"They are all giving thought nowadays," WFB begins, "to how the post-Watergate

Presidency should look, how the office might be revised so as to bring it back within republican discipline." A rich discussion of how the Presidency reached its present state--which is, host and guest agree, too strong in some respects and too weak in others--enlivened by the offbeat perspective that makes Mr. McCarthy arguably a better poet than he would have been a President: e.g., his proposal that instead of picking the President first and letting him pick his running mate, the "big fights at conventions ought to be over who's going to be the Vice President.... You pick the Vice President and you let him pick the presidential candidate. And you see all the good that would come out of that. You'd be picking a man who would say, 'I have no ambition at this point to be President. I'm going to take the least of all political jobs ... I will demonstrate my humility. And then I will be responsible for the man I pick to be President.' "