Six modest proposals:
Burris, Keith
Government in the 1980s SIX MODEST PROPOSALS HOW TO REVITALIZE THE PARTIES EIGHT YEARS AGO political scientists and political columnists were writing about the demise of the Republican party. Two...
...Koch outspent Cuomo by wide margins...
...5k: Encourage civics teachers and political science professors to return to the instruction of citizenship...
...They campaigned against exorbitant spending itself, and against the selling of candidates, by relying on old-fashioned political organization and unique campaign techniques like handshaking and meeting the voters...
...Three: Keep the way open for independent and third force candidacies...
...Jefferson College...
...None of these proposals necessitates legislation...
...If the process is open and competitive and free, the parties have a better chance of renewal...
...One: Repeal the Federal Election Act...
...College freshmen discuss the breadth and depth of their own ignorance and passivity...
...William Safire and others have now prophesied a "turn back" to the left...
...Lincoln was a third-party candidate...
...Spending is at more obscene levels than ever...
...For many people who think about such things, the decline of party is a worry, not because the two parties have offered us relevant policy or personality choices over the last two decades, but because the end of parties may leave us to the politics of political action committees, consultants, and Pavlovian TV advertisements...
...A long series of debates keeps the candidates off the road...
...A caucus system would foster political organization and be open to new political initiatives and personalities...
...Five: Routinize newspaper- and TV-sponsored debates...
...If the expectation of debates becomes ritualized, paid advertisements might eventually wither away...
...Students must be taught not social science but the duties and honor of liberty...
...The Democrats are now saying that our representative system is in "dire straits" because they have so much less money than do the Republicans...
...They ought to follow the leads of Senator William Proxmire and retired Ohio Congressman Charles Vanick...
...Two: Abolish the presidential primary system...
...It does not foster grass roots activity...
...It does not foster a discussion of issues or ideas...
...A candidate with three to five million dollars to spend on a primary can afford to ignore the party completely, or may win its grudging allegiance as its own ticket to solvency...
...All agree that political parties in America are in a state of flux and trouble...
...Since our system has developed around two loose non-ideological parties, third candidates and parties have provided an outlet for discontent, fertile ground for development of issues the major parties could not or would not develop or discuss, and new directions for moribund confused parties, not to mention new identities for collapsed or defunct ones...
...Though the primaries did not start out this way, they have become almost purely show business and hype...
...Two years ago, we were told the Democrats were experiencing an identity crisis, or even, a "coalition crisis...
...The federal government ought not to regulate the process by which it is chosen...
...Here are six proposals, humbly offered, for the revitalization of political parlies in America...
...It does not produce candidates of maximum experience or knowledge...
...We need to maximize both professionalism and participatory amateurism to revive parties...
...It was about grass roots organization...
...Only individual contributions and activities have been limited by the law...
...Since the media does so little to inform the public anyhow, it might at least help to reduce the costs of campaigns by offering free air time, or newspaper space, for debate...
...Contrary to conventional wisdom (based I think on a European model of political parties) third force candidates have not hurt but helped the American party system...
...Both men campaigned by making spending an issue, not by asking for more money or saying the Feds should provide it, but by announcing they would not spend what they already had, and would accept or collect no more...
...Four: Make money an issue: As long as it is possible for candidates to, in effect, buy nominations by purchasing so much television time as to make their own a household name and bury their opponents', candidates will not see the efficacy, or perhaps possibility, of trying to organize...
...The "new politics" of 1968 and 1972 was really the old...
...This has worked in New York City and New York State in the case of the New York Times...
...High school students now watch movies about social problems...
...Special interests, through their PAC's, have taken over the fund-raising mechanism from parties and nearly taken over the function of recruitment of candidates as well...
...They require only a bit of discipline, vigor, and that measured degree of optimism and hope republican democracy depends upon...
...In the recent New York gubernatorial race, Mario Cuomo might not have been able to defeat Mayor Koch of New York City had he not received the exposure and credibility lent him by a series of debates sponsored by that venerable newspaper...
...Federal funding for presidential candidates is a bad principle, is opposed by most Americans, and has failed to hold down the cost of campaigns as it was intended to do...
...The Federal Election Commission is, after the I.R.S., the most inept, intrusive, and unfair bureaucracy in the federal government...
...TV is bad for politics and bad for sports...
...This is bad news in immediate terms for TV stations, but the longer and deeper view is that the shift would return commercial air time exclusively to personal and hygienic needs and anxieties...
...This is a justification for privatism and a prescription for abdication of freedom and responsibility to large and impersonal bureaucratic "forces...
...It is really a variation of the old Southern practice of two candidates campaigning together...
...Whether it be by Sam Brown, Jesse Jackson, or Richard Daley, organizing is the door-to-door politics of actual persons, and is preferable, both in process and result, to the primary politics of CBS, NBC, Jody Powell, and Gerald Rafshoon...
...This is a "reform" which has left us in worse shape than where we came in...
...KEITH BURRIS (Keith Burris, a previous contributor, teaches political science at Washington & Jefferson College...
...And when I was a first-term graduate student, my American Government professor insisted that "the people" did not exist and that"civics book democracy" was a quaint and unscientific approach to common problems...
...After the election of Ronald Reagan, the talk was of a "turn to the right...
...Makes life easier for reporters...
...Gives candidates an opportunity to put forward policy and program, and lessens the need for purchased air time...
Vol. 110 • March 1983 • No. 6
