What I Learned About How We Pick a President
Alexander, Lamar
What I Learned About How We Pick a President By Lamar Alexander While my wounds are fresh, let me offer several ways to fix how we nominate presidents. First, for those who only see it on Inside...
...Forbes, let us remember, spent almost no time raising his money and had no limits on what he spent per state...
...This took about 70 percent of my time...
...Why not a cable channel devoted entirely to Michigan governor John Engler's charter schools, San Antonio county executive Cyndi Krier's crime program, Milwaukee's school-choice program...
...Now, to fix the process (although I should proclaim up front and loudly that it is the candidate who must accept responsibility for losing, not the process): • Report on those who are actually running for president...
...Lots more interesting-and lots more conducive to sound judgment by the voters, too...
...As a candidate, you can also feel the collapse...
...Deregulate the election process...
...I actually did this during 1994, when I was not meeting nice people who could give $1,000...
...From the moment the networks began to cover the campaign (this year it was not until late January), you could feel the lift...
...Think of it this way: Say the fifth-grade teacher organizes a contest for class president with water pistols as the weapon of choice...
...Let the candidates speak more often for themselves...
...The Federal Election Commission is full of competent people trying to do their jobs (several of whom are about to audit my campaign, which, if everything works out perfectly, will only take only about three years...
...Lamar Alexander was a Republican presidential candidate in 1996...
...The rest of us did...
...Start the coverage earlier...
...I was astonished how many told me they saw C-SPAN's 50-minute coverage in July of my walk across New Hampshire...
...You can imagine how many friends I made with this statement, but I was right...
...At least the news media presence was so small it did not disrupt the flow of the session...
...I am not kidding...
...At a breakfast in Washington in November, I said this to my friends in the news media: "If you guys were sportswriters, you would arrive during the last quarter of the Final Four championship game and claim you had covered the entire basketball season...
...Spread it out...
...Then, require all the other states to hold their primaries on the second Tuesday of March, April, or May...
...There is a great market in the American electorate for a full-fledged discussion about what kind of country we can have in the year 2000 and beyond...
...Wouldn't I have been a better candidate-and the country better off had I been elected-if I had spent more time traveling around America and visiting our allies abroad...
...For example, to raise $10 million in 1995 for my campaign, I attended 250 fund-raising events...
...Praise the media here...
...This would give winners a chance to capitalize on successes, voters a chance to digest new faces, and candidates a chance to actually meet voters...
...The New York Times printed excerpts from candidates' speeches, even some very long excerpts...
...I cannot help but think that there are ways-even many months out-to relate the day's news about, say, the failure of the Hartford school system's private-management contract to what the presidential candidates say about how schools should be run...
...Referring to those of us actually running, this phrase usually begins to appear after several months of stories about those who aren't running...
...Now, in defense of the media, it is hard to cover a 21-day wild rollercoaster ride, which is what the nominating process has become: 38 primaries in 25 days...
...The World Series wouldn't last more than one inning...
...Let us hope the national political writers never decide to become umpires...
...It sometimes seemed that 90 percent of the political news during 1995 was about numerous Americans, estimable as they may have been, who had no intention of running or who couldn't win even if they did...
...This will give the public more exposure to state and local politicians who might then have a better chance of winning national office...
...I can find the good easily about this process, even with its flaws...
...C-SPAN's Road to the White House on Sunday nights set the pace...
...The campaigns are grossly overregulated...
...Let's change this: Let Iowa and New Hampshire go it alone in February...
...The audience always listened carefully...
...This by itself is one reason to salute Bob Dole for making his way so well through such an obstacle course...
...Their questions went straight to the heart of what kind of country we could have, of our jobs, our schools, our neighborhoods, and our families...
...Ban the phrase "the motley crew...
...The well-intentioned $1,000 limit, placed into the federal law after Watergate, was meant to reduce the influence of money in politics...
...First, for those who only see it on Inside Politics, let me describe what running for president really feels like (especially when you have just lost...
...By my count, the news media covered the presidential race aggressively for just 21 days, from the Iowa caucus on February 10 until the South Carolina primary on March 2. Most of what went before consisted of asking people like me, "Why are you behind Bob Dole 72-3 in the polls...
...What do you think would have happened this year if after the surprising New Hampshire primary (Buchanan winning, Dole stumbling, me surging, Forbes falling) there had been three weeks to campaign before a March 12 primary in a bunch of states...
...Then another month until another set of primaries...
...So, most of us did...
...During most of these meetings I was little known and unencumbered by news media...
...Is it really necessary, for example, for the federal government to decide that a candidate's campaign T-shirts need not bear the "Paid for by...
...Remove the state spending limits...
...Give these leaders as much C-SPAN face-time as members of Congress...
...Raise the limits on individual giving to campaigns from $1,000 to $5,000...
...As with many federal laws, it has done just the opposite...
...This is step two in the crusade to deal with the phenomenon of the zillionaire in politics...
...Isn't it time after 200-plus years of presidential elections to realize that any American looks better rocking on the porch than he (or she) does trudging through the mud buck-naked with spotlights turned on (another way to describe participation in the current presidential nominating process...
...It is like walking above Niagara Falls on a swaying tightrope as the wind blows and the crowd shouts, "FALL...
...After South Carolina, the most frequently asked question was, "When are you going to get out...
...I became unusually well acquainted with a great many good Americans capable of giving $1,000 (who probably represent a cross section of one percent of all the people in the country...
...Create a new C-SPAN channel to cover the country outside Washington...
...Either take away the new kid's machine gun (Bill Bradley suggests a constitutional amendment to limit what individuals can spend on their own campaigns) or give the rest of the fifth graders the freedom to raise and spend enough money to buy their own machine guns...
...I remember wishing time after time that anybody who had any sense of cynicism about our presidential selection process could be with me, as a fly on the wall-because they could not be cynical after hearing and seeing and feeling what I saw...
...These were always the words of my friend the late Alex Haley...
...Chief executives from outside Washington sometimes make the best chief executives in the country...
...then some kid arrives with a machine gun...
...The networks all showed unedited stump speeches of the major candidates...
...Fewer rules and full disclosure should be the bywords here...
...In one week just before the New Hampshire primary, Steve Forbes bought 700 ads on one Boston television station in one week, most of them negative advertising against Dole (plus a few gentler ads against me...
...Find the good and praise it...
...Of the $10 million our campaign raised during 1995, about $1 million went for accountants and lawyers for compliance with the federal rules...
...The reason to make certain we have a properly functioning presidential nominating process is that the presidency itself is our most important institution as we go into the new century, and the debate about who should be that president is our most useful national discussion...
...During the last year I walked across New Hampshire meeting several hundred people a day, spent 80 days in Iowa in maybe 200 meetings that ranged from 20 to 300 people, and had at least 50 meetings in Florida with the delegates to the Presidency III straw poll...
...at a time when everyone knew Dole and no one had ever heard of me...
...It is like scaling a cliff for three years in the dark to earn the privilege of shooting one NBA-range three-point shot, i.e., the New Hampshire primary...
...If New Hampshire is most of the ballgame in the presidential primaries, why shouldn't we be permitted to defend ourselves even if we use up all the money the government allows us to spend during the entire campaign...
...disclaimer...
...In meeting after meeting, I came away certain that this is a nation hungry for a vision contest, not one willing to tolerate a trivial presidential election...
Vol. 1 • March 1996 • No. 27
