Chicago Sun-Times : Keep the wannabes out of the debates

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Keep the wannabes out of the debates

BY STEVE HUNTLEY | July 15, 2007

At last a fresh idea has emerged from one of those presidential debates, albeit by accident. No, not a new thought on Iraq, terrorism or health care. It's the eminently reasonable notion, advanced by John Edwards and Hillary Clinton, to reduce the field of candidates qualified to take part in these forums to just the front-runners.

Call me an elitist, but I'm tired of hearing Democrats Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel, Republicans Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee or any other candidate with no hope of winning the nomination drone on while the front-runners twiddle their thumbs.

Edwards and Clinton didn't bring up this issue in public at Thursday's NAACP Presidential Forum in Detroit. They just didn't know their post-debate conversation was being picked up by Fox News microphones.

Edwards walked up to Clinton at her podium and said, "We should think about at some point ... maybe some time in the fall, we'll try to have a more serious debate with a smaller group of people."

Clearly agreeing, Clinton said, "We've got to cut the numbers of these, because they are just being trivialized."

"And they're not serious," Edwards answered. "They're not serious."

The Fox video shows Edwards walking away and Clinton following and saying, "I think there was an effort by our campaign to do that, but it somehow got detoured. We've gotta get back to it."

Then in a moment of high comedy, one of the targets of their plot, Kucinich, walks by and Clinton shakes his hand. The Ohio congressman is still in the picture frame as Clinton tells Edwards, "Our guys should talk."

Of course, this is all very unpolitically correct, very undemocratic, very elitist -- and very honest.

After learning that the conversation had been caught on an open microphone, Edwards' office said he was not trying to limit who participates in the forums. Nonsense. That was exactly what he was trying to do, and it's a splendid idea.

Now that we've had several forums featuring every long shot dreaming the impossible dream of waking up in the White House, why not cut the field down to the contenders who actually have a realistic chance of curling up in the Executive Mansion's bed? It wouldn't be that hard to do. Turn to those horse-race polls that seem to come out every other day and set a threshold for participation in the debates. Pick a standard -- say, no low-single-digit candidates need show up.

And while we're talking about reforming these debates, why stop at limiting the field? Why not shake up the format by letting the candidates also ask each other questions and respond to the points each of them make? Let them go on more than a minute or 90 seconds so long as they're answering a question. But cut them off at 20 seconds if they're clearly changing the subject or some other way trying to avoid giving a direct answer.

But the first thing to do is winnow down the contestants. Look, it was good to have all the contenders on stage in the first couple of debates. But now we've seen Gravel whack Clinton over her husband's support of free trade and we've heard a couple of GOP wannabes explain why the theory of evolution isn't real.

They've had their time in the spotlight, and these forums need to start focusing on the policies and views of the candidates who actually have a shot at winning.

shuntley@suntimes.com