Washington. -- Barely ten weeks since the official start of the 1992 presidential nominating process in Iowa, the preference of a large number of eligible voters for America's next leader already seems to be in: None of the Above.
Poll after poll shows that a significant segment of the electorate wishes that other candidates were running in both parties. The most recent survey by the Times Mirror Center for The People and The Press, for example, found fully two-thirds of all voters polled said they were unhappy with the choices available to them.
In primary after primary since New Hampshire, the turnout has been abysmally low. According to Curtis Gans of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, after a record high of 41 percent of eligible voters in New Hampshire, turnout has plunged 11.8 percent nationally through the most recent primaries in New York, Wisconsin and Kansas, and 18.4 percent on the Democratic side. Only 7.16 percent of eligible Democrats in New York voted, Mr. Gans says.
And then there is the prospect of the independent candidacy of H. Ross Perot, clearly a commentary on voter dissatisfaction with what the parties have wrought.
Why is it that the regular-party choices are so unattractive for many voters that so many aren't voting, and so many of those who do are pulling the levers with one hand while holding their noses with the other?
One answer, concerning the Democratic Party, may be that its most appealing and best-known figures -- Gov. Mario Cuomo of New York, House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt, Senators Albert Gore Jr. of Tennessee, Bill Bradley of New Jersey, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, Sam Nunn of Georgia and others -- have elected to sit out 1992.
But in today's rough-and-tumble politics, with negative tactics and intensive press scrutiny the order of the day, few politicians can hope to look as good as they do on the sidelines once they get into the game. This year, in the prevailing anti-politics mood, there is no assurance that any of these non-starters would be faring much better than those who offered themselves to the voters.
On the Republican side, after all, the party is running its obvious and best-known active politician, President Bush, and although he is winning each Tuesday there is evidence of considerable nose-holding among the GOP faithful as well and, according to ** Gans, a national turnout falloff of 4 percent. Challenger Patrick J. Buchanan, after a flurry in New Hampshire and few other early-voting states, has also been ruled unacceptable by overwhelming numbers of Republicans.
The tone of the campaign clearly has been a major contributory )) factor to the voter turnoff. In both parties, it has been marked by personal sniping among the contenders and from the news media firing rounds of "character" allegations, with Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas the prime but not only target. Issues that were getting considerable attention in the early going, such as national health care, job training and opportunity, environmental and education reform, have been drowned out in the noisy cross-fire.
Nevertheless, in the short span of three months, the presidential field has been reduced for all practical purposes from nine more-or-less prominent contenders -- six Democrats and three Republicans -- to the two likely nominees, Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bush, with Democrat Jerry Brown and Republican Buchanan now serving essentially as weekly punching bags for them.
In that time, the hopefuls in the two parties have raced from one week to another, from one region of the country to another and back again in a frenetic pursuit of votes, at a pace which has taxed the endurance and the concentration of voters as well as of the harried candidates. Even in the absence of all the negative clutter of the 1992 campaign, the candidates' task of getting their messages through would have been daunting.
Only Mr. Bush and Mr. Clinton have had the money to sustain a presence on paid television from the start of the process to the present, and the television networks from the outset have cut back appreciably on their coverage, failing to provide the kind and scope of voter information of which their medium is capable. Nor has the public seemed to be in much mood to listen, revolted by the reports of congressional check-bouncing and pay-raising that have tarnished all politics.
The situation, in sum, cries out for a better way for presidential candidates to offer themselves to the voters that will enable them to present their substantive proposals in an atmosphere more conducive to serious consideration by those voters.
For openers, the current 100-yard -- to the nomination must somehow be slowed (but not lengthened) to give candidates ample time to sell themselves and their ideas, and to give voters adequate time to make informed judgments about them. And second, money should not be allowed to be the winnower of candidacies to the extent it is today.
The Democratic Party, which is the determining force in setting the presidential primary calendar because it is dominant in most state legislatures that set the dates, has increasingly "front-loaded" the process. That is, it has encouraged states to schedule their primaries early -- in the hope of selecting its nominee quickly. That way, it is argued, the anointed one will have more time to heal primary rifts and mount an effective fall campaign against the Republican nominee.
While the Democrats appear to have already settled on Mr. Clinton, the feat has not been accomplished without high cost in voter disgruntlement, not only over the choice itself but how it came about. One candidate with some appeal, former Sen. Paul E. Tsongas of Massachusetts, lacking the money to sustain the pace, was forced out before many voters were ready to quit on him. Two others, Senators Bob Kerrey of Nebraska and Tom Harkin of Iowa, also bowed out for lack of funds.
To deal with the calendar problem, the sensible approach is for the two parties to agree to a simple revision that will give candidates and voters alike more time to sort out what's going on from one primary day to the next. Now, primaries are held simultaneously in several states every week in the early going, obliging candidates to jet pell-mell from one region of the country to another and giving the voters of no state adequate attention.
The schedule should call for five primary dates from February through June on the first Tuesday of each month. No more than ten states would vote in any one month, and dates would be allotted by region or by lottery and would be rotated every four years, so that no state would have the permanent advantage of the present kickoff states of Iowa and New Hampshire.
This year, 33 states have primaries, which would mean each month would have seven states voting. Dates of caucuses, which demand and draw less candidate attention, could be left to the states holding them.
Regional primaries along these lines would sharply reduce candidate travel and encourage a focus on regional issues. But most important, there would be a full month between each primary date, during which candidates could develop their positions, the news media could analyze them more thoughtfully and voters could assess them more carefully.
As for the money problem, Jerry Brown's 800 number may be adequate for a candidate running on a shoestring. But a better answer would be for the television networks to be persuaded to give a limited amount of free time to qualified candidates and then require those candidates, as a condition of receiving the federal campaign subsidy now available to them, to buy no more time. Getting the networks to agree, though, would be a tall order.
This reform, however, not only would pay off in reducing the impact of money on the ability of a candidacy to survive. It would free up funds to put presidential campaigns back into America's neighborhoods. Before television consumed the lion's share of available campaign money, neighborhood campaign headquarters where volunteers gathered to stuff envelopes, argue politics and generate voter interest were commonplace. Today, no campaign can afford such a "luxury."
But considering the level of apathy toward politics in America's neighborhoods, maybe putting the presidential campaign back
on Main Street, once again involving voters as more than television viewers, is not a bad idea.