History
The CPD has moderated the 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008 debates. Prior to this, the League of Women Voters moderated the 1976, 1980, 1984 debates before it withdrew from the position as debate moderator with this statement after the 1988 Presidential debates: "the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter." The Commission was then taken over by the Democratic and Republican parties forming today's version of the CPD.
In 2000, the CPD established a rule that for a party to be included in the national debates it must garner at least 15% support across five national polls. This rule is considered controversial as most Americans tune in to the televised national debates and hear only the opinions of the two main parties instead of the opinions of the multiple other U.S. parties, including three others considered "major" for having organization in a majority of the states and a couple dozen others considered "minor".
Washington University in St. Louis has been selected by the Commission to host more Presidential and Vice Presidential Debates than any institution in history.
Read more about this topic: Commission On Presidential Debates
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“One classic American landscape haunts all of American literature. It is a picture of Eden, perceived at the instant of history when corruption has just begun to set in. The serpent has shown his scaly head in the undergrowth. The apple gleams on the tree. The old drama of the Fall is ready to start all over again.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)
“No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.”
—Richard M. Nixon (b. 1913)