Open the Presidential Auditions

I just gave in on one of my chief badges of iconoclasm. I have cable TV service. Not one of those $100/month digital packages, but just Basic Cable, which includes only the channels required by the local cable monopolies, plus some all-shopping and all-ads channels. I got sick of trying to pull in weak signals with rabbit ears.

So I sat down last night and watched a little CSPAN. There was Alan Keyes (the anti-gay, anti-choice, pro-capital-punishment, pro-flat-tax, anti-public-education, black Republican candidate) talking. "Oh, fucking great..." I thought. "I thought we were rid of him." But you know what? He was making perfect sense. He was appearing in a press conference for Open Debates, who are filing a complaint with the FEC over the Commission on Presidential Debates' handling of televised debates. On the dais with him were a handful of other "fringe" politicos whose viewpoints have been locked out of the presidential debate process. (I missed the beginning of the conference, so I don't know who the others were.)

In one of his few positive contributions to the 1996 campaign (aside from the mere fact of being black and in the race), Keyes was arrested for trying to join a televised debate between Republican candidates. Here he was talking about the larger problem of how democracy is being subverted by a process that reduces the options before the voters even get a chance to act. As a speaker, he's no Jesse Jackson, but he had some good analogies, comparing horse races (where we're betting on the outcome) to presidential races (where the same thing happens, but we're supposed to be determining the outcome). He compared our system to that of the old Soviet Union, where 99% of the people voted, but the candidates had all been pre-selected , so the "democracy" was a sham.

He blamed the Commission on Presidential Debates - a cartel created by the two major parties - for making their events so deadly dull that people don't even bother watching them. Which is exactly what the Big Two's leaderships want: to keep people out of the electoral process, so that it's easier for small groups (such as them, or the corporations who fund the CPD and most major elections) to determine the outcome. It's a "keep out the vote" program. And there's a growing list of people from all over the political map who are willing to say so.

Keyes only hinted at what his own political agenda is, and he acknowledged (without ridiculing) the very different agendas of some of the others behind this complaint. Keyes mentioned Ralph Nader a few times as someone who should have been included in 2000, not because he likes Nader's positions, but because that's what it takes to make our electoral system work properly. Nader (who wasn't there) presumably feels likewise about Keyes. I certainly do. I was pissed that Keyes was locked out of that debate, and I'm pissed that the CPD is already planning to keep this year's debates limited to Bush and (presumedly) Kerry.

(I'm also more than a little disgusted at the primary process that's already appointed Kerry to be the nominee. I live in one of the states with a relatively early primary, and the list of candidates I got to chose from was already shortened from the original. The one I wanted to vote for (Kucinich) was still there, but that's only because he and Sharpton aren't playing the game by the rules, and sticking with it even though they're not "winning". If you're a Democrat and you like Gephart or Lieberman or Clark or Braun, that's just too damn bad because the pundits analysing the results from Iowa, New Hampshire, and so on have forced them to bow out. They've pretty much crippled Dean as well.)

People have been saying for years that the debates are no longer even debates. At best they're joint press conferences, and they're really closer to auditions for Martin Sheen's role on The West Wing. Maybe that's inevitable with the nature of the presidency today. But at the least they should be open auditions, with room for a variety of viewpoints, not just the moderate-liberals and the moderate-conservatives, both trying to look like just-plain-moderates.