CAMPAIGN WATCH : Debate, Please

Every politician prefers a campaign he or she can control to one that’s freewheeling, but campaigns aren’t supposed to be conducted for the convenience of office seekers. They are run instead to give voters the chance to size up and compare the people who seek the public’s trust. Part of that process requires that a candidate’s ideas on the issues of the day be aired and held up to public scrutiny. Here, of course, the interests of the public and of politicians diverge. Politicians stay out of electoral trouble by avoiding controversy. Voters, though, if they are to make informed decisions, must have just the kind of forthrightness that politicians instinctively run from. How can voters’ interests best be served?

Face-to-face confrontations between candidates--debates, in a very loose sense of the word--fall well short of the ideal, but they are vastly preferable to the manipulative TV spots and mailers that politicians now rely on to make their case. The latest Los Angeles Times poll finds a dispiriting 63% of voters worrying that the state is headed in the wrong direction. California’s interests, we believe, demand that Gov. Pete Wilson and his Democratic challenger, Treasurer Kathleen Brown, meet in a series of face-to-face debates. There’s been enough posturing about formats and the rest. Let a respected neutral outside group, like the League of Women Voters, propose a venue that the candidates would agree in advance to accept. Then let them do what the democratic process requires. Let them have the courage to stand up and defend their records and ideas.