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Last Notes on the Last Political Conventions

By Chris Tucker |

WE-MEANING THE United States, not just Dallas-may never have another national political convention.

Remember, you heard it here first. No, we’re not relying on highly placed unnamed sources, just common sense and a little extrapolation from the way things are now. Consider:

1. Recent conventions have been of the television, by the television, and for the television. In San Francisco, large numbers of print reporters couldn’t even see the podium from their seats; the TV people, of course, had their own observation tower one of the most electrifying (well, interesting) moments came when Nancy Reagan spoke, then turned around to look at the giant TV screen and saw her televised husband watching her on television from his suite at the Anatole. Big Ron caught sight of his televised wife waving at him (or, really, at the screen), so he began waving at her (actually, he was waving at the TV cameras set up in his hotel room). So at this point, the rest of us back in the Convention Center were watching Nancy watch Ron watch her watch him. In this case, even being there was not like being there.

2. The public, most of which does not vote, long ago tired of gavel-to-gavel convention coverage, but the networks gamely soldiered on, providing total viewing for political junkies and the bedridden. No longer. This time, only Cable News Network carried everything from snore to roar. Dan Rather at CBS fought for saturation coverage, but the grand poohbahs of the networks pointed to the bottom line.

3. The two political parties, realizing that the networks would no longer hand them four days of free advertising, moved to cram all their superstar attractions into the two hours of prime time.

In effect, the conventions are being canceled by history-or by poor Nielsen ratings, if you want to be unsentimental. Since the conventions are aimed at Viewer-land, and since the networks won’t play along, it’s only a matter of time until the parties get tired of footing the bill for these archaic galas.

And what will replace these unwieldy gatherings of drunken delegates and rude reporters? Television, of course. Why should everyone come to Dallas or San Francisco or Miami? The delegations can bivouac in Holiday Inns and Hiltons in their own states, and a simple TV hookup will link them (a la Nightline) if there’s anything to debate or discuss. It won’t be long until the Convention Week becomes Convention Night, honed down to one two-hour prime-time extravaganza like the Super Bowl. The taxi drivers and souvenir peddlers will suffer, but that’s free enterprise.

So the brontosaurian convention lurches into history, floundering in the tar pits of its own dullness. Memento mori. And aren’t you a little sorry, deep down inside? You didn’t watch much of these last conventions. Didn’t read even five articles about the platform hearings. Skimmed over the whole of Bert Lance II. Yawned, then flicked off the set as minicam-toting film crews stalked the convention floors in search of other reporters who had talked to Connie Chung about her exclusive with Diane Feinstein. You don’t miss your media hype ’til the well runs dry.

But cheer up. On the brink of Election ’84, here’s one last look at the last conventions. Cut this out and keep it. Years from now some grandchild studying Media and Reality in school may rush in and ask, “Who were the Big Three in Big D?” And, recalling the billboards and the way it was, you’ll answer confidently, “Brokaw, Mudd, and Chancellor, of course. Now did I ever tell you about those conventions?”



ACCENTS. Talk about diversity. Any political party big enough to embrace the accents of both Ted Kennedy and Jim High-tower is a party of the people indeed. But with voices like Lowell Weicker’s and Phil Gramm’s, the Republicans don’t do bad either.

BIDNESSMEN. In San Francisco, the president of the American Small Business Association told of starting his fishing tackle business with $50 saved from a paper route. In Dallas, millionaire Trammell Crow wondered why a man like himself, “just a concerned citizen and businessman,” was asked to address the convention. “Then I realized that ordinary Americans are what our party is about,” he said.

BUTTONS. Both parties scored well in portable polemics. Democrats: No Mo’ Ron; Jane Wyman was Right; Better Active Today than Radioactive Tomorrow; Bedtime for Bonzo ’84; Wearing Buttons is Not Enough; No Vietnam War in Central America; Here Comes the Gender Gap. Republicans: Mondale Eats Quiche; Freeze Today, Fry Tomorrow; Not E.R.A, Not NOW, Not Ever; Nuke a Gay Whale for Christ.

CABBIE QUOTES. San Francisco: “I mean, these Republicans are crazy. They want to give embryos the same rights they’re denying full-grown women.” Dallas: “Being a cabbie is like being a surfer, and the surfs up this week.”

CONVERTS. In Dallas, former pro football player Roosevelt Grier told the convention of his odyssey from Bobby Kennedy’s liberalism to Reagan’s conservatism via the old-time religion.

FREE ENTERPRISE. San Francisco: The Hilton Hotel, headquarters for the Democratic National Committee and many reporters, jacked its prices up to $3.14 for a draw beer and $2 for coffee and a doughnut. Dallas: An enterprising young man sold Jail Packets of cigarettes, toothpaste and toothbrush for $3.50 each. “You’ll pay a lot more in the slammer,” he told customers.

GIPPER. “One more for the Gipper!” exulted the speakers in Dallas. In an odd bit of cinematic grave-robbing, the real-life courage of George Gipp, the legendary Notre Dame football star, has been transferred to the 73-year-old Reagan, who once played the Gipper in a 1940 movie called Knute Rockne: All American.

HACKNEYED QUOTES. At both conventions, it became clear that no politician ever travels “through” or “around” America. Due no doubt to the exigencies of scheduling, politicians travel on “the highways and byways” and “the streets and roads” (as opposed to the alleys and sidewalks?) of “this great country of ours.”

HUMOR. In San Francisco, a reporter said to Pudge Henkel, Hart’s campaign manager: “How can Hart position himself as the one who can beat Reagan without painting Mondale as a loser who can’t?” Henkel: “Rather skillfully, I think.” Mondale, who scored big during his campaign by borrowing a Wendy’s hamburger line that we will not repeat here, promise, drew laughs in San Francisco with more ad talk, this time ripping off John Houseman’s Smith-Barney motto: “I got these bags under my eyes the old-fashioned way. I earned them.” In Dallas, Reagan quipped: “We could say they [the Democrats] spend money like drunken sailors. But that would be an insult to drunken sailors.”

KIDS. The reporters for Children’s Express, aged 8 to 13, provided cute convention coverage in Dallas. Excerpts from their grilling of Barbara Bush: “She seems really aware and stuff, but she didn’t say anything that really incredibly surprised us. She’s very biased about her husband. She’s like, ’George could be president in ’88.’ ” The kids also elicited this wisdom from humorist Andy Rooney when they asked how he felt about Reagan: “Feel about him? I don’t feel anything. I think about him. Feelings have nothing to do with it. I feel as though I like him, but I don’t think I do.”

LOG CABIN RHETORIC. San Francisco: Variations on Jesse Jackson’s “hands that picked the cotton” motif were legion. Gov. Toney Anaya of New Mexico, welcoming Ferraro, said, “The hands that pick up only 59 cents on the dollar” (i.e., women) would nominate her as VP. Every speaker stressed his rough-hewn origins, with Hart reminding the throng that he worked on railroad crews as a boy, McGovern weighing in as “a small-town lad from a prairie town,” and Mondale waxing nostalgic about his family, which “never had a dime,” but was long on love and caring. Dallas: none.

MEDIA. San Francisco: One tipsy reporter in the press bar to another: “Hell, let’s start our own political party. We outnumber the delegates.” Dallas: Strapped for news, writers peppered convention officials with questions about the temperature in the Convention Center.

MUSIC The Democrats’ choice of tunes provided some food for thought. Geraldine Ferraro came on to the strains of Those Were the Days, the Archie Bunker theme. But some of the lines (“Didn’t need no welfare state/Everybody pulled his weight”) might fit better with the Republicans’ rugged individualism. More irony: After the Dems tried valiantly to regain the high ground of family values, the band launched into the Village People’s YMCA, practically a gay anthem. Musical reverie began by Anne Richards’ saying “Walter Mondale hears you. Walter Mondale sees you.” (See me, feel me, touch me, heal me . . . Don’t hear no commentators, don’t see no gloomy polls/A sleepy-eyed Norwegian, with presidential goals). Inexplicable theme music: the Indiana Jones theme for Ted Kennedy, who decided to avoid Reagan’s Temple of Doom this year. Predictably theme music: Rocky for Mondale, aka. Fighting Fritz-the underdog.

PROTESTORS. San Francisco: At the Rock Against Reagan concert outside the Moscone Center, a spiky-haired singer shouted to the crowd, “Isn’t it a lovely day?” When the crowd chorused its agreement, he replied: “Well, it isn’t completely lovely, because we haven’t eliminated the opposition. But we’re trying!” Dallas: The Artists for Nuclear Sanity brought a huge sign warning of the growing nuclear menace and had it installed on the side of a bus carrying Republican delegates to the convention.

RELIGION. In Dallas, the Republicans left no doubt that Jerry Falwell and his ilk would have a stronger voice in a second Reagan administration. Speaking to a prayer breakfast, Reagan set up this neat syllogism: “Politics and morality are inseparable. And as morality’s foundation is religion, religion and politics are necessarily related.” And he added: “Only those humble enough to admit they are sinners can bring to democracy the tolerance it requires in order to survive.” Thomas Jefferson might be surprised.

UNWELCOME GUESTS. San Francisco: Reagan adviser Lyn Nofziger lugged his trademark stogie through the crowd, fending off (mostly) good-natured insults from Democrats. Dallas: Consumer advocate Ralph Nader showed up to claim that Reagan is anti-consumer. “He’d rather regulate 120 million Americans by making them wear seat belts than regulate 12 auto makers by forcing them to provide passive restraints,” Nader said.

VICIOUS RHETORIC. In San Francisco, Ted Kennedy called the GOP “a cold citadel of privilege” and attacked Reagan’s record on health care: “When Ronald Kea-gan is sick, all he has to do is push a button. I just hope it’s the right button.” Texas’ Jim Hightower, a master of invective, accused Reagan of turning the White House into “a private club for a bunch of Gucci-wearing, Cabernet-sipping Hollywood plutocrats.” The Republicans slung mud of their own in Dallas, with Frank Farehnkopf calling the San Francisco convention “an orgy of pressure groups in search of a party” and Howard Baker declaring that “Mondale and his party’s platform have nothing to offer but fear of the future, fear of growth and fear of global leadership.” Not to be outdone, Jeanne Kirkpatrick (a registered Democrat) denounced “the San Francisco Democrats” as the “blame America first” party: “They didn’t blame the terrorists who murdered the Marines; they blamed the United States.” Painting the Democrats as quiche-eating cowards, Reagan said that “in the four years before we took office, country after country fell under the Soviet yoke.”

ZEALOTS. A man wearing only a loincloth and looking rather dazed by the heat gave out copies of this song in front of the Dallas Convention Center. It’s to the tune of O Tannenbaum:

Each self can grow in steps more free as member of community,

For social health and wealth within, let’s grow as balanced yang and yin.

Community is worth its weight when set to help each self grow great.

For social health and wealth within, let’s grow like balanced yang and yin.

A weirdo, sure, but after the sound and fury of San Francisco and Dallas, it’s a comforting thought. Maybe he’ll get the nomination next time-if there is a next time.

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