Dreary Formats

At first glance, the CPD seems to have had a positive effect on presidential debate formats. Unlike the League of Women Voters, the CPD managed to escape the restrictive Press Panelist Format, which consisted of seated reporters asking all the questions. The CPD hosted the first Single Moderator and Town Hall presidential debates.

But the CPD did not develop the "new" formats. The major party candidates, for various reasons, chose to break from the Press Panelist Format. For example, the CPD publicly took credit for selecting the popular town-hall format when, in fact, Governor Clinton proposed the format in 1992 because it highlighted his interpersonal skills.

More importantly, as a consequence of major-party manipulation, a structural deficiency still mars CPD-sponsored debates: they are not really debates. Despite the purported format diversity, the public is still left with glorified news conferences. The only difference from joint news conference to joint news conference is who asks all the questions - a panel of reporters or Jim Lehrer or a group of undecided voters. The candidates never speak to each other, and because they are peppered by a succession of disparate questions, they often superficially glaze over the issues and recite a series of memorized soundbites. "It's too much show business and too much prompting, too much artificiality, and not really debates," said former President George Bush. "They're rehearsed appearances."

While the basic formats have changed for the better, the structure and the rules governing them have become much worse. Candidates have extensively manipulated the details within the selected formats to eliminate the remaining shreds of spontaneity:

• When the League of Women Voters sponsored the debates, panelists and moderators were always permitted follow-up questions, which allowed them to get past rehearsed answers, delve into an issue, and challenge the responses of the candidates. But when the CPD took over, the candidates banned or limited follow-up questions.
  
  
• The candidates have strictly prohibited themselves from questioning each other. All the Memoranda of Understanding state, "There will be no direct candidate-to-candidate questioning."
  
  
• In 1980, the League of Women Voters selected Bill Moyers, to serve as moderator after consulting with the Nieman Foundation, Pulitzer Prize authorities, the Radio and TV News Directors Association, Newspaper Publishers' Association, and the American Society of Newspaper Editors. It is unlikely that someone as challenging as Moyers will ever moderate a CPD-sponsored debate because the CPD has allowed the major party candidates to handpick moderators. As to be expected, the candidates select moderators who ask predictable, safe questions. In 1992, 1996 and 2000, the candidates selected Jim Lehrer, host of PBS's Newshour, to moderate every presidential debate. After the 2000 presidential debates, Senator John Kerry said, "You could have picked 10 people off the street who didn't know Jerusalem from Georgia and they would have had better questions." Due to Open Debates' unprecedented pressure, however, the CPD proposed moderators for the 2004 presidential debates.  The Kerry and Bush campaigns accepted the proposed moderators, resulting in four different moderators for the first time in 12 years, a victory for the debate reform movement.
  
  
• According to polls and focus groups, the general public prefers debates that give candidates more time to answer questions. Restrictive time limits can reduce the candidates' responses to memorized soundbites. Nonetheless, response times have been severely whittled down under CPD sponsorship. In 1984, the LWV allotted the candidates 4.5 minutes per question sequence, whereas in 1996, the CPD limited the candidates' responses to a mere 90 seconds.
  
  
• Viewers and pundits have praised the town hall format for maximizing spontaneity and citizen participation. But with no opposition from the CPD, major party negotiators transformed the popular format into a staged charade. In 1992, audience members could ask anything they wanted, including follow-up questions. In 1996, follow-ups and questions seeking clarification were banned. In 2000, the questions actually had to be written down on index cards and screened by moderator Jim Lehrer before the debates. In 2004, the questions had to be written down on index cards and screened by moderator Charles Gibson before the debates, and any town hall audience member who asked a question that differed from the question submitted on the index card would have her micophone turned off.

The CPD is partly responsible for these format deficiencies. No other sponsor has allowed the major party candidates to negotiate exclusively. No other sponsor has implemented, without protest, Memoranda of Understanding that eliminate spontaneity, accountability and confrontation.

In 2008, in response to Open Debates' criticism of its restrictive formats, the CPD proposed positive improvements to the presidential debate formats.  The CPD declared that for the first time ever, debate participants would ask each other questions during the forums and would be encouraged to directly respond to each other's statements without excessive interference from the moderator.  Such improvements in format should be applauded.  The question, however, is whether the Republican and Democratic nominees will support such format changes, and if not, whether the bipartisan CPD will actually fight for the more challenging formats, as did the League of Women Voters.