OPEN UP DEBATES, LET REAL DEMOCRACY FLOWER

The Register-Guard

Blair Bobier

Thursday, October 14, 2004

Despite the fact that most Americans now favor ending the war in Iraq, the presidential candidates for the two establishment parties spent most of their first debate posturing about who would do a better job with the continued occupation of that nation. The notion of a swift exit, supported by most Americans, wasn't discussed at all.

When the two parties' vice presidential candidates met in their only debate and discussed health care, neither offered a solution that would provide insurance coverage for all of the 47 million people in our country who are uninsured.

How can participants in the highest level of political dialogue ignore majority opinion and the most critical issues facing us today?

It's because the restricted, scripted and staged exchanges are not really debates, nor are they intended to present solutions or a wide range of political options. The "debates" sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates, an entity founded and operated by the two old parties, have about as much in common with real debates as World Wrestling Entertainment does with the Olympics.

Unfortunately, sham debates are just the tip of the iceberg. Lurking beneath the icy waters is a mountain of deceit that we call "democracy."

Breaking this news to adults is likely to be received as well as telling a 5-year-old that Santa Claus doesn't exist. While there's no problem in kids indulging in harmless fantasies, it can be downright dangerous for the rest of us to presume that we live in a democracy. We don't.

The United States was never intended to be a democracy. The word "democracy" appears nowhere in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. This nation's founders created a government that considered Africans slaves and women incapable of voting. Freeing the slaves and giving women the right to vote were just two steps toward becoming an enlightened civilization and a true democracy. We have many more steps to take.

We can start by opening up the debates to more choices and more voices.

Debates aren't just about who is going to win an election; they are the only forum where we can have unrestricted dialogue about the critical issues. Restricting debates to two parties severely limits our potential for progressive change.

Debates including third party and independent candidates have had a profound effect on recent American politics. Reform Party candidate Ross Perot's participation in the 1992 presidential debates is widely credited with putting the issue of a balanced federal budget on the table. Independent Jesse Ventura's election as governor of Minnesota was due in large part to his participation in debates with his major-party opponents.

In fact, there's an argument to be made that all significant social change came about in this country because of pressure brought by a third party - including the abolition of slavery, women's suffrage, the creation of Social Security and the direct election of U.S. senators.

One of the major problems with presidential debates, besides the bias of the primary sponsor, is that polling is a major criterion for participation. Allowing pollsters to determine who can debate is another sign that our democratic process has been hijacked by spin-doctors and media mega-corporations.

A fair and objective standard for presidential debates would allow all candidates who are on enough ballots to win an Electoral College majority to participate. In this election, that would be only six candidates - a very manageable number, and far fewer than participated in many of the Democratic presidential primary debates this year.

On Oct. 8, the PBS program "NOW" featured a discussion with the Green Party's David Cobb, Libertarian Michael Badnarik, Constitution Party candidate Michael Peroutka and independent Ralph Nader. These presidential candidates presented a broad spectrum of opinions on such diverse issues as health care, democracy, the Constitution and the economy. Despite their differences, they all agreed that the war in Iraq was based on lies and needed to end.

How to end the war in Iraq quickly won't be an issue in this campaign so long as the debates are restricted to two candidates with similar views on the subject. The solution is to open up the debates - and also to use instant runoff voting, which solves the "spoiler" dynamic. Until we have instant runoff voting and unrestricted debates, American voters, and American troops, will be left between Iraq and a hard place.

Philomath resident Blair Bobier is media coordinator for the Green Party's presidential campaign (www.votecobb.org).