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Debates Need Minor Players

IT HAS BEEN SAID that in the United States there are two political parties: the incumbents and everyone else. Last week, in Washington, D.C., the federal courts struck a blow for incumbent power when they refused to pass on the merits of claims by minor-party candidates Ross Perot and the Natural Law Party's John Hagelin that they had been unconstitutionally denied a place in the presidential debates. The courts ducked the issue by referring the matter for administrative determination by the Federal Election Commission, even though that meant no resolution in time for this year's debate.

By every standard except the one applied by the Commission for Presidential Debates, Mr. Hagelin and Mr. Perot were both presidential candidates. In creating the election commission, Congress defined a presidential candidate as one who qualified in 10 or more states. Mr. Perot was qualified in all 50 states, Mr. Hagelin in 45. The standard applied by the debates commission was that only candidates with a reasonable chance of success could participate. Previously, federal courts had barred debates in public-forum cases in which the government had sought to limit candidate speech and access on the basis of the government's judgment of political viability. Deciding viability was the people's--not the government's--task once the candidate had qualified for the ballot.

The issue goes to the heart of the democratic process: How free is an election when only the two candidates of the major parties are allowed to speak? Are the rights of minor-party candidates to be heard important--or merely a distraction?

The founders of the republic had strong feelings about the right of the people to govern themselves through free elections.

Robert Livingston: "The people are the best judges who ought to represent them. To dictate and control them, to tell them whom they shall not elect, is to abridge their natural rights."

Alexander Hamilton: "The true principle of a republic is, that the people should choose whom they please to govern them. Representation is imperfect in proportion as the current of popular favor is checked. This great source of free government, popular election, should be perfectly pure, and the most unbounded liberty allowed."

James Madison realized that free elections require access to the information necessary for an informed choice: "A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."

The government has institutionalized the two-party system. The debates are controlled by commissions whose members are drawn from the Democratic and Republican parties. They have decided on a mechanism that has excluded all minor-party candidates. Their criterion--a realistic chance of election--seems fated to exclude such candidates in virtually all presidential contexts.

In other contexts, the courts have been solicitous of the rights of minor candidates. Laws effectively foreclosing them from the ballot have been given short shrift. But ballot access is virtually meaningless if minor-party candidates are denied realistic access to the public and private forums that constitute the marketplace of ideas.

This year, at least seven candidates met the congressional standard of qualification in 10 states. That's too many for a reasonable debate. Relief would not be impossible, however, only complex. One solution might be a series of round-robin debates. Or time might be made available to each candidate to use in his or her own way. If the major parties still wished to have their own head-to-head confrontation, they could do so the old-fashioned way, by buying the time with their lush campaign contributions.

A wide-open political process as envisioned by the founders of the republic offers a marketplace for the new ideas that people say they are seeking. Socialist Norman Thomas was a presidential candidate six times from the 1920s to the 1940s, but he never had a realistic chance of election. Nonetheless, many of his ideas flowered in the Roosevelt New Deal. In 1992, Mr. Perot had virtually no chance of winning the White House, but his campaign focused public attention on the looming budget deficit crisis, which was being carefully ignored by the two viable candidates.

A combination of media focus on the presidential campaign as horse race and exclusion of all minor-party candidates from debate has turned the campaign from a brawling marketplace of ideas to a quiet table for two in the corner.

The founders believed that free and open debate was essential to preserve truth and freedom. Limiting public debate to the two major parties further stultifies an increasingly rigid system. By postponing a resolution of this issue, the federal courts are laying the foundation of tomorrow's constitutional crisis.¤

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