Face time
IF YOU'VE watched the last few debates in the Democratic presidential campaign, you may have found yourself shouting at the screen over the way these forums have been conducted.
In their quest to tease out any possible conflict between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton or John Edwards and Clinton, the moderators and panelists have ignored the other candidates for long periods, leaving them to stand like mannequins as they have tried to foment a fight among the front-runners.
"The Washington television media is fixated on a three-person race, and it's more than a three-person race," Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico told me on Monday. "It's frustrating."
And mind you, Richardson, a former congressman, UN ambassador, and energy secretary, has had it relatively good compared with what's happened to senators Joe Biden and Chris Dodd.
For my money, Biden is consistently one of the best in these forums. With his call for a federal solution, he's the only Democrat with something truly different to say on Iraq. Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden shows his international expertise in answers consistently more complete and complex than those of most rivals.
When he gets to talk, that is. During CNN's Las Vegas debate, his first opportunity didn't come until more than nine minutes into the discussion, and when his first question finally came, it was this inane query: Was the squabble CNN had just provoked between Clinton and Edwards good or bad for the Democrats?
Rounding to the nearest minute, Biden's entire speaking time was slightly more than nine minutes - about half of Obama's 18 minutes. In the last three debates combined, the Delaware senator has spoken for about 22 minutes. Clinton got that much time in the Oct. 30 MSNBC forum alone; on Thursday, she logged another 16 minutes.
Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, and second most senior Democrat on the Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee, is both knowledgeable and refreshingly willing to give a straight answer. As a candidate, he has been a strong voice for granting habeas corpus rights to anyone in US custody, and a forceful proponent of a carbon tax to reduce global warming.
But last week, Dodd, whose campaign keeps the "talk clock" this information is drawn from, was second to last in airtime, at just over seven minutes. His total speaking time for the last three debates is about 26 minutes - a little less than half the 56 minutes Clinton has gotten, a little more than half the 51 minutes Obama has enjoyed.
So is Clinton, by virtue of her eight years as first lady and her seven as a senator, twice as substantive as Dodd, who has served in the Senate for 27 years?
Is Obama, with his three years in the US Senate, really twice as noteworthy as Biden, who has been there since 1973?
I admittedly take US Representative Dennis Kucinich's candidacy less seriously. That said, he holds a credible post as a House member, has a distinct point of view, and commands a certain following.
"The American people are entitled to a debate here," Kucinich protested on Thursday.
He's right: If a candidate meets the criteria to appear in these debates, he deserves to be heard from, not marginalized as Kucinich regularly is.
Further, simply repeating one candidate's charge about another and then asking for amplification or rebuttal, rather than exploring the substantive differences between the rivals, is as silly as it is lazy. Edwards and Obama can offer their critique of Clinton without having Brian Williams or Tim Russert or Wolf Blitzer act as an interrogatory Iago.
A couple of weeks ago, when Dodd expressed frustration about the debates, I asked him why he doesn't say, "Hey, what about us?"
"Because it doesn't make a damn bit of difference," he replied. "It's all about ratings."
Still, if I were one of the regularly slighted hopefuls, I'd go for a Ronald Reagan moment by confronting the next moderator who tried to keep me out of the debate action and demanding fair treatment.
Of course, at irony-impaired CNN, you'd best bring a fog horn along. The day after last week's exclusionary proceedings, Blitzer's CNN show, "The Situation Room," featured a segment on the frustrations the second-tier candidates faced in trying to get noticed in the debate.
As that old pundit Pogo might say, Wolf, we've met the problem - and it's you.
Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com. 