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Saturday Morning News

What Do Americans Think About Presidential Debates?

Aired September 9, 2000 - 9:35 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: This week, the presidential campaign was dominated by the debates, where and when to hold them specifically. Yesterday, the Bush campaign asked for a meeting with the Gore campaign to talk about a new debate schedule.

Time now for our call-in and e-mail segment with our CNN senior political analyst -- boy, it's hard to say all that, Bill. It's too long a title. He's the political maven. How's that?

WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: It'll do.

O'BRIEN: Nice to have you with us. Once again, that phone number to call is 404-221-1855. Our staff of operators is standing by.

Mr. Schneider, good to have you with us.

SCHNEIDER: Good to be here, Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right, let's go to the e-mail, shall we? This one comes from -- I can't remember who it comes from, but let;s go to it, and his name will be at the bottom there:

"Don't you think that George Bush is really hurting himself by seemingly avoiding these debates? I get the impression that he is simply afraid of facing Gore either because he is not a good debater or he does not have a full grasp of the material or issues involved."

That's from Jim Hoffman in Banning, California.

SCHNEIDER: Well, yes. And it turns out that view is shared by a great many Americans, because we polled people just these last few days and asked people, if there are no debates, who do you think would be most to blame? And they blamed George Bush more than they would blame Al Gore, even though Governor Bush said that, you know, he would debate Mr. Gore on "LARRY KING LIVE" here on CNN or on a special edition of NBC "Meet the Press." Nevertheless, the view was the commission has set up these debates and that Mr. Bush ought to participate. So he is not doing well in the debate on debates.

O'BRIEN: All right, let's got to the phone lines. And on tap is our all-time great caller Joe McCutcheon (ph) out of Ellijay, Georgia, who is a strong supporter of one Pat Buchanan. We've seen him around the halls here at CNN every now and again. CALLER: Thank you, Miles.

O'BRIEN: What do you think about, Joe -- let me just ask you a question as long as I've got you on the line.

CALLER: Yes, sir.

O'BRIEN: Should Pat Buchanan be involved in these debates?

CALLER: Yes, Miles, definitely. I think Pat's going to get that $12.6 million matching funds, I think he will make the debates much more exciting. I think definitely, yes, Pat Buchanan needs to be in the debates. And don't give up on him yet. We're going to keep fighting. I think he's going to be back on the campaign trail next week from his gall bladder surgery and be ready to go.

But my question for Bill is, Bill, with the presidential impact, what will be the impact of the presidential, President Clinton's, veto of the death tax on the presidential and congressional elections?

SCHNEIDER: Well we're not seeing any big impact right now. I mean, he vetoed a big tax cut bill a year ago and there was -- I mean, you might have thought he'd pay a price for that because it was a big tax cut that Congress passed. And there was no discernible impact on his job rating, on Mr. Gore's fortunes, nothing. And we're not -- I'm not reading any feedback form his veto of the congressional cut of the estate tax. So, so far its zero, zilch.

I should say that Mr. Buchanan had some good fortune this week because the staff of the Federal Elections Commission recommended that he be given -- he, not the alternative Reform candidate John Hagelin -- that Buchanan be given the $12.6 million in federal subsidies. That has to be approved by the commission. It may go to court, but that's a first step.

O'BRIEN: All right, Mr. Schneider, back to the e-mail box we go. And here's the query:

"I'm sick and tired of watching George W. telling the American people where he is going to show up and where he is not. How can we ensure that future presidential debates have a standard format where most of us, the American people, that is, have an opportunity to see the debates?"

That's from a gentleman by the name of B. Bernall at AOL.

SCHNEIDER: You can't ensure it, because frankly the debate commission is set up by the two major parties. They have no authority in the matter. There is nothing in the Constitution that says there have to be debates. In fact, there weren't from 1964 through 1972, and then the tradition got back in gear again in 1976.

Since 1988, there's been this debate commission. It's formed by the two major parties, and they've formulates this set of rules about who will be included and not included in the debates. But they have no legal standing. The candidates have to agree to participate, and in fact, you know, Mr. Bush said he was only going to participate in one commission debate; he had an alternative format.

There is no way to force them to show up. The only thing you can do is make it clear, as I think was made clear to Governor Bush, if he doesn't show up, there will be a political price to pay.

O'BRIEN: All right, let's go back to the phone lines.

Sarah is on the line. She joins us this morning from Florence, Alabama.

Good morning to you.

CALLER: Good morning.

SCHNEIDER: Good morning.

O'BRIEN: Do you have a question for Bill?

CALLER: Yes, I do, I have a question for Bill.

O'BRIEN: Fire away.

CALLER: I'm trying to find out if there's going to be some insurance plan to come up that a person like me -- I'm self-employed, 58 years old, and I cannot purchase any kind of insurance for myself at all because I have pre-existing conditions.

SCHNEIDER: Well, that is something that a lot of Americans are concerned about, and the Democrats, Mr. Clinton, tried to do something about that in his original health care plan but it turned out to be a very complicated matter.

There have been proposals that all Americans ought to have the same options that federal employees have to be able to buy various health insurance policies. that is very -- along with education, health insurance is the No. 1 issue in the country today, and both candidates are trying to come up with plans, if not necessarily to make this happen immediately -- I'm not going to say that you're going to have the option of buying insurance as soon as the new president is elected; it could take a matter of years. I'm sure that's not good news for you, but what they're trying to do is step by step, as Al Gore says, make insurance more widely available to all Americans.

But remember that President Clinton proposed a system where he held up a card and said every American will have the right to have health insurance under this plan, and Congress, and I must say the American public, were very nervous about it because they thought it would be too much government regulation. So we're going to have to go step by step in that direction.

O'BRIEN: All right, let's get one more e-mail in. This final one comes from Mark Nipper in Henderson, Tennessee -- a little bit of political trivia for our trivia buffs out there:

"Has there ever been a presidential election in which the candidate with the most popular vote lost the election?" SCHNEIDER: Well, there have been a couple, actually, in the late 19th century. I think one was 1876. I believe Samuel Tilden won the popular vote, but he didn't get elected. Rutherford B. Hayes, I believe was the president in that year, and then, I think, again in 1888, the Grover Cleveland-Benjamin Harrison election. In the late 19th century, what you had were excruciatingly close elections between two very, very closely balanced parties, Democrats and Republicans. Usually, 10,000, 20,000 votes made the difference. And when you have an election that's that close around the country, it can happen that a candidate loses the popular vote and wins the electoral college.

I mean, just think about it. You can win all the electoral votes in California by carrying the state of California by 10 votes, and then you can win other states by huge majorities, but, you know, it doesn't do you any good. So it is theoretically possible for that to happen, but the elections -- the popular vote has to be very, very close. And that's happened twice, I think, in American history.

O'BRIEN: You know, some would suggest that was a glaring flaw in the founding fathers' thinking. I mean, would you go along with that?

SCHNEIDER: It is a problem, and there are a lot of people who say we should correct it. But, you know, there's an old saying: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And it hasn't been broke in this country for about a hundred years. There was no huge public outcry back in the late 19th century when these things happened because you had a very different kind of political system and public opinion didn't have the same weight that it has today.

I can tell you something. Miles, if this happened again this year or any time in the near future, the Constitution would be changed like that, because Americans would be outraged.

O'BRIEN: OK, good point.

Bill Schneider, always a pleasure having you with us, and we appreciate you being such a font of political information in a very extemporaneous manner. We appreciate it.

SCHNEIDER: A font, I appreciate that.

O'BRIEN: See you soon.

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