independent American party
Labor Party
Libertarian Party
Light Party
Natural Law Party
New Party
New Union Party
Peace and Freedom party
Prohibition Party
Reform party
The Revolution
Socialist Party
Socialist Action
Socialist Equality Party
Socialist Labor Party
Socialist Workers Party
US Marijuana Party
US Pacifist Party
Veterans Party of America
We the People Party
Workers World Party

How exactly would you structure a debate for even 1/4 of these parties? Maybe we could schedule debates like the NCAA conference.

25

I stongly disagree with inviting the fringe candidates. We live in a world with Cspan I, II and III, 24 hour cable news, as well as webpages and blogs. No one has a problem getting their message out. Nader’s 2000 campaign was covered extensively on C Span.

I don’t get to play golf against Tiger Woods because I, “Might have a chance.” since I won my local club’s tournament. The Bad News Bears don’t get to take on the Yankees since they have “new ideas.”

26

The television networks was the “they” in my mind.

Please fight my ignorance as necessary:

As I understand it, the television and cable TV networks are corporate entities, somewhat regulated by the government. I don’t think the the goverment can demand Presidential Debate time. (They can demand emergency disaster info time.)

So, the (national level) party organisations and the TV corporations negotiate agreements, somehow, on who will host the Presidential Debates, and how long those debates run, and who will moderate it. I dont know how much input the national level parties have in who else is allowed to participate in the debate, if any.

I would like to see more variety than the two party dominance we now seem to have, but their will naturally be limits to how many candidates have the stage at once.

Consider: A nationally televised Presidential Debate held on a particular network is scheduled to be 2 hours (or 98 minutes, excluding commercial breaks) in length. 20 candidates may participate.

98 minutes divided by 20 candidates means that each candidate will have less than 5 minutes. This 98 minutes also has to include introductions, the framing of the question(s), break announcing, and any other procedural/admin stuff. This means that candidates aren’t going to really “debate” an issue. Instead, they will be framing their messages to be short, memorable, witty, or whatever, but gerally less in depth than even today. For example:

“Mr. Gore, what do you feel is the most important issue facing the country today?”

“It’s the economy, stupid.” <reads two paragraph statement>

“Mr. Bush, what do you feel is the most important issue facing the country today?”

“It’s National Defense, stupid.” <reads two paragraph statement>

“Mr. LaMarche, what do you feel is the most important issue facing the country today?”

“It’s Global Warming, stupid.” <reads prepared statement until microphone cut off by moderator>

all the way until

“Mr. Humbolt, what do you feel is the most important issue facing the country today?”

“Hi mom!”

“Urm… That’s it?”

“uh-huh. Oh. And I’d like to tell my house sitter something… Don’t forget to feed Fluffy Tender Vittles! You know how finniky she is. :slight_smile: Hi Fluffy! Hi! Who’s a pretty cat? You’s a pretty cat. Yes you are! Oh yes you are…”

(Ah, I crack me up. Honestly, I suspect Mr. Humbolt would have been properly vetted before this, but still.)

27

Government is run by the people who actually get elected. And virtually every person who gets elected runs as either a Democrat or a Republican. So if you’re voting for any party other than the big two, your vote doesn’t matter and the government can and will ignore your interests.

This may sound harsh and unfair and it may be harsh and unfair - but it is the reality of American politics.

28

Let’s not forget that nobody is required to debate or prevented from having their own debate. If Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton are each holding 45% of the polls, why would they want to waste their time in a free-for-all debate? Attending would only lend weight to the marginalized competition, give those jokers a chance at stealing votes from you, and you need every vote to beat the other guy.

Have a debate with 10 marginal candidates, you will ONLY get marginal candidates. The other two will schedule their own debate on their own time. You can’t pass a law preventing them from having such a debate, and that’s the only debate that will get big focus.

Having a debate amongst marginal candidates might be a good thing, though. Assuming you could drum up interest, it would be a great way to get new ideas out there.

29

The networks are only part of the equation. The actual financing, scheduling, and production of the debates currently falls to a non-government, non-profit, non-partisan group, the Commission on Presidential Debates. Prior to that, it was the League of Women Voters.
I figure that the networks will cover whatever they feel to be news- a debate between the two major candidates qualifies. Thing is, quite often the major candidates refuse to debate the fringe folks because it wastes time and resources better used against their real opponent. So you might get a debate with 10 candidates, but neither of the big 2 are among them.

  1. who’s going to watch that?
  2. who’s going to pay for that?
  3. would you want legislation that forced the ‘big 2’ to debate any number of fringe challengers?

btw, both the CPD and LWV sites are very interesting reading.

30

I think the debates should include the candidates of all parties that have enough representation on the ballot to allow a theoretical win (idea taken from Wikipedia : “Current third parties - Each of these non-major parties had ballot status for its presidential candidate in states with enough electoral votes to have had a theoretical chance of winning the 2004 presidential election.” Of course, since debates are organized by private groups, the groups can invite whoever they want.

I also propose that the Federal Election Committee should publish an official document giving the official presidential candidate of each major party (using the definition in my previous paragraph) the same amount of space (X words or X pages) to explain their platform. This would be distributed to voters along with voting guides.

31

The debates already include all the candidates that could theoretically win: the Democratic nominee, the Republican nominee, and any third party candidates like Anderson or Perot that have a remote chance of winning.

But if you start including people like Michael Badnarik, David Cobb, James Harris, and Michael Peroutka as people who theoretically might get elected President, you might as well just go ahead and invite any native born American who’s over 35 and feels like expressing his political beliefs on TV.

32

Not at all. That the Green, Libertarian, and (remnant) Reform parties have their candidate on the ballot in enough states to win implies a nationwide organization, and nationwide support. I don’t see any reason such candidates should not be included in a debate.

I’m not supporting, by any means, a cattle call of everyone who has got their name on a ballot somewhere. I am supporting the inclusion of any candidate who has enough nationwide support to get their name on many state’s ballots, and the ability to win enough electoral votes to be elected is an obvious and appropriate cutoff point.

33

The debates which included Ross Perot were nothing special. I’d argue that Perot’s contribution was basically worthless; he was a blowhard with nothing substantial to say. Certainly having him did not make the debates better than I suspect they would have been in his absence, quite the contrary actually. However Bush I and Clinton were pretty ok despite that.

Nader is informed and persuasive on some issues pertinent to the position of POTUS, but hardly on all. I do not agree that he would have roasted anyone in the debates, not even Bush. Too many gaps in his knowledge. Kerry did actually roast Bush, in my opinion, but fat lot of good it did him.

Which brings me to my next point: the presidential debates on TV are all about style and appearance, not about scoring factual points. Nader, in that arena, would look like a whiny fish out of water, I suspect. A few people are excited about his politics (again, regarding a narrow range of the issues a president needs to command), but even fewer were really excited about him as a person, as a leader.

The only good thing I can imagine would have been if he had debated in 2000. Then perhaps some people thinking of voting for him would have realized that he’s really kind of a schmoe and ended up voting for Gore, thereby allowing Gore to win the presidency without controversy. Alas.

Anyway, I don’t know what it might take to create viable political parties besides the two in the US, but inviting non-entities to debates isn’t going to help. Probably it would require a real split in the current political parties, with a couple major personalities in one party going separate ways. For example, if Anderson hadn’t just been an independent but really formed a new party. Or, imagine if the current Republican Party splits, one side being evangelical christians, warhawks, and their hardcore neo-con allies (led by say, McCain), the other being moderate conservatives, fiscal conservatives, and libertarians (led by say, Giuliani)…

34

Getting your name on the ballot doesn’t mean you have a significant level of support; it usually just means you were able to fill out the proper paperwork.

To keep things in perspective - in 2004, George Bush got 62,040,610 votes (50.7% of the total) John Kerry got 59,028,111 votes (48.3%) and Ralph Nader, Michael Badnarik, David Cobb, James Harris, Michael Peroutka, and all of the other candidates combined got a total of 1,224,611 votes (1%). Kerry, who came in second place, got 127 times as many votes as Nader got in third place.

35

I think if these people are nutzoids showing themi n public would damage their parties and perhaps doom them. I suspect the Libertarians and Green Party might get converts if allowed entrance.
Why is support the measuring meter. ? It should be about ideas and our political parties are getting pretty sterile. New ideas come from outsude and they should get more play in a public forum.
PBS had a series of debates with third party candidates and I found it informative and interesting.

36

I agree with that. But it won’t happen because the Big Two won’t allow it. They already boycott groups that host debates with third party candidates. And on a related note, I wish the debates were debates, and not just speeches.

37

Well, my first iteration included some level of support in polls. On being shown that that idea was a little weevly, I dropped it. We’re talking about what, five people? I don’t think that’s too many, and I do believe it would add something to the debate.

38

That’s something else I agree with. It’d be nice if the Greens made the Big Two squirm over environmental issues and if the Libertarians made the Big Two squirm over civil liberties issues. But that’s the whole reason the Big Two exclude all the others. They don’t want to squirm.

39

It’s like asking why the NFL doesn’t allow high school teams to participate in the playoffs. How do we know that Jefferson Central High couldn’t have won the Superbowl if they never had a chance to compete against the Colts? Both teams, after all, have eleven players on the field and will get the same number of points for every score they make. So on paper they’re equal and theoretically either team might have won.

40

Truly a crappy analogy. The debates are about ideas. If you see it an a pre inaugeration good for you. I see it as an idea exchange and find the Greens and Naders ideas to be equal or superior to our present parties.