What One Debate Can Do
by P.J. Sullivan
The first Republican presidential debate was dominated by the boorish reality show star who has been leading the polls, and in the aftermath, coverage has focused on whether he later made reference to a basic cable journalist’s menstrual cycle. A bigger story has been overlooked.
Candidate Carly Fiorina swept the NIT Tournament debate among the contenders ranked 11th through 17th in the polls, and has shot into contention. While Fiorina polled just 0.8% in an average of five national GOP polls at the end of July, a new Rasmussen Reports survey has her at nine percent, tied with Gov. Scott Walker, and just behind Floridians Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio at 10% each. (Donald Trump continues to lead at 17%.) Fiorina has also jumped to seven percent in a CNN poll of Iowa Republicans.
Her gains show what a solid debate performance can do, and prove that critics of the Fox News debate formula, which limited the “real” debate to the 10 candidates doing best in five national polls, were right.
Sen. Lindsey Graham griped, “A national poll is a lousy way in my view to determine who should be on the stage.” Veteran Republican operative Alex Castellanos said, “It is just plain wrong for the Washington elite and the news media to tell voters, at the outset of a campaign, which candidates they will fall in love in with and which they won’t.”
More than 100 South Carolina GOP officials protested that the restrictions have “the effect of denying all credible candidates an opportunity to have their voices heard on an equal basis.” And Rick Santorum said on Fox News that if only the “top two-thirds” of the candidates for the Democratic nomination in 1991 polling had been invited to that party’s first debate, “Bill Clinton wouldn’t have been on the stage.”
But will any of this be remembered once the Democrats and Republicans have selected their nominees?
Since the 2000 campaign, the Commission on Presidential Debates has set a bar of 15% in national polls for general election debate inclusion. This would have excluded Ross Perot four years earlier, as in fact the CPD did. A similar standard in Minnesota in 1998 would have locked out Jesse Ventura, who was at just 13% in a Mason-Dixon poll in September. It was Ventura’s strong debate performance that convinced many that he was a serious candidate — as is now happening with Fiorina.
If Fox can fit 10 candidates on a debate stage, why can’t the CPD fit more than two? In the latest presidential election, there were four candidates on enough ballots to theoretically win an Electoral College majority — an easily manageable number. And these are serious people. The Libertarian Party nominee was a former governor who had spent twice as long in that office as had the Republican nominee. Four years earlier, both the Green Party and the Libertarian Party nominated presidential candidates who had spent more time serving in the federal legislature than had the Democratic nominee.
Once their party has settled on its candidate, will the Republicans currently crying out for fairness and a real debate continue to speak out?
P.J. Sullivan is a journalist and theater artist residing in Washington, D.C.