Pros and Conventions

Jackson complained that "we have two parties but one source of money," those who can afford to write checks -- and as a result, he said, "real issues don't get debated."

But the panel cast a skeptical eye on many popular ideas for reforming the process. The idea of a national primary to shorten the campaign was rejected by McGovern and Lugar, but Anderson found scattered support for his "American Plan" for a radically altered primary calendar that would start with small-population states and end with the electoral giants.

The biggest surprise to me was McGovern's stance on the "superdelegate" issue that roiled the waters between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama this year. McGovern recalled that the "superdelegates," elected and party officials, were given a free pass into the convention in reaction to the rules his commission had drafted that opened the Democratic convention to blacks, Hispanics, women and young people.

"Tip O'Neill was beaten in his own precinct by a 20-year-old woman supporter of mine," McGovern said, arguing that the superdelegates are needed to leaven the mixture on the convention floor.

The conventions of which they spoke were much livelier affairs than those we have seen in recent years, where everything has been negotiated in advance. The new Adlai Stevenson Center on Democracy will take on the challenge of trying to improve these conventions without making them even more scripted.

davidbroder@washpost.com