s a retired English teacher, I have the solution to the political blather we have to suffer until November. My plan is time-tested, and it is guaranteed to reveal who deserves to be president and vice president.
And it is quiet. No speeches, no volume turned up for TV commercials, no debates, no visits with Larry King or Katie Couric, no sound bites, no below-the-belt charges and countercharges.
My plan will not only benefit the nation, but will transform the candidates themselves, making them more thoughtful and effective leaders than we have had in the past 50 years, perhaps in history.
The plan is the essay exam.
The essay exam reveals to the instructor - in this case the voter - and to the candidates themselves how much and how little they know. It is a humbling experience, and if anything, a candidate needs, inflated by the cheers of artificially hyped-up crowds, it is a good hosing of humility.
This essay exam is so important that it would require special conditions. The candidates for president and vice president would spend a full week in individual isolation, with food passed through a special slot in their doors.
Think of it. These candidates haven't been alone in years. No advisers. No bloated contributors. No assistants. No ''yes'' persons. No fawners. No wives or mistresses. No conjugal visits. No fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, children, old pals or former college roommates. No pets. Most of all, no speechwriters. The candidates will fill their own blue book.
They will be without newspapers or magazines, radio or TV, books or VCR tapes. No phones, cell or otherwise. No computers. No polls. No crib notes. They will be given half a dozen No. 2 pencils, with erasers on each, a pencil sharpener, and a single blue book. The candidates will have to think for themselves, by themselves.
The candidates will answer one question:
''What are the three most important problems the country faces, and how do you intend to solve them?''
The candidates will be told that they will be graded on brevity, clarity, and the logic of their thought.
As all who have had their minds exposed by the surgery of a blue-book exam know, they will confront the English language. This is a matter of tradition - spelling, mechanics, diction, usage - but as the writer reads what has been revealed of the writer's own mind, the eraser is essential.
Reading aloud what we have written, with confidence and in high seriousness, few of us can escape hilarity followed by embarrassment, shame, humility, and the fear of ridicule. We erase and revise. Not just for correctness, but for intelligence, wit, logic, even common sense.
The writer of a blue book exam confronts the writer. We stand mentally naked in front of the mirror; all that has been hidden is exposed.
Hollow promises, petty attacks, illogical sequences of thought, ideas that cannot stand alone, are exposed. What ARE the three greatest problems the country faces and exactly HOW do I expect to solve them?
At the end of seven days, the candidates, humbled and less arrogant, will appear and pass in their exams. They will not be graded, but their blue books will immediately be published in newspapers and magazines, on TV and computer screens.
The nation would have a day off for reading and thoughtful reaction. No work. No football games. No game shows. Just a quiet day alone with the minds of our potential leaders, laid bare on the page.
The next day we would vote.
And if not one of the four gets a simple majority, we would start over. This time we would be looking for leaders who can pass a blue-book exam, revealing the quality of their minds through a series of sentences that demonstrate brevity, grace, and old-fashioned, clear thought.
