The Commission on Presidential Debates should invite Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, the presidential candidates of the Libertarian and Green parties, to wrangle alongside Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton at its upcoming political slugfests.
That's the opinion of Matt Welch, an editor-at-large at the libertarian monthly Reason, who says the American political system will benefit if the commission allows the minor party candidates to lock horns with the Republican and Democratic heavyweights.
"The commission and its overlords are right to ponder a tweak to the rules, if for no other reason than to fulfill its stated mission," Welch writes in an opinion piece in The Los Angeles Times.
"[It] reads in part 'to ensure that debates, as a permanent part of every general election, provide the best possible information to viewers and listeners."'
Welch adds:
"You cannot provide the best possible information by limiting the debate to Trump and Clinton — the two most disliked presidential nominees in modern history … Just as important, both major-party candidates back policies that are uncommonly extreme in an American context.
"Trump's hostility toward the free movement of human beings may get the most ink, but Clinton has embraced an economic agenda arguably to the left of anything we've seen since George McGovern."
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