Order in early presidential debates is an overvalued virtue. Fox News and CNN erred in deciding that they will not impose a severe limit on the number of Republican presidential hopefuls they will allow to participate in the first two debates of the contests. These early encounters always have the whiff of nuttiness wafting about the crowded stage.
The cable news networks should have followed the Mae West rule of confronting dilemmas. “Whenever I’m caught between two evils, I take the one I’ve never tried,” declared the 20th century show business sensation. The news outlets cover wars, revolutions, and earthquakes, and their reporters on the ground never have a hair out of place. Eighteen Republicans hoping to put their case across to several million voters has flummoxed network executives.
Fox News will host the first debate of the campaign on August 6th in Cleveland. It’s limiting the number of participants to the top 10 in a collection of national polls. This means some interesting and accomplished hopefuls are going to be left out, cheating the candidates and, worse, the engaged public.
Perhaps they will consider a modest proposal. Divide the candidates into three panels–assigned at random–and give each panel 30 minutes. No opening or closing statements. Each panel will have a different interlocutor from Fox. After the final panel, bring them all together for some sort of lightning round of questions hosted by podcast sensation Adam Carolla. He’s an electric–some might say rowdy–presence.
Carolla is a libertarian leaning Republican who has built an audience of new media listeners, many of whom might be inclined to watch a presidential primary debate. Carolla would expand the audience. That, we are told over and over, is what Republican candidates and party poobahs yearn to do.
Parties do not expand by excluding. Let a hundred voices be heard in August. The crowded stage can shape. One of Ronald Reagan’s most famous stage performances came at a New Hampshire debate. “I paid for this microphone, Mr. Green,” the former California governor bellowed at the moderator who tried to cut off his microphone.
Reagan was to have debated rival George H.W. Bush that night in Nashua. Just the two of them. Election laws prevented a local newspaper from sponsoring an event between only two of the six candidates still in the contest. Reagan agreed to pick up the tab and figured that allowed him to make some of the rules.
The quote entered political history as soon as the crowd stopped cheering that night. What’s faded is the photo of four candidates Reagan invited standing behind a flummoxed and doomed Bush. Candidates at these events rarely get the chance to soar like Reagan did, but they have no trouble inventing ways to crash.
In 2011, Minnesota governor Tim “Pawk-Pawk” Pawlenty came to grief when he beat an astonishing retreat in his attempt to link Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts health care plan to Obamacare. He disowned his clever “Obamneycare” phrase on a Manchester, New Hampshire stage, along with his backbone and presidential hopes.
Hillary Clinton’s first presidential campaign first looked wobbly at an October 2007 Democratic debate in Philadelphia when no-hoper U.S. Senator Christopher Dodd had his only memorable moment of the campaign when he pinned Clinton to the truth over her varying statements on the wisdom of providing drivers licenses to illegal immigrants. Clinton’s trimming on the truth before the national audience made her look less formidable than when the evening began.
The difference between 18 candidates on the stage and 10 of them is not significant. With 10, each would get a tiny number of minutes in the spotlight, 18 provides a teeny-tiny number. It’s not worth denying former Texas governor Rick Perry the chance to immolate again over a question on one of his own policy proposals.
Former New York governor George Pataki won three statewide races in that deep blue state. He’s earned a place in the first debate. So has Rick Santorum, who ran a strong race for the 2012 nomination. Businesswoman Carly Fiorina collects admirers wherever the campaign trail leads her. Let them sing out in Cleveland on August 6th.
