News and Politics Forum

I wanted to ask you to join a recently launched letter writing campaign designed to stop corruption in the Presidential debates. 

In the last five months, a number of nationally prominent journalists have been making the case for a well-financed, mainstream independent candidate to run for president in 2008. 

Tom Friedman of the New York Times, for example, argues that a new political party is needed to address crucial energy and environmental issues, because the Democrats and Republicans won’t – or can’t – engage in any long-term thinking on the issue.  Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal points to an emerging gap between the Washington elite of both parties and ordinary Americans, proposing that only an independent movement can bridge that gap.

These opinion-makers have become convinced that only independent political leaders and movements can take
the country beyond the current partisan stalemate.

Now that some of the biggest names in journalism and government are registering the corruption and stagnation
of two-party politics, we can “push the envelope” with them.  That means teaching them about real-life barriers to the independent scenario they envision.

No barrier is more damaging and regressive than the current design of the nationally televised presidential debates.  Since 1988, the debates have been run by the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), a pseudo-governmental entity created by the Democratic and Republican National Committees. The CPD’s criteria for inclusion in the debates are designed to keep independents out.  And they have!  Since its current rules were adopted in 1995, not independent presidential candidate has been invited, even in the face of numerous polls showing that 60% of Americans would prefer to see independents included.

This is a classic vicious circle, of course. Instead of the presidential debates being a forum which expands and deepens public dialogue, the CPD uses criteria that narrow the field and the exchange of ideas.  It requires the candidates show 15% in three or more polls that ask voters whom they plan to vote for.  The CPD has rejected calls to change the polling question to ask which candidates voters would like to see in the debates as well as calls to lower the 15% threshold.

How does all this relate to the journalists who are calling for a third-party candidate in 2008?  They need to be reminded that as long as the debates are off-limits to independents, potential candidates are unlikely to throw their hat into the ring.  What well-financed candidate would be willing to spend the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to get on the ballot and build name recognition, only to discover that they can’t meet the CPD threshold?

With the 2008 presidential election more than two years away, now is the perfect time for independents to take the stage and stimulate a national dialogue on the presidential debates. 

I wanted to ask you to join the letter-writing campaign designed to influence the country’s most independent-minded journalists to take up the subject of the presidential debates in their columns and editorials.

Go to http://www.independentvoting.org/debates.html to sign the pledge (to write a letter) and find out more.  You can find a sample letter there too.  Send me a copy of your letter, gmandell@cuip.org.

Thanks, Gwen