Commission prevents debates from informing

In 1984, the campaigns of Republican Ronald Reagan and Democrat Walter Mondale tried to eliminate difficult questions from the presidential debates. The League of Women Voters, which sponsored the debates that year, had prepared a list of journalists to pose questions . The campaigns vetoed every reporter on the list. The league submitted another list , and again, the campaigns vetoed every one. By the end of the process, the campaigns had rejected 80 reporters.

The league was outraged. Despite threats from Reagan and Mondale not to participate in its debates, the league held a news conference and lambasted the campaigns for "totally abusing" the process. As a result, the panelist selection process for the second debate was entirely different. Not a single journalist was rejected; the candidates were too afraid of public criticism.

This year's debate sponsor, the Commission on Presidential Debates, would never challenge the candidates as the league once did. Despite its official-sounding name, the commission is a private corporation that was jointly created by, and for, the Republican and Democratic parties. In 1986, the parties ratified an agreement "to take over the presidential debates" from the nonpartisan league, and the commission has sponsored every presidential and vice presidential debate since.

The co-chairs of the commission, Frank Fahrenkopf and Mike McCurry, are major party loyalists and corporate lobbyists. Fahrenkopf is the former chairman of the Republican Party and the nation's leading gambling lobbyist. McCurry is the former press secretary to President Bill Clinton and a lobbyist for the telecommunications industry. Not surprisingly, the commission is principally financed by major corporations such as Anheuser-Busch.

Every four years, the commission demonstrates its fealty to the Democratic and Republican candidates. Behind closed doors, negotiators for the major party nominees draft secret contracts that dictate how the debates will be structured .

Undoubtedly, the commission's monopoly over the presidential debates has harmed our democracy. Without a sponsor willing to criticize the Republican and Democratic campaigns, the debates are often structured to accommodate the wishes of risk-averse candidates, not voters.

Because the candidates fear making a costly gaffe, fewer debates are held than necessary to educate voters. In 1858, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas debated seven times. Earlier this year, the Republican primaries featured an unprecedented 27 debates. The commission, meanwhile, has only scheduled three presidential debates this year. At a time when the country is facing a complex fiscal crisis, stubbornly high unemployment and multiple foreign policy challenges, debates should not be rationed.

Even more troublesome, the few presidential debates held are often governed by rules that impede actual debate. Remarkably, contracts negotiated under the commission's tenure have prohibited the candidates from talking to each other. The contracts also require all questions posed by audience members during the town-hall debate to be prescreened . And the moderators are vetted by the candidates and thus unlikely to pose surprising questions.

Third-party candidates also are routinely excluded from the commission's debates, even when a majority of voters support their inclusion. Ross Perot was excluded from the 1996 debates although his campaign had received $29 million in taxpayers' funds and 76 percent of voters desired his inclusion. No third-party candidate has been allowed to participate in a presidential debate for the past 20 years.

The presidential debates have never been more important. President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are running neck-and-neck in the polls, and an endless barrage of attack ads are making it difficult for voters to figure out who the candidates really are. The debates provide the best opportunity to directly evaluate the candidates . Yet, without an independent organization like the league sponsoring them, and so long as the commission exercises a monopoly , the debates will fail to fulfill their potential.

Attorney George Farah is director of the nonprofit Open Debates (www.opendebates.org) and the author of "No Debate: How the Republican and Democratic Candidates Secretly Control the Presidential Debates."