
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, November 8, 1994                   TAG: 9411080089
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ELECTIONS

CONSIDERING Congress' cynical reluctance to make even modest changes in campaign-finance laws, it's unlikely that Maggie Thatcher's ideas for improving America's electoral system will go over as big here as - Yeh! Yeh! Yeh! - Beatlemania.

We colonists made it clear with a little scuffle called the American Revolution that we prefer to do things our own way, thank you. To accept all the former British prime minister's suggestions, moreover, might require dumping some of our cherished homegrown notions - such as guaranteed free speech.

But, by Jove, Thatcher is right when she links growing cynicism about politics in America, in part, to the increased influence of moneyed special interests in political campaigns, and to the increased mud-slinging in media campaigns that the special interests help finance.

Britain, she told an audience at the College of William and Mary on Friday, has tried to minimize money's influence in politics by strictly regulating campaign spending and advertising. Candidates for the British Parliament are given equal time to speak on television for free. But they cannot run TV ads. Candidacies are based on detailed, national party platforms - on policies as much as people. And political campaigns are limited to a period of about three weeks.

In Britain, of course, the legislative and executive branches aren't as separate as they are here. (The prime minister is the country's chief executive officer, but also sits in the legislature.) The legislature is also able to pass laws governing elections without worrying much about a finicky judicial branch's constitutional objections and interference.

All in all, America has the better of it with division and balance of power among the branches and such democratic niceties as the First Amendment.

But here, at the end of this unseemly, grueling political season - one marked by more snarling and hissing than discussion of issues, and one that seems to have begun not long after the Boston Tea Party - a weary electorate may find merit in aspects of the British system. That three-week limit, for instance, seems a jolly good idea.

by CNB