ASHINGTON - The debate over debates, a quadrennial feature of American presidential elections, is getting off to an unusually early start.
Ordinarily the debate about debates begins after the summer political conventions. It customarily includes taunts, threats, and tantrums. Usually there are legal suits, a dollop of name-calling, some protests, even boycotts. There is also a lot of high-minded talk about ''the American people.''
This is a year that already has been contaminated by the word ''frontloading.'' It is a favorite of the politico class, a word that not one ordinary person would ever use in ordinary conversation at, say, the supermarket (where it might be confused with the sensible idea of stocking all the sale items at the front of the store). The word can be vaguely translated into English as ''doing things quite a bit earlier than sane people would choose to.''
So this year, where the primaries and caucuses were frontloaded, so, too, is the debate about debates.
Nader kicks things off
The debate about debates got off to a fast start this month when Ralph Nader mounted a legal challenge to the presidential debates, including one to be held in Boston, that are on the calendar for the fall. His argument: The corporate contributions that underwrite the debates constitute an unfair private subsidy to the major party candidates.
Members of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Commission on Presidential Debates barely reacted. They believe that Federal Election Commission regulations provide them with sufficient cover. ''This is not the first time we've heard these charges,'' said Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., a former Republican National Committee chairman who is cochairman of the debate commission.
The debate commission is run by political professionals; the other cochairman is Paul G. Kirk Jr., the former Democratic National Committee chairman. But the commission also has a very difficult political problem. Creating a format for debates that is fair to all - to the candidates and to the public - is no easy task.
Already, 216 people have filed for president, and it's a good bet that 212 of them are virtually unknown to the American people. Nobody argues that all 216 should be invited. The difficulty is finding a format that allows meaningful exchanges among candidates who have a meaningful chance of taking the oath of office.
This year's formula attempts to apply the precision of science to the art of politics, all in the service of justice - an ideal that defies both science and art. The debates will be open to candidates who are supported by at least 15 percent of the public in five national polls. Under these criteria, the candidates who mounted the three most important modern challenges to the two parties - George C. Wallace in 1968, John B. Anderson in 1980, and Ross Perot in 1992 - would have been included.
So on Tuesday, Sept. 26, the debate commission will do the math and decide whether invitations for the first debate, scheduled for Oct. 3 and sponsored by the John F. Kennedy Library and the University of Massachusetts at Boston, will be sent to anyone besides Vice President Al Gore and Governor George W. Bush of Texas. The same process will be followed for subsequent presidential debates at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., and Washington University in St. Louis, and for the vice presidential debate at Centre College in Danville, Ky.
Competing theories
The commission clearly takes the viewpoint that candidates who can't compete can't debate. Nader, who was nominated by the Green Party, and Patrick J. Buchanan, who is likely to be the Reform Party nominee, take the opposite view: Candidates who can't debate can't compete.
The debates provide a platform for third-party candidates to take a stand and make an impression. During the last three election years, audiences for the televised debates have ranged from 50 million to 97 million people.
But, said Kirk, ''these are not whimsical terms that someone dreamed up.'' The Federal Election Commission requires that invitations be offered according to objective standards.
Yet there remain a lot of aggrieved parties. Most of them are predictable, especially because they are predictably aggrieved.
But there are two other angry groups. One is the Teamsters Union, which has 1.4 million members. The other is the United Auto Workers, which has 800,000 members. The two unions have held back from making any endorsements. Their principal goal right now is simple: to win debate invitations for Buchanan and Nader. Why? The sessions that begin in Boston in October are the only way they can continue their offensive against liberalized trade with China. The debates matter, and not only to the candidates.
