The market way to fairness is to impose a hefty tax on political TV advertising. Paul Taylor, an energetic reformer, urges a tax of 50 percent. He would use the proceeds to underwrite vouchers, to be distributed among political parties and candidates for the purchase of TV time in any market. That's a halfway measure. Better yet, in my view, would be a 100 percent surcharge on every political TV and radio commercial to pay for an opponent's immediate response in the same market, to the same audience. A stiff tax would assure that the more a candidate spent on TV, the greater the subsidy for his or her rivals.
4/18/97
Former New York Times Executive Editor Max Frankel in the New York Times Magazine, March 30, 1997:
