By: Daniel Nardini

Probably few things will bore Americans more than the U.S. presidential debates. I seriously doubt that too many people want to hear anymore attacks and negative phrase-mongering than they already have heard from all of the TV ads now playing. We know that there will be two candidates on the debate—current President Barack Obama and contender Mitt Romney. What is truly disappointing about the debate is that they are the only ones who will be featured. There are in fact two other contenders for the presidency. They are Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party and Jill Stein of the Green Party.

What is troubling for me is that too many Americans tend to think that there are only two viable parties. We have two ruling parties, but they are not the only ones in this great land of ours. For too long the Democrats and Republicans have been dominating the political landscape. It is time to include the other two contending parties—the Libertarian Party and the Green Party. Libertarian Party U.S. presidential candidate Gary Johnson is campaigning on a number of issues, but the biggest is the national debt. Johnson has made it clear that if the national debt gets any bigger, it could trigger economic insolvency and the whole nation could go bankrupt. Worse, the value of the U.S. dollar will collapse and the United States could collapse with it. This is something very much connected with the growing unemployment problem in this country.

Jill Stein’s platform has been on health issues and the environment. A practicing physician, Dr. Stein has seen how waste and mismanagement have damaged the environment, and put peoples’ lives in danger. More than that, Dr. Jill believes in clean power sources, sustainable agricultural practices, and preventing toxic threats to the environment. Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein could provide a greater outlook on what is happening in this country, and help open up the virtually closed political process.A four-way presidential debate would most certainly attract TV viewer attention like never before, and it would open the whole debating process to new horizons not only for the candidates but for what the American public would like to know. Even if there is not a four-way presidential debate, it would be nice if the candidates from the Libertarian Party and the Green Party are allowed TV air time to debate each other. In my view, the presidential election process has to be opened up more.