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« Back to An Unconventional Look at Conventions main page    Transcript for: An Unconventional Look at ConventionsThink Tank Transcripts: An Unconventional Look at Conventions ANNOUNCER: 'Think Tank' is made possible by Amgen, recipient ofthe Presidential National Medal of Technology. Amgen, helping cancerpatients through cellular and molecular biology, improving livestoday and bringing hope for tomorrow. Additional funding is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation andthe Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. MR. WATTENBERG: Hello, I'm Ben Wattenberg. The politicalconvention is one of the oldest and most colorful rituals in Americanpolitics, but what really happens at a convention? Is it all justpageantry for the television? And if it is, what's wrong with that? Joining us to sort through the conflict and the consensus are:Michael Barone, contributing editor at 'U.S. News and World Report,'author of 'Our Country' and co-author of 'The Almanac of AmericanPolitics'; Jean Baker, professor of history at Goucher College andauthor of 'The Stevensons: A Biography of an American Family';Benjamin Ginsberg, director of the Center for Governmental Studies atJohns Hopkins University and co-author of 'Politics by Other Means:The Declining Importance of Elections in America'; and Thomas Mann,director of the governmental studies program at the BrookingsInstitution and co-author of 'Congress, the Press and the Public.' The topic before this house: An unconventional look atconventions. This week on 'Think Tank.' MR. WATTENBERG: Neither political parties nor their conventionsare mentioned in the Constitution nor mandated by any law.Nevertheless, conventions came quickly on the heels of the partysystem. The first political convention was held in 1831 by ashort-lived third party, the Anti-Masons. The very next year, theDemocrats caught on. And when the Republicans formed in 1854, how didthey kick off their first campaign? With a convention. Early on, conventions served four purposes. They chose thenational presidential and vice presidential ticket, they adopted aparty platform, they conducted party business, and they staged aking-sized pep rally. Today primary voters have replaced delegates in choosing thenominee, long before the conventions. Delegates and party officialswrite the platform, before the convention. And party business isconducted throughout the year. Gradually conventions have evolved.Today they are mostly television infomercials to introduce thenominee and the party. But in politics, as in life, first impressionsare very important. First question, lady and gentlemen: How important are conventionsthese days? Michael Barone? Fast answers. Let's go around the roomonce quickly. MR. BARONE: Well, they've lost the function of being acommunication device within the party, but they're a way that theparty and its nominee can communicate with the public unmediated by amedia that is typically critical and hostile, especially with theRepublicans, but also sometimes with the Democrats. MR. WATTENBERG: Tom Mann? MR. MANN: They lost their role 40 years ago in selectingpresidential nominees and now have taken on largely a role ofpublicity and political communication to present the candidate andthe party to the electorate as a whole. That's an important function. MR. WATTENBERG: Okay. Ben Ginsberg? MR. GINSBERG: The convention is a very important pep rally forparty activists. It's a way of getting them interested, getting theminvolved, making sure they'll participate in the campaign. MR. WATTENBERG: Jean Baker? MS. BAKER: I think conventions now are under great duress. Idisagree with Tom about when it was that they lost their role interms of picking candidates. Nonetheless, I think the question thatwe ought to address is how can we help them out, because unless we'reall in favor of a national primary system, then we only have, itseems to me, one other choice, and that's the convention. MR. WATTENBERG: If you accumulated the rating points of televisionor television and newspapers, any gauge you want to use, I wouldguess that Senator Dole would get 10 to 100 times more rating pointsat these four days in San Diego than he would have got fromeverything else that went before this year. MR. BARONE: It's interesting, the paucity of comments that votershave to make about Bob Dole, and you can see that in some of thepublic opinion polls. Now, you know, a majority of voters won't bewatching the convention. Either they'll be getting the informationabout it, such as they do, second hand. And I think if we were reinventing a means of introducing thecandidate today, we might make it an all-video presentation andwouldn't need to have all this delegate procedure, the candidatehaving been selected. But I think there is, you know, there is someway that -- there's someplace for a place where the parties canpresent their people, their candidates to the voters in a reasonablysympathetic way, if they're able to do that. MR. GINSBERG: You know,I just want to add one thing to this. I agree with what you've said,but the convention does more than simply introduce the candidate. Theconvention shows the party, with all of its factions and with all --you know, it's the party down and dirty. MR. BARONE: Warts and all. MR. GINSBERG: Warts and all. People watching -- MR. WATTENBERG: Or all warts. (Laughter.) MR. GINSBERG: Right, as the case may be. But people watching havean opportunity to see not only the nominee, but to see the variousfactions struggling for power. They see where that nominee issituated within the particular party and vis-a-vis the party systemas a whole. And I can't think of any institution that's better atthat than the convention. And you're right, people get it second hand, but they do get asense of it, and every time we have struggle, conflict at aconvention, people say, hey, this is where this guy stands. MS. BAKER: But if they watch. Isn't it true, and you can all helpme on this, that the ratings for the conventions have simplyplummeted over time? MR. MANN: They have declined over time, and certainly mostAmericans aren't watching the convention every evening of it, butthis is one of those opportunities for a real exercise of civiceducation. It's an opportunity, first of all, for a presidentialnominee and his party to try to present themselves in the bestpossible terms. But as Ben suggests, the media is there to cover thatconvention as well, and the stresses and strains are going to bevisible. This is a wonderful opportunity for the public, whichdoesn't pay much attention along the primary process, to get somebetter sense of what this person and what this party and their alliedinterest groups are all about. MR. GINSBERG: Yeah, in 1992, the public had a chance to learn somethings about the Republican Party that it didn't really like. It sawsome factions playing an important role, or they thought they sawsome factions playing an important role at that convention that folkswere a little bit unhappy about. In 1996, Bob Dole is going to tryextremely hard to make sure they don't see the same thing. MS. BAKER: And this is why the Democrats are going back toChicago, isn't it? MR. GINSBERG: It's part of the reason. MS. BAKER: The great debacle in 1968 is something that I guess thepresumption is that lots of Americans remember that, and surely someAmericans do, and this is a great opportunity to provide themselveswith the same setting, but a different outcome. MR. WATTENBERG: You mentioned, Ben Ginsberg, that this conventionthing also plays out when something goes wrong, and you indicated1992. And you talk about it coming to the American public second hand.This puts the press in an enormously powerful role, doesn't it? Imean, there are those of us who think that the coverage of the 1992convention was dreadful. MR. BARONE: Well, I mean, you know, the fact is that a recentsurvey of Washington bureau chiefs and so forth showed that 89percent of them had voted for Clinton in the 1992 election. Andobviously, that has some effect on the coverage. Just ask yourselfthe question, if the press was 89 percent for George Bush, would theproduct be different that they're putting out? Of course it would be. So the fact is that it's intellectually trivial to claim that ithas no effect. But then I think that -- MR. WATTENBERG: Thank you, Michael. We now agree. MR. BARONE: -- as a member of the press, I think that's obvious.But the interesting thing is that we don't have just the threeold-line networks having as much of a strangle hold on the coverage.There are many different ways to get information from the conventionnow and I think a lot of evidence that many Americans are seekinginformation from different media sources, such as this program, whichthey find more congenial and to make better sense of the world thansome of the traditional sources that used to have a kind of monopoly. MR. WATTENBERG: Your colleagues are preparing to go ballistic. TomMann? MR. MANN: The partisan bias is sort of beside the point. Somehowin spite of this liberal media, Republicans have managed to dominatepresidential elections over the last several decades. The more important point, Ben, is that there are two conventions,one occurring in Chicago and San Diego and the other in our livingrooms before the television set. MR. WATTENBERG: That's three conventions, Chicago -- (laughter).All right, okay. MR. MANN: The media plays a terribly important role in decidinghow the two hours or hour and a half of prime-time television will beconstructed. To simply view this as an opportunity to advantageDemocrats is beside the point. They're looking for a good story line,they're looking for conflict. That's why the media really hate thefact that conventions no longer make decisions about the nominee. MS. BAKER: That's right. MR. MANN: Because that's the best story in the world. So they'rehyping the vice presidential selection, they are looking for fissuresin the platform, battles. And that doesn't serve the interest of thenominee and their party, so there's a constant tension between themedia and the party. MR. GINSBERG: Well, right, that interferes with the pep rallyfunction of the convention. MS. BAKER: And there's another aspect of the pep rally, and thatis to mobilize the activists. That, as an historian, is what I see asone of the primary functions of these conventions. It's not only tointroduce the presidential candidates to the populace, only a half ofwhom will probably get out to vote, but it is an effort to really tryto reanimate these parties that are dying and decomposing. MR. BARONE: But isn't there a fascinating tension, Jean, betweenthat need and the need to present something that's more broadlyacceptable to the general public? MS. BAKER: Sure. Sure. MR. BARONE: I mean, the two forces in the two political partiestoday that are the greatest sources of energy and enthusiasm andelan, the religious right in the Republican Party, the feminist leftin the Democrat Party, both of them have some issues positions thatthey care about sincerely, and not unreasonably, considering theirvalues, that are unpopular with the American public. And you know, we saw that one of the reasons George Bush put PatBuchanan on live on Monday night of the 1992 Republican nationalconvention was to enthuse a certain number of party activists, and infact, the evidence suggests that it probably served that function.But Buchanan as amplified by a media hostile to the Republicans, andon the basis of his own fighting qualities, the sort ofcontentiousness and the relish that he seemed to take in culture war,I think definitely hurt the Republican Party among the generalelectorate. MR. GINSBERG: Well, this is a case where the pep rally part of theconvention interfered with the presentation of the candidate in thebest possible light. And it's interesting that the Republicans thisyear are going to try and separate these two elements. For pep rallypurposes, there is going to be gavel-to-gavel coverage on PatRobertson's American Family Network. MR. BARONE: And C-SPAN. MS. BAKER: And C-SPAN. MR. GINSBERG: And C-SPAN. But the presumption is that theRepublican Party activists you're talking about are going to bewatching on the family channel. MR. WATTENBERG: Let me ask you a question. Do you think that in1992, the role of Pat Buchanan was portrayed accurately by the pressgenerally? And let me remind you of a couple things. The firstspeaker in prime time was Condolessa Rice, who was a black womaninternationalist who worked on the National Security Council. Thespeaker after Pat Buchanan was Ronald Reagan. Somehow Pat Buchanan,because of a couple of sentences in there, got all the ink,characterized that -- or caricatured that convention in the eyes ofthe press, whereas at the Democrat convention earlier, nobody saidJerry Brown and Jesse Jackson characterized that party. I don't wantto go along with everything that Michael said, but isn't theresomething in there that says not fair, the press? MR. GINSBERG: Oh, yeah. I hate to agree with people -- (laughter)-- but I think that's absolutely right. MR. MANN: I just think it's a mistake to look for the party biashere. You're absolutely right, the press made more of a story out ofPat Buchanan than was justified by his place at the convention. MR. BARONE: No, there was some story. MR. MANN: The same could be said for Jackson in '84 and '88 andTed Kennedy in 1980 at the Democrat conventions. It just underscoresthe fact that the media are making choices about what to talk about,what to emphasize, how to get a good story, how to try to findgenuine conflicts at the convention and play them up. MR. WATTENBERG: And that brings us to abortion, just about,doesn't it? I mean, in the Republican (convention), near as I canfigure out, that's what the attention's going to be about becausethere is some difference. MR. BARONE: Well, we've spent a great deal of attention lookinginto the -- I mean 'The New York Times' has run I don't know how manylead headlines on the Republican abortion plank, which appears to be-- will be uncontested out of their platform committee hearings. Verylittle attention, curiously, to the Democrats' abortion plank. Thefact is, on the partial life abortion ban voted by the Congress andvetoed by President Clinton, 81 House Democrats voted for that,including the Democratic leader in the House, Dick Gephardt, and thewhip, David Bonior. My colleague Gloria Borger was one of the few --first people in the press that actually went to some of the Democratsand said, 'Are you going to have an argument about abortion at yourconvention, because on this one phrasing of the issue, there's a lotof difference between the Democrats.' MS. BAKER: I think we should talk a little bit about the primarysystem and how it undermines the conventions. It loves those --digging around in New Hampshire and all those little taverns and snowin the background. And there's a sort of a zero-sum game going on, asof course there always is ultimately. But as someone has said, we allknow -- MR. WATTENBERG: Well, why is it worse for the voters of NewHampshire and California and everywhere else, the primary voters, topick a candidate than delegates in a smoke-filled room as of yore?What is wrong with that? I thought -- MS. BAKER: Well, because again -- MR. WATTENBERG: -- the primary system is an advance in thisprocess, isn't it? I mean, you're the historian. MS. BAKER: Well, there are a couple of things wrong with it. Ifyou go early into states like New Hampshire, you're sure distortingthe model because, as you just said, being first out of the startingblocks, to cop an image from Atlanta, is a big advantage. And soyou're coming out of New Hampshire, you -- Lamar Alexander, PatBuchanan -- who's ever heard of you? You're a sort of self-anointedcandidate. MR. BARONE: Well, the fact is New Hampshire -- I mean, you know,no state is typical, but New Hampshire is less typical than most. IfLamar Alexander had won 4,000 more votes in New Hampshire and BobDole 4,000 less, Lamar Alexander, in my judgment, would be theRepublican nominee today. MS. BAKER: Oh, well -- MR. BARONE: Four thousand voters in New Hampshire had a terrificamount of leverage in this. MR. WATTENBERG: But wait, hold on. Just hang on. Let us recall whowon the New Hampshire primary and what happened to him. MR. BARONE: Pat Buchanan, right. MR. WATTENBERG: Pat Buchanan won the New Hampshire primary andlost the next 35. MR. MANN: Exactly. MR. WATTENBERG: And is, as it stands now, not even offered achance to speak live at the convention. So how important was NewHampshire? It was a process. MR. MANN: Ben, I'm with you. I think, frankly -- I think theargument has been made and settled. The days of brokering andbargaining by party leaders and elected officials are over. MS. BAKER: That's irrelevant. MR. MANN: The convention -- it is not irrelevant. The conventiongives us a window on American politics writ large. We live in aplebiscitary era. We live in an era of political communication, masscommunication. We don't trust brokers anymore. We want to dogoverning for ourselves in the selection of nominees and, frankly,the way in which we settle legislative battles. MS. BAKER: In your model, you want to go back to the past. We'dnever do that. I mean, we would get in with the caucus system, inwhich -- well, the electoral college nominated and then electedGeorge Washington. And then came the caucuses, and they didn't workbecause the Congresses were the members of the caucus. We never goback. It seems to me that what we've got to think about is what themodel -- MR. WATTENBERG: He's not going back. He's going -- MR. MANN: I'm accepting the present and saying we can't go back,as much as I may like to. MS. BAKER: You're arguing against -- MR. GINSBERG: Right. In -- MR. WATTENBERG: Let Jean explain why she thinks Tom is going back. MS. BAKER: You're arguing against what we've come from, and thatwas the pre-progressive brokered convention, the smoke-filled room ofAmerican imagination in which deals were -- MR. MANN: I liked it, Jean, but a whole lot of forces operated tochange that system and I can't see how we can go back. MR. BARONE: Well, one of the things that changed it, if you goback historically to the conventions, one of the things you find outis that the convention was actually a forum for communication ofpeople who had never talked. As recently as 40 and 50 years ago,leading politicians in this country, leading businessmen in thiscountry did not communicate by long-distance telephone. They did nothang out in airport lounges as they were hip-hopping in planes acrossthe country. They never saw each other. So the Democratic delegates that came to Chicago in 1952 didn'treally know who the other delegates were. MR. GINSBERG: The present system is not a bad one. It may be thatout there in the world, there is some better system. Maybe we'll findit, but the present system isn't a bad one because, first of all, theactual choice of nominee is made in a series of primaries which maybearen't timed exactly right, maybe we want New Hampshire to come lastrather than first -- (laughter) -- but -- and the weather there isterrible and all that. But the actual choice is made in a series ofprimaries in which a lot of people participate. MR. WATTENBERG: You know, until, I don't know, a few years ago,when we here in the political community described these two partiesand the two conventions, there was the 'C' word for Democrats, whichwas chaos -- or the 'K' word. (Laughter.) You know, chaos, that'swhat Democrats always did is they argued and they screamed at eachother. And Republicans, they were the unity party. They were thissort of white bread kind of thing and everybody was sort of gettingalong with each other. MR. GINSBERG: There's a reason for that. There's a very importantreason for that. MR. WATTENBERG: Right. But now it's gone -- it's apparentlyflipped. I don't think we're going to get much argument at the -- MR. GINSBERG: Look, the reason for that is that the RepublicanParty has recruited large numbers of new forces into the politicalprocess. It's been the Republicans who have done what the Democratsused to do. They have mobilized large numbers of different kinds offolks who now play a role in politics and want representation at theconvention and disagree with the old white bread Republicans. MR. WATTENBERG: You are talking about the so-called religiousright. Do you buy that, Tom? MR. MANN: I do indeed. There's no question that the fact that theRepublicans have emerged to contest for and now control a majority inthe House and the Senate, as well as dominating now at other levelsof government, means they're more inclusive, it means there are boundto be divisions on social and economic issues, and those willoftentimes play out at a convention. It's just important to realizethat Democrats aren't naturally chaotic and Republicans naturallyconsensual. These things change over time. But then it's veryimportant to understand that the degree of consensus or conflict atthe convention is a wonderful predictor of how the parties are goingto do in the November election. These conventions are important,maybe not as the driving force, but at least as an indicator of thehealth of the parties. MR. WATTENBERG: Jean Baker, do you buy the Ginsberg theorem thatthe reasons the Republicans are so fractious now is because they havein fact expanded their base? MS. BAKER: Yes, I think there's partly a functional explanation. Imean, you know, if you're the majority party, it is a big tent. ButI'd like to suggest that when we look at Republican conventions, wecan look at 1964, for example, and we can find a fair amount ofcontentiousness. I would even like to go back to 1860 and remember --ye gods -- and remember the convention that nominated AbrahamLincoln. Couldn't have been more fractious. MR. MANN: And the media coverage there was really tipped to theDemocrats. MS. BAKER: And the media coverage. (Laughter.) (Cross talk.) MR. BARONE: The Democrats were even more fractious. They ended uphaving two conventions back then. MS. BAKER: That's right. MR. GINSBERG: Especially the television networks that year. MR. WATTENBERG: And we had four candidates that year. MR. BARONE: Well, here we've got a country of 260 million people,great geographic expanse, immense cultural and economic variety inthis country. And yet these two major parties have succeeded inrepresenting most of our -- gathering together the votes of most ofour fellow citizens for a very long time now, 140 years in theRepublican Party, 164 years in the Democratic Party. And every four years, we have gathered in two rooms in thiscountry, very big rooms, to be sure, but two rooms. We've got peoplethat are all, you know, representing in some way, imperfectly, butrepresenting the one party and representing the other in the otherroom. That's a pretty awesome achievement. I don't know how -- I canfind lots of faults with this system. I'm at a loss to know if I caninvent a better one. MR. WATTENBERG: Let's go around room the once quickly, we have toget out, starting with you, Michael Barone. Serve as our sherpa forour viewers. What should -- MR. BARONE: Oh, for the Himalayas of the conventions? MR. WATTENBERG: Right. You be the guide, I'll be the porter, justpicking up when you leave. Now, what should an intelligent viewer,such as the people who listen to 'Think Tank,' what should they belooking for, particularly? MR. BARONE: Well, I think as citizens, they ought to be lookingfor clues to how these guys and gals would govern if they got in, andthey will -- those clues -- MR. WATTENBERG: What's a good clue? MR. BARONE: You will listen to the speech of the presidentialnominee. You will listen for other themes that are going through theconvention. MR. WATTENBERG: Would it be a good clue -- we're going to come toyou, we're going to go right around the room, but I must ask this, Ihave no discipline. Will it be a good clue to see if the Democratsargue about partial birth abortions? MR. BARONE: It would be an interesting clue. I don't expect thatto happen. MR. MANN: The best clue is actually the party platforms. Platformsmean something. They're consequential. Winning parties act on thoseplatforms. The intelligent, discerning viewer should be looking atthe platforms to see what in fact might happen after the election. MR. WATTENBERG: Very, very interesting point. Also very muchagainst the conventional wisdom. And I have to agree with you. Yes? MR. GINSBERG: The most important thing to look at is the amount ofenergy, activity, conflict, and struggle at the convention.Typically, a party that is growing, that is attempting to become amajority party is a party whose convention is characterized bystruggle, strife and conflict. Those are good signs. MR. WATTENBERG: Interesting. MS. BAKER: Day two. I absolutely agree with Tom. Listen to theparty platform. Listen to whether there's any controversy over it.Turn your set off when we get the floor demonstrations for theindividual candidates. They're for internal democratic politics. Butreally listen on day two when the party platforms are read. MR. WATTENBERG: Thank you. That will have to be the final word.Thank you, Michael Barone, Jean Baker, Thomas Mann, and BenjaminGinsberg. And it is time to announce the winners of part two of the 'ThinkTank' bumper sticker contest. The winner for the best pro- Bob Dolebumper sticker is: 'Bob Dole, because he is foreign to affairs.' Andin a tie for the best anti- Bob Dole stickers: 'Dole, he's as old asthe Hill,' and 'Nihilists for Dole.' We enjoy hearing from our viewers. Please send your questions andcomments to: New River Media, 1150 17th Street, N.W., Washington,D.C. 20036. Or we can be reached via e-mail at thinktv@aol.com or onthe World Wide Web at www.thinktank.com. For 'Think Tank,' I'm Ben Wattenberg. ANNOUNCER: This has been a production of BJW, Incorporated, inassociation with New River Media, which are solely responsible forits content. 'Think Tank' is made possible by Amgen, recipient of thePresidential National Medal of Technology. Amgen, helping cancerpatients through cellular and molecular biology, improving livestoday and bringing hope for tomorrow. Additional funding is provided by the John M. Olin Foundation andthe Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. Back to top  Think Tank is made possible by generous support from the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Donner Canadian Foundation, the Dodge Jones Foundation, and Pfizer, Inc. ©Copyright Think Tank. All rights reserved. 
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