WHAT DEBATES?

Cleburne News

Editorial

Thursday, September 30, 2004

If you were a football fan would you waste time watching a Super Bowl if you knew the whole game was rigged, that the fans were hand-picked by both sides and the winner already decided weeks in advance?

Probably not, so why would anyone watch so-called presidential debates which are so controlled that 11 international pro-democracy groups have recently issued a report on how our freedom and democracy in America is being eroded by these highly staged political events.

The report “Deterring Democracy: How the Commission on Presidential Debates Undermines Democracy” came out in the wake of a U.S. District Court ruling ordering a Federal Election Commission investigation of the Commission on Presidential Debates (a private business with absolutely no connection to the U.S. government) and how they are unduly influenced by the Democratic and Republican parties and the harm to democracy that results from such partisan practices.

There was a time, when the League of Women Voters held the debates, that voters really watched true debates. But both political parties decided their candidates should not be exposed to real questions and conflict.

So, according to writer George Farah, the parties held closed-door meetings and basically hijacked the real debate process through a series of private agreements. The outcome of which is the private Commission on Presidential Debates.

The upstanding League did not fall for the “hoodwinking” of the American public but the Commission soon took over the debate process and since that time both Democrats and Republicans have laid together in their bed of deceit.

Detailed page after page of contracts between the two parties are drawn up each election to make sure there are no real confrontations between the two candidates, that the audience is hand-picked and must ask the questions they are told to ask while the candidates have already practiced their responses and warned not to deviate from them one iota.

And of course the most audacious matter concerns the “memorandum of understanding” between the two parties and the two candidates. These secret contracts reveal the extent to which the whole process is orchestrated to the grand delusion of the American people. Copies can be downloaded from the PBS website as well as at www.opendebates.org.

The secret agreements keep third party candidates such as Ross Perot out of the process. Ralph Nader and Pat Buchannon are other candidates on the “keep away” list despite the fact that third parties are largely responsible for almost every piece of major legislation ever passed in this country. Sure the Democrats and Republicans want to take the credit but where would the country be without prodding by the third party candidates? Probably much, much farther behind than what we already are!

And if you carefully edit out all the planned and plotted political fluff of the Bush-Gore debates you will see each candidate repeatedly looking at each other and saying “I agree,” “I agree with him” “I wholeheartedly agree” to the point that the moderator asked both men if there was anything they did not agree on.

These aren't debates - they're two grown adults being led about like kindergarten children and the public being made fools of for thinking there is any seriousness to the program.

And the debate sites have turned into carnivals with beer and tobacco companies, lobbyists and various corporations throwing up tents giving away free samples and expecting tax deductions and bills favoring their business to be approved when the candidate wins the election.

The report further documents how the corporate-sponsored Commission implements and conceals secret contracts drafted by both parties' campaigns at the expense of voter education through “deceptive majority party control.”

The report also notes that the debates have been “reduced to a series of glorified bipartisan news conferences, in which the Republican and Democratic candidates merely exchange memorized soundbites” allowing no real discussion.

If I want to see actors I'll watch a movie tonight rather than watch two talking puppets make a feeble attempt to hoodwink the American public. I just hope Congressman Mike Rogers and opponent Bill Fuller will stick to higher standards in their upcoming debates and address the real issues facing people here in the Third District.