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TalkBack Live

Whose Voice Should be Heard in the Presidential and Vice Presidential Debates?

Aired October 5, 2000 - 3:00 p.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

BOBBIE BATTISTA, HOST: Third-party presidential candidates: shutout of the debates.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RALPH NADER, GREEN PARTY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We have an invitation here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BATTISTA: The Commission on Presidential Debates says they don't have enough support to take part. But those candidates say they have a right to the same audience the Democrats and Republicans get. And they say they are not the only ones getting cheated; voters are too.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAT BUCHANAN, REFORM PARTY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: What you've got is two Beltway parties funded by lobbyists and corporations. They both get $250 million in soft money. But they've got the same basic agenda, because those lobbyists want the same things.

NADER: It's two parties who have a cushy relationship taking money from the same corporate interests, dominating the Debate Commission. Why should they compete? It's an instinct. Monopolists don't like to have any competition.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BATTISTA: Does a lack of competition equal a lack of choice, or would including third-party candidates just distract voters? Whose voice should be heard in the presidential and vice presidential debates? And who has the right to decide?

Hello, everybody, and welcome to TALKBACK LIVE. I'm Bobbie Battista.

The number of Americans joining third parties has increased over the past 10 years. But those parties' presidential candidates were excluded from Tuesday's debate in Boston. Green Party candidate Ralph Nader was barred from attending even as a spectator, even though he had a ticket. Should third-party candidates be allowed to participate in the debates, even if they don't have big poll numbers? Here to talk about this with us today -- and other issues as well -- Harry Browne, the Libertarian presidential candidate. Ezola Foster is with us. She is Pat Buchanan's Reform Party running mate. And on the phone with is Winona LaDuke, who is Ralph Nader's running mate on the Green Party ticket.

Welcome to all of you.

EZOLA FOSTER, REFORM PARTY VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Thank you.

WINONA LADUKE, GREEN PARTY VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Thank you.

BATTISTA: Let me first get reaction from you about being excluded from the debates.

Harry Browne, let me start with you.

HARRY BROWNE, LIBERTARIAN PARTY PRES. CANDIDATE: Sure. Well, of course, I wanted to be there. And, of course, the reason that some of us don't have as high a poll numbers as the Presidential Commission would like is because we can't be heard.

There should have been one debate in September --- or maybe two debates -- in which all the candidates who had a theoretical chance of winning were on the stage. That would have been seven candidates. They had that many candidates in the primary -- the Republican primary debates. So why not now?

Then, maybe in October, go to two debates with those people who have 5 percent or more in the polls. And then, finally, in -- at the end of October, maybe have one or two debates with those who have 15 percent in the polls. But people can't decide how they feel about these candidates, they can't register their support, if they have no idea what these people stand for.

BATTISTA: Ezola Foster, as you know, the criteria is that the candidate gets 15 percent of national support before they are included in the debates. That's the criteria set by the commission for the presidential debates, which is a private organization, private sponsors. What do you think the criteria should be?

FOSTER: Well, certainly, any candidate receiving taxpayer's dollars should be heard by the taxpayers. And I notice it's called an independent debate commission. This commission is controlled by Republicans and Democrats. And I think it is sinful and shameful that they are denying the American people, who actually are funding a campaign, not to hear that particular candidate.

I would like to see other candidates in. But certainly, if a candidate is receiving tax dollars, then those taxpayers who are footing the bill certainly should hear that candidate.

BATTISTA: Winona LaDuke, what happened to Ralph Nader the other night in Boston that he couldn't even get into the debate as a spectator?

LADUKE: Well, not only was it ungracious, but I think it was perhaps illegal. Ralph went to the debates. And he was on a shuttle bus there. He had a ticket for entry into it -- not into the actual room that the debates were in, but a side room. And he was met by a security guard. And he then was escorted off by not only a security guard, but, as well, three policemen.

And I didn't know that the Debate Commission had police powers. And it seems not only undemocratic and ungracious, but it's totally contrary to allowing people into the process of the American democracy. And it pretty much under -- it illustrates how -- how it's become more and more exclusive. In fact, most of the tickets were held by people who had given over $100,000.

BATTISTA: What will you all do about this in order to try to change the process?

Winona, let me start with you. Are you going to take -- is Ralph Nader going to take this court?

LADUKE: Oh, Ralph has filed a lawsuit on it. He has also asked that the Debate Commission give $25,000 to a Harvard project on electoral reform to begin talking about the process of actually how we have a working democracy. The largest party in America is the non- voters; 50 percent of the American electorate no longer votes. And if we really want to have a democracy that works, let's figure out how we get those people to be included.

And that's not by being so exclusive in the process. As well, I have called on the League of Women Voters to take back the debates from the Federal Debate Commission. That is who originally held it. And I believe that they are not only an unbiased, but they are a well- respected force. And I think that the League of Women Voters is a much -- a much better place for the debate commission to be held.

BATTISTA: I just want to clarify for people: I think that is Ms. LaDuke's eight-month-old there in the background.

LADUKE: That's exactly right: eight-month-old sitting right next to me.

BATTISTA: Harry, let me ask you: Why don't you guys, who are members of alternate parties, why don't you organize your own debate? Why don't you go after a private organization with private sponsors, and -- you know, CNNs, or Court TV -- I mean -- you know what I'm thinking. What am I thinking of?

BROWNE: Bobbie, it's a wonderful idea.

BATTISTA: Fox. Yes, go ahead.

BROWNE: It's a wonderful idea and I would like you to sponsor the debates. I would like to do it on CNN. I think Ralph Nader, Pat Buchanan and Harry Browne in a debate would be fabulous, because you would have three different points of view, unlike Tuesday night when you had two people just arguing over the least little technical details. Look at me, for instance, I want you to be free of the income tax by making government so small that we don't need an income tax. Ralph Nader wants to move in exactly the opposite direction. I want to release you from Social Security. I want to end the campaign finance laws; he wants to increase them.

Look at the differences that exist between us. I want to end the war on drugs; Pat Buchanan wants to step it up. But Tuesday night you had two people saying, well, we need a new prescription drug program to work just as well as Medicare has worked in the past, which is not well at all, but we are just going to argue about the little details of it; same thing with education; same thing with bombing Yugoslavia, or whatever they are going do to make Milosevic go away. What we need are three different points of view, not just two people arguing over the details.

LADUKE: Can I clarify Ralph's position?

BROWNE: Sure.

BATTISTA: Yes.

LADUKE: Ralph doesn't actually support an increase in income tax, what Ralph supports is a more equitable tax base, and that right now about 73 percent of the federal tax base is paid by individuals and only 13 percent by corporations, and we think that corporations should pay their fair share, and that the rich should pay their fair share, and that we shouldn't have to be taking care of the rest of them.

BROWNE: Well, corporations are made up of people, and so you tax corporations, you're taxing the shareholders.

LADUKE: I wouldn't say that Wal-Mart is necessarily accountable to the people.

FOSTER: If I may get in on this debate?

BATTISTA: Yes, we segued into -- go ahead.

FOSTER: Yes. Well, actually the reason that Mr. Buchanan is not allowed in the debates is because he's bringing in issues that the other candidates are not addressing, and that's -- the primary one is, of course, going back to our Constitution, which is the best instructional guide for governing this country. The candidates -- the two main candidates are talking about which one will give the most money to education. The answer is to get the federal government out of education altogether, there is no authority whatsoever in our Constitution that gives the federal government the right to fund, influence or control public education.

More than that, we need to boot UNESCO, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization out of the business of educating our children. Another issue we don't hear addressed is immigration. You know, they talk about the health cost care and the number of insured, and Social Security and taxes, education -- all of these are impacted by immigration, both legal, and illegal especially, and until we address...

BATTISTA: Let me interrupt here just a second -- let me interrupt just a second, because we are throwing out a bunch of issues that I -- and I do want to explore them a little bit further on in the show, but I also do want to continue to pursue the issue of inclusion in the debates, so hold on just a second. And I know Winona LaDuke has a plane to catch, so I have to say good-bye to her, and I thank you very much for joining us. In fact, I wish you could stay longer.

LADUKE: Thanks for your call. And do consider some of the options for recovering democracy from the Debate Commission so we can have a larger voice. Thank you.

BATTISTA: All right, thanks very much. And let me just put the other two on hold here for just a second and bring in John Scardino, who is media director for the Commission on Presidential Debates. John, thank you for joining us today.

Let me clarify something with you.

JOHN SCARDINO, MEDIA DIRECTOR, COMMISSION ON PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES: It's my pleasure.

BATTISTA: Was Ralph Nader not admitted the other night just simply because he didn't have an invited ticket, or simply because the commission didn't want to deal with third-party candidates?

SCARDINO: Bobbie, to be honest with you, I wasn't at that debate. I've been down here since Sunday helping to prepare for the vice presidential debate, so I don't really know the details, and I'd be uncomfortable commenting about that. But essentially, it's my understanding that the tickets that we have are specifically for the debate hall, it seems unclear to me from what -- just what I've been reading in the papers about what the ticket was that Mr. Nader had that he thought he had access to. But the only tickets that we give out are for the debate hall, where the debate takes place, and those tickets are very clearly nontransferable, so that's all I can really say on that.

BATTISTA: All right, let me ask you this then, does the Debate Commission feel like perhaps their criteria is a bit too stringent, are you constantly reviewing it?

SCARDINO: We are constantly reviewing it, and I think that that's a very good point, a very good question, that -- one of the reasons that we have the criteria that we do this year as opposed to what we had in 1996 is that back in '96 it was kind of a long list of 15 or 16 different factors that we use to assess whether a candidate might be invited to participate, and those criteria were different than what they were in 1992.

The object with the criteria that we announced this year -- in fact, we announced them in January, so almost a year ago -- we announced that there would be three simple things: you had to be constitutionally eligible, which meant you had to be 35 years old, et cetera; you had to be on enough ballots to have a mathematical chance in the Electoral College; and the third criteria is that you had to be polling at roughly 15 percent or higher as of September 26. So we didn't apply that criteria until the end of the campaign, in late September, when we looked at where all the candidates were standing in the polls, and at that point we invited the candidates that were polling at 15 percent or higher. So I'm...

BATTISTA: OK, I want to ask you more about that.

SCARDINO: Sure, just to directly answer your question, the idea was to have a clear and bright line this year so that all candidates would understand what goals that they had to meet in order to be invited to participate in these debates, and I just want to emphasize that that was announced back in January, but they were not applied until the end of September.

BATTISTA: I want to pursue this with you just a little bit more, John, if I can. I've got to take a quick break here, though, so we'll continue when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BREAKING NEWS)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BATTISTA: Welcome back. It is a very remarkable day in Yugoslavia, by the way, and events are unfolding quickly there. We will return you to Wolf Blitzer and the newsdesk as soon as we can for more developments there.

In the meantime, we'll continue to talk about our topic today, which is including third-party candidates in the debate.

And, John Scardino, if I could, one last question to you: Is there room for compromise here? Are you, at least, discussing the idea, perhaps, of including third-party candidates in at least one of the debates?

SCARDINO: Bobbie, I don't really think that we can, quite honestly, because what the law requires is that, if you're going to host a debate, then you must announce well in advance what your criteria are; and once those criteria are announced, I don't think -- I'm not sure about this, I'm not a lawyer, but...

BATTISTA: I don't mean this year. I mean in the future.

SCARDINO: I'm sorry. We review, after every election cycle, after every series of debates, and the one thing that I would ask and encourage your viewers and participants here to do that might be helpful is to visit our Web site at debates.org. There's a great deal of information about how we came to the criteria that we have; there' information there about the establishment of the commission and we fully disclose who we are and what we're all about.

BATTISTA: All right; John Scardino, thank you very much for joining us today. Let me do a couple of e-mails quickly; from Gill (ph): "It is unconscionable that a Democracy would not only ignore legal, competing ideologies, but physically bar somebody with a legal ticket from watching. Josef Stalin would be proud."

Darryl (ph) in Oregon says, "We need a third party that is not on the extreme end as the ones we have now. We need a third party that takes its ideas from all other parties and represents what the majority of the American people want. This would be a true centrist party and would break the duopoly of the two major parties."

OK, let's try to discuss a couple of issues quickly, here, with our two candidates. Let's go, first, to what's happening in the headlines right now as we watch the events unfold in Yugoslavia.

Harry Browne, if you were president, what would be your involvement, if any, in this situation.

BROWNE: None whatsoever. It is none of our business. It is amazing that our politicians think that they are capable, not only of running our lives, not only taking half of our incomes in federal, state and local taxes, but that they're also capable of running the lives of the Serbian citizens.

Who died and made our people the rulers of the world? We have no business over there telling those people how to live. We have no business trying to decide our elections when we don't open our own elections up to everybody who might be qualified to run.

BATTISTA: But do we have an obligation to assist in the peace and stability of that region? I mean, would you get involved in the sense that you might talk with Russian President Putin and, you know, try to get him involved?

BROWNE: No, no. You have a right as an American citizen to give money to anyone you want, anywhere in the world. You have a right to go fight for any government or any revolutionary movement you want. You should not be prevented from doing any of those things.

But our government should not force you to pay for what Bill Clinton wants or what George Bush wants or what Al Gore wants. Our government should not force you to fight for a foreign government, to fight and die on foreign soil.

This is how wars begin -- world wars begin -- is by something happening in a country like Serbia, and somebody going in on one side, a superpower on the other side, and another power and another power -- and the next thing you know, you have a world war. That's how World War I started, it's pretty much how World War II started, also.

BATTISTA: Ezola Foster, what would a Buchanan administration do in this situation?

FOSTER: Well, first of all, I have to agree with Mr. Browne on much of what he has said. Secondly, under a Buchanan administration, our military would not fight under foreign authority and certainly not be accountable to any foreign government; and we would not have our troops fighting as peace-keepers for NATO.

America's military exists for one principle reason, and that's to defend America and to fight and win America's wars; and it's very, very important that we get back to this. No more of these undeclared wars. That is why it's so important that we get back to our Constitution; and as far as helping other countries, we would certainly work with our allies and, in this case, we would provide diplomatic and logistical assistance, but we would not have our military risk limb and life to fight a war or a conflict that actually can best be handled by the European forces.

BATTISTA: What would be the criteria for U.S. forces to get involved, then, in an unstable region?

FOSTER: When the interests of America is threatened, when Americans' lives are threatened, that would be our interest.

BROWNE: America should intervene only if America itself is threatened, not the national interests of America as defined by George Bush or Al Gore, as they tried to do Tuesday night.

But all you have to do is to look back at history. We went into Panama to end drug dealing there and killed a lot of innocent people, and killed a lot of Americans and kidnapped Noriega. Well, drug dealing is going on full-scale in Panama today.

We intervened in the Philippine elections, to get rid of the corruption of Marcos; corruption is going full-scale in the Philippines today. Show me some place around the world where protecting our national interests has actually delivered on any promise that the politicians have made.

War is just another big government program. Our government is no more efficient when it is trying to settle world affairs than it is when it tries to stamp out drugs or poverty in this country. Government simply does not deliver on its promises, and we should quit putting our sons and daughters at risk; quit putting our nation at risk on the false premises that our government, that Bill Clinton, that Al Gore, that George Bush can just say the right words and bring peace to some region of the world.

Nobody can do that from America.

BATTISTA: Since you both, essentially, agree on this, let's move on to another topic.

Let me take a question from the audience, Mark (ph):

MARK: Yes; historically, there have been two parties that represented the candidates. Is that system outmoded, or should the system be reformed?

FOSTER: I think...

BATTISTA: I'm sorry, Ezola, go ahead. FOSTER: I think Carrol Quigley, the man described by Mr. Clinton as his mentor, the Georgetown University professor in his book "Tragedy and Hope" stated quite explicitly what the two-party system is all about.

When he said that the notion that there should be two parties with opposing ideals is a foolish idea and that, sure, the electorate can throw the rascals out every four years, but nothing will change. Whatever party is in, with these two, they will pursue the same policies. And that is what we're having today. You have the Republicans and the Democrats colluded together -- the WTO, NAFTA and GATT and all of these trade policies which really have hurt American workers and America's best interests.

So, there is no difference, when you take a look at where they are on the issues; the issue of life, for example, with this RU pill that's out now to make abortion even easier. You know, the constitution is quite clear: No person may be deprived of life without due process of law.

And yet, since 1973 over 38 million little ones have had their life deprived while cold-blooded murderers have due process of law before their life is lost.

BATTISTA: We covered two topics there. So, Harry, let me have you address dismantling the two party system and then, also, the issue of abortion.

BROWNE: Yes; the reason we have a two-party system is because the Republicans and Democrats are in power. They pass campaign finance laws which make it very difficult for third parties to raise money to compete with them while they take the money from the taxpayers and the federal treasury to run their campaigns.

We have a two-party system because two parties are in power in the state legislatures, and they pass ballot-access laws to make it very difficult for third parties to get on the ballot. We have a two- party system because the debate commission is owned by the two parties and they get special exemptions from the law -- from the Internal Revenue Code, from the campaign finance laws, to stage political advocacy on the part of the Republicans and Democrats, and this makes it very, very difficult.

But I'm happy to report that the Libertarian party is still 2 1/2 times the size it was four years ago. We're growing rapidly; I think in another two or four years, we will be strong enough, big enough, well-enough financed that we will be able to compete on an equal footing with the Republicans and Democrats.

And when we do, people will have a small-government alternative. Tuesday night they heard no proposals whatsoever to make government smaller, to relieve you from the income tax, to release you from Social Security, to end the insane war on drugs -- and yet, these are views that are held by a great many Americans, and they were not represented in that debate. We will provide that representation when we're big enough and strong enough, and I think that that's coming very soon. But it all begins with my getting as many votes as I can this year. That will pave the way for us to elect a Libertarian president in the near future.

BATTISTA: And quickly on the issue of abortion.

BROWNE: On the issue of abortion, I am 100 percent opposed to abortion, but government never delivers on any promises. We are not going to stamp our abortion through government. We are going to do it through education and persuasion. But government we can help by repealing the restrictive adoption laws that shut off one of the alternatives to abortion, and we need to repeal the income tax so families can keep one parent at home if they choose a parent that can teach the children the values that might lead to something other than unwanted pregnancies.

But government is never the answer to any social program. And so no matter how much I want to get rid of abortions, I am not going to work to make the government do it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(INTERRUPTED BY COVERAGE OF BREAKING NEWS)

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