MERICAN PRESIDENTIAL campaigns begin as crucibles, designed to steadily narrow the field to the two major party candidates, who will face each other on a Boston stage tonight. But the debate itself should not be limited to a narrow band of issues just because the candidates who enlivened the primary season have departed. Tonight, we hope the echoes of those other campaigns - and of Americans who are not represented by any PACs or parties - can still be heard in the issues that are raised by the debate.
If John McCain were still in the race, for example, it is certain that campaign finance reform would get better treatment than the empty blandishments we have heard from Al Gore and George W. Bush thus far. A direct question to the candidates might be: Will you two gentlemen follow the lead of Hillary Clinton and Rick Lazio in New York and reject the use of soft money for the rest of the campaign?
Democrat Bill Bradley's voice would resonate with a question about race, still this nation's most vexing domestic issue. Closely alligned to that are questions about poverty, an issue lost almost completely in this dot-com campaign. The truth is that even with the paltry increase in the minimum wage that Bush and Gore both now support, thousands of Americans will still be below the poverty line after working at full-time jobs. Gentlemen, what kind of message does that send to poor Americans about the value of work, and what are you going to do about it?
Ralph Nader, whose Green Party campaign attracted 12,000 paying fans to his Boston rally last weekend, might query what is the appropriate role for government in consumer safety typified by the Firestone tire debacle. Is it simply to investigate after 101 deaths or try to prevent them with (gasp!) government regulation?
Sadly, one would have to reach back to Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone's almost-campaign to find the echo of this question, but it needs to be asked nonetheless: Why do you both insist on continuing the flawed and inhumane death penalty when its fairness has been so clearly discredited in dozens of cases this year alone?
Although both campaigns have aired positions on the costly and improbable missile defense plan (both of them misguided), neither has addressed a foreign policy challenge much closer to home - an appropriate one given the debate location near the John F. Kennedy Library: What is your plan for America's engagement with Cuba when Fidel Castro dies?
Finally, a question from our senior senator, Edward M. Kennedy, whose bill to correct the injustices in the 1996 immigration ''reform'' act has been bottled up by Republicans in the Senate: Who is still missing from your America?
