The Presidency: Job Specs for the Oval Office

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whatever) attract plentiful contributions. Once a candidate is rated as having a serious chance, the money tends to flow, but some first-class people never get sufficiently funded to be seen as "serious." Mainly because of the price of TV ads, it can cost millions to run for Governor or Senator in a populous state, a serious constriction on the size of the pool from which presidential possibilities are drawn. Republican Lew Lehrman spent about $7 million of his own money running this year for Governor of New York. Democrat Mark Dayton spent about the same (but four times as much per voter) in his run for Senator from Minnesota. Both lost, to be sure, and in Dayton's campaign in stolid Minnesota, the lavish spending may have hurt him. But adding up all 33 Senate races, we find 27 of the winners were the bigger spenders. Total spending on the 1982 congressional races exceeded $300 million. The cost of 1984, presidential and congressional, could hit $1 billion. This is not an excessive advertising budget for the most important act a democracy performs (Procter & Gamble spends $600 million a year on ads). The question is whether the money is fairly distributed, and whether contributors in effect can buy a politician's vote. But campaign financing is a very complicated thing to regulate. Freedom of speech is involved, also the law of unintended consequences: past "reforms" have often created whole new sets of problems.

> Perhaps the greatest stroke in behalf of better Presidents would be for the incumbent President, starting with Ronald Reagan, to consider as one of his major responsibilities the identification and grooming of possible successors. (One of his close associates says he has never heard Reagan mention the subject.) A corporate C.E.O. would be considered shamefully derelict if he did as little about his successor as the President of the U.S. does. We do not want the President decreeing his successor, which he couldn't anyway, but he could do far more than most recent Presidents have done to see that strong people are in the right places to get serious consideration. Ike gave fitful attention to the problem, and kept lists. He thought Robert Anderson, Texas businessman, his Secretary of the Navy, then of the Treasury, was best qualified to succeed him. But when Anderson was not interested, Ike seemed to lose interest. He was not a great Nixon fan, but would not move against his Vice President.

Nixon as President came to think John Connally would be his best successor, toyed with the thought of moving Spiro Agnew to the Supreme Court (!) and making Connally his running mate in 1972. He could have commanded that, but backed off. Then, when Agnew had to quit in disgrace in 1973, Nixon was in enough trouble himself that he did not want to risk a congressional fight over the controversial Connally and chose the safe and well-liked Jerry Ford.

Not only in the choice for V.P, but hi his major Cabinet appointments, a President has the chance to put good people into the running for the future. Some can be from the "outside." The President needs to be big enough, of course, not to feel threatened or upstaged by strong people around him.

> There is more the sitting President can do. He can fight the idea that the presidency is unmanageable, for the sake of his own place in history, but also for the sake of the