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Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Washington Post about third parties locked out by DemoPublicans
From: Joe Toth
Date: 28 Sep 1996 13:33:06 -0700

THE WASHINGTON POST
Thursday, September 26, 1996

Hardly a Choice Debate Setup

by Jack Anderson and Jan Moller

It has come down to this: Six years after the dissolution of the Soviet
Union, the democratic process in Russia gives citizens more choices than
what is available here at home.

Just weeks before the historic presidential election in Russia last June,
Alexander Lebed was a political unknown. Then came a nationally televised
debate, which gave millions of Russians a firsthand look at the candidates.
Lebed's performance on television led to a surge in his poll numbers. So
popular was the retired lieutenant general that, in an effort to court his
voters, President Boris Yeltsin named him national security adviser.

John Hagelin likes to remind people about what happened in Russia. It
bolsters his immediate goal, which is to be included in the presidential
debates set for Oct. 6 and Oct. 16. The outcome of a lawsuit being heard
next week in U.S. District Court here will determine whether Hagelin or
Reform Party nominee Ross Perot can participate.

Hagelin is the presidential candidate of the Natural Law Party. His name is
on the ballot in 45 states and the District of Columbia. He's cultivated
enough support that American taxpayers are funding his campaign to the tune
of $600,000 in federal funds. Perot, meanwhile, is receiving $29 million in
federal funds. Yet neither candidate has been deemed worthy of sharing the
podium with President Clinton and Robert J. Dole when the two meet in
Hartford, Conn., and San Diego.

The court may lump both cases together for convenience. This has Hagelin
elated, as he hopes to capitalize on the publicity that follows Perot.
Reform Party officials are somewhat less excited at the prospect.

The decision to limit the debate to Clinton and Dole was made by the
Commission on Presidential Debates, an organization made up of equal parts
Republicans and Democrats. Perot and Hagelin both say they have met the
four "objective criteria" set by the commission. To be allowed in the
debates, candidates must be born in the United States, meet the
constitutional age requirement, be qualified on enough ballots to have a
mathematical chance to win and be qualified for federal matching funds. But
that wasn't enough.

In excluding Perot and Hagelin, the debate commission instead relied on a
far more subjective criteria: Who has a "realistic" chance to become
president. As some have noted, dryly, this formula could have been used to
keep Michael Dukakis and Walter Mondale out of America's living rooms in
1988 and 1984, respectively.

Instead, it's being used to deprive voters of a close-up look at the very
candidates their dollars are helping to fund. It also stifles the voices of
millions who signed petitions to put Perot and Hagelin on the ballots of
most states.

All of this has Hagelin feeling understandably frustrated. "When you become
involved in third-party politics, you quickly learn that it is not
fairness. It's not ethics. It's not democracy--fair and open democracy. And
it's not even legality that determines the outcome of such decisions,"
Hagelin told our associate Aaron Karp. "It's politics. And the only
recourse that a candidate or a citizen of the country has against powers as
large as the Republican and Democratic establishment is the legal
recourse."

The four objective criteria are enough, by themselves, to disqualify nearly
all of the dozens of candidates who throw their hats into the presidential
ring every four years. Ralph Nader doesn't qualify; Howard Phillips of the
U.S. Taxpayers Party doesn't qualify. Lyndon LaRouche doesn't get invited.
But Perot and Hagelin do.

It's hard to feel sorry for Perot's predicament. After all, the pint-sized
populist ducked his own challenger for the Reform Party nomination, Richard
Lamm, by refusing to debate him earlier this summer. But when you're
bankrolling your own party, you get to make the rules.

The Clinton campaign lobbied for Perot's inclusion not because they like
him, but because they think he'll siphon votes from the GOP. The Dole
campaign, fearing exactly that, worked just as hard to keep him out.
Apparently they feel Perot is good enough to steal issues and ideas from,
but not good enough to debate.

As for Hagelin, he believes that his presence in the debates might work
against Clinton.

We've never been fans of Ross Perot, having had many differences with him
over the years. And we don't know enough about John Hagelin to say what
kind of president he'd make. But we do believe that in an election year
that's generally devoid of new ideas, the voters of America deserve to see
what choices are available outside the two major parties.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

John Hagelin is at
http://www.hagelin.org/
