IS THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN TOO LONG?

Both Allies & Candidates Think So

EVERY four years, in just about the length of time it takes to produce a baby hippopotamus, the U.S. brings forth a President. From the first, frosty preprimary campaigning in February until the last hurrah in November, the nation becomes increasingly absorbed with its own inner stirrings, increasingly detached from the affairs of the outside world. In happier times, the U.S. could afford its quadrennial ''year of paralysis" while an indulgent world stood by until everything was once more in order in Washington. But in the presidential-election year of 1960--the year of the Communists' world propaganda push--the flaws of the long campaign are more and more apparent. Among them:

During lengthy campaigns too many foreign-policy pronouncements are designed for domestic consumption, to the confusion of the U.S.'s allies. "As the date of the American elections grows nearer," said sagacious old Konrad Adenauer last week, "a difficult time in foreign policy begins. Public opinion in the U.S. will be increasingly preoccupied with domestic affairs. It is not excluded that Khrushchev will take advantage of this period for his designs. It is now all the more necessary to pay closest attention to what Khrushchev does and says.''

The 22nd Amendment, restricting U.S. Presidents to two terms, tempts foreign nations to put less and less trust in a second-term President's policies. Khrushchev, in his airy dismissal of the Eisenhower Administration ("Within six or eight months, we shall again meet ... in a new, more favorable atmosphere''), had not missed the point.

The long campaign is debilitating, tedious and expensive for the candidates. "Obviously a year of perambulating, incessant exposure is exhausting,'' says Adlai Stevenson. "You grow weary, frustrated and bored. Any man who has listened to himself several times daily since February is not likely to inspire his countrymen in October." In the five months between New Hampshire and Los Angeles. Front Runner Jack Kennedy will have traveled an estimated 65,000 air miles, spent at least $700,000 and delivered 350 speeches--an exhausting pace even for a relatively young candidate, and a whopping bankroll even for a millionaire. Kennedy is not likely to complain, since seven primary campaigns have made him the best-known hopeful. But even if he wins the Democratic nomination, Kennedy will be no closer to Election Day than the halfway mark.

Despite democracy's built-in respect for political debate, the public actually gains little enlightenment from prolonged campaigning. Today's candidate carefully parcels out his program over the length of the campaign and understandably saves the best for last. He usually avoids debates like the plague for fear of making an embarrassing slip. Said Woodrow Wilson, from the rear platform of a 1912 campaign train: "I would a great deal rather make your acquaintance than leave a compound fracture of an idea behind me." Adds Vice President Richard Nixon: "The longer the candidate is in the field, the greater the hazard to him. No candidate wants to lay out an entire program for 1961 in January 1960."

Even with an extended campaign, the best man is not always selected (Clay, Webster and Greeley were all defeated by lesser statesmen). Nor is a razzle-dazzle road show a prerequisite to victory on Election Day: William McKinley, in 1896, and Warren G. Harding, in 1920, won easily with "front-porch" campaigns, letting the groups of voters and the politicians come to them. And Franklin Roosevelt used the pressures of wartime as a reason for limiting his campaign appearances outside Washington to a bare minimum in 1940 and 1944.

National elections in Britain and France are run off in three to six weeks. Even in such leisurely Oriental nations as Burma and Cambodia, where political campaigns are measured off by astrologers, an election is no more time-consuming than two months. In an age of jet planes and television, and short-order speeches by ghosts, say the critics, U.S. campaigns are as outmoded as the Stanley Steamer.

While the reformers would all foreshorten the election year, they all disagree on the methods of change. Some would eliminate the state primaries; others would settle for a national primary, or 50 state primaries in the same week. The conventions might be pushed forward to August or September, or Election Day moved back. There is no universal panacea. Says Dick Nixon, facing the toughest campaign of his life: "The campaigns are certainly too long for the well-being of the candidates. Here is one place where I think our British cousins have a good word. They have a three-week campaign, and I'd be for it. But I doubt if the American people would ever stand for it." Historian Allan Nevins is not so sure: "There is no ideal solution for some thing so complicated. Democracies always work in a partially unsatisfactory way and are necessarily clumsy. There is no one highly efficient method for the 180 million people who live in our democratic society. But the need for drastic reform of our political campaigns is obvious."

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