Steve- Thanks for your comment, and for making several additional intriguing points. Your questions, paraphrased, are addressed below:

SD: Self regulate: self-regulate what, exactly? That there will be no negative ads?

WL: That there will be no paid ads. Period. It's time to change the political-(paid) media industrial complex. If both political parties were mandated to tie their media buying hands behind their proverbial backs, they could find alternative means to voluntarily level the awareness-building playing field. The commercial sector is proof. The liquor industry had a 50-year voluntary ban on broadcast advertising until 1996. The premise: advertising contributed to alcohol consumption and abuse. This July, 11 of the nation's largest food and drink companies -- Cadbury Schweppes, Campbell Soup, Coca-Cola, General Mills, Hershey, Kellogg, Kraft Foods, Mars, McDonald's, PepsiCo and Unilever -- promised to curb advertising to children 11-and-under. A regulatory defensive move? Likely, since the Federal Trade Commission announced in April that it would subpoena 44 food and beverage marketers for detailed information on how they market to children.

SD: Negative ads work. Especially when they expose the truth about a candidate's lack of judgment, character or leadership.

WL: The horse and carriage worked, too. Negative advertising isn't our only option. There are "high roads" to be taken in exposing truths. Why not form a bipartisan ethics panel that has final say on holding candidates accountable for their campaign (mis)statements. Any candidate deemed to be lying would face consequences: say, disqualification from the race. Earned and social media are free to report on the findings throughout.

SD: We need candidates to answer questions both on and off line, in front of cameras and in front of keyboards. We need to know how they react under pressure.

WL: Precisely. Paid media accomplishes none of this. Earned and user-generated media can. Through debates, and planned (then archived online) media coverage around a specific issue that compares one candidate's position to another's. Through user-generated video captured on a mobile phone at a political rally, uploaded to YouTube.

SD: Divert saved dollars to the winner so they can launch a major program: if I'm a donor, I don't want to support some other guy's program.

WL: Hence, the 7 Point Plan calls for rewriting most of the rules, as donors, citizens, media and politicians have come to accept them. Expectations for donors would change along with voluntary reforms. Donor's prerogative to draw, or fold.

SD: Where's the beef: each candidate should be required to answer the same 99 questions as selected by popular vote AND a panel of pundits. And there should be case study questions.

WL: I love this. An exercise like this should help candidates and citizens alike get beyond the rhetoric. It's exactly the kind of taste-off our political parties should have the courage to initiate.