7/26/00 5:15 p.m.
End of the Big Show
Moving towards fake conventions.

By NR's Editors

s Republicans prepared to gather in Philadelphia, columnist Robert Novak wrote that their convention would be more tightly controlled by the foreordained nominee than any convention in recent memory. Advance reports forecast a carefully scripted procession of lawmakers and GOP speakers representing every hue, sex, and disability (on Monday night, there is supposed to be a blind mountain climber). A campaign that taps Dick Cheney for veep is not pursuing a high-risk strategy — but does a great American spectacle have to be this tame?

One obvious enemy of the convention as an art form has been television. In a layman's version of the Heisenberg principle, as soon as politicians understood that they were being observed, they began changing their behavior. In the Sixties, they ached for the notice of Walter Cronkite, Huntley & Brinkley, and the other anchors disposed like gods in their skyboxes. As the networks began losing interest and cutting coverage, the parties took ever more desperate steps to make their rituals viewer-friendly.

They had more leeway to streamline thanks to the second great enemy of the convention — democracy. In 1960, there were only half a dozen primaries that mattered. By now, every state has some primary or caucus. In front-loaded, free-spending cycles, most of these, it turns out, don't matter either (this year, John McCain ran out of gas at a point before Ronald Reagan had got going in 1976). But when every vote has been decided in advance, nothing is left for the convention. The real first ballot is cast in Iowa, and the last comes in March. No long demonstrations, no tedious polling of delegations.

There is a third, aesthetic reason for the creeping dullness of conventions — the tendency toward bland overproduction in all American public events. With sound systems able to overpower all the voices in even huge halls, and video systems able to turn any blank surface into a cineplex, every American event — from athletic half-time show to religious revival — has become a Wizard of Oz sound and light show. The convention has followed suit, as its ambitious managers try to program every toot and doodle. The all-time low point so far: Elizabeth Dole's walkabout at San Diego in 1996 — unless it was the soulful stylings of Kenny G during the Ron Brown tribute at Chicago in 1996 (when the modern convention tries to be quiet and earnest, it is most vulgar and manipulative). No doubt these nadirs will be equaled this time around.

It's all too bad, because conventions still gather thousands of pols and party faithful in one place. Some of them are allowed to speak from the podium; others can be collared by the industrious reporter. What is on their minds will soon be on our minds, possibly in our laws. The real story is still the outside story.

But civic-mindedness has to be helped along by drama, ritual, and bustle. As these dwindle down to nothing, what is an ordinary person's incentive to pay attention? Las Vegas hotels have lately built little pseudo-cities: a fake Venice, a fake New York. What we will see in Philadelphia, and then Los Angeles, will be increasingly like fake conventions.