As we close in on the first debate on Sept. 26, there’s been a lot of discussion about the debate rules. There’s Donald Trump, of course, who’s questioning the fairness of the schedule and the moderators, but for once this isn’t about him. This is about Gary Johnson and Jill Stein.
The Commission on Presidential Debates, which organizes and plans the general election debates we’ve been made familiar with over the last 11 election cycles, was responsible for writing the rules for inclusion that have been the subject of controversy. Namely the rule that, to qualify for appearance on the main stage of the debate, a candidate must be polling above 15 percent nationally, as per an average of the results of five pre-selected polls.
That threshold currently excludes both the Libertarian and Green hopefuls, which, in this election of remarkably undesirable major party candidates, has become the point of contention. Many people think they should be included in the debates, even though neither of them is meeting the 15 percent standard.
The purpose of debates is to inform voters on the policy positions and, unfortunately for both Clinton and Trump, the personal histories and temperaments of the people who could be our next president. Depending on who the candidates are, the debates can be a productive conversation where we learn where the daylight between the candidates lies, or it can be, as it is likely to be this cycle, a no-holds-barred slugfest.
For candidates, the advantage of being on the stage is obvious: You have the opportunity to get your message out to the voters and, hopefully, get them to mark your name on the ballot come November. Because of that, some people argue that keeping third-party candidates off of the stage until they hit that 15 percent in the polls will, in turn, keep them from ever reaching that number, throwing third-party candidates into a self-perpetuating cycle.
But the truth is that candidates with no hope of actually being president would drag the debates down into irrelevancy more than they would make the contest fair. If we’re educating voters on people with the potential to be president, excluding candidates without that potential seems like common sense.
If we actually included every third party and independent candidate on the debate stage — which would be the most essentially equal model of selecting debate participants — we would include a whole host of people you’ve never heard of. There are hundreds of people running for president. Most of them have no mathematical chance of winning enough electoral votes to actually win the presidency, because they simply don’t appear on the ballot in enough states. (Whether the process of getting on the ballot is fair is a whole different argument.) Even if we excluded the people who didn’t meet that requirement, you’d still be stuck with Darrell Castle, the nominee of the Constitution Party, which technically appears on the ballot of enough states to win the presidency. If you’ve ever heard of him before, more power to you.
Is there any point in putting Castle on the stage, when his chances of winning the presidency are about as good as mine? Is there any point in putting Stein in the debates, for that matter? She’s polling at almost 3 percent, and has never been higher than 4.8. What about Johnson? He’s never even broken 10 percent.
If either major party candidate’s numbers had ever dipped below 30, we’d already be merrily lowering their campaign’s coffin into its grave — even Trump, with his wildly fluctuating support, has never been below 35 since the general election began. Realistically, Johnson and Stein’s chances of being president are laughable at best, so hearing from them in the debates isn’t really a productive use of a time intended to educate us on the views of our next president, whoever he or she may be.
And the argument that their support would be higher if they were allowed on the debate stage doesn’t hold much water either. Presidential debates being held every election cycle is a relatively recent phenomenon, dating back to 1976,but third parties taking power was not unheard of before that time. We might still have a Whig party if general election debates were required for a third party to take power. People paying attention in high school history classes might remember the brief and powerful rise of Teddy Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party, which also occurred before we held regular debates. This country has seen the fracture and destruction of political parties into third and fourth parties before regular presidential debates were even a twinkle in the eye of the CPD.
These breaks from the two-party system largely took place in the age of horse-mounted mail carriers and letter writing, further taking the wind out of the sails of the idea that third parties must take the debate stage to gain any national traction.
These days, Gary Johnson and Jill Stein have Twitters that can reach hundreds of thousands of people in moments and access to a national media that has the capability to circulate their positions to millions in a heartbeat with a televised interview. They have an unprecedented ability to get their message out — with or without debates. The truth is that they simply don’t have popular support. Even this year. Even when both major party candidates are sporting disapproval ratings upwards of 50 percent, the two biggest third parties’ poll numbers combined don’t add up to the threshold they would need to get even one of them into the debates.
Even if they did, with only two independents in Congress, there is no current framework for a third-party takeover this year. They would be without support even if they somehow managed to eke out a general election victory. They are currently without enough support to make it worthwhile to put them on the debate stage.
Politics is an uphill battle for third parties, there's no doubt about that. But if the issues they were illuminating mattered to enough Americans to make them viable candidates, Johnson and Stein would be meeting the already low standards for inclusion in the debates. For now, it's time to admit that although third parties are important and useful in our political system, their candidates won't bring anything important and useful to the debate stage.