Let the Outsiders into the Debates

Some of us are political junkies, some of us are not. If you're not, you may not thrill with anticipation at the promise of this autumn's Gore-Bush debates, not to mention the prospect of Lieberman vs. Cheney. Anyone wondering why a George Wallace, a Ross Perot, a Nader or Ventura or Buchanan has incited so much public interest and press need look no further. For all their too-evident foibles, third-party candidates inject an element of chance, of unpredictability or simply personality that is often lacking in presidential politics.

This is not guaranteed: John Anderson, the 1980 independent, was dull as dishwater. But then, he was a career politician, not a true outsider. More usually, the independent can be counted on to add at least some entertainment value. Imagine how interesting a Nixon-Humphrey-George Wallace debate might have been during the turbulent 1968 election. (There were no debates that year. Wallace went on to take 14 percent of the vote and carry five states.) Perot, the only other independent since Anderson to be allowed a spot, provided at least comic relief in the '92 debates he shared with Clinton and Bush, as did his runningmate, retired Admiral James Stockdale, in his one debate with Gore and Quayle.

Wouldn't it be interesting to see Bush, Gore, the Green Party's Nader and Reform's likely candidate Buchanan all on the same stage? That will not happen. The two major parties have been in control of the debates since 1987, when they took responsibility for the events away from the League of Women Voters and created their in-house Commission on Presidential Debates. The Commission's arbitrary criteria for inclusion are not likely to be waived to produce more watchable television programming.

And yet, why not? Nader and Buchanan are both excellent extemporaneous speakers, and ratings would almost certainly go up.

The Commission should consider it, if only to assure this year's corporate sponsors of the debates, Anheuser-Busch and 3Com, et al., that someone will be watching. ("Top Drawer" columnist Charles Glass jokingly suggests that a nationwide boycott of Budweiser could force the Commission's hand. Glass, who lives in London, may not understand that a Buchanan presidency is more likely than the nation giving up its Bud.)

Faced with the prospect of a dry Gore-Bush/Lieberman-Cheney fall, even The New York Times seems ready to ponder the possibility of an outsider?any outsider. Last Saturday's edition ran a positive profile of John Hagelin, by Michael Janofsky. Under the headline "Taking a Scientist's Approach to the Problems of Politics," Janofsky explained that Hagelin is a physicist who is challenging Pat Buchanan for the Reform Party nomination. Janofsky wonders rhetorically why "someone with his academic background and soaring I.Q., 165," would seek the nomination from "an utterly chaotic political organization" like the Reform Party. He partly answers this by noting that even the chaotic Reform Party is a step up from Hagelin's previous two presidential runs, in 1992 and 1996, as the nominee of the Natural Law Party, which he helped found.

But nowhere in the article does Janofsky explain that the Natural Law Party was, in effect, the Transcendental Meditation party. Or that one of Hagelin's stated goals in those previous runs was to introduce the practice of "yogic flying," a form of deep meditation, to the governance of the nation. Or that in 1993 Hagelin brought some thousands of TM practitioners to Washington, DC, in an attempt to lower the city's crime rate through this yogic flying.

This is not to disparage TM, but only to ask why Janofsky failed even to mention it. Either he didn't do elementary homework on his subject, or he made an agreement not to delve into Hagelin's new-age past. Or perhaps the Times' abhorrence of Patrick Buchanan is such that it will puff up any rival of his it can find.

Not that there's anything wrong with a yogic flyer running for the presidency. But why stop there? There are many other small and sometimes outlandish-sounding political organizations that could do to have their apples shined by a puff piece in The New York Times. There's Howard Phillips' Constitution Party, Earl Dodge's Prohibition Party, the Libertarians, the Pot Party, the Socialist Workers Party, the Progressive Labor Party and even something calling itself the Libertarian National Socialist Green Party.

So get to work, Michael Janofsky. It's mere weeks to the first presidential debate.