Election '84: The Shaping of the Presidency 1984

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politicians and that Congress must step in and act, by law, to make the process reasonable. Perhaps the best current proposal is that the long run of primaries be sliced into four separate Tuesdays, one month apart, set not by regions but by time zones. Time zones run from north to south, so parochial regional interests would be blurred. The Eastern time zone clusters New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, the Carolinas; the Midwest time zone clusters industrial Illinois as well as farm states like Kansas and Southern states like Alabama. And so across the nation. Time-zoned primaries would force all national candidates to address themselves once a month to a full cross section of the nation, less fettered by special interests, ethnic or racial groups.

By 1988 it is certain that both parties will be holding primaries simultaneously in a free-for-all that will confuse everyone. New public laws, not new party regulations, are needed.

The conventions are the next step in choice. But conventions have also changed; they no longer choose, they only ratify the primaries. They are spectacles into which television tries to inject drama; even television's own leaders feel too much power has been placed in their hands. Said one of the most creative of television's veterans, Producer Don Hewitt of CBS: "Let's give the conventions back to the politicians. Give the parties control of the two hours of prime time we allot. Let them fill it as they want. If we think there's any news, we can tack it on afterward as commentary. But the conventions should be their show, not ours."

The national contest that follows the conventions is fouled by two intertwined circumstances swollen to intolerable: money power and television power. The flood of money that gushes into politics today is a pollution of democracy. Money buys television time, buys Election Day "expenses," buys access to decision makers. Most major candidates now control personal political action committees that let them mobilize allies long before an election. Important Congressmen accumulate similar slush funds. Independent PACs bring the most brutal pressure on individual Congressmen.

More important even than money power is the power of television. Television is the main battleground for public opinion in our time, and professional campaign designers try to outwit television news masters in a game of mask-ing-and-unmasking, or "I've got a secret" against "This is their secret." Television reaches its climax in the so-called great debates. For forgotten reasons these debates, sponsored by the League of Women Voters, wander like a traveling road show from city to city. They are vital as a display of contending personalities, but they have degenerated into quiz shows where candidates, stuffed with facts like geese with fat gobbets, try to outdo each other with encyclopedic tidbits—and gain extra points for well-prepared quips.

Much can be done to restrain both money power and television power. Wise laws, to take one example, can forbid the contribution of money to any candidate in one state from sources in any other state. Wise laws can conscript time from the networks to be shared evenhandedly between the major candidates. New laws can and must help. Yet, in the end, politics is the entry way to power, cruel or benign, and in our system,