Democracy Needs A Little Free Time

Paul Taylor’s magical moment in his battle with the three major TV networks came early in April in his bedroom.

Taylor, a former political reporter for The Washington Post and The Philadelphia Inquirer, had teamed up with legendary CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite to push the idea of providing presidential candidates with free air time. They had gained a breakthrough when Rupert Murdoch said his Fox network would do so.

But the major networks had all turned thumbs down. It was time to bring in heavy artillery, and the opening salvo was to be a full-page newspaper ad headlined, “TO ABC, CBS, and NBC: We need just a few minutes of your time.”

The willingness of people across the political spectrum to be signatories was amazing. Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition said yes, as did his archenemy, Norman Lear of People for the American Way. Senators and former national chairmen from both parties signed on, along with five former network anchorpersons and Superman himself, Christopher Reeve.

As Taylor sat in his bedroom/office in suburban Washington, reading incoming faxes, he realized, “I’ve got them surrounded.”

Within a week, all three networks agreed to free time for candidates. They did not agree to the exact plan Taylor and Cronkite proposed for a nightly prime-time slot, but Taylor says he long ago learned “there are no clean wins in politics.”

His story is a remarkable tale in this era of corrosive cynicism, one that addresses the failings of American society while offering hope that they may not be terminal.

By 1988, Taylor, then 39, had ascended journalism’s slippery ladder of success and was covering presidential politics for the Post. He even wrote a book, “See How They Run,” about the Bush-Dukakis campaign that, as he puts it, “sold very well among my friends and family.”

But it had a distinctive point to make. The book showed that “journalists were part of the problem,” that reporters’ “wiseguy, smart-aleck, we’ll-tell-you-what’s-really-going-on” attitude was turning the public off as much as anything the candidates were doing.

Taylor offered a solution: “The Five-Minute Fix.” The candidates would be given time, on an alternating basis, to speak to the public, unmediated by journalists. This, he argued, could compel substance and dispel cynicism.

Taylor then committed the journalistic equivalent of “hara-kiri,” asking to be taken off the political beat. He spent a year covering “the family,” a beat he devised, then was dispatched to South Africa, where he was promptly shot. But he recovered, and the events there, he says, “rekindled my idealism.”

Returning to Washington, he found the political grind more depressing than ever, but in doing a piece on Bill Bennett, he was impressed with how the virtuoso of virtue had created an influential podium for his ideas outside government.

Taylor was also gratified to discover there were top officials who actually remembered his free-TV-time plan. He organized a symposium on it as part of a course he was teaching at Princeton; while listening to the speakers, he decided to leave the Post to promote the idea.

He did not wander long in the wilderness. His first stop was the Pew Charitable Trusts in Philadelphia, where his idea fit perfectly with the foundation’s goal of “reviving America’s democratic heart.”

“We’re going to make you an offer you can’t refuse,” Pew President Rebecca Rimel told Taylor. He did not.

Ex-Post editor Ben Bradlee connected Taylor with Cronkite, who had been thinking along the same lines, with variations. (Two minutes had been long enough for Eric Sevareid, Cronkite said, and it should be long enough for a candidate.)

Taylor and Cronkite are now working on getting this year’s apparent candidates to agree to a format in which they would alternate taking the free air time, thereby establishing a political dialogue the public could follow from day to day.

Dole has agreed; Clinton is, of course, waffling. But stay tuned. There is more to come.

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