It was that way all week. As the GOP stage-managed the show, deftly combining large-screen video appearances with prescreened, carefully scripted, well-coiffed speakers, it drained all of the hot blood from the convention’s arteries. Before the opening gavel, I knew this convention would produce little unexpected news and that the backstage manipulation would be more ruthless than ever before. (This is a bipartisan problem: next week in Chicago, the Democrats will engage in the same micromanagement.) In San Diego, I laughed aloud when the only breaking news we were able to report one night was that New York Gov. George Pataki would deliver the nominating speech for Jack Kemp. That received serious, extended analysis when in fact it would have no impact whatsoever – on anything.
It was just another example of the self-importance of journalists and politicians alike – and we wonder why so many people hold us both in such low esteem. The parties spin madly; reporters complain about being used, usually just before or after being used.
Consider what conventions have come to mean. These days nominefes are virtually always decided months ahead of time. And the parties understandably want to remove all of the risk from these proceedings. The stakes are large: both have paid for mismanaged conventions – think of Chicago in ‘68, or Houston in ‘92.
It seems to me, however, that there is another risk in this infomercial approach. Instead of attracting people to the process, its phoniness drives them away. By the end of next week, the two parties will have moved the Beltway to San Diego and Chicago for self-congratulatory rituals, mostly financed by special interests arriving on corporate jets and entertaining on yachts. Yet people know there are real schisms within these parties. So when speakers are muzzled, it does resemble, as one Russian correspondent observed in San Diego, the old Communist Party meetings. It’s not surprising prospects for a third-party movement remain strong.
The thousands of journalists who happily converge for nocturnal expense-account dining and daytime whining about the absence of real news contribute to this growing gap between how people live and how they relate to their government. By our behavior and our presence in excessive numbers at scripted events, the press seems to buy into the illusion. We should cover conventions, but if the current trend toward total control continues, the only prime-time feature genuinely worthy of our attention will be the presidential nominee’s acceptance speech.
As a speaker might say from the podium of either convention, Americans are eager for the challenges of the new century. What that speaker won’t say is that the people may soon decide that these summer galas are largely irrelevant to that task. But the real danger is that disenchantment with conventions, politics and the press will translate into cynicism about what comes next: the campaign, the election and, most important, the shape of the next four years.
