BE PART OF THE COALITION OF THE UNWILLING.

If the two-party system is what the voters want, Reason's Eric Boehm argues they should get it, good and hard.

I'm saying there should be more debates. Maybe two or three per week between now and the election. Seriously. The debates shouldn't be seen as horrifying divertissements from more sanitized campaign trail news, and they certainly shouldn't be canceled because they show Trump and Biden in such a raw, unfiltered light. This is the choice we have, America, and we should not look away.

There should be more debates because the two major parties that vomited up these candidates into your living room deserve to be humiliated. Take away the pundits, surrogates, and teams of public relations professionals who help sell Trump and Biden as normal, competent adults capable of holding any position of power, and you're left with what you saw on Tuesday night.

There should be more debates because Americans should have to stew in this porridge of hot garbage until they cry out for alternatives—alternatives that are kept off the stage by rigged qualification rules set by the Commission on Presidential Debates, which is itself a creation of the two major parties. (After watching Tuesday's display, you can at least understand why Democrats and Republicans are so keen on excluding anyone who might be even moderately coherent.)

There should be more debates because Americans need to confront the fact that Trump and Biden didn't merely have an "off night" on Tuesday. Their performances were every bit as calculated and cynical as they were unserious and exhausting. They were, believe it or not, trying their best.

Yes, and it's enough to make anyone capable of independent thought wonder how to square "The American Presidency is the single most important position in the World" with "The two major parties heaved up this." It's only a binary choice as long as you let it be, dear reader.

There should be more debates for roughly the same reason that we should abolish tax withholding. Though originally a well-intentioned idea pushed by none other than Milton Friedman, having taxes automatically withheld from paychecks means that most Americans don't experience the reality of paying roughly one-third of what they earn to the federal government every year. If we could only force people to write massive checks to the IRS every year, the theory goes, more people would feel differently about proposals to increase the size and cost of government. Likewise, if only we had more presidential debates, perhaps we could awaken more of America to the ruinous consequences of having only two viable political parties in a country of 325 million people.

Every time Biden and Trump speak, they undermine the rotting system that put them in front of the cameras, so they should be invited to speak, literally ad nauseum, until we can't take it anymore.

There might be elements of the governance structure and voting procedures established in the Federal Constitution that make a competition between two parties more likely than a competition among multiple parties, although the recent tendency of both parties to cater more to a base (that might strongly reject any deviation from its preferences) than to attract the median voter likely isn't helping.

I wrote the above before Our President admitted to an infection with the Wuhan coronavirus.  It's unlikely that he, or his party, will be more likely to cater to median voters as his experience runs its course.  The people deserve to see the other choices on offer.