THE SCREEN TEST

By NANCY GIBBS

It has become a reliable pattern in American politics that when the plumbing breaks down, the superintendents appear promptly to fix it. Progressives in the teens and '20s tried to clean up the electoral process with the secret ballot and the direct election of Senators. In the 1960s smoke-filled rooms gave way to primary beauty pageants, and after Watergate, big-money contributors had to form PACs instead of flushing money directly to their candidates. The avowed goal is always the same: to ensure communion between the voters and their leaders.

This year has brought a new call to clean the pipes because in this campaign, as in the ones before it, 30-sec. ads often seem to clog and sully the National Conversation. Last week the television networks were pushed into the arena with proposals to give candidates free, unfiltered access to the airwaves during the closing weeks of the race this fall. Their offers represented a victory for crusaders led by apostate journalist Paul Taylor and his coalition Free TV for Straight Talk, which has argued that the best way to counteract voter apathy and mounting cynicism is to create some new kind of forum in which the candidates would compete, gloves off, no referees and certainly no journalists.

The movement for free airtime arises from several factors: people may be fed up with the slick spitballs that candidates throw from behind the mask of a voice-over. But the fact that both voters and sages decry them does not shame candidates out of using them, in part because they work. Furthermore, the reformers argue, raising the money to pay for the ads consumes the candidates' time and corrodes their independence. Since these ads won't go away without a repeal of the First Amendment, the next best hope is to counteract them, to prod the candidates into standing up straight and revealing their positions rather than just reviling their opponents'.

It is no surprise that the impetus comes from a guilty press corps, which has been lambasted of late for its obsession with "horse race" journalism, for covering campaigns as if they were sports and mincing substance into sound bites. According to one study by journalist Kiku Adatto, the average sound bite on the evening news in presidential elections went from 42.3 sec. in 1968 to 8.4 sec. in 1992. And while sound bites are taking up less airtime, punditry is taking up more. A study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs shows that television correspondents covering the 1996 campaign talk six times as much as the candidates themselves in broadcast-news stories.

Into this furor comes Taylor, erstwhile political reporter for the Washington Post, who apart from general civic-mindedness had his own reasons for taking up this crusade. It was he who in 1987 asked presidential candidate Gary Hart whether he had ever committed adultery, thereby changing forever the rules about probing the private lives of public figures. "There's no question that it prompted a whole lot of soul-searching in me," Taylor says.

That search deepened when he went overseas in 1992 to cover South Africa's march to democracy. Taylor acquired, among other things, a bullet in his shoulder during a shoot-out near Soweto, as well as a profound sense of the gap between how democracy is viewed in a country that is enchanted by its promise and one that is disgusted by its processes. "Part of the reason we've built up a $5 trillion deficit over the past 15 years is that we don't trust our politicians," he says. "Therefore, our politicians don't have the political freedom to make hard choices or demand sacrifices of us. And the reason is we have awful campaigns that bring out the worst in everyone."

So when Campaign '96 rolled around, Taylor shocked his editors by standing down, leaving the business in order to lobby it, and persuading the Pew Charitable Trusts to fund his new role as a "journalism reformer." Working with ex-CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite and other industry and government pooh-bahs, he set out to talk the networks into giving the candidates free airtime--anywhere from two to five minutes a night in prime time. "I would hope it could unfold as kind of a running debate, with Clinton responding to what Dole said last night and back again," he says. "The viewing public would know that for a few minutes a night, somewhere on the important channels on their television, they could get straight talk from one of the men seeking to become President."

The networks' offers last week fell well short of Taylor's vision. All promised to somehow work more face time for the candidates into their regular news programming. ABC extended an hour of prime time in the last week of the campaign, inviting the candidates to sit in the same room and have it out, free from journalistic moderation. NBC said it would seek to have the candidates on evening news shows such as Dateline NBC. CBS made a vague promise of "free, unfiltered access" to viewers through its news programs. CNN anted up with five minutes a week for four weeks on Inside Politics. And Fox's Rupert Murdoch last year opened the bidding with an hour of prime time on election eve.

Oddly enough, the proposals all come just as events overtake the imperative. Thanks to the Internet, talk radio, C-SPAN and cable talk shows, voters this year have more direct access to candidates than ever before. The very day that ABC announced its offer of an hour in prime time, Bill Clinton was live on CNBC discussing Senate gridlock over the minimum wage. Then, minutes later, C-SPAN--the All Dole All the Time network when the Senate is in session--showed the majority leader rebutting the President. Internet Websites like TIME-CNN's AllPolitics http:www.allpolitics.com/ routinely include the full text of campaign speeches. But advocates are quick to retort that a third of U.S. households don't have cable and many that have it don't tune in to public-affairs shows. The point is to reach the audience that has dropped out, which is why Taylor was hoping for a five-minute lead-in to Friends instead of a chunk out of Tom Brokaw.

The pristine new forums certainly won't replace the dastardly 30-sec. spots. The candidates will still spend whatever they can afford, running whatever ads are most effective. In fact, some commentators argue that getting rid of negative ads should never have been a goal in the first place. "Attack is an indispensable part of politics. If the attack is fair, accurate, in context and relevant to governance, we ought to encourage it," says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. "I prefer asking, 'Is free TV time going to reduce the amount of illegitimate attacks?' The answer is yes."

Which raises the question of whether the candidates would be keen on this reform. In 1992 the candidates were careful to limit their appearances to events they thought they could control. All three were invited to appear for an hour on Meet the Press, for instance; not one of them accepted. So while both parties' candidates endorsed the scheme, it remains to be seen whether Dole and Clinton will relish the idea of being locked in a room together during prime time with no way out except through the tube.

Yet in a TIME/CNN poll last week, 63% of voters surveyed said they believe free TV time would make for a better race. That by itself may make it worth a try. For if it reduces even slightly the cynicism about politics, it could help voters feel more engaged in the process and perhaps restore their faith in it.

--Reported by Tom Curry/New York and Mark Thompson/Washington

With reporting by TOM CURRY/NEW YORK AND MARK THOMPSON/ WASHINGTON