From Party Convention to Coronation - 28 July 2000

I'm off to Philadelphia in the morning. So ran the old song but, I quickly add, maybe 2,000 maybe 10,000 Republicans are going there, but not I.

And only a much diminished press corps. And I'm told about a third of the usual television crews because, what is still called a presidential nominating convention has been totally transformed in the past quarter century or so into a coronation.

The first sentence of an encyclopaedic piece on the subject says: "The business of a political party's national convention is to choose its nominee for the presidency of the United States."

But the party's presidential choice has already been picked in state primary elections sworn to name and vote for one man.

We used to go to the nominating conventions, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as keyed up with buzz and expectation as people going off to the cup final. We were going to see the most exciting horserace in America.

I recall, with relish, a great day when my chief - the Washington correspondent of the Times (of London, as we say in these parts) - mysteriously asked me to lunch at the press club.

He was a slim, impeccably dapper man who stood as upright as a grenadier and the pursed lips of a stage archbishop and he talked like one of those English butlers in the movies of the 1930s and 40s: Sir Willmot Harsant Lewis.

When he was knighted he said to his buddies at the press club: "Call me Sir Bill, or if you prefer, 'Hello there you old SOB.' "

A sly, alert, formidable Welshman whose prestige in Washington was such that he was occasionally telephoned by the president of the United States and more or less begged to report some presidential act the way the president saw it.

One time on the subject of the American loan to the victorious but impoverished allies, Lewis flatly, in the presence of the most high, regretted that his dispatch in the following morning's paper would report but not take the presidential tack.

Forlornly the president said: "Bill what have you got to lose?"

Lewis intoned: "My virginity, Mr President."

This incomparable character, about whom I could go on and on, tipped me off that our lunch would be a very special lunch.

We sat down and Sir Bill trailed a sort of regal hand through the air, by way of calling the waiter, and when he appeared Lewis said bravely: "Henry this is a very special occasion. The Martini must be specially dry - four parts gin and, if you must, a sprinkle or two of the vermouth."

Well what was special about it was that my chief was about to announce to me that he was quitting the daily coverage of events, from now on would write mostly think pieces and might soon, on his 70th birthday, retire.

I don't know how old he was then, I'd already been to three or four of his 70th birthday parties.

Anyway he reached in an inside pocket. He pulled out a black leather wallet, tilted it and out on the table slid four or five cards, not playing cards but privileged passes - his press pass - to the Senate, to the House, to the White House.

He flattened his hand over what might have been, were for me, two aces, chuckled and he flipped them over, they were his press invitations to the two conventions.

"All yours dear boy, all yours."

It was 1940, it was my first convention and of all the conventions I've covered, until the system was replaced, it was the most thrilling. And it was in Philadelphia. Maybe we'll come to it later on.

The history, the structure, of the convention system is slightly more complicated than the history of the procedures for splitting the atom and you'll be relieved to hear that we're not going into it. Instead I'll try a couple of large generalisations and hope they're true.

For the longest time the two presidential candidates - when there were three parties, three - were chosen by the party chieftains in Congress.

Now take a big jump to the choice being made by voters in each state. But they didn't vote for a president, they voted to form the delegation that would represent their party at its convention.

When this system spread there were many variations. In most states the men who ran to be delegates announced which national figure they were for and the people voted accordingly - some for this man, some for another.

So the normal procedure at the convention, when the balloting started, would go like this: the clerk, usually a man with a powerful basso profundo, would start the roll call by chanting "Alabama" and the chairman of the Alabama delegation would get up and declare: "The great state of Alabama gives 12 votes for John Q Smith, six votes for Patrick Jones and four votes for Leroy Robinson" - that was the routine.

In a few states they have what was called the unit rule or closed primary, that's to say the primary election picked one man as the winner and when the delegation went off to the convention city it was sworn to vote for that man - until it might be plain after so many ballots that some other candidate was sweeping all before him. In which case the chairman of the committee state delegation would announce he'd release his delegates to go where they chose, preferably on the coming winner's bandwagon.

Today, in most states if not all, the chosen delegation is unanimous for one man.

What about those states whose Republican primary gave a majority vote for John McCain? Well it's theoretically possible they might in Philadelphia vote for him, assuming that he allowed his name to be put in nomination, which would be, at this point, some sort of scandal. There's no sign now that that will happen.

So this business of having all the delegations committed to one figure has meant no horse race, even if a few courtesy nominations were allowed.

At all the conventions there used to be a tedious half day when states nominated their governor as a favourite son, just for fun, just for show.

I think if anybody was responsible for our arriving at a party convention with the absolute certainty that there was only one candidate I'd say the Kennedy brothers did it or maybe Bobby Kennedy on his own.

In the year before the 1960 election he visited most of the 3,000 and some counties of the United States and he talked to and he flattered the Democratic Party bosses in counties both huge and tiny.

He told them, he convinced them, that there would be no other electable candidate than his brother - the senator from Massachusetts.

And on his way out of town: "Oh" - like Columbo - "there's just one other thing. Come Inauguration Day we won't forget you."

Robert Kennedy's safari took him thousands and thousands of miles and thousands of plastic chicken sandwiches and cokes and coffees.

So at Los Angeles, in mid summer 1960, no other name than John F Kennedy was put in nomination.

Outside the auditorium there was a pathetic little parade, hired at $2 a parader, by the unbowed supporters of Adlai Stevenson. But they picked up their $2 and they went home.

Since then, thanks to the committed primary, I think it's now in 40-odd states, we've known way ahead of time the presidential candidate of both parties.

It's as if you went to the Derby to watch an exhibition trot by the winner who had become the winner by beating all comers in several preliminary run-off races.

Since the 1960s the only fun, well curiosity left, was guessing whom the chosen one might pick as his vice president.

That was always announced to rapturous applause on the next of the last evening of the convention.

Would it be a geographical choice, a Midwesterner to balance an Easterner, a Californian to offset a New Yorker, would it be an old hand or new blood?

Frankly either way it wasn't terrifically exciting. But now even this magic has been taken from us. Now - never happened before - the candidate announces his vice presidential choice before the convention.

So for this simple drastic reason the triumph everywhere of the closed primary, the television networks, this year, have drastically reduced their coverage.

They used to broadcast the whole show from the keynote welcoming speech on Monday morning, through the days and into the nights of the balloting, right down to the final exhibition of the happy couple.

For 125 years the voting could run to 10 ballots, 35 ballots - once to 103 ballots through 10 days and nights before the demigod was chosen.

They could save an awful lot of money by abolishing conventions altogether.

And talking of golf - which the whole non-golfing world was doing last weekend for the first time since the late 1920s - I don't think we should end without saluting a new shining star with an unprecedented record.

It used to be during the past 20, 30 years or so that the golfer, the player, of the year had won three or four tournaments.

Now we have a player who in the past 15 starts, as they say in racing, has won 10 times - has won three of the last four majors and last weekend rounded off this amazing record by winning the Open for the first time.

So let's give a cheer and raise a glass to - the pride of Australia, the first lady of golf: Karrie Webb.

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