Retire the Presidential Debate Commission

A few weeks ago I joined the Open Debate Coalition, an effort to make the presidential debates more accountable to voters and in touch with the Internet Age.

The effort kicked off with a letter from Stanford Law Professor Larry Lessig, who also founded the school’s Center for Internet and Society, and asks two things: 

1) Debate footage be authorized for public use.  Currently, it’s owned by the media and prohibited for reuse or repackaging by the public.

2) Townhall debate Internet questions be chosen by the public, and not solely the media.

Signers include political and new media enthusiasts from both sides of the aisle, mostly the Left (Arianna Huffington, Craig Newmark, MoveOn, Roger Hickey), but also right-leaning friends (me, Ruffini, Henke) including latest signer Grover Norquist.

While both candidates (McCain and Obama) blessed the letter with their endorsement of its principles, the debates did not change.  The media and the commission took minimal steps to support the release of debate footage and no steps to reform the debate format.

It’s too late to address the latter problem in this election, but the Commission does have a chance to make right the debate footage issue.  As Norquist said today:

If the Commission wants to show any bit of responsiveness this year, they'll make sure that debate footage is put in the public domain so people can put clips on YouTube and otherwise share key moments without being deemed copyright lawbreakers.

Nonetheless, both presidential candidates’ public endorsement of the open debate coalition principles set the standard for future presidential debates – and hopefully down-ballot debates in the interim. 

Democratizing the debate process -- something the Internet makes more possible -- goes beyond party or ideology.  It's about making the debates more accountable to those it's intended to serve -- the voters.

The candidates updating their approaches in response to the changing force of interactive media isn’t enough.  Debates matter.  And unless the presidential debate commission embraces reform, 2008 could well be their last year sitting on the debate throne.