datasets.iitb.crawledDocs.yn_08Oct08_file_266 Maven / Gradle / Ivy

    Welcome, Guest [ , ] - 95728752 Law.com Debating the Debates: A Q&A With Sidley Austin's Newton Minow Wednesday October 8, 3:03 am ET Ross Todd, The American Lawyer "A vast wasteland" is how former FCC Chairman once described television. Wasteland or not, the medium plays a big part in the political process, especially in a presidential election year. And Minow, senior counsel at Sidley Austin, has been a key figure in bringing election debates into living rooms across the U.S. Minow is a vice chairman of the , the organization that sponsors and produces the quadrennial televised presidential and vice presidential debates. In fact, Minow, , has had a hand in every one of these televised exchanges since the groundbreaking Nixon/Kennedy debates in 1960. His most recent book, is a first-person history, written with longtime collaborator Craig Lamay, a professor at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. Hours before the second of three presidential debates this year, we checked in with Minow to discuss the book, his role on the commission, and this year's hotly anticipated and overly analyzed exchanges. After this year's first presidential debate, you wrote in a letter to the New York Times that "In a test of its will, independence and credibility, the commission last week again put the interests of the voters ahead of the interest of the candidates." Were your Republican colleagues on the board as eager to press on with the debate? It was unanimous. There was no dissent. We are a nonpartisan group. And I've never seen a partisan word said about the debates [by members of the commission]. What did you think of McCain's calls to delay the debate because of the financial crisis? I'd been through this before in 1980 [with] President Carter. We had a third-party candidate who was running over 15 percent, Congressman John Anderson. So we organized the debate and invited Anderson, Reagan and Carter. Carter said, "I'm not going to debate with Anderson," and Reagan said, "I will." So we had a debate with [Anderson and Reagan] first. Then later Anderson fell below the criteria and we had one debate between Carter and Reagan. So, I've been through this and unless the reason was illness or something like that we saw no reason to change [the plan]. The Commission on Presidential Debate's board has a ton of lawyers on it. Is that by design? I think the reason there are so many lawyers is because the whole concept started with a change in the law. There wouldn't have been a debate starting with Kennedy/Nixon in 1960 if there hadn't been a change in the law. And there wouldn't have been debates starting again in 1976 had there not been a change. What were those changes? The Communications Act since the beginning has required that if a broadcaster gives or sells time to one candidate it must give or sell time on the same basis to candidates for the same office ... We have many candidates, particularly for president -- it's not a matter of two or three, it runs in the hundreds. So in 1960 when television was really pretty well established, Adlai Stevenson proposed in a magazine article that there be debates between the candidates on radio and television. I helped Adlai with his testimony. That led to Congress -- as an experiment -- exempting the presidential campaign from the equal time law. In 1976 the League of Women Voters petitioned the Federal Communications Commission ... to take another look at the law because "news events" were exempt from equal time and the league argued that a debate was a "news event." The FCC to its great credit agreed and said that as long as a debate was not organized by a broadcaster, it was not subject to the equal time law. Tell me about the modern process. The commission comes up with the format and the locations and the moderators, but is there anything binding about the commission's decisions? We can't make a candidate participate. It has to all be done by agreement. In the earlier years with the League of Women Voters there was much more involvement in the negotiation. It was like a three-way negotiation. Now through the years the commission has become more and more independent, and we pick the places, the dates, and the moderators without consulting the candidates. There used to be terrible arguments about the dates. Somebody wouldn't want to debate so they'd find a reason why the date didn't work. As FCC chair you called TV a "vast wasteland" and you point out in your new book that televised debates have stoked modern campaign's emphasis on image and the sound bite. Still, I get the impression from your book you still think the way we do debates now is exemplary for the rest of the world. Why? I think the debates are the one time, the only time when the entire huge country from Florida to Alaska and from Maine to Hawaii -– the one time when all of us can share the same live experience of hearing the candidates in a discussion of the issues without the commercials, without the sound bites. I think it's a marvelous opportunity every four years for the voters to learn and understand what the candidates are like, what they stand for. You write in the book, "There will always be scripted lines and canned speeches, but always, always there are moments of authenticity." Have we seen any of those moments yet this year? Less so this time, I think. At least so far, I don't know what will happen tonight or in the third debate. So far I thought that most of the discussion in the first debate and in the vice presidential debate was substantive. We have encouraged -- without success -- to get the candidates to question each other. Our format that we proposed this year allows for that, but the candidates don't do it ... It seems to me at some point a candidate should turn to the other candidate if he feels he has't answered a question and say, "Well here's my answer and I'll give you the rest of my time to answer the question. You didn't answer it." But nobody does that ... The one thing we've learned from the public is the public wants less formality, more spontaneity, and more interchange between the candidates. That sounds exactly like what the candidates don't want. (Laughs) Exactly. The candidates know what's at stake, and they don't want to make a mistake and they're cautious. The guy who's ahead always doesn't want of debate. In the interest of full disclosure here, you're a friend of the guy who's ahead -- former Sidley summer associate Sen. Obama? I am but I check my friendship at the debates. This article first appeared on blog on AmericanLawyer.com. Go to for legal information and services on the web. Sign up today for a free subscription to the . Copyright © 2008 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. - Copyright © 2008 NLP IP Company. All rights reserved.