Save 'genuine' presidential debates

Since 1988, the general election presidential debates have been controlled by a private corporation - the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) - that has deceptively served the interests of the Republican and Democratic parties at the expense of the American people. And for the first time in 16 years, there is a vigorous, organized effort to return control of the presidential debates to a genuinely nonpartisan champion of voter education.

Presidential debates were nobly run by the nonpartisan League of Women Voters until 1988, when the national Republican and Democratic parties seized control of the debates by establishing the CPD. Cochaired by Frank Fahrenkopf and Paul Kirk - former heads of the Republican and Democratic parties, respectively - the CPD secretly submits to the demands of the Republican and Democratic candidates. Documents obtained from a whistleblower and published in my recent book, "No Debate: How the Republican and Democratic Parties Secretly Control the Presidential Debates," show that negotiators for the major party nominees jointly draft debate contracts behind closed doors. These contracts dictate precisely how the debates will be run - from decreeing who can participate, to selecting who will ask the questions, to ordaining the temperature in the auditoriums. The CPD merely implements and conceals the contracts, shielding the major party candidates from public criticism.

Anheuser-Busch, US Airways, and other corporations foot most of the bill for these candidate- controlled pseudo-debates through tax-deductible contributions to the CPD. The corporate connection is not surprising; Mr. Fahrenkopf is the nation's leading gambling lobbyist, and Mr. Kirk has lobbied on behalf of pharmaceutical companies.

The consequences of such deceptive major-party control are predictable and distressing. Candidates that voters want to see are often excluded from the general election presidential debates, such as Ross Perot, Ralph Nader, and Pat Buchanan. Issues the American people want to hear about - such as free trade, government waste, child poverty, and immigration - are often ignored. And the debates have been reduced to a series of glorified bipartisan news conferences, in which the Republican and Democratic candidates merely recite prepackaged soundbites to fit 90-second response slots. Walter Cronkite, who served as a panelist for a 1960 presidential debate, called the CPD-sponsored debates an "unconscionable fraud" and accused the major party candidates of "sabotaging the electoral process." Accordingly, debate viewership has plummeted; 25 million fewer people watched the 2000 presidential debates than watched the 1992 presidential debates.

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