Twenty years ago, citing their unwillingness to serve as an "accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public," the League of Women Voters stopped moderating the U.S. presidential debates. (The move was to protest candidate attempts to turn them into ever-more elaborately staged and controlled events.) And especially after the stultified train-wreck that was last month's ABC debate, we've mourned their departure ever since.
Since the League's departure, the corporate-funded Commission on Presidential Debates, in tandem with candidates and major TV networks, has held a monopoly on deciding who can debate what where. Now, though, it looks like an end-run is being planned around this iron triangle. Last November, in a move that triggered sharp controversy, the Commission spurned New Orleans as a general-election debate site. Today, the New York Observer reports that the city is teaming up with YouTube and Google to try and host its own debate this fall anyway.
So far, YouTube's attempts to insert itself into the game haven't been terribly fruitful--for example, thanks to overbearing producers, the YouTube/CNN debate that was to 'revolutionize' the process turned out merely cringe-worthy (diamonds and pearls, anyone?). But if YouTube and Google can successfully entice general-election candidates to appear at an independent New Orleans debate in the fall, that's a major coup. It's about time the Commission's stranglehold over who can participate in what kind of debate was broken.
And what better place for two candidates to start that long-awaited American conversation on race than in New Orleans?
--Te-Ping Chen
