Replace Fluff in Presidential Debates with Meat

Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
By Chris Shaw
Monday, November 24, 2003

The Commission on Presidential Debates has announced the sites that will host its proposed 2004 presidential debates. Rochester should not feel discouraged that the Rochester Institute of Technology was not one of the selected sites because the commission has sponsored debates that, in the words of the civic-minded League of Women Voters, are "campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity, and honest answers to tough questions"

The CPD is a private corporation that was founded by the heads of the national Republican and Democratic parties. It was created to serve the interests of the Republican and Democratic nominees, not voter education. The debates had previously been sponsored by the nonpartisan League of Women Voters. However, the major parties wanted power over these important electoral events, so they seized control of the debates from the League and established the CPD to run the debates in 1988.

Under the CPD, the debates have been staged and managed. In the 2000 "town hall format," audience members read prescreened questions from note cards.

Candidate response times were slashed from 4 1/2 minutes when the League of Women Voters ran the debates, to a paltry 90 seconds in 1996. Such artificially restricted response times allow the candidates to recite the uninformative packaged sound bites that they have been continually repeating on the campaign trail.

These and other manipulations of the format have pushed spontaneity and authenticity out of the debates. Presidential debates should produce honest moments. Viewers tune into the debates to get a candid picture of the candidates.

Additionally, ideas about the important issues facing our nation are continually ignored. American voters want to hear what the candidates' positions are on the issues.

The CPD's debates are the debates of, by and for the major party candidates. They are "their" debates, not "our" debates. "Our" debates would serve the American people first, not political parties.

We need a nonpartisan citizens' debate commission to take over debate sponsorship. My organization, Open Debates, is establishing such a commission that will be led by national civic leaders from the left, right and center of the political spectrum. Debates sponsored by the citizens' commission will require candidate-to-candidate questioning, rebuttals, follow-up questions and adequate response times. These format changes will foster an in-depth discussion of issues, and will make it much harder for candidates to evade straight-forward questions.

Rochester should not be disappointed that it wasn't selected to be a site for a candidate-controlled pseudo-debate because we deserve real debates.

Chris Shaw ( cshaw@opendebates.org ) is the organizing director of Open Debates