The irony is that much of that drama and import had in effect come to depend precisely on all the staging and scripting we find objectionable. As the original function of the political convention had disappeared from the convention itself, being accomplished elsewhere and often long before the convention took place, we (and the viewing public) came more and more to seek our suspense in how the staged event came off. Because we were dealing with tableau, image politics, our judgments and reporting necessarily became in some measure those of theater critics and sports announcers. Could this one really deliver a good speech? Would that one get a lot of cheers? Would the spoiler be allowed on the podium for the finale? Would there be an outbreak of hostility over some ruling? And how would each night’s show play with John Q. Focus Group?
Don’t get me wrong. Once in a while, even in modern times, there has been a true news story in the proceedings – a blowup, a breakthrough, a revelation. From the journalist’s point of view there is also value in getting to meet and talk to delegates from all around the country. But the attention of the disproportionately huge and competitive throng of journalists has also led to the overplaying of tiny, trivial events within a convention while we were actually missing the larger story. I remember our fascination during the McGovern convention in 1972 with the inner workings of some delegation in relation to a floor amendment – all the rushing around and breathless reporting to one another we did – while the larger fact that the convention was bombing big time with the public just kind of eluded us. Conventions do that to you, even if you think you are a pretty skeptical journalist. Sometimes I think that they could nominate Saddam Hussein at one of these things and by the end of the week, what with the pack pressure and the distorted perspective that finally takes over, we would be saying ““Well, you know he did pretty well and they patched over that platform glitch and he definitely comes out of here looking good.’’ What I mean is that one week of this folderol and even the Menendez brothers would get a ““bounce.''
The argument this time around has been about all that staging and scripting and manipulating the convention producers did. It was extreme, but only as an extension of what has been creeping along for years. Since the day such proceedings began to be televised this was inevitable. Participants – great blowsy orators and the rest – performed for the writing press before that, of course, but their being onstage live before the whole televiewing public was bound to lead to this. The gut dispute between journalists and public figures is over which of them gets to tell the public figure’s story. On this their interests will always clash and there is nothing to be done about it. I think the press does owe the public a straight reporting account first of what a national political convention publicly does; in that sense it must be allowed to tell its own story even if we know a lot of it to be hokum or very selective or subtly misleading. We are free to say so, but I do believe they deserve one unimpeded shot at doing it their way. The Lord knows there wasn’t any shortage of journalistic criticism and debunking and sour analysis in San Diego.
In fact, the press and the pols both stand to learn something from the recent Republican convention and probably from the forthcoming Democratic one as well. The press can learn that it doesn’t – if you’ll pardon the expression – take a village to cover a party convention, that all those superfluous, anxious, underemployed minions could be better assigned somewhere else. To some extent the Internet and all the rest of the newly created interactive universe, in particular call-in radio and television, have made every American who so desires his own pundit. The result is that it’s hard for some of the paid headscratchers to say anything analytic or outrageous that has not already been aired by someone calling in from a car phone somewhere. I think for us in journalism it’s back to the drawing board concerning coverage of these events.
The pols needn’t take too much satisfaction in this. A savvy, endlessly schmoozing public knows and calls scripting and staging for what they are. If Bob Dole or Jack Kemp (or Bill Clinton or Al Gore) swerves off a position, or fudges one or commits practically any other act of politics, it will be immediately noted and copiously chewed over on all the new lines of communication that are buzzing in this country. I don’t object to the image the GOP convention was trying to project; it’s a lot better than the one itwas trying to project last time. And I don’t think there is any danger that people won’t notice the more important contradictions in the GOP’s message or try to hold it accountable for them. Every time Jack Kemp or Dole tries to get away with something cute, it will be noticed and discussed to death, just as it will be with their opponents. Our job is to track these people in the places where they are really doing business, not just wearing funny hats, and say what we see.
