Third Party Candidates Want McCain's Debate Spot

If the success of a rescue plan depends on its wackiness, this one might just work.

A couple of colorful third-party presidential candidates who both hail from Georgia but are ideological opposites are offering to save the first presidential debate. If John McCain goes through with his threat to skip Friday night's first presidential debate at Ole Miss University, Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney has offered to step in and debate Democratic nominee Barack Obama.

"I'm ready right now to travel to Mississippi," says McKinney, whose last most memorable act as a Democratic congresswoman from Georgia in 2006 was allegedly punching a Capitol Hill police officer who mistook her for an ordinary citizen at a security checkpoint.



Cynthia McKinney, the Green Party candidate, at a town hall meeting with students of Walden III High School and Middle School in Racine, Wisc., Sept. 5, 2008. (Photo -- The Associated Press)

Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party presidential nominee, also stands ready to save the day. "Given Senator McCain's political stunt to avoid the debate, I ask that Friday's debate moves forward without him, as I am more than willing to step in to participate," says Barr, who is perhaps best known for his zealous drive to impeach President Bill Clinton. (And, as Mark Hemingway at the National Review reminds us, Barr is also notorious for once shooting off a gun accidentally at a reception. Leave your guns at home on Friday, Bob.)



Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party candidate for president, at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, Sept. 10, 2008. (Photo -- Getty Images)

McKinney was defeated about four months after her brush with police, in August 2006, by primary challenger Hank Johnson, who is now the Democratic congressman representing McKinney's old seat. She had made a brief comeback to Congress after both she and Barr, who was a Republican congressman, lost to respective primary challengers in 2002.

And here they are today, both making a wild stab in the dark to get on that presidential debate stage Friday night.

"Any presidential candidate who is on enough ballots to be

elected deserves to participate," McKinney said in a statement released by the Green Party late Wednesday. "We need multi-party presidential debates, and I'm ready to go up against Barack Obama or any other candidate and present my ideas to the American people. I should be included in these debates whether McCain shows up or not,"

Ditto that from Barr. Just as Ronald Reagan chose to debate independent presidential candidate John Anderson one-on-one in 1980, and just as George H.W. Bush demanded the inclusion of H. Ross Perot in all three presidential debates in 1992, so should Obama welcome Barr to the stage. According to Barr, of course.

"It's time that at least one of the two leading presidential candidates show leadership and provide the American public an opportunity to witness an open and fair debate, based upon substance and issues rather than sound bites and rhetoric," Barr said in a statement issued today.

McKinney, who is black, blamed race as the reason why the Capitol Hill police officer stopped her in the spring of 2006 when she breezed past the magnetometer. That's when she belted the cop with the cell phone she was carrying.

Known as an outspoken radical, the former congresswoman and current Green Party presidential candidate - whose campaign mantra is "Power to the People!" - also gained national attention when she suggested the Bush administration may have orchestrated the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

She lost her 2002 primary campaign soon after that. And her father, former state representative Billy McKinney, spelled out the reason why his daughter was defeated: "J-E-W-S."

And here's why McKinney thinks she should be allowed to debate Obama Friday night: "Voters deserve to know which candidate best represents their interests and ideals."

As for Bob Barr, if the presidential political landscape is hurled even further into the Twilight Zone and he does wind up on the Ole Miss debate stage Friday night, our advice to Obama is: bring breath mints.