PAT Buchanan is taking legal actions to require the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) to include him if, as expected, he becomes the Reform Party nominee. He says, "without the debates, there really is no chance, I believe, that the Reform Party can win the presidency."
That's true, but it is beside the point because there is also no chance -- NO chance -- that Mr. Buchanan or any Reform Party nominee can win the presidency by being in the debates.
Same thing with Ralph Nader, the nominee of the Green Party, who is also trying to force the CPD to let him join Al Gore and George Bush in the three planned presidential debates.
Excluding them is in no way a threat to or rebuke of democracy. It's the American way. This is a two-party nation.
Thirteen of the first 17 presidential elections from 1788 to 1852 were essentially two-party or one-party contests. In the eight of those elections after popular votes began to be tallied, in 1824, the two principal candidates' share of that vote ranged from 72 percent to 99 percent, averaging 93 percent.
In 1856, the new Republican Party first ran a candidate for president against a Democratic Party nominee. In the 36 presidential elections beginning that year and through 1996, those two parties have averaged 95 percent of the total presidential vote.
That's the popular vote. The two parties between them won 16,738 of the 17,202 electoral votes cast since 1856.
Almost a third of the total of those third (and fourth) party electoral votes were cast in 1860, when the nation, on the eve of secession and civil war, was falling apart in a never-before and never-since political crisis.
In this century's 25 presidential elections, the Democratic and Republican candidates got more than 80 percent of the vote in every election but one (1912, when former Republican President Theodore Roosevelt ran as a third-party candidate).
In no 20th century election except that one did a third party candidate get even 10 percent of the electoral vote.
Based on the historical record alone, the CPD would be justified in barring third party candidates just on the historical record. Two-party politics is as American as cherry pie.
Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Nader aren't really candidates in the traditional sense. They aren't officeholders or public-spirited private citizens with experience in leading or managing large entities, honestly seeking to become America's chief executive. They're extremist pamphleteers "running" for personal aggrandizement only. Their lecture fees and book royalties would be greatly enhanced if they got on the presidential debate stage.
