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Presidential debates sound like a good idea, until it's actually time to stage one, or even worse, watch one.
The Commission on Presidential Debates plans two debates, and Ross Perot wasn't invited. He was so upset that he planned to file suit yesterday.
At first, I was on Perot's side. Simple fairness says that any presidential candidate who's on the ballot in all 50 states ought to be included in the presidential debates.
If that means we get to see a whole bunch of candidates -- Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Green, Reform, Socialist Worker, Prohibition, Peace & Freedom -- so much the better.
The minor-party candidates would be able to present their views to the multitude, and the major-party candidates might have to address those issues. We would be exposed to a much broader spectrum of political opinion, and the two major parties would benefit.
How? Our two leading parties exist solely to win elections. They do not exist to advance any specific cause, ideology or group. Minor parties do that, and then the major parties steal the concepts.
The radical Populist platform of 1892 -- support for farmers, minimum wage scales, regulation of big business, graduated income tax -- became Democratic orthodoxy by 1936. George Wallace's American Independent Party of 1968 -- mean-spirited pandering to white guys in the peckerwoods -- became the modern Gingrich-Lott GOP that we know and love.
If the minor parties were more visible, then their ideas
would be more accessible. Bill Clinton could steal from
them, rather than the Republicans, and, well, let's face it
-- the Republicans need some new ideas. They're so short
that Bob Dole has been forced to swipe the War on
Drugs
from Richard Nixon, and tax cuts for the
wealthy are good for everybody
from Ronald Reagan.
Granted, the major party candidates wouldn't want to
share a stage with dingbats who bring up dangerous
questions like Why can't we have a single-payer
Canadian-style health plan?
or Why is it any of the
government's business what plants I cultivate in my
garden?
But that could be tied to the federal matching funds -- you want the money, you participate in the debate.
However, I recalled that Perot had refused to debate Dick Lamm for his own party's nomination. What gives Perot the right to demand the respect and courtesy that he refuses to grant others?
Forget that question -- Perot's a billionaire, which in this country gives him the absolute right to demand what he pleases. Who else but a billionaire could demand to be taken seriously as a candidate after he dropped out once because clandestine Republican operatives were planning to disrupt his daughter's wedding?
Even so, I still thought Perot should be in the debates
until I heard his comment: They're denying voters their
constitutional right to hear a candidate they want to
hear.
Ross Perot certainly has a constitutional right to speak. And you and I have the right, if we want to hear Perot, to go listen to him. The Commission on Presidential Debates did nothing to infringe on either right.
Obviously, Ross Perot doesn't know beans about the U.S. Constitution. There is no constitutional right to see somebody speak on TV.
Perot's ignorance, though, suggests a better format for
the debates.
We expect U.S. Supreme Court justices
to know something about the constitution, and they have to
appear, under oath, before the Senate Judiciary
Committee.
Put the candidates under oath, so they can be prosecuted for perjury if they lie, and put together a committee -- a couple of tough prosecuting attorneys, assorted advocates for various liberal and conservative causes, a general or admiral, a peacenik, altogether a dozen or so people, including one citizen drawn from a hat.
Candidates would go one at a time. Each hearing would start at 8 a.m., and conclude when the committee felt like concluding. Put the hearings on CSPAN, and the broadcast networks could pick them up if they wanted to.
We'd see better questions, and even better, we'd get some follow-up on the questions so that candidates couldn't weasel their way around the hard ones. Candidates would have to give truthful answers, or face prosecution.
I'd gladly give up a few days of productive work to see
the results of Mr. Clinton, why are you running as a
Democrat, when you've pretty well repudiated everything
your party once stood for?
or Mr. Dole, you said you
wanted to prevent the government from coming between
patients and physicians, and yet your party platform calls
for considerable government interference in
patient-physician relationships -- abortion, drugs, etc.
Which one are we supposed to believe?
Forget the debates. Let's have hearings. If hearings are good enough for federal judges, they're good enough for the person who appoints federal judges.
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