The Presidency: Job Specs for the Oval Office

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only one so far) before a woman or a black. Possibly a black female professor of economics who had become a university president (we could really use some good economics) in 1996. Meanwhile, the U.S. is conferring about 400,000 advanced degrees a year, lawyers and doctors, M.A.s, M.B.A.s, Ph.D.s, etc. These people are a formidable talent pool.

This brings us to the perennial question: Isn't there some way to get good people from "outside" politics into politics—at the level where they might be considered for the presidency? The answer remains: probably not. Wendell Willkie in 1940 was the last major-party nominee from totally outside politics.

In 1975 TIME published an Essay, "New Places to Look for Presidents." Out of reports from the TIME news bureaus around the country, about 150 names made the working lists. Last month TIME again asked its news bureaus for lists of people outside politics who might be presidential. The exercise yielded a national total of only 21 names. Among them: two former astronauts, Frank Borman, president of Eastern Airlines, and Neil Armstrong, oil-equipment executive; Chairman Robert O. Anderson of Atlantic Richfield; Lee lacocca of Chrysler; James Bere of Borg-Warner; Thomas Wyman of CBS; President Hanna Gray, University of Chicago; Marvin Goldberger, Caltech; Bartlett Giamatti of Yale; and, inevitably, Walter Cronkite.

TV is all over the place. The two former astronauts owe their high "name recognition" in good part to TV, and Borman helps keep his alive with TV commercials. lacocca also gives himself heavy exposure as TV pitchman; it is an expressive face, an appealing tough-guy personality and, who knows, if he could pull Chrysler out of the hole, save American jobs ... The president of CBS is an unknown face, but any heir apparent who can avoid being fired by Bill Paley has undeniable political talents.

"It's lists like this," says Jonathan Moore of Harvard, "that make you think the people inside politics aren't so bad after all." Nothing personal, he hastens to add, but the outside types tend to be "onedimensional in experience."

How to give them another dimension?

Most private institutions are proud when one of their people is offered a prestigious appointive job hi Washington. Depending on the man's age and length of absence in Washington, the organization is glad to welcome him back, sometimes in a higher job than he left; and if that cannot be done, the individual will usually be snapped up elsewhere. There is no taint to Cabinet or sub-Cabinet experience under either party; it is highly marketable.

What is needed is for some courageous corporations, universities, foundations to give "electoral sabbaticals." A promising 40-year-old corporation V.P. or university dean could try for a nomination to Congress (or indeed the state legislature). If he wins, he is now in politics, and if he has the talents that would have made him an impressive figure in private life, at 55 say, he may at 55 be a Governor, Senator or Cabinet officer with a shot at President. If he loses, he gets his old job back, and his organization learns not to be embarrassed that one of its people is an openly confessed Republican or Democrat. One of the reasons Congress and the state legislatures are so loaded with lawyers is that they can run