The candidates and issues in presidential campaigns vary wildly from cycle to cycle, but one constant for decades has been the general-election televised debates. Ever since the two major parties asserted control over the process in 1987 by creating the Commission on Presidential Debates, the number, timing and format of these events have been almost unchanged.
One other feature hasn't changed, but maybe it should. That's the cast of participants, restricted with only one exception to the Republican and Democratic nominees. Only in 1992, when the two parties' campaigns suggested H. Ross Perot's inclusion — a masterstroke by one side and a fatal miscalculation by the other — was the stage widened to permit a third player.
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