It was the 2000 Presidential Debate at Washington University in St. Louis. The match up, Al Gore’s ‘lock box’ Vs. George W. Bush ‘compassionate conservatism’. Protestors occupied the baseball field across from the Field House–before there was anything to really protest about.
I was the guy in charge of WUTV– the campus television station and this was the biggest thing that ever happened to me. We had wall to wall coverage, analysis– and yes a SCANDAL! Ralph Nader wanted to get into those debates. Now I don’t know whether he should have been allowed to debate or not–some blame RALPH for deep sixing Gore. All I know is we had extra tickets, and we’re able to get people next to the field house to interview them as part of our extensive WUTV coverage (playing closed circuited only on campus–but maybe CNN was watching?).
The end of the story is, we got Ralph Nader tickets to get to his interview with WUTV and as soon as he showed up, he was prevented from coming on campus. I haven’t spoke publicly about this until now–our shenanigans were mostly overshadowed by the Governor of the State of Missouri dying in a plane crash earlier that morning.
What I can tell you is that Ralph Nader got us all the seat belt which is RATED on this new installment of RATED (and I think maybe he should have stopped there).