Word: ranney
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...American Enterprise Institute's Austin Ranney sees heightened interest in the presidency by scholars, journalists and politicians because "it became apparent that it was not inevitable every President was going to be a failed President." Not so long ago academics had suggested the institution was flawed...
...Washington, so highly educated and amply endowed with the taxpayers' money, as an arrogant and isolated state within a state, condescending toward the rest of the country, enamored of itself and puffed up by its social pretensions and inside rituals. That legend now has some scholarly support. Austin Ranney, a resident political scientist at the American Enterprise Institute, points out that the losers in past elections have often blamed the electorate. In their despair they have decided that the voters were "a bunch of jerks," not "the good peasants and yeomen" of yore. This time, says Ranney, the sense...
...Austin Ranney, editor of a study of debates for the American Enterprise Institute, believes that these factors are important issues. His view: "We don't say, 'I believe in these 20 things and Reagan believes in 17 of them and Mondale in 14, so Reagan wins 17-14.' We're trying to determine what kind of people they are as human beings, how they will respond in times of crisis." Debates in their present format, he concedes, are "by no means ideal" for facilitating that judgment, but "what other chance do we have to compare them...
Perhaps the best approach would build on a suggestion from Ranney: A series of four debates with a different format for each, testing the candidates in a variety of settings. One might be a variation of an old-fashioned debate with stated topic, statements and rebuttals, and the candidates questioning each other; another could be a debate along present lines; the third and fourth might be modeled on Polsby's extended conversations. In some form, debates probably will and certainly should continue; the task is to prevent them from freezing into a mold that satisfies no one except...
...Democratic Party seems to be forming itself like another part of the federal bureaucracy. In Ranney's view, a Kennedy revolt of 400 or 500 delegates never materialized in part because too many of the people on the floor had a personal stake in spending programs Jimmy Carter had fostered for states and localities...