Sam Husseini
27 Sep, 2016
Before the faceoff between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, many were pleading that Lester Holt, the NBC anchor and moderator Monday night, to be a "fact checker."
Any delusions in that regard should have been dashed right away as he perpetrated a root falsehood at the very start of the event.Holt claimed that the event was "sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization. The commission drafted tonight's format, and the rules have been agreed to by the campaigns."
While the CPD certainly controls much of the event,
it's not a "nonpartisan" organization at all.
It's about as far from nonpartisan as you can get. It's totally bipartisan.
It's a creation of the Democratic and Republican parties designed to solidify their dominance over the public.
Its origins are in an agreement "Memorandum of Agreement on Presidential Candidate Joint Appearances" from 1985 signed by Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., then Chairman of the Republican National Committee, and Paul G. Kirk Jr., then Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. The two would go on to head the CPD.
But that original agreement didn't even have the word "debates" in it. This Commission is the mechanism by which the Democratic and Republican parties came together to push aside the League of Women Voters, which had organized presidential debates before 1988. It was to make sure that the campaigns, not some independent entity, would decide on moderators, on formats -- and to critically exclude other participants unless both sides agreed. They simply wanted to ensure "televised joint appearances" -- which became emblematic of a pretense of democratic discourse.
Holt's fabrication -- he can't possibly be ignorant of this -- is really a root problem of our politics. All the lies and spin from Clinton and Trump largely manifest themselves because each side excuses them because "the other" is worse. That is, the very "bipartisan" structure of our elections is in large part responsible for the dynamics we're seeing.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-husseini/lester-holt-told-the-firs_b_12221574.html