One of the best ways for us to reform the political process would be to ban television advertising. Politicians now have to raise enormous sums of money to compete and the lion's share of this goes towards television spots. As a result, most of our elected officials are beholden to their largest fundraisers and this manifests itself in many ways, from Clinton letting them stay in the Lincoln bedroom to Reagan giving them giant tax breaks to Bush the 43rd allowing them to write policy. The average voter means nothing to the politician now, he's only worried about appeasing his biggest bundlers and corporate donors.
On the other side of the coin, you have the television networks themselves. Even the staid, liberal old PBS was referring to Wal-Mart as a large job creator after they had underwritten programming. The networks are only focused on covering political races like horse races. Nowhere is there any discussion of policy, it's all about who's ahead in the polls and how their opponents are responding. The networks want a close presidential race for the same reason they want a seventh world series game - revenue! The closer the race looks, the more interest it generates and the more is spent on television advertising.
Without TV advertising, politicians would be forced to appearing on existing television shows to get their message out. Republicans would be all puffed up and pandered to by Faux News, but the others would have to appear in debates or allow themselves to be grilled by TV hosts like Bob Shieffer, David Gregory or (gasp!) Katie Couric.
Since truth in advertising clearly does not extend to political ads, politicians would have to make their outrageous claims without market-tested graphics and would immediately be called upon by astute hosts to back these claims up. The only possible exception would be the Fox Noise network.
Political aspirants would be freed from the burden of constantly trying to raise funds and may actually spend some time listening to their constituents and formulating policy. Instead of funneling billions to the large media conglomerates, television would be tasked to a scheduler with network contacts.
Eventually, perhaps, the TV news reporters would return to real journalism and dissect those who aspire to run this country without fear of reprisal from the media conglomerate's chief executives.