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Almost as predictable as the extra day in a leap year is the quadrennial announcement from various professional guardians of our civic virtue that there's something wrong with America because we don't spend enough time watching the national political conventions on television.
After all, the major networks used to cover them
gavel-to-gavel, and in those days, there weren't many
channels other than the networks. If you plopped in front
of the tube during a convention week in the 1960s, you had
to work at it not to hear The great state of Kentucky,
birthplace of Jefferson Davis, is pleased to cast
...
If people were still interested in what happens at the conventions, the networks would be happy to provide thorough broadcasts after a week of promotional reporting, sort of like what they do for the Superbowl. So why aren't conventions interesting?
The problem is that good television requires conflict and suspense, and those are the last two things that any party wants at its convention.
The only conflict we see in recent times is an occasion dispute over a platform plank -- Republicans debating how far children should be required to bow their heads during mandatory school prayer, or Democrats arguing about whether the Right to Never Have Your Feelings Hurt should be a mere federal statute or a constitutional amendment.
But even these tend to get smothered by the party bosses, who want the news coverage to display a harmonious and united party.
As for suspense, there hasn't been any since well before the Vernal Equinox. We have lots of early primaries. Both parties' nominees have been crowned since early March -- before Colorado could even hold its primary.
So, if there is any conflict over the party platform, the authorities will do their best not to let us see it. As for suspense, we already know who will get the presidential nominations.
All that's left is the vice-presidential selection, which George W. Bush is supposed to announce today, well before the convention starts. And rumor has it that Al Gore will announce his vice-presidential selection next week, timed so that his news will trump any post-convention rise for the Republicans.
All this, for an office whose first occupant, John
Adams, called the most insignificant office that ever
the invention of man contrived or his imagination
conceived,
and a later occupant, John Nance Garner,
said was not worth a pitcher of warm spit,
though
spit
was likely a reporter's substitution for what
we might today call a urine sample.
Thus even the vice-presidential nominee is today known in advance. Ronald Reagan may have started this in 1976, when he announced his running mate several weeks before the convention that didn't nominate him -- the last convention I can remember where the nomination wasn't totally sewn up in advance.
The last time the announcement didn't come before the convention was 1988, when George Herbert Walker Bush turned James Danforth Quayle, previously an obscure senator from Indiana, into a national figure -- mostly, the butt of jokes.
A previous last-minute selection, Missouri Sen. Thomas
Eagleton in 1972, also led to problems when he had to be
dumped from the Democratic ticket after it was revealed
that he had taken electroshock treatments. It didn't help
George McGovern's credibility to say he was 1000 percent
behind Eagleton
one week and then be replacing him the
next week.
So in a broad civic sense, it's probably for the best that the vice-presidential candidate is now announced before the convention, after suitable contemplation by the candidate and his staff, rather than at the end.
But that does eliminate the suspense and drama. What's left is no real conflict, but the harmonious and unified delegates that convention organizers want us to see -- a glowing infomercial for the Republican or Democratic party.
An hour a day of such pablum is more than enough. The guardians of civic virtue ought to be proud of Americans for avoiding this swill, rather than scolding us for not paying more attention to it.
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