Presidential Debates -- the 2008 Schedule

The Commission on Presidential Debates has announced the lineup and format for the 2008 presidential debates -- once the Democrats and Republicans have settled on their tickets.

The first debate will be held in about 10 months, on Friday, Sept. 26, 2008, on the University of Mississippi campus in Oxford, Miss.

Other sites for the debates include Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., on Thursday, Oct. 2, 2008; Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., on Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2008; and Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., on Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2008.

St. Louis will host the vice presidential debate. The other cities will host the second and third presidential debates.

Noteworthy for its omission is New Orleans, which has hosted conventions since being devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 but was rejected as a presidential debate site because it hasn't sufficiently recovered from the storm and the flooding.

Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, who is expected to face a tough fight for re-election next year, says the commission has “lost sight of the public interest it was chartered to serve.”

Landrieu, of course, is free to say and believe what she wants about how New Orleans was "slighted" in the selection of debate sites, but I can see both sides.

Democratic co-chairman Paul Kirk reportedly claimed the city wasn't ready to host a high-profile event like one of the debates, and Republican co-chairman Frank Fahrenkopf reportedly said sites were selected based on technical factors and geographical balance and that politics played little or no role.

But, in the words of Forrest Gump, I think both are going on at the same time.

(Besides, the "geographical balance" bit doesn't really hold up for me. St. Louis, Nashville and Oxford, Miss., are from generally the same part of the country, and St. Louis is the only one [but just barely] that is west of the Mississippi River. Those three cities are even in the same time zone. Only Hempstead, N.Y., is in the Eastern time zone.)

Fahrenkopf is wrong if he thinks politics didn't influence the decision. Politics influences everything.

On the other hand, everyone saw how New Orleans was hammered by the hurricane, and we all know how difficult it has been for the city to bounce back. It's plausible to believe that it isn't ready to provide food and lodging for the thousands of people who come to a city hosting a debate. Including the candidates and the Secret Service agents who are assigned to them.

So, if the commission was simply latching on to a convenient excuse not to select New Orleans, it has one that is practically bullet-proof.

It would be nice to hold a debate in New Orleans. It reminds me of the talk six years ago of holding the next Super Bowl in New York in support of that city following the 9-11 attacks.

In both instances, the suggestions represent a desire for supportive gestures that are or were easier to achieve as abstract recommendations. In reality, there are too many obstacles.

For example, playing the Super Bowl in the Meadowlands in February 2002 would have meant traffic and a large crowd at an outdoor arena on what may have been a cold, possibly snowy, evening -- which would have made great TV but would have been a logistical nightmare for a city still on edge after the collapse of the Twin Towers less than five months earlier.

The presidential and vice presidential nominees won't be debating in New Orleans, but both parties need to define what the federal role will be in New Orleans in the next administration.

A country that is willing to spend $1 billion a week to capture, then lose, then re-capture, then re-lose much of the same territory in Iraq over and over and over again should be willing to invest money and manpower into rebuilding a city that has been made to suffer for more than two years.

And hopefully allow many of its displaced citizens to return.

That's the battle Landrieu needs to fight in defense of her Senate seat.