TOWN HALL DEBATE RULES STIFLE SURPRISES

The Journal Rules

Phil Reisman
Tuesday, October 5, 2004

The 2004 presidential debates are like a TV miniseries. Although they are not prerecorded, they are practically pre-laundered of any element of surprise.

This Friday's so-called "Town Hall" debate in St. Louis, in which "real citizens" will be given the opportunity to direct questions to the candidates, has been so thoroughly straitjacketed and stifled by rules and caveats that the chance of viewing any real democracy at work is slim at best.

I direct you to Section 7 (subsection e) on Page 13 of the 32-page Memorandum of Understanding that was hammered out by the Bush and Kerry campaign handlers and agreed to by the Commission on Presidential Debates. It outlines how questions from an audience of 100 to 150 people must be submitted in advance to a moderator, in this case, Charles Gibson of ABC News, who will decide which questions will be used. If an audience member deviates "in any material way" from the submitted question, he or she will be cut off by Gibson, who will then instruct the audience that "nonreviewed questions" will not be permitted.

"Moreover," the memorandum says, "the Commission shall take appropriate steps to cut off the microphone of any such audience member that attempts to pose any question or statement different than that previously posed to the moderator for review."

In other words, in the minds of the control freaks dictating the process of modern politics, citizens are loose cannons and must bear greater scrutiny than George W. Bush and John Kerry, who presume to lead them. Anyone who veers from the accepted script will be silenced.

It's sort of like a doctrine of pre-emption, except terrorists and rogue states have nothing to do with it.

Mitchell S. McKinney, a communications professor at the University of Missouri, who has analyzed trends in presidential debates, decries how candidates have gradually gained nearly total control over the Town Hall debates since the format's inception in 1992, when the first Bush - George H.W. Bush - ran for re-election against Bill Clinton.

McKinney calls this a "devolution" in which every four years the participants are granted less and less freedom in the question-and-answer exchange.

"It's almost to the point where the citizens are seen as props," he said.

The Town Hall debate was first proposed by Clinton, who thrived in Oprah-like settings. He supposedly felt our pain while the elder Bush impatiently glanced at his watch.

In the 1992 forum, questioners were selected, but they did not have to write their questions down for preapproval or screening, and the moderator had no idea what they would ask, said McKinney. They also had the opportunity to stand and ask follow-up questions.

In 1996, however, when Clinton ran against Bob Dole, subtle changes were introduced. Unlike the first Town Hall debate, citizens were instructed to remain seated. No follow-ups were allowed.

In 2000, for the first time, questions posed to son-of-Bush and Al Gore were written in advance and submitted to the moderator, who then called on the questioners.

This year, the questions will be preselected and identified as coming from either "soft" Kerry supporters or "soft" Bush supporters. If they harden, the moderator acting as proxy for the candidates can, in effect, tell them to shut up and sit down.

"I've sarcastically suggested that if we fast-forward four years from now and the candidates continue to control the forum, we simply will go to Hollywood central casting and get actors to play the roles of citizens," McKinney said. "And then we can have the two campaigns come up with the questions they wished to be asked and give those to the actors to read from the script at the appointed time."

Controlling the message - for better or worse, that's been the candidate's mantra ever since Richard Nixon looked shifty, sweaty, pasty-faced and just plain awful against the telegenic countenance of John F. Kennedy in 1960. It's not for nothing that both Lyndon Johnson and Nixon avoided televised debates.

It wasn't until 1976 when a desperate Gerald Ford, lagging in the polls, opted to spar one time with the equally unexciting (but somewhat craftier) Jimmy Carter, that TV debates made a comeback. Now, they are a fact of political life, said McKinney.

"So the question is not this issue of will we have debates; the question is, as we see every four years, is how many will we have, what type of debates, what will be the actual rules applied, where will they be, what dates they will be held - all those questions surrounding the debate."

Nothing must be left to chance.