Response to No Forced Collisions

(See: Just Above Sunset: No Forced Collisions)

On the question of who triumphed in last week's CNBC debate, everyone seemed to agree at first that the candidates won and the media lost, but after a week, there seems to be a new consensus. It was as if the inmates had briefly taken over the asylum, but eventually came to their senses once they realized they couldn't run the place by themselves.

The whole idea of all these candidates, getting together in an OPEC-type cabal and thinking they could dictate what the news coverage of them will be, reminds me of my time in college back in the 1960s, when a bunch of us were able to persuade the school to let us create our own seminar (on the works of Mark Twain, as I remember), also selecting our own teacher, but also declaring that each student would be granted an automatic A for the course! (Hey, this was the 60s and schools felt free to experiment!) As it turned out, our professor was not that impressed with the quality of work he got out of us, so the school never tried that again.

Who should control presidential debates has been a constant battle between obviously-subjective candidates and objective outsiders goes back to early in the history of debates, which traditionally played out not so much in the primaries as in the general elections.

In 1980, the two major parties decided to take control of the debate process for the purpose of excluding any third-party candidates -- specifically, after Democrat Jimmy Carter, in his reelection bid against Republican Ronald Reagan, refusing to share a stage with independent candidate John Anderson. CNN, in its first year of broadcasting, came to Anderson's aid by inserting him into the live debate from a stage in Washington, DC. Most Americans never knew this even happened, due to the fact that CNN was arguably being seen by only hundreds of viewers back then; I only remember this unmemorable occasion because I worked on that event.

For a while, it was assumed by all concerned that the involvement of a respected outside organization was required, just to give the operation a little much-needed credibility:

The role was filled by the nonpartisan League of Women Voters (LWV) civic organization in 1976, 1980 and 1984. In 1987, the LWV withdrew from debate sponsorship, in protest of the major party candidates attempting to dictate nearly every aspect of how the debates were conducted.

The League formally voted to drop out in October of 1988, and put out a pretty harsh press release on this, blasting both parties:

"The League of Women Voters is withdrawing its sponsorship of the presidential debate scheduled for mid-October because the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter," League President Nancy M. Neuman said today. 

"It has become clear to us that the candidates' organizations aim to add debates to their list of campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and honest answers to tough questions," Neuman said. "The League has no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public." 

Neuman said that the campaigns presented the League with their debate agreement on September 28, two weeks before the scheduled debate. The campaigns' agreement was negotiated "behind closed doors" and vas presented to the League as "a done deal," she said, its 16 pages of conditions not subject to negotiation. 

Most objectionable to the League, Neuman said, were conditions in the agreement that gave the campaigns unprecedented control over the proceedings. Neuman called "outrageous" the campaigns' demands that they control the selection of questioners, the composition of the audience, hall access for the press and other issues. ... 

Neuman issued a final challenge to both Vice President Bush and Governor Dukakis to "rise above your handlers and agree to join us in presenting the fair and full discussion the American public expects of a League of Women Voters debate."

Needless to say, neither candidate rose to that challenge, and the rest is history.

The format battles continued over who could decide who would ask questions and what questions could be asked, with the major TV and cable news networks taking over from the League of Women Voters, and there were times that the parties privately threatened to broadcast the things themselves (and also thought of taking the nominating conventions away from the networks) -- until they realized that, while they were busy offering up their programing to anyone who wanted it, chances are viewers would instead be watching network sitcoms and such.

They not only needed someone else to put the events into living rooms, they needed someone else to pay for the expensive production.

Speaking of which, while Donald Trump is suggesting that the networks make so much money off these debates, he's pushing the idea that the networks donate all this money to veteran's groups. But in fact, if these debates ever turn into party- or candidate-controlled pseudo-news events, with all the power of choosing moderators and questions and whatnot put into the hands of the "newsmakers" instead of the "news organizations", then the networks could consider charging the parties for the airtime, maybe just to cover production costs! After all, why should the networks, up to now but no longer in the business of covering actual "news", give away free advertising time to political parties? 

And a nice bi-product of that idea is that the programs could then forego commercial breaks!

You would think the most damning thing the Republicans did to themselves in this last debate was expose to voters the possibility that none of them were capable of answering tough questions -- even from right-of-center outlets like Fox News and CNBC! -- the possibility of which was ruthlessly ridiculed by the President himself (remember him?), having great fun at a Monday fundraiser:

"Have you noticed that every one of these candidates say, 'Obama's weak. Putin's kicking sand in his face. When I talk to Putin, he's going to straighten out,'" Obama said ... 

"Then it turns out they can't handle a bunch of CNBC moderators at the debate. Let me tell you, if you can't handle those guys, then I don't think the Chinese and the Russians are going to be too worried about you," Obama said.

It was pretty funny, especially those little touches left out of the above transcript. If you haven't seen it, you need to check out the video. It's hard to imagine any of the present Republican candidates -- or even the Democratic ones, for that matter -- ever being able to deliver that level of sendup.

And even if he doesn't necessarily have a new career in standup awaiting him, you've got to admit, Obama has skills and that he will be missed.