More is More Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush has, in our judgment, made a bad decision in deciding to resist the non-partisan Commission on Presidential Debate's proposed format for three public debates between himself and Democrat Al Gore. Bush countered over the Labor Day weekend with an acceptance of one of the commission's sites, at Washington University in St. Louis, coupled with a proposal that he and Gore sit down, respectively, with NBC's Tim Russert and CNN's Larry King for two more encounters. The problem is not with the format. Russert and King are both probing questioners -- the hardballs of the one and the softballs of the other capable of coaxing healthy swings and honest answers from their subjects. But understandably the other major networks -- CBS and ABC -- decline to cooperate with what would be, in effect, a promotional bonus for the talk show hosts of their competitors. The audiences for a joint appearance by the candidates on Meet the Press (even a prime-time version) and Larry King Live would be correspondingly reduced, as would the people's vaunted Right to Know. Gore, who long ago accepted the commission format, has charged his rival with wanting to duck public scrutiny. The best way of countering that political sally would be for Bush to accept the full Commission format, including two more all-network appearances at Boston and Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Then we wouldn't mind at all watching the two candidates talk things over with Russert and King or whomever else for a more limited audience. That -- an expansion of opportunities as against a contraction -- would be the best possible compromise solution. And Bush, who just now has slipped behind in the polls, would be doing himself a favor by maximizing the opportunity for public contact with his opponent. Put It to Rest! A pointless continuation of a pointless quarrel got rebuffed last week by a committee of the state legislature, and we can only express ourselves relieved -- and hopeful that this is the last we are ever going to hear of an ill-tempered and ill-considered vendetta by some Memphis legislators against educator and former Shelby State Community College president Bud Amann. What happened was that State Senator Andy Womack (D-Murfreesboro), chairman of the legislature's joint Oversight committee on Corrections, pressured State Rep. Ulysses Jones (D-Memphis) to drop his objections to the salary level Amann is now getting from the University of Memphis, where Amann transferred following the merger of Shelby State and the State Technical Institute at Memphis into the new Southwest Tennessee Community College. Jones had threatened to block a new $1.25 million U of M chair of excellence in audiology and speech pathology if Amann's salary (roughly equivalent to what he got at Shelby State) were not reduced. If you do, then the money will be diverted from the U of M to unfunded chairs at Middle Tennessee State University and elsewhere, was what Womack in effect told Jones, who then backed down. The campaign against Amann, stemming from the interference by Jones and some other inner-city legislators with Shelby State's prerogatives in setting its standards for graduating nursing students, was wrongheaded to begin with. It long ago became tiresome, and, as Jones indicated last week, destructive to the best interests of the Greater Memphis educational community. The issue raised by Jones and the others is, in any case, now moot. It is high time for them to get over it and put the whole affair behind us.