But who will save us from the commission? Can we trust it to sponsor debates that will maximize audience and interest? History suggests not. This year, the Bush campaign was roundly and deservedly rebuked for seeking debate venues that would limit the number of people watching.

But in 1996, it was the Clinton-Gore campaign -- leading in the polls -- that wanted to reduce debate viewership. Top Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos explained the strategy at a panel discussion in February 1997 at the Harvard Institute of Politics. He said: ``We didn't want them to pay attention. . . . We wanted the debates to be a nonevent.''

Stephanopoulos explained how the commission-sanctioned deal was made: ``[The Republicans] didn't have leverage going into negotiations. They were behind. They needed to make sure [H. Ross] Perot wasn't in it. As long as we would agree to Perot not being in it, we could get everything else we wanted going in. We got our time frame, we got our length, we got our moderator [Jim Lehrer].''

Such a deal likely would have been resisted by the League of Women Voters, which sponsored the presidential debates through 1984. But the bipartisan commission took control in 1988, when the nonpartisan league refused to bend to the dictates of the GOP and Democratic campaigns.

The commission was launched in 1987 by the then-national chairs of the Republican and Democratic parties, Frank Fahrenkopf and Paul Kirk, to promote the interests of the two major parties and to ward-off third-party interlopers. Fahrenkopf and Kirk head the commission to this day.

``Mr. Fahrenkopf indicated that the new commission was not likely to look with favor on including third-party candidates in the debates,'' The New York Times reported. ``Mr. Kirk was less equivocal, saying he personally believed the panel should exclude third-party candidates.''

Through the years, the commission has proved itself better at excluding challengers than at establishing firm and objective standards.

Recent history suggests that nothing sparks interest in the debates like the inclusion of third-party candidates. In 1992, when Perot was included, the three presidential debates were viewed by record-breaking TV audiences, averaging 90 million people, with the audience growing for each successive debate.

Once allowed in, third-party candidates not only build interest in the campaign; they sometimes win. Jesse Ventura proved this point in Minnesota in 1998 when he took his 10 percent poll support into a series of closely watched debates and ended up beating ``the two-party system.''

GOOD FOR DEMOCRACY

If the goal is to institutionalize debates as must-see events, it should be done by a genuinely nonpartisan group not predisposed against third-party candidates. This year the commission vows to bar outsiders such as Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan if they lack 15 percent poll support -- a barrier that would have excluded Perot in 1992 and Ventura in 1998.

Debates involving three or four ideologically diverse candidates would be good for democracy, especially on the many issues where Gore and Bush barely disagree -- such as trade, globalization, corporate welfare, capital punishment and the drug war. Inclusive debates also would be good for ratings.

If Gore and Bush really want the biggest audience possible, they would call for the kind of open debates that the commission has thwarted. Indeed, there's little stopping the TV networks from exercising their own judgment on who should debate, instead of letting the two major parties decide whether ``the two-party system'' faces competition.

Jeff Cohen is the founder of Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, a media-watch group in New York.

Copyright 2000 Miami Herald

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