Choices Beyond Tweedle-DeeDee and Tweedle-DeeDumb

Why televised presidential debates should feature more balloted candidates

The math just doesn’t add up. There are eighteen flavors of Samuel Adams® beer… but supposedly only two political parties adequately represent 335 million Americans. And as major networks televise “presidential debates” which feature only the two legacy party candidates, it’s as if the networks think that the American voter would struggle to count candidates above the number of two.

It has been thirty-two years since a major network’s nationally televised presidential debate featured more than two candidates. Ross Perot in 1992 was the last, and the feisty Texan billionaire netted 19% of the popular vote that year, which is why the legacy parties colluded never to allow a third debater. The Commission on Presidential Debates, a bipartisan collusion, effectively prohibited the legacy party candidates from participating in any debate which would feature one or multiple third-party candidates, as an explicit condition of their nomination. This essentially has made the Commission a gatekeeper between the legacy candidates and the television networks, which is why for so many years the Commission handled all negotiations between the campaigns and networks interested in hosting a presidential debate.

Yesterday’s debate was anomalous in the Commission’s history because Donald Trump and President Joe Biden bypassed the Commission to negotiate their own collective deal with CNN. This they did despite neither being their party’s official nominee, which means that this national broadcast of a “presidential debate” was an unprecedented primary boost for these candidates in advance of their respective conventions later this year (RNC July 15-18 in Milwaukee, WI, and DNC August 19-22 in Chicago, IL). The pre-convention exposure certainly sealed the deal for Trump’s nomination. As for President Biden, he may have been better off sticking to the Commission’s schedule of debates well after official nomination at convention, given that now left-wing outfits like MSNBC are questioning his performance at debate and openly war-gaming a switcheroo in favor of California’s governor Gavin Newsom. It may have helped President Biden yesterday to hide behind some third-party debaters!

To have five candidates on stage would offer to the American electorate a much broader range of ideas. The addition of Libertarian Chase Oliver, Independent Robert Kennedy Jr, and the Green Party’s Dr. Jill Stein would showcase officially balloted candidates for millions of voters throughout the union. Instead of millions of televisions turned off during yesterday’s debate because so many Americans feel no connection to the candidates on display, staging a debate with all five candidates would boost ratings enormously as voters finally tune in to an event without precedent. And not to worry… if the American voter struggles to count “all the candidates,” he can resort to counting them on one hand’s fingers.

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