Editorial: Two is enough at first presidential debate

In the 2012 presidential election, candidates not named Barack Obama or Mitt Romney took a combined 1.7 percent  of the vote.

This year the two leading third-party candidates, Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein, are polling at 8.8 percent and 2.8 percent, respectively.

Yet neither has been invited to join the first presidential debate on Monday because neither has reached the threshold of 15 percent established by the Commission on Presidential Debates. And neither will be invited to subsequent debates unless their support increases dramatically in coming days.

Is that fair? Johnson doesn’t think so. He calls the system “rigged.” Stein agrees, calling it “undemocratic.” Most third-party candidates say the 15 percent threshold is too high. Johnson takes a different tack, arguing that he could reach that threshold if only pollsters asked about a four-way race before they asked about a two-way race, a claim that polling experts dispute.

But the commission has good reason to stick to its guns. It has placed its cutoff at a reasonable level and has maintained it since 2000. Tampering with it now would be changing the rules in the middle of a game.

There is no hue and cry for a lower threshold, even in future years. That message was received this year by a well-funded group of former governors, senators, Cabinet officials and businessmen who lobbied for rules changes in hopes of attracting a centrist third-party candidate. The group bought advertising, had its members deliver speeches and visited editorial boards. In the end, it had about as much impact as the proverbial tree falling in an empty forest.

With just six weeks until the election, it’s time to zero in on the people with a plausible chance of winning: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Both should be put on the hot seat and pressed to provide substantive answers to tough questions.

With more people on stage, the answers get shorter, the questions get fewer, or both. That is what happened with early Democratic primary debates, when there were five candidates, and throughout the Republican debates, which featured multiple people on stage.

This is not to say that third-party candidates don’t have important things to say. Johnson, in particular, has a way of cutting through divides between Republicans and Democrats, with pro-trade and fiscally prudent positions combined with support for abortion rights and same-sex marriage.

But contrary to what many enthusiasts argue, third-party candidates are not being held back by their absence from debates. No third-party candidate in the past century has come close to winning a presidential election, even when there were no debates.

The debate commission, for its part, is not without its share of blame. It is structured as a bipartisan body — always co-chaired by a former luminary from each party — rather than a nonpartisan one, such as the League of Women Voters. This invites criticism that it is out to maintain a two-party duopoly.

The commission is also too quick to allow the two campaigns to work out rules among themselves that put restrictions on the moderators. But it is right to set a threshold for participation. And it is right to stick to it.