On Monday Al Gore proposed campaign-finance reforms including free air time for presidential and congressional candidates. (Click here to read his speech.) His plan would require broadcasters to give each candidate five minutes of free air time a day in the 30 days preceding an election. Moreover, any broadcaster airing a paid "independent issue ad" would have to donate equivalent time to each candidate. In 1997 the American Enterprise Institute's Norman Ornstein and former CBS News exec Barbara Cochran debated similar proposals in Slate.