Debating society

If not everyone remembers the first presidential debates broadcast to a national audience, people remember the lessons.  In the first debate, John F Kennedy triumphed via television, looking tanned and fit, while Richard Nixon, having refused studio make-up (unlike Kennedy) looked pale and shifty.  This was crystallised by those who had listened it to it solely on radio believing Nixon had won the debate.  Fewer recall that there were no more TV debates of this nature until 1976, when a president - Gerald Ford - lacking in credibility having not been on either a presidential or vice-presidential ticket sought to bolster his flagging support - and blew it.  Before that, Lyndon Johnson did not deign to debate with Barry Goldwater, sealing the Democratic landslide, while Richard Nixon, as incumbent, treating another political maverick, George McGovern, the same way eight years later.  In between, with a Democratic party in disarray following the stepping down of Johnson and the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, the rise of the segregationist Dixecrats, the returning Nixon had no need to debate.
The upcoming British General Election on 7th May looks likely to be even more messy than 1968 was for the USA and throw up far more permutations than the 2010 election.  Believing they lost the chance of an overall majority by consenting to debate with Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg, Conservative Head Office are keeping David Cameron in isolation.  The prime minister himself has been receptive to abandoning TV debates altogether.  First he wouldn't debate unless the Green Party was included in at least one of the TV debates - the Greens though only have one Westminster seat, so the broadcasters felt compelled to bring in the better represented Scottish and Welsh nationalists, as the national parties would be competing against the likes of them too.  This brought a howl of protest from the Northern Irish parties and so, reneging on his pledge to debate if the Greens were included, Cameron took up the cause of the Democratic Unionist Party (the DUP) and others in Ulster.  Having thrown up so many impediments, for Cameron then to declare to the broadcasters that his 'final offer' to "unblock the log jam" (which he himself has created!) was one debate, 90 minutes long, with Labour, the Liberal Democrats, UKIP, the Greens and the Scottish and Welsh nationalists was at such a level of patronising arrogance as to induce nausea.
Frankly, if the three debates do go ahead and the broadcasters 'empty-chair' him, they should leave a very telling empty podium in each of their studios too, to reinforce Cameron's contempt to show his face in public alongside fellow party leaders.  The debates should also be staged in the middle of the election campaign proper to further embarrass Cameron's no-show.  George HW Bush was called 'chicken' when he expressed his reluctance to debate with Bill Clinton and Ross Perot in 1992 - his subsequent performance (including at one point looking at his watch to see how much more of that particular debate he would have to endure) proving why.
The BBC has rightly said that the Northern Ireland parties would be excluded from the TV debates, first of all because the set-up would be even more chaotic than it already is (seven parties will reduce leaders' responses to mere soundbites) and secondly, the Conservative and Unionist Party are the only major party contesting seats in the Six Counties, Labour and Liberal Democrats traditionally fielding no candidates there.  The DUP, sympathetic to Conservative ideals, has threatened to take this ruling to judicial review, imperilling all the debates.  If the leaders' debates do not proceed this year, it could be another 15-16 years before they are revived.