Let’s debate ... the CPD

This year’s presidential and vice-presidential debates have been complete drivel.

It’s hardly a new revelation that they leave viewers unsatisfied. Back in 1998, Walter Cronkite said “the debates are part of an unconscionable fraud that our political campaigns have become. ... The candidates participate only with the guarantee of a format that defies meaningful discourse.” It still rings true today.

I sat watching the vice-presidential debate with the same intentions the few of you not playing drinking games had – to get information about our candidates. But I finished without any new information. Despite huge audiences, everyone’s mentioning how useless they think these debates are. Sadly, this has become as American as apple pie.  

We all remember watching the Kennedy-Nixon debate in civics class – there was a time when they could make a difference. But that time was before the Commission on Presidential Debates.

The CPD is an organization started and run by the Democratic and Republican parties and is seeking to exclude third-parties from the debates and remove dialogue between candidates including cross-examination and rebuttal.

It’s especially discouraging to see how this organization took sponsorship.

In 1934, when new media formats such as radio and television began emerging to provide information to masses of people, Congress passed a Communications Act. The part that’s relevant here is the equal-time provisions therein. It stated that if any broadcast station allowed a candidate to use its facilities, then all other candidates for that office must be given the opportunity for equal time.

This provision lasted until 1975, when the FCC ruled the debates to be “bona fide news events.” So if a third-party organization were to host the events, then they’d be exempt from the equal-time requirements.

The League of Women Voters, a genuinely nonpartisan group that hosted the first ever televised presidential debate, became this “third party.” Between 1976 and 1988 these debates were game changers for candidates, so much so that in 1985 the CPD was formed through a rare bipartisan effort to get custody of the debates.

And they got it.

In 1988 the League of Women Voters withdrew its support of the debates saying, “It has become clear to us that the candidates’ organizations aim to add debates to their list of campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and answers to tough questions.”

It’s precisely this equal air time that matters. Take the 1992 election, when third-party challenger Ross Perot made an appearance on the CPD’s presidential debate (both parties believed to have an advantage over the other if Perot came on). Polls only estimated him having 7 to 9 percent of national support.

However, after being allowed to debate to a record-breaking 90 million viewers, he ended up grabbing 19 percent of the vote on Election Day. He was not invited back in 1996. And in 2000, the CPD excluded all candidates who did not have, by the eve of the debate, 15 percent or more of national polls.

I hope next time instead of displaying “Tonight’s Presidential Debate,” CNN and the other major networks will display “Tonight the CPD presents the Presidential Debate.”

It’d be fairer.