A third of teenage deaths involve driving accidents—teen drivers are three times as likely as older ones to die in a crash. As other traffic deaths fell between 1993 and 2003, deaths involving Americans from 15 to 20 years of age rose by 5 percent, to 7,884 driving fatalities in 2003.

One reason for the increase is the ongoing effects of the tax revolt inspired by Proposition 13. Just as schools cut gym classes when their funds were slashed, leading to the soaring rate of teen obesity, driver-education courses at 80 percent of our schools were cut. The courses that survive in, for example, Washington, D.C., “don’t teach you how to drive as much as how to pass the driving test,” according to one expert.

But the main problem is far too many young drivers, especially males. “Boys have a lot of testosterone and a penchant for risk-taking,” notes a staffer at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. On top of high spirits, inexperience means overdriving on curves and an unawareness of how prone S.U.V.’s are to rollovers.

Then there are the other teens in the car. “The risk of a fatal crash is directly related to the number of teens in the vehicle,” notes Dr. Jeffrey W. Runge, former head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. A driving instructor in New Jersey laments the “distractions” and “socializing” that take place inside cars jammed with teens.

Concern over these appalling statistics is growing. A popular reform is the graduated driver’s license, in which 16-year-olds who pass driving tests get a permit requiring an adult passenger in the car. They get a full license after a year of safe driving. Many graduated licenses also restrict teen passengers and night driving, especially on weekends.

The results of these reforms have been encouraging: Fatal crashes by 16-year-old drivers fell by 26 percent between 1993 and 2003. More than half of the nation’s 16- and 17-year-olds had licenses a few years ago. Now, 42 percent do.

Still, that means 42 percent of a crash-prone group has a license. How crash-prone? Recent studies have shown that the risk-inhibiting areas of the brain are not fully formed until people are about 25.

“The more I read about the current statistics in teenage driving, the more things need to change,” says Dr. Arturo Betancourt. “We don’t let kids drink until they’re 21, but we put them in killing machines before they’re really able [to handle driving].” Dr. Betancourt’s daughter, Alicia, died last year when a young friend lost control of his car and spun into a lamppost. She was 16, and one of 15 children killed in nine crashes in a single month last fall in the Washington, D.C., area. Three of the nine crashes involved 16-year-old drivers; four had 17-year-olds at the wheel. All but one driver was male.

Such tragedies are inevitable, given the very permissive local licensing laws. Teens as young as 15 can get permits in Virginia and Maryland. Washington drivers qualify at age 16 and six months.

“Two weeks more, Dad, and I’m cuttin’ you loose,” says the beardless youth to his father-driver in a State Farm Insurance commercial. State Farm is trolling for a piece of a growing market: While 22 percent of our kids from 16 to 19 owned cars in 1985, some 41 percent do today.

But for all the talk about driving as an American “rite of passage” from adolescence to adulthood, there’s no right to drive a car. Driving is a privilege—and kids with high-risk brains and the turmoils of youth have no business behind the wheel.

Requiring drivers to be at least 17 years old to get a learner’s permit is among the measures Washington can take on to reform the worst drivers in the First World. Likewise, all drivers over the age of 70 should be regularly recertified for licenses by their states. Washington should also revive the national speed limit of 55 to 65 miles an hour. All cell phones should be banned from private vehicles, and helmets mandated for motorcyclists. And given that drunk drivers cause 40 percent of highway deaths, there must be much tougher state and local penalties for D.W.I. offenses, such as instant license revocation.

Meanwhile, we have all those adolescent drivers with risk-prone, immature brain cells and youth’s usual storms. “However badly and hopelessly in love you may be, at 120 miles an hour you are less so,” wrote a young Françoise Sagan, shortly before totaling her Aston-Martin.

Fortune smiled. She only broke her skull.

A third of teenage deaths involve driving accidents—teen drivers are three times as likely as older ones to die in a crash. As other traffic deaths fell between 1993 and 2003, deaths involving Americans from 15 to 20 years of age rose by 5 percent, to 7,884 driving fatalities in 2003.

One reason for the increase is the ongoing effects of the tax revolt inspired by Proposition 13. Just as schools cut gym classes when their funds were slashed, leading to the soaring rate of teen obesity, driver-education courses at 80 percent of our schools were cut. The courses that survive in, for example, Washington, D.C., “don’t teach you how to drive as much as how to pass the driving test,” according to one expert.

But the main problem is far too many young drivers, especially males. “Boys have a lot of testosterone and a penchant for risk-taking,” notes a staffer at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. On top of high spirits, inexperience means overdriving on curves and an unawareness of how prone S.U.V.’s are to rollovers.

Then there are the other teens in the car. “The risk of a fatal crash is directly related to the number of teens in the vehicle,” notes Dr. Jeffrey W. Runge, former head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. A driving instructor in New Jersey laments the “distractions” and “socializing” that take place inside cars jammed with teens.

Concern over these appalling statistics is growing. A popular reform is the graduated driver’s license, in which 16-year-olds who pass driving tests get a permit requiring an adult passenger in the car. They get a full license after a year of safe driving. Many graduated licenses also restrict teen passengers and night driving, especially on weekends.

The results of these reforms have been encouraging: Fatal crashes by 16-year-old drivers fell by 26 percent between 1993 and 2003. More than half of the nation’s 16- and 17-year-olds had licenses a few years ago. Now, 42 percent do.

Still, that means 42 percent of a crash-prone group has a license. How crash-prone? Recent studies have shown that the risk-inhibiting areas of the brain are not fully formed until people are about 25.

“The more I read about the current statistics in teenage driving, the more things need to change,” says Dr. Arturo Betancourt. “We don’t let kids drink until they’re 21, but we put them in killing machines before they’re really able [to handle driving].” Dr. Betancourt’s daughter, Alicia, died last year when a young friend lost control of his car and spun into a lamppost. She was 16, and one of 15 children killed in nine crashes in a single month last fall in the Washington, D.C., area. Three of the nine crashes involved 16-year-old drivers; four had 17-year-olds at the wheel. All but one driver was male.

Such tragedies are inevitable, given the very permissive local licensing laws. Teens as young as 15 can get permits in Virginia and Maryland. Washington drivers qualify at age 16 and six months.

“Two weeks more, Dad, and I’m cuttin’ you loose,” says the beardless youth to his father-driver in a State Farm Insurance commercial. State Farm is trolling for a piece of a growing market: While 22 percent of our kids from 16 to 19 owned cars in 1985, some 41 percent do today.

But for all the talk about driving as an American “rite of passage” from adolescence to adulthood, there’s no right to drive a car. Driving is a privilege—and kids with high-risk brains and the turmoils of youth have no business behind the wheel.

Requiring drivers to be at least 17 years old to get a learner’s permit is among the measures Washington can take on to reform the worst drivers in the First World. Likewise, all drivers over the age of 70 should be regularly recertified for licenses by their states. Washington should also revive the national speed limit of 55 to 65 miles an hour. All cell phones should be banned from private vehicles, and helmets mandated for motorcyclists. And given that drunk drivers cause 40 percent of highway deaths, there must be much tougher state and local penalties for D.W.I. offenses, such as instant license revocation.

Meanwhile, we have all those adolescent drivers with risk-prone, immature brain cells and youth’s usual storms. “However badly and hopelessly in love you may be, at 120 miles an hour you are less so,” wrote a young Françoise Sagan, shortly before totaling her Aston-Martin.

Fortune smiled. She only broke her skull.

Campaign-finance reform is as old as one of Herblock’s first cartoons about the subject, published in 1932, five years before Senator McCain was born. Sixty years later, in 1992, money’s grip on Congress was so secure that even Hollywood caught on. In The Distinguished Gentleman, Eddie Murphy plays a con man named Thomas Jefferson Johnson who gets himself elected to Congress. After Johnson lands a plum committee assignment, a slick trick from Gucci Gulch named Terry Corrigan (played by Kevin McCarthy) refers to the post as “the honey pot.” Money pours in from lobbyists on both sides of issues. “How can anything be done?” the Johnson character wonders. “It doesn’t,” Corrigan answers. “That’s the beauty of the system!”

Then came Tom DeLay’s K Street Project in 1995, purging Democratic lobbyists while raising lots of Republican cash. The number of lobbyists exploded from 9,000 to 34,000, with a similar increase in earmarks. By 2004, lobbyists were so ubiquitous that The Washington Post hired Jeffrey K. Birnbaum as the paper’s first lobbying reporter. More recently, the paper’s campaign-finance specialist, Thomas B. Edsall, described how 69 lobbyists have served as treasurers for the campaign committees or leadership P.A.C.’s of members of Congress.

In early January, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich unleashed a blunt jeremiad about the influence of lobbyists and money, saying that Washington was “building a wall of money to protect itself from America.” Following Mr. Gingrich’s speech, House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist called for reforms. Then realities prevailed. Messrs. Birnbaum and Edsall reported that members of Congress returned from a two-week break determined to pass a weak reform package because they heard little about the issue from voters.

As a result, reform meant more disclosures about contacts between Congress and K Street, more reports on gifts or contributions, but not bans on them. “That will be a little bit of a nuisance, but we’ll do it,” a lobbyist told Mr. Birnbaum.

Public financing of Presidential campaigns has helped level the playing field—three sitting Presidents, who usually have an enormous fund-raising advantage, have been defeated since 1976. The Presidential system began as a response to Watergate. Today’s lobbying scandals may yet inspire taxpayer-funded Congressional races, free from special-interest money. But it will take time. The soft-money caps in the McCain-Feingold law came seven years after then–Speaker Newt Gingrich and then–President Bill Clinton pledged reform with their “Claremont handshake” deal in New Hampshire.

House incumbents protected by partisan gerrymanders will strongly resist public financing because of the aid it would give to challengers. Even many Senators would rather debate themselves by raising money, granting “access” to K Street pleaders, even “tweaking” bills with niche breaks for backers in the name of “economic development.”

Meanwhile, three states show the way on public financing: Arizona, Maine and Vermont. These states have more competitive races and more citizens involved in them. Arizona offers up to $1 million in taxpayer funds for statewide races if they meet certain criteria. “Surprise, surprise!” said Senator McCain. “I’m spending more time talking to voters, not contributors.”

Under Maine’s Clean Election Law of 1998, candidates get modest public funds by collecting a maximum of $5 from all their backers. While this is “somewhat labor-intensive,” wrote state legislators Glenn Curtis, a Democrat, and Ed Youngblood, a Republican, “we enjoyed the fact that it caused us to spend more time in people’s living rooms, rather than on the phone, chasing down checks from lobbyists.”

One in four Maine state legislators is going clean; costs have plummeted; races have been more competitive; and incumbency has lost its juggernaut force. “Best of all,” wrote Messrs. Curtis and Youngblood, lobbyists have stopped hassling “clean” lawmakers, making it “easier to get through the Capitol’s halls in time for a vote.”

Cheaper and more-contested races, more citizens participating as $5 donors, lawmakers unmolested by lobbyists en route to doing the people’s business—how’s that for representative democracy?

Campaign-finance reform is as old as one of Herblock’s first cartoons about the subject, published in 1932, five years before Senator McCain was born. Sixty years later, in 1992, money’s grip on Congress was so secure that even Hollywood caught on. In The Distinguished Gentleman, Eddie Murphy plays a con man named Thomas Jefferson Johnson who gets himself elected to Congress. After Johnson lands a plum committee assignment, a slick trick from Gucci Gulch named Terry Corrigan (played by Kevin McCarthy) refers to the post as “the honey pot.” Money pours in from lobbyists on both sides of issues. “How can anything be done?” the Johnson character wonders. “It doesn’t,” Corrigan answers. “That’s the beauty of the system!”

Then came Tom DeLay’s K Street Project in 1995, purging Democratic lobbyists while raising lots of Republican cash. The number of lobbyists exploded from 9,000 to 34,000, with a similar increase in earmarks. By 2004, lobbyists were so ubiquitous that The Washington Post hired Jeffrey K. Birnbaum as the paper’s first lobbying reporter. More recently, the paper’s campaign-finance specialist, Thomas B. Edsall, described how 69 lobbyists have served as treasurers for the campaign committees or leadership P.A.C.’s of members of Congress.

In early January, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich unleashed a blunt jeremiad about the influence of lobbyists and money, saying that Washington was “building a wall of money to protect itself from America.” Following Mr. Gingrich’s speech, House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist called for reforms. Then realities prevailed. Messrs. Birnbaum and Edsall reported that members of Congress returned from a two-week break determined to pass a weak reform package because they heard little about the issue from voters.

As a result, reform meant more disclosures about contacts between Congress and K Street, more reports on gifts or contributions, but not bans on them. “That will be a little bit of a nuisance, but we’ll do it,” a lobbyist told Mr. Birnbaum.

Public financing of Presidential campaigns has helped level the playing field—three sitting Presidents, who usually have an enormous fund-raising advantage, have been defeated since 1976. The Presidential system began as a response to Watergate. Today’s lobbying scandals may yet inspire taxpayer-funded Congressional races, free from special-interest money. But it will take time. The soft-money caps in the McCain-Feingold law came seven years after then–Speaker Newt Gingrich and then–President Bill Clinton pledged reform with their “Claremont handshake” deal in New Hampshire.

House incumbents protected by partisan gerrymanders will strongly resist public financing because of the aid it would give to challengers. Even many Senators would rather debate themselves by raising money, granting “access” to K Street pleaders, even “tweaking” bills with niche breaks for backers in the name of “economic development.”

Meanwhile, three states show the way on public financing: Arizona, Maine and Vermont. These states have more competitive races and more citizens involved in them. Arizona offers up to $1 million in taxpayer funds for statewide races if they meet certain criteria. “Surprise, surprise!” said Senator McCain. “I’m spending more time talking to voters, not contributors.”

Under Maine’s Clean Election Law of 1998, candidates get modest public funds by collecting a maximum of $5 from all their backers. While this is “somewhat labor-intensive,” wrote state legislators Glenn Curtis, a Democrat, and Ed Youngblood, a Republican, “we enjoyed the fact that it caused us to spend more time in people’s living rooms, rather than on the phone, chasing down checks from lobbyists.”

One in four Maine state legislators is going clean; costs have plummeted; races have been more competitive; and incumbency has lost its juggernaut force. “Best of all,” wrote Messrs. Curtis and Youngblood, lobbyists have stopped hassling “clean” lawmakers, making it “easier to get through the Capitol’s halls in time for a vote.”

Cheaper and more-contested races, more citizens participating as $5 donors, lawmakers unmolested by lobbyists en route to doing the people’s business—how’s that for representative democracy?

There’s a way to end such executive oscillations between bubble and Bubba while restoring openness to both the White House and Congress in a time of widespread voter mistrust. It’s a forum whosze drama can help revive a democracy where just half the adults vote. It’s Question Time, a political centerpiece of two nations like ours, Britain and Canada. C-SPAN attracts millions of Americans who watch Tony Blair’s weekly grilling in the House of Commons. Far more would tune in to a monthly American Question Time pitting the President against his critics on Capitol Hill.

Early in 1993, rumor had it that President-elect Clinton was considering a form of Question Time. But then he took office and soon retreated from even regular press conferences. How dramatic was that retreat? President Bush’s press conference of Oct. 11, 2001 was the first prime-time session since 1995. For six blissful years, two Presidents had avoided going before cameras in prime time to swat away the softballs that dominate these one-sided meetings.

By 2003, Mr. Bush had held just 11 press conferences, compared with 91 by Dwight Eisenhower, 71 by his father and even 32 by the reclusive Richard Nixon at similar points in their Presidencies. This extreme isolation contrasted with Mr. Bush’s junior partner in the “coalition of the willing.” Tony Blair’s position on Iraq became so unpopular that, in contrast to Mr. Bush, he began to hold monthly press conferences at 10 Downing Street. It was very American, and traditionally very not done by Her Majesty’s First Minister.

Our last two Presidents compare feebly to John F. Kennedy, who met weekly with reporters. Although James Reston once called these televised sessions “the goofiest idea since the hula hoop,” Kennedy knew better: He used the press conference as a pipeline to the people. The format also served to show off, in the words of Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Kennedy’s “intellectual speed and vivacity … the terse self-mocking with the exhilarating personal command.” But even these sessions were lopsided. We need a more equal meeting ground in Washington—and that could be Question Time.

Al Gore seemed to realize this. In 2000, inspired by his town meetings during the primaries, he pledged many more if elected. “It will be a centerpiece of the way I conduct an open, continuing, candid, no-holds-barred dialogue with the American people,” he said solemnly. But Presidential town meetings tend to be very slow pitches, even mash notes from gushing fans. Far closer to the spirit of Question Time was John McCain: He promised in 2000 to meet regularly at the White House with Congressional critics. “That kind of exchange would be good for America,” he said. Even so, a few Congressional nags in the Oval Office would still be pretty decorous compared to a full, howling body of them in a Question Time setting.

An earlier, and thorough, case for this kind of forum was made in 1942 by Thomas K. Finletter, a New Dealer who later served in the Truman and Kennedy administrations. Though a very liberal Democrat, Finletter was concerned about the increasingly strong Presidency of the man he served, Franklin Roosevelt. In his lively (if blandly titled) book, Can Representative Democracy Do the Job?, Finletter strongly urged a Question Time as a legislative check on his boss.

Given our current political alienation and the near extinction of the press conference, the need to restore some balance between the branches of government is even more relevant today. With a televised Question Time, Americans would have a regular, dramatic way to follow what their President and Congress were doing—or not doing—on their behalf.

In the meantime, we have the vanishing press conference and the State of the Union address, where the President commands the House lectern amid partisan huzzahs and standing ovations while also making like Ed Sullivan, asking plants in the House gallery to “take a bow” for their civic deeds.

Woodrow Wilson was the first President to actually give the State of the Union message, mandated by the Constitution, in person rather than through a letter. That idea set a fine precedent for Question Time, because the in-person speech has become a custom.

Our founding document doesn’t require the President to meet with the press—that’s a custom. And Question Time can become a custom too.

All it takes is a President willing to give it a try.

There’s a way to end such executive oscillations between bubble and Bubba while restoring openness to both the White House and Congress in a time of widespread voter mistrust. It’s a forum whosze drama can help revive a democracy where just half the adults vote. It’s Question Time, a political centerpiece of two nations like ours, Britain and Canada. C-SPAN attracts millions of Americans who watch Tony Blair’s weekly grilling in the House of Commons. Far more would tune in to a monthly American Question Time pitting the President against his critics on Capitol Hill.

Early in 1993, rumor had it that President-elect Clinton was considering a form of Question Time. But then he took office and soon retreated from even regular press conferences. How dramatic was that retreat? President Bush’s press conference of Oct. 11, 2001 was the first prime-time session since 1995. For six blissful years, two Presidents had avoided going before cameras in prime time to swat away the softballs that dominate these one-sided meetings.

By 2003, Mr. Bush had held just 11 press conferences, compared with 91 by Dwight Eisenhower, 71 by his father and even 32 by the reclusive Richard Nixon at similar points in their Presidencies. This extreme isolation contrasted with Mr. Bush’s junior partner in the “coalition of the willing.” Tony Blair’s position on Iraq became so unpopular that, in contrast to Mr. Bush, he began to hold monthly press conferences at 10 Downing Street. It was very American, and traditionally very not done by Her Majesty’s First Minister.

Our last two Presidents compare feebly to John F. Kennedy, who met weekly with reporters. Although James Reston once called these televised sessions “the goofiest idea since the hula hoop,” Kennedy knew better: He used the press conference as a pipeline to the people. The format also served to show off, in the words of Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Kennedy’s “intellectual speed and vivacity … the terse self-mocking with the exhilarating personal command.” But even these sessions were lopsided. We need a more equal meeting ground in Washington—and that could be Question Time.

Al Gore seemed to realize this. In 2000, inspired by his town meetings during the primaries, he pledged many more if elected. “It will be a centerpiece of the way I conduct an open, continuing, candid, no-holds-barred dialogue with the American people,” he said solemnly. But Presidential town meetings tend to be very slow pitches, even mash notes from gushing fans. Far closer to the spirit of Question Time was John McCain: He promised in 2000 to meet regularly at the White House with Congressional critics. “That kind of exchange would be good for America,” he said. Even so, a few Congressional nags in the Oval Office would still be pretty decorous compared to a full, howling body of them in a Question Time setting.

An earlier, and thorough, case for this kind of forum was made in 1942 by Thomas K. Finletter, a New Dealer who later served in the Truman and Kennedy administrations. Though a very liberal Democrat, Finletter was concerned about the increasingly strong Presidency of the man he served, Franklin Roosevelt. In his lively (if blandly titled) book, Can Representative Democracy Do the Job?, Finletter strongly urged a Question Time as a legislative check on his boss.

Given our current political alienation and the near extinction of the press conference, the need to restore some balance between the branches of government is even more relevant today. With a televised Question Time, Americans would have a regular, dramatic way to follow what their President and Congress were doing—or not doing—on their behalf.

In the meantime, we have the vanishing press conference and the State of the Union address, where the President commands the House lectern amid partisan huzzahs and standing ovations while also making like Ed Sullivan, asking plants in the House gallery to “take a bow” for their civic deeds.

Woodrow Wilson was the first President to actually give the State of the Union message, mandated by the Constitution, in person rather than through a letter. That idea set a fine precedent for Question Time, because the in-person speech has become a custom.

Our founding document doesn’t require the President to meet with the press—that’s a custom. And Question Time can become a custom too.

All it takes is a President willing to give it a try.