Editorial 6.10, October 2004, by Deirdre Helfferich Corruption and Coercion at a Debate Near You Courtesy of the Knowles campaign, Alaska is now apparently adopting the national practice of eschewing public information and debate in its elections. A debate provides candidates with an opportunity to face off, to probe the weaknesses and strengths in their opponents’ arguments. But Knowles won’t debate unless the other candidates have fifteen percent in the polls, the same percentage that the Commision on Presidential Debates requires for participation. In other words, because he is a major player in the election, he believes that he should call the shots in what is supposed to be a neutral public forum, aired via public broadcasting. Interesting. In this and the 2002 elections, Alaska has moved toward acceptance of a narrow, uninformative, two-party control over its discussion of candidates and issues. The Anchorage Daily News is to be commended for providing thorough and wide-ranging coverage of the views of the candidates for US Senate, but this is not the same as a lively debate with an active monitor or group of panelists who press the candidates for thorough answers to the questions posed—and opponents willing to pounce on a weak answer. Open Debates, a nonprofit organization committed to reforming the presidential debate process, has a discussion of the commision’s criterion, and says “it remains the greatest obstacle to democratic presidential debate.” The group points out that it directly contravenes the wishes of the majority of American voters, and notes wisely that if the CPD is going to rely on polls to determine who should be in a debate, perhaps it should ask from whom the public wishes to hear, rather than dictating who the public is allowed to hear. The fifteen percent figure also conveniently disregards the fact that the federal election matching fund threshold is only five percent. The fifteen percent threshold, Open Debates adds, “irrationally requires candidates to prove their viability before the general public knows much about them.” The fifteen percent hurdle imposed by the CPD ignores those little problems like discriminatory ballot access laws, winner-take-all voting, the huge corporate contributions to the major parties and their candidates, and the general lack of media coverage on the minor candidates and parties. And most important, third parties and independent candidates have made major contributions to our social and legal fabric, introducing—and forcing—issues such as the abolition of slavery, unemployment benefits, child labor, public schools, labor unions, the legal options of the initiative, the referendum, and the recall, and, pertinently, the direct election by the people of U.S. senators. Even the five percent threshold is suspect. The Open Debates website notes that only two minor party candidates, John Anderson and Ross Perot, would thus have qualified to participate in the national debates. In statewide debates, this threshold is even more silly. In a politely worded e-mail to several news organizations, Jim Sykes said that he did “not recall a single year when all the candidates didn’t appear on statewide public broadcasting,” and brought up the memorable 1990 election coverage, in which five candidates appeared on Channel 2 for the governor’s race and ten (governor and lieutenant governor) on Channel 13. This year there are six candidates. How is this an undue burden? A few more candidates make for a MUCH more interesting debate. I recently watched the second presidential debate. It was instructive to note which questions Bush and Kerry did not address. Instead, on a few difficult ones, such as how they planned to reduce the deficit by half in four years, the two successfully distracted each other—and perhaps the audience—by going on tangents or simply addressing completely different issues. In a two-way debate, it is much more likely that this can happen, because each candidate has only to divert one other opponent and the moderator. If the moderator is not aggressive, or if neither of the two participants wishes to deal substantively with a subject, the voters are the losers. With one or two or three more people in the debate, all waiting for a weakness in their opponents, it is less likely that questions will remain unaddressed, because of the political opportunity presented when a candidate avoids answering (“Observe how he failed to address this important question!”) and because of the greater breadth of viewpoints. I doubt that if Ralph Nader or Michael Badnarik or David Cobb had been in this debate that Bush or Kerry would have been able to get away with such obvious evasion. Yet, one of the more interesting—and revealing—aspects of this debate was not what was happening inside the building, in front of the cameras, but what was happening outside. Two presidential candidates, Libertarian Badnarik and Green Cobb, were arrested, along with five students, for crossing a police barricade around the building in which the debates were held. Cobb and Badnarik were making a symbolic point, of course, but they were also attempting to deliver an Order to Show Cause to the Commission on Presidential Debates. (Attempts had been made to deliver this document to the Washington, DC, headquarters of the CPD earlier in the day, but they were stopped from entering the office by security guards, according to Badnarik’s website.) The order requires the CPD to appear at a hearing concerning a lawsuit brought by the Arizona Libertarian Party to stop the third debate, which is sponsored by Arizona State University, or force its opening to the minor party candidates. According to azcentral.com,
The suit claims that this public university is, in essence, making illegal, partisan campaign contributions to the Republican and Democratic parties. Although the CPD describes itself as “a nonprofit, nonpartisan corporation” whose mission is “to ensure that debates, as a permanent part of every general election, provide the best possible information to viewers and listeners,” Open Debates points out that in fact the CPD, which is co-chaired by the former heads of the Republican and Democratic parties and has close ties to multinational corporations, functions more like a bipartisan organization that runs the debates in the interest of those parties and corporations, and not to provide the voters with the best information. This election season, the way the debates are organized has finally come to the attention of the major media. Open Debates and the nonpartisan Citizens’ Debate Commission have successfully forced the issue into the open. The Memoranda of Understanding, secret agreements negotiated by the campaigns, are at long last being discussed on the news—at least, on NPR. For the first time, the Memoranda have been made available to the public—not to mention that the CPD has acknowledged their existence. When the Federal Elections Commission dismissed a complaint that the CPD is a partisan organization (and thus ineligible to sponsor the debates), it was found to have acted “contrary to law” by US District Court Judge Henry Kennedy, Jr. The CPD is beginning to suspect it is in trouble, and is making modest changes in its approach to the debates. However, the candidates of the Democratic and Republican parties still control them: they determine who the moderator will be, they limit or ban followup questions (or simply don’t answer them), they do not question each other, and they control the format of the debate. And, of course, they have colluded in keeping other parties out of the debates. All of this cheats the public and turns the debates into a joint commercial. In effect, this is what Knowles has done: he has said that if the debates don’t play his way, he’ll pick up his ball and his bat and go home. He is a powerful enough candidate to do this. Lisa Murkowski has wisely refrained from following his example, letting Knowles do the dirty work. Her website states mildly, “The Murkowski campaign also encourages all debate sponsors to extend invitations to all US Senate candidates to participate in thse important forums for Alaska voters.” Ostensibly, Knowles also takes this stance: his campaign’s policy is that either all should be invited, or the fifteen percent rule applied (thereby eliminating all minor party candidates). Yet, he could just as easily have refused to participate if the other candidates were not invited. Those who have become so fearful of Republican control of the US Senate are excusing his behavior, claiming that this election is too important to allow a third-party candidate a chance to speak (particularly a Green, who might hurt Knowles’ chances). This is partisan politics at its worst: we must win at all costs, even at the cost of not informing our voters—and thus at the cost of our democracy. When the sponsors of a debate accept this coercion and do not stand up to those who would manipulate a public forum, we have all been betrayed. | ||
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