Presidential Debates

In 2008, Americans will pick a new president. How will we make our decision? We'll look at the candidates' records, certainly - but they'll have no record showing how they'd act as president. We'll listen to their stump speeches, but those are invariably more like advertising pitches than genuine windows into their minds. We'll watch them debate, but presidential debates mostly summon forth the candidates' usual talking points. And, of course, we'll watch countless TV commercials. Wouldn't it be better if before hiring someone to guide our country through these dangerous times, we could get a meaningful look at how he or she would perform as president?

WASHINGTON -- If Pat Buchanan, the human hand grenade, lobs himself into the 2000 presidential campaign as nominee of the Reform Party, some Republicans, and perhaps some Democrats, will try to dampen his explosive force by excluding him from next year's presidential debates, as Ross Perot was excluded from the Clinton-Dole debates in 1996. Exclusion would be in the spirit of campaign-finance reformers' plans to further constrict, through government regulation, political discourse.Fortunately, Jamin Raskin, an American University law professor, in his essay "The Debate Gerrymander" in the Texas Law Review, refutes the arguments for excluding candidates like Mr. Buchanan from the central events of presidential contests.

WASHINGTON -- As polls continue to reflect widespread public apathy if not disgust toward the two major political parties and interest in an alternative, long-shot efforts are going forward to crack the door open for independent and third-party candidates in the next presidential election.Leading the effort is Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, who was the Libertarian Party's presidential nominee in 1988 and was elected to the House as a Republican in 1996. He is sponsoring bills that would make it easier for such candidates to gain ballot position in the various states and to gain admission to presidential debates.

WASHINGTON -- Supreme Court justices reacted negatively yesterday to a plea by publicly owned broadcast stations for a constitutional right to exclude minor-party candidates from campaign debates on radio or television.By the end of an hourlong hearing, it appeared that a state-owned Arkansas TV network may be hard-pressed to win full First Amendment protection from the court when the network chooses debate participants.The court's ruling may have a wide impact, since two-thirds of the nation's public TV stations are licensed to state government agencies.

WASHINGTON -- When the Commission on Presidential Debates held a seminar here the other day reviewing the 1996 debates and looking ahead to 2000, much was said about diminished voter interest. Considering the relatively lackluster Bob Dole challenge to Bill Clinton, it wasn't any great surprise.Audience reactionAudiences for the debates, after increasing in 1992 for thethree-way exchanges among Mr. Clinton, George Bush and Ross Perot, slipped when Mr. Perot was denied participation and the other two contenders had it out between them.

WASHINGTON -- With no incumbent running in 2000, the Commission on Presidential Debates expects there will be debates the next time around, and also hopes that the commission will have a firmer hand on organizing them.Paul Kirk, the former Democratic National Chairman who is co-chairman of the commission, says the panel will be stipulating to all prospective nominees well in advance how, when and where the debates will be conducted, and asserting a lead role for the commission in debate negotiations.

WASHINGTON -- A federal appeals court and the Federal Communications Commission cleared the way yesterday for President Clinton and Bob Dole to debate tomorrow night with no other candidates on the stage.Ross Perot, the Reform Party candidate for president, and John Hagelin, the Natural Law Party candidate, lost their bids in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to stop the debate from taking place without them.Although their legal options are not exhausted, Perot has decided not to go on to the Supreme Court at this stage, and Hagelin will not do so at least until early next week -- thus eliminating any legal barrier to the debate tomorrow between the two major-party nominees.

ROSS PEROT, the strongest third-force alternative to the entrenched two-party system, has been denied an opportunity to debate Democrat Bill Clinton and Republican Bob Dole by the bipartisan (not tripartisan) Commission on Presidential Debates. And why? Because the opinion polls, those wildly swinging weather vanes of voter sentiment, proclaim that the Texas billionaire is wallowing deep down in single digits.Shades of the Literary Digest poll of 1936 that confidently predicted Alfred M. Landon's victory over Franklin D. Roosevelt!

WASHINGTON -- With the three main candidates officially nominated, the Commission on Presidential Debates is struggling to decide whether Ross Perot should be included this fall, as in 1992, even though his poll standing has been slumping."

WHEN BILL CLINTON and Bob Dole meet tonight in their first presidential debate, you can be sure neither believes the election has already been decided. They know that in at least two (and maybe more) of the six such encounters since John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon started this ritual in 1960, the debates were probably decisive. Republican Dole will be looking for a breakthrough; Democrat Clinton will be trying to protect his big lead.Why then is President Clinton willing to debate at all?

Bishop Douglas I. Miles has lately been preaching a little something extra to his congregants at Koinonia Baptist Church in Northeast Baltimore - the gospel of tuning in to the presidential debates. His congregation listened - as did many others in the Baltimore area, where ratings collectively were the highest in the country for the first two presidential debates and the vice presidential debate. The third presidential debate between Democratic Sen. Barack Obama and Republican Sen. John McCain airs at 9 o'clock tonight from Hofstra University on Long Island, N.Y. "Parents and grandparents want their children and grandchildren to be witness to this historic event in the lives of the African-American community and America," Miles said.

Thursday night's vice presidential debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden was seen by 69.989 million viewers, the second-largest TV audience for any presidential or vice presidential debate since Nielsen started counting the number of persons watching debates in 1976. Baltimore's TV market had the highest percentage of viewers, with 59.1 percent of TV households tuned to the event - about 660,000 homes. St. Louis, the city in which the debate was held, had the second-highest percentage of viewers at 58.3.

WASHINGTON - On the eve of what some are calling the most important event of the '08 campaign, Republican presidential candidate John McCain engaged in brinkmanship yesterday over his planned TV debate with Barack Obama. McCain appeared to hint last night that he would be at the debate, saying it was "very possible" enough progress would be made on an bailout agreement for him to fly to Mississippi today. "I'm very hopeful, very hopeful that we can," he said in network TV interviews. Obama and McCain met at the White House yesterday afternoon with President Bush and congressional leaders to discuss a bailout deal.

There may not be any more presidential debates between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, partly because of the bad aroma that ABC's interrogation before Pennsylvania's primary left behind in many noses. In fact, when you consider the rising risks that televised debates pose in the age of YouTube, especially for front-runners, we'll be lucky to see any more presidential debates at all. North Carolina's Democratic Party has canceled the debate that CBS had hoped to broadcast this Sunday, in advance of the state's May 6 primary.

Politics is a battle of inches. An expression here, a sound bite there can often mean the difference between celebration and commiseration. A litany of reasons has been given for Rudolph W. Giuliani's political collapse in this presidential race: He bypassed all the early primary states, showed an almost obsessive focus on 9/11, had dodgy associates and embraced a social policy agenda out of step with mainstream Republicans. True enough, but they ignore a more significant Giuliani campaign failure: the inability or utter unwillingness to communicate a presidential vision of America and the country's future.

WASHINGTON -- Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama tangled over the Iraq war and outreach to America's adversaries during a novel TV debate last night that stretched the boundaries of new and old media. Opening a new chapter in the digital political age, the candidates answered prerecorded video questions that had been submitted online by thousands of ordinary voters. While the format of the event might have overshadowed its substance, Senator Obama of Illinois used it to attack Clinton over the consequences of her 2002 Senate vote to authorize the use of U.S. military force in Iraq.

In 2008, Americans will pick a new president. How will we make our decision? We'll look at the candidates' records, certainly - but they'll have no record showing how they'd act as president. We'll listen to their stump speeches, but those are invariably more like advertising pitches than genuine windows into their minds. We'll watch them debate, but presidential debates mostly summon forth the candidates' usual talking points. And, of course, we'll watch countless TV commercials. Wouldn't it be better if before hiring someone to guide our country through these dangerous times, we could get a meaningful look at how he or she would perform as president?

What: Debate watching party. Where: Cockeysville Info: We don't have a big-screen TV but we do have TiVo so guests can scream and swear without the worry of missing anything. In case there's a defining moment (such as "and you're no John Kennedy") we can watch it over and over again. - From a recent online posting for a debate-watch party Imagine the possibilities: A crisp fall evening, a bottle of Yuengling, a spirited conversation about deficits and health care - all served with a large televised helping of John Kerry and George Bush.

COLLEGE PARK - Many of the University of Maryland students here who watched the presidential debate last night came for extra credit. The rest seemingly came for entertainment. Although students were encouraged to leave their politics at the door, they repeatedly chuckled at President Bush's comments and chortled at Sen. John Kerry as the two candidates discussed homeland security and foreign policy. "He was funny, he didn't know what to say," Megan deMagnus, a freshman from Silver Spring, said of Bush.

If you read a news analysis in the The New York Times the morning after the first presidential debates four years ago, you learned that Al Gore was "the man who loves to show off how much he knows" while George W. Bush was "more eager to exchange good wishes." But patrons of The Washington Post discovered instead that Bush "took some punches and gave some back in return," while Gore "treated his opponent with relentless courtesy and occasional humor." Did Gore's and Bush's remarks reveal "pretty ideological" divisions, as Fox News Channel analyst Bill Kristol asserted just a few minutes at the close of the debate?