Presidential Debate Moderators Named
- Friday 16 September, President
Jim Lehrer, Executive Editor and Anchor, The NewsHour, PBS
The University of Mississippi, Oxford - Thursday 2 October, Vice President
Gwen Ifill, Senior Correspondent, The NewsHour, and Moderator and Managing Editor, Washington Week, PBS
Washington University, St. Louis, MO. - Tuesday 7 October, President
Tom Brokaw, Special Correspondent, NBC News Belmont University, Nashville, TN
- Wednesday 15 October, President
Bob Schieffer, CBS News Chief Washington Correspondent, and Host, Face the Nation
Hofstra University, Hempstead, N.Y.
In 1988, the non-partisan League of Women Voters withdrew their debate sponsorship after the George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis campaigns went around their backs and presented a joint list of demands on how the debates would be conducted. This "memorandum of agreement" effectively shut out any third party challenger (emphasis added):
One of the most effective means of fulfilling that responsibility is through nationally televised joint appearances conducted between the Presidential and Vice Presidential nominees of the two major political parties during general election campaigns.
In response, the League withdrew, saying in a written statement (pdf) that "the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter."
According to a USP commenter, in 2004 " the Libertarian and Green Party candidates, who were on nearly all state ballots for the presidential seat, were summarily refused participation in the presidential debates by the privately-held “Committee for the Presidential Debate (CPD), who restricted media access and had the audacity to have these two fine Americans (Badnarik and Cobb) ARRESTED outside the venue in St. Louis!"