Perot managed to catch the Republicrats with their pants down. He used the force of his personality to persuade the Bush (41) and Clinton campaigns to allow him to participate in the debates because they figured he was a nutcase that would make a complete fool of himself. What they did not count on was the high level of voter frustration with the two-party system.
Perot scared them so badly they made sure no third-party would be allowed to participate in the Presidential debates. Since 1992, the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) rules have been restructured to eliminate every party with less than 15% in the polls:
"The CPD's third criterion requires that the candidate have a level of support of at least 15% (fifteen percent) of the national electorate as determined by five selected national public opinion polling organizations, using the average of those organizations' most recent publicly reported results at the time of the determination."
http://www.debates.org/pages/candsel2004.html
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks