I wish national political conventions were more analytic.
The first national political conventions largely covered by television was in 1952 and both the Republican and Democratic eventual nominees for their parties were contested. For the Republicans, Robert Taft, often called “Mr. Republican”, was isolationist and anti-labor but was defeated by Dwight David Eisenhower, the famous general of World War II, who was an internationalist who would go on, as President, to in effect ratify the New Deal. I remember Everet Dirksen, the Senator from Illinois, standing on the rostrum and pointing his finger at Tom Dewey, who was the leader of the New York delegation, saying with contempt, Dewey, a strong supporter of Eisenhower, that Dewey “had led us down to defeat”. For their part, there were a number of contestants for the Democratic nomination in that year. There was support by Eleanor Roosevelt for Averil Harriman, the Governor of New York, who had been a major player in diplomatic negotiations for her late husband, and she was interviewed on television on Harriman’s behalf. But Harriman was somewhat stiff and probably nobody could have beaten Eisenhower.
The point was that the political dynamics were real and played out in more or less full view, like actors and actresses reaching beyond the footlights to penetrate into real life, just like Gene Kelly running off the stage to catch Debbie Reynolds at the end of “Singing in the Rain”. What was on the stage really counted even if there were still smoked filled rooms behind the scenes trying to manipulate the performance, most states not yet dominated by the primary system which did not become universal until McGovern’s nomination in 1972 and where national political conventions eventually becoming superfluous in that the standard bearer is settled before the convention, as was the case in Republicans nominating George W. Bush in 2000 because of his name rather than his other personal attributes, a figurehead to preside over a Republican establishment with Cheney and Rumsfeld in command, even though Democrats still got somewhat embroiled, in that Sanders remained in the Democratic nomination race in 2020 through the convention, and Ted Kennedy had been less than gracious in admitting that Jimmy Carter had been renominated as President in 1980. All told, the movement to a primary system seemed progress and more democratic because the process was more public as well as ballot driven. It was also more dramatic as well because unexpected things could happen within a time and place.
So what happens to the two political conventions if there is no business for them to undertake? Maybe the networks will stop covering them because they are no longer newsworthy but that is unlikely unless ratings decline significantly. The Olympics get a lot of play because people do tune in and so exorbitant ad revenues result. Or maybe the national conventions are regarded as free air time for three or four nights every four years as a service to democratic politics. Continuity for current conventions is the hallmark of these evenings, each party presenting its candidates and its own policies to its best advantage, full of hoopla and grand speeches, so as to illuminate the electorate about who they are and what they stand for.
That certainly is what happened during the first night of the Democratic Convention in Chicago the other night. Protests for a ceasefire had not gotten much coverage and the demand for a Palestinian American to speak at the convention was foreclosed in that such an appearance would have legitimized the genocidal invasion by Hamas on Oct. 7th, and the Democrats were not going to put up with that. So if there was no confrontation, what should occupy the Democrats? There was a roster of speakers, one after the other, and each one picking apart the Republican program and its leaders and familiarizing the public with shrouding Harris with awesomeness and her charm and her bona fides so as to continue what the Democrats will be a triumphal march to victory, just about all the factions of the party united for victory.
And the speakers accomplished that rather well. Women and a husband spoke about the dangers to health offered by rescinding Roe v. Wade. Speakers told that Trump was an undemocratic would-be tyrant who would destroy the Republic and had already tried. They aired the tape of Trump's request to get the votes so he could win Georgia in 2920. Trump disdained the military, which is a cardinal sin, And to be rejected as President for that reason alone.Trump was a felon while Harris was a prosecutor and engaged in what seems to me a low blow by saying Trump had been involved with a porn star, personal matters not to be dignified even though part of American politics since the inception of the Republic have engaged in showing dirty linen..Meanwhile, the Biden administration, the speakers of the convention asserted, had handled the pandemic which Trump had fumbled, got infrastructure done when Trump had failed to do so, strengthened foreign alliances and built the economy. Joe Biden did his job in his speech by tieing the strands together. He showed how successful he had been but was turning the baton to someone else, someone he had originally made vice president, not because of differences on policy but because he had become too old, a bit of graciousness in that he didn’t think he was too old, but other people did. Continuity for the party in the face of Trump's threat to democracy brought the themes together. The entire production seemed a pleasing and uplifting endeavor.
But why did I feel dispirited even though by and large I approve of the Democratic agenda and find the people in the room appealing? It is because all this overarching theme to find Republicans blameworthy and their own side meritorious, however much that's the way political rhetoric is waged, seem to me to be beside the point, not a source of illumination but mutual gladhanding that erases all the subtleties. Consider the speech early in the night of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She was, as commentators thought, grooming herself for greater things than being a congresswoman, and she delivered her remarks with a strong voice and verbal clarity. But she went beyond the bounds of reasonable discourse through the exaggerations that are allowed in political rhetoric. She said she had only been a bartender six years ago and that Republicans made fun of that even though it was honest and hard work, having to be on your feet all day. So far I can agree. All or most work is today considered honorable, maybe even including porn stars. But she also has disdain for what the Democrats generally call other than the middle class even though it includes the poor and the working class and even Kamala Harris’s mother who was a professional in that she was a medical researcher and happened never to get rich. The objects of derision are the rich people who exploit the middle class and are just greedy. But any fair reading would reflect, as the Democrats will not, that it takes not just auto workers but also auto executives, who are in the game of planning cars as they will be a decade hence, as contributing to the economy, even if you also think that they are over compensated. And not just bartenders work hard. So do investment bankers who log in very long hours and recalculate possible large scale and risky ventures even if you think the actual function of what most of them do is unnecessary. So AOC in her screed was unbalanced in her presentation and that is what always happens in political rhetoric, which is to find villains.
Consider if we put aside not our partisanship but our simplifications. Maybe then a Democratic speaker could explain to us why the arch-villain Trump has over forty percent of the electorate in favor of him, despite the outrageous behaviors and statements he makes. What motivates his supporters? Are all of them, as Hillary put it, “despicable and irredeemable”? Or is it that his supporters are angry, but just about what? Or is it that they like his meanness even as they disapprove of his crudeness? I don’t know but political operatives might try to figure it out if only to follow the general rule of knowing your enemy. But that doesn’t happen, the politician's just adopting another pejorative, which is that he is weird, so as to dismiss him rather than to build him up by portraying him as the great bogeyman. A nuanced view of Republicans might amplify the Democratic message.
But what I find sad to say is that political rhetoric, as exemplified by both political parties in their conventions, do not engage one another, just demean one another. Maybe that is not the role of politics. Maybe academics of our time could do that, which is what public intellectuals did in previous generations when, for example, John Kenneth Galbraith did, and which William Buckley Jr did for Republicans as best he could. Where is the public space to do that? NY Times columnists do a bit of that but analyze less than they should and guess the horse race and write cleverly instead, Friedman and Krugman to be notable exceptions. Maybe all I am saying is that social science should be more in play and that I am sad that it has been displaced by advocacy, that national conventions are not means of enlightenment rather than mobilization.