Bush's Weasling on Debates Comes To Light

We knew that for the Bush/Cheney people to agree to three debates, including the town-hall style meeting with questions from a live audience, there must be hidden provisos that shift the ground in El Presidente's direction. And sure enough!

The "memorandum of understanding" between the two presidential camps gets a good going over in the NYTimes today:

"The memorandum of understanding negotiated by the campaigns also includes an unusual level of prescriptions, particularly over the town-hall-style debate scheduled for Oct. 8, which some say undermines the idea of a voter-driven discussion. It states several times that audience participation, outside the forum questioners, is prohibited, and calls for visible timing lights, so viewers will know if someone is filibustering. 'The interesting thing here is the lengths they go to to restrict the questioning at the town hall,' said Martin Plissner, a debate expert and former CBS News political director. 'It makes the whole process look kind of ridiculous. It will have to be extremely mechanical.' The agreement includes four pages of provisions -- up from one in 2000 -- about the town-hall-style debate, including a requirement that the moderator, Charles Gibson, present to the campaigns by Oct. 1 a question-selection method. Mr. Gibson is to ensure that the audience members pose equal numbers of questions on foreign policy, domestic security and other domestic issues; alternate the candidates to whom their queries are directed; and not alter their pre-selected questions on the fly .... 'If any audience member poses a question or makes a statement that is in any material way different than the question that the audience member earlier submitted to the moderator for review, the moderator will cut off the questioner and advise the audience that such nonreviewed questions are not permitted,' the agreement reads."

Ain't it interesting that the Bush people are much more afraid of the general public than they are of the cowed national press corps? Clear as a bell that they can't stand the thought of a regular citizen asking El Presidente a question he can't answer, or would rather not be caught side-stepping.

So concerned are these little weasels that for the first time in presidential debate history, the Bush/Cheney people are asking the officials of the Commission on Presidential Debates, as well as the four moderators for all the debates, to sign the memorandum of agreement as well.

"Several of the journalists scheduled to moderate the debate expressed uncertainty about signing, which the agreement says they must do seven days before their scheduled debate 'in order to evidence his or her understanding and acceptance of, and agreement to, the provisions hereof,' or else the campaigns will pick someone else. 'I don't think that news people like the idea of signing onto documents negotiated by politicians,' said Thomas E. Mann, a scholar at the Brookings Institution with expertise in debates."

They want to make sure that Charles Gibson knows he has to shut up any citizen who steps out of line and asks something that didn't get scripted in advance.

What a fraud on the American people! But then consider the source.