Ryan Blethen has a column lamenting that the also-ran Presidential candidates are finally starting to be excluded from Presidential debates. Blethen says this does "voters a disservice by excluding serious candidates."
Specifically, he is troubled by these criteria:
The limits employed by ABC News for its Republican and Democrat debates Saturday night are more bizarre. The network is letting candidates debate only if they finished in the top four of Thursday night's Iowa caucuses or if the candidates' support reaches 5 percent in national or New Hampshire polls.
There's nothing bizarre about that, nor is that criteria just amount to "Iowa's favorite politicians" as Blethen claims. Adding up the top four in Iowa plus anyone at 5% nationally or in New Hampshire still leaves a pretty broad field. For the Republicans, that means Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, and Fred Thompson can all be on the stage. For the Democrats Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson are still eligible (plus Joe Biden and Chris Dodd dropped out after Iowa anyway).
If anything, this winnowing process is arguably coming too late in the game after an endless series of debates and forums on both sides of the aisle, in which the also-rans steadily became more of an impediment to discourse than an addition to the conversation. Is the public better served by Alan Keyes, Mike Gravel, or Dennis Kucinich being able to waste people's time in the heat of the campaign? Please.
If anything, this is a day to cheer the media for finally saying "no" to the pretenders.
Posted by Eric Earling at January 04, 2008 10:17 PM | Email ThisI also noted a high degree of antipathy toward the first amendment in the letters to the editor. One called for no one being able to speak the two weeks before the election. Actually, if everyone gets to be president, we don't have to worry about that annoying incessant political speech.
Posted by: janet suppes on January 4, 2008 10:10 PMI agree ABC's criteria seems somewhat reasonable to me. They did not limit it to one type of criteria (instead giving 3 different types of criteria) and they were objective about it. I do think 5% is still a bit high considering how early we are in the race but it is their call.
Fox on the otherhand appears to be subjectively chosing who can come. Certainly their right, but it sure makes their motto (fair and balanced) look like complete and utter BS. By what rational method did they decide that Paul did not belong?
Money? Nope he just set a couple records and by most experts accounts probably raised more than all the other GOP candidates.
Position in Iowa? Nope Paul placed higher than Rudy.
POlling in NH? Nope Paul ruitenly polls higher than Thompson.
State Party recomendation? Nope the state party has called for his inclusion.
Poor performance in previous debates? Nope Paul has won everyone, even the Fox polls.
Fox should be ashamed, boycotted, and ignored for the next year as punishment for bad behavior.
Posted by: Travis Pahl on January 4, 2008 10:19 PMYou seriously agree with Foxs decision or are you just being funny?
Posted by: Travis Pahl on January 4, 2008 10:30 PMHe is not a top tier candidate; he will NEVER be a top tier candidate, and excluding him was absolutely the right decision... along with any of the other non-factors in this election.
Posted by: Hinton on January 4, 2008 10:37 PMPauls showing was above what most polls predicted and over 3X what Guilliani got. Do you think Guilliani should be excluded?
Posted by: Travis Pahl on January 4, 2008 10:44 PMPlease expand on your comments on #6. What is it about Paul that you find so unworthy of discussion?
Posted by: Travis Pahl on January 4, 2008 10:51 PMYou might guess from my yelling that I feel strongly about that. Then again, I've been railing about this for 12 years now, ever since the same thing happened to Alan Keyes: he was nonsensically excluded from a Georgia debate because he did poorly in the New Hampshire primary. And he was arrested when he tried to gain entrance to the debate. No one ever said politics was pretty.
Judging inclusion in a New Hampshire debate by the Iowa results shows a complete lack of understanding about the purpose of the primary. It seems stupid to have to say it, but the point of the New Hampshire primary is for the citizens of New Hampshire to pick the candidates that New Hampshire wants. And the Iowa caucus has nothing to do with that.
The debate is not for "top tier" candidates, or candidates who "have a chance." It is for candidates that New Hampshire voters have chosen to hear from by putting those candidates on the ballot.
Granted, they could argue that the occasion of the NH primary is the justification for the debate, but that it is really for the whole country. Fine. But national poll data is notoriously unreliable. The best way to do it is still organization: are you on enough ballots to win? Of course, that may be difficult to determine for a caucus, but if possible, that's the best way to do it, because it shows all that you need to know: the organization is there, the support is there.
That alone is enough to make you worthy of being on stage. We already have a system of determining whether a candidate has enough support to be worth giving attention to -- whatever the ballot placement process is -- so how does anyone come off thinking that the debates should be more restrictive than the democratic process?
Frankly, the whole idea is very anti-democratic to me.
Yes, that means Kucinich and Hunter and maybe even Gravel will be on stage. So? Democracy is not served by restricting the candidates to people the press happens to believe are "viable."
It's not like these are real debates. What we SHOULD have are a series of debates, each one covering a single topic, with each candidate given a 10-minute-or-so speech, with a followup later of 5 minutes or more, and then a final statement of a few minutes. If we had better debates, it wouldn't even really matter if you didn't think one or more of the candidates should be there, first, because it would be more interesting, second, because if you really didn't care about them at all, fine, go take a bathroom break.
Besides, after Super Tuesday you can start to eliminate candidates who no longer have a chance at winning the nomination outright (although, you may have to re-include some later if it becomes clear that NO candidate can win the nomination outright :-).
Posted by: pudge on January 4, 2008 10:55 PMI totally agree! It is not reasonable to exclude candidatres in one state based on another states results. The media talks non stop about how different NH is but yet they are trying to use one to exclude the others.
Posted by: Travis Pahl on January 4, 2008 11:05 PMToday we see lost souls standing on street corners looking confused and carrying Ron Paul signs.
Who is this Ron Paul person anyway??
Posted by: Hank on January 5, 2008 05:32 AMSo now he boo-hoo-hoos because some other editors have exercised some judgement, proper or improper, about furnishing resources to propagate messages of marginal candidates. Come on, Ryan! Put your money where your mouth is. Open the pages of the Seattle Times and its far-flung satellites to those marginalized candidates, give them sufficient column-inches to get even with Fox and that nasty ABC.
Posted by: Insufficiently Sensitive on January 5, 2008 08:45 AMI absolutely hate the current "debate" format. These are simply biased news conferences, where balance does not exist in content or time give to the candidates. The current format is nothing but a collection of sound bites, and platforms for gay generals and left-wing "moderators".
I would like to see a format that 1) Includes every viable candidate. 2) Restricts the subject to a single issue. 3) Poses fewer but more in-depth questions. 4) Gives EVERY candidate a lengthy time to answer. 5) Allows candidates to rebut and question each other.
Such a format, however, does not fit the watered down, short & shallow program that the MSM desires.
People constantly complain about the same old politicians. Yet our system makes it impossible for a newcomer to do well.
Posted by: Seabecker on January 5, 2008 09:47 AMSeabecker nailed it: none of these TV shows are debates, they're biased news conferences. They benefit the TV networks more than they do the candidates, in fact are tilted toward damaging candidates by muzzling their expressions down to sound bites. They're like Russian roulette - if a candidate is lucky, he survives without losing position.
Of course, were any pair of candidates be presumptuous enough to attempt to follow the Lincoln-Douglas format, they'd have to address a focused subject, and that might be too much of a burden for their delicate poll-driven image handlers to assume.
Posted by: Insufficiently Sensitive on January 5, 2008 12:18 PMRon Paul himself was elected as a Republican to Congress TEN times.
Are those credentials Republican enough for you? I'd say that makes Ron Paul more Republican than you are! :)
As much as you "small tent" Republicans would hate to admit it, the small "l" libertarian is a faction within the conservative movement and within the Republican Party, just as social conservatives and foreign policy hawks and big-business interests are.
If you choose to kick us out of your "big tent" then your tent won't be so big any more. The result of that could be Hillary or Obama winning in '08.
Still want to say that libertarians are not conservative or Republican? That is up to you. I know this libertarian does not feel very comfortable or welcome within the Republican Party. I'd be happy to vote for a partisan Libertarian if the R's nominate someone like Huckabee. Many others of my ilk would just stay home, or even vote for Obama. (I doubt any libertarian could vote for Hillary...)
So, you see, it is a marketing decision on your part. Do you want to appeal to the libertarian segment, or would you rather we vote for someone else? Your call.
By the way, the latest Rasmussen poll has Ron Paul in third place in NH with about 14%.
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on January 5, 2008 04:15 PMI think what steve was really saying when he tried to say that the 10 term republican congressman deserved to be only in a third party debate is that he does not want people to hear an opinion that differs from what they are used to hearing.
Travis
Posted by: travis on January 6, 2008 07:38 AMAnything he writes is ill considered and should be taken with a grain of a salt molecule.
Posted by: G Jiggy on January 6, 2008 11:13 AMThat's it, let it all out. Tell us how you really feel.
Posted by: G Jiggy on January 6, 2008 11:16 AM