The presidential debates are the Super Bowl of politics : the democratic centerpiece of the election season. These quadrennial confrontations-broadcast to tens of millions of Americans-are the only decisive political discussion between the candidates to which an ever-increasing number of unaffiliated voters may look. Yet the two major parties dictate almost every aspect of the event, stifling broad electoral choice.
In No Debate, author and lobbyist George Farah uses the lens of the presidential election, an event he argues is singularly important to our electoral democracy, to examine just how open America’s elections may or may not be.
Central to his argument is the national debate sponsor, the Commission on Presidential Debates, an ostensibly nonpartisan group which Farah exposes as an arm’s length organ of the major parties to keep out viable third parties. In this meticulously researched exposi, Farah finds a determinedly collusive commission, its board boasting some of the most powerful partisans in the country, through which tax-deductible corporate political donations to both major parties are funneled.
Along the way, Farah examines the backroom maneuverings and political calculations of the major parties: from Ross Perot’s strategic debate invitation in 1992, to his exclusion in 1996, to the treatment of Buchanan and Nader in the 2000 election. With startling clarity No Debate documents a grievous institutional rigging of the electoral process, wherein glorified news conferences pass as debate and the two parties call the shots at the electorate’s expense.
George Farah is the founder and executive director of Open Debates, a Washington-based nonprofit focused onreforming the presidential debate process. His articles have appeared in Harvard Law Record, Extra! and Princeton’s Progressive Review.
