(8 of 11)
-The debates should become standard. These suddenly sprouted in 1960 from nothing more substantial than John Kennedy's need to deflate a more experienced antagonist and Richard Nixon's misplaced confidence in his own debating skill. In the 20 years since, there have been two campaigns with debates and three without them. No rules have emerged except that whichever candidate feels stronger generally tries to avoid the confrontation, and that the League of Women Voters presides over whatever can be negotiated between the warring camps. Nonetheless, TV debates have become so important in the voters' final judgments that they should become a regular institution, with the ground rules made standard. The main goal of those rules should be to encourage real debate between the candidates rather than what the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, president of the University of Notre Dame, calls "just people talking at each other." Hesburgh argues that "there should be a debate on foreign policy, on domestic policy, on governmental policy, on where we are going for the next four or five years. Each debate should have a subject and a moderator to make the candidates keep their feet to the fire and talk to each other." What if a front runner refused to risk such a challenge?
The networks could simply give the time to his opponent(s), and let the absentee face the judgment of the public.
-The candidates should get free air time. Though the networks' news departments must remain independent in deciding what they want to broadcast, there is no immutable law that all political candidates must be charged thousands of dollars a minute to get their own views across. The air waves theoretically belong to the public and are only leased to broadcasters in exchange for a certain amount of public service. One such service should be the granting of some post-convention prime time free of charge, perhaps one hour a week for the presidential nominees, a shorter period for lesser candidates. If such free time were arranged, there should then be a limitation on the 30-second spots that blitz the voters as an election nears. It should be possible for stations to impose an arbitrary limit on the number of political commercials that last less than, say, two minutes.
The main obstacle to free air time is not network greed but Section 3 1 5 of the Federal Communications Act, which requires that equal time be granted to all candidates, no matter how obscure or ab-Section 315 should be substantially revised — or junked.
THE PITIFUL GIANT
The presidency begins with a gro-extended transition period, which was traditionally fixed at four months during the horse-and-buggy then cut to two months in 1933.
It still leaves the country too long suspended over an abyss of uncertainty, and in this age of instant communication it should be cut by another month.
Finally, the victor takes the oath that he will "faithfully execute the office of the President of the United States," and soon discovers, if he has not previously guessed, that he has acquired an office that demands more than anyone can fully execute. The Constitution says vaguely that he is the holder of "the Executive power."