hat schoolchild fails to understand that his or her team can't make the playoffs unless it wins enough games in season to be ranked a contender? Some teams make it. Others don't. It's that simple and that fair. It's why playoffs take place after competition narrows the field on the road to the championship.
There is a parallel here to the general election debates sponsored by the nonpartisan and nonprofit Commission on Presidential Debates. A winnowing out process is one purpose of our long and expensive presidential campaigns. Well over a hundred candidates declare. Each has multiple opportunities to compete for popular support. From talk shows, speeches, live TV and radio appearances, editorial boards, town meetings, fund-raisers, direct-mail solicitations, Web sites, paid ads, preliminary debates, endorsements, nominating conventions, etc., voters form opinions.
Toward the end of this process, voter opinion surveys reveal the principal contenders for the presidency. Some candidates make it. Others don't. It's that simple and that fair. It's why these debates take place after competition narrows the field on the road to the White House.
Candidates who protest ''But if I'm not in the debates, how can I compete?'' presume the debates exist to launch their campaign for support. They ignore the competitive campaign that preceded their protest. They ignore a schoolchild's sense of fairness about how a team makes the playoffs. They also ignore the central point dictating the need for a line determining candidate eligibility for debate participation - voter education.
At the end of a campaign, voters want and deserve a chance to focus on candidates whom they believe have a realistic chance to win the presidency. It is the commission's mission to provide voters that focus in debate format. To do so, the nonpartisan commission has determined that if independent public opinion research shows a candidate supported for president by 15 percent of surveyed voters, he or she should be considered a principal rival for the office and be invited to debate.
Asking the voter whom he'd like to see in a debate is different from asking whom he'd prefer to see in the White House. The first question is about ''infotainment.'' The second is about governance. It is the second question to which the commission's 15 percent standard applies.
As expected, some argue that 15 percent is too low; others argue too high. The commission believes that 15 percent strikes a fair balance. It eliminated from its 2000 criteria automatic debate invitations to major-party candidates. Yet some third-party candidates have already claimed that the 15 percent criterion is a ''conspiracy'' to deny them a chance to participate. Let's look at four scenarios:
Those arguing that 15 percent is too high should recall that well before the debates of 1992 in which Ross Perot participated, he led both major-party candidates with 40 percent of voters surveyed supporting his candidacy.
A race in which three candidates are tied at 30 percent in the polls clearly would result in all three being considered principal rivals.
If two candidates enjoy 40 percent support but a third trails at 10 percent, would prospective voters realistically view candidate number three as a principal contender? We doubt it.
Finally, assume two candidates are at 35 percent but a third trails at 17 percent. Here, the two leading candidates have twice the popular support of the third. Yet, in striking a fair balance for inclusion, the commission's 15 percent criterion affords the third candidate a place in the debates.
A conspiracy? As sponsor of these debates in the 1970s and 1980s, the League of Women Voters was certainly not conspiring when it applied the 15 percent standard. Dorothy Ridings, then president of the league, has long supported the commission's work, and she is a distinguished member of its board of directors.
The Federal Election Commission requires pre-established, objective debate criteria. The Commission on Presidential Debates' publication of its criteria nine months in advance of the 2000 debates provides ample time for candidates of all parties to compete for voter support. We wish them all well.
The rules of the game are objective, clear, certain, straightforward, and fair. In nine months, independent surveys of America's voters will determine who are the principal rivals for the presidency. The voters' choices will be in the playoffs. We believe every schoolchild would agree that's a fair standard.
Paul G. Kirk Jr. and Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr. are cochairmen of the Commission on Presidential Debates.
