History of conventions - 17 July 1992

It sounds unbelievable but it is attested that this week, 15,000 reporters swarmed into New York to cover the doings of 4,928 Democrats in convention assembled as the formality goes to choose their candidate for president of the United States, but he was chosen long ago by a system that has virtually made conventions unnecessary. Three reporters to every one delegate all come together in New York's biggest sports arena to cover a non-news event.

When I thought of these 15,000 jaunting from the far corners of the earth, checking before they left home their passports, their laptops, their credentials, their travellers cheques, checking also perhaps with the boss the agreed per diem expense account. It rudely occurred to me that the money it cost each newspaper or broadcasting company to send these people here and keep them for a week could have handsomely sheltered and fed the homeless in the old home town for six months. The 15,000 whether they knew it or not, came here really to pay tribute to a vanished American institution, which once was as essential to the final choice of a president as the cup final is essential to the British soccer season.

An old friend of mine, a journalist and new to American politics asked me on Monday night at the end of the opening session of the convention, the simple following question "But why did they change the system, this is nothing but a party conference with speeches, applause and free snacks?".

Well,how to answer that I can't think who they would be nobody in either political party sat down, no group, no board and said "we've had enough of choosing our presidential candidates at the convention, let's do it some other way". It happened gradually, a new institution crept in and before we knew it had robbed the convention of its main function, which is to have all the delegates vote in successive ballots here and nowhere else between two or three sometimes more candidates until one of them gets a majority of the votes and he is it.

Before I identify the sneaker villain who captured the convention's job, let me try and describe for you as vividly as I can the way that conventions of both parties worked and the peculiar excitement of them. The system was born in 1832 and breathed its last gasp in, goodness, 1952, 40 years ago, which makes me realise for the first time that most of the delegates to either convention, everybody under 60 or 65 never experienced the convention system and so I must admit having nothing to year for can settle down to what they imagine a convention is all about a circus, a procession of bellowing speeches, cheers, flocks of balloons and occasional boo and lots of parties on the side.

Let's take a typically dramatic convention, I remember I didn't attend it as a reporter, but it was the first one I followed like half the nation over the radio and it produced a momentary thrill a picture in the mind as sharp as indelible as anything I can recall from the conventions through the next 20 years that I attended and eventually also came to watch on television, but then as that famous little boy said in the BBC survey he preferred radio to television because the pictures were better.

1940, no television. The Second World War has been going since the previous September. America under President Franklin Roosevelt is neutral indeed, if not in thought and most of his opponents; the Republicans intend to see that America remains neutral. The Republican Convention met in Philadelphia on 24 June 1940. I give you the precise date because it will tell you in hindsight how unreal, how parochial an American political convention could seem at that time. For on 25 June, the second day of the convention, France surrendered to Hitler, the Republicans now found themselves having to go along with Roosevelt and give Britain with which was standing alone all help short of war.

By the time the Philadelphia convention had done with the usual preliminary hoopla, the Republicans were ready to put into nomination two powerful leading candidates, the senior senator from Ohio, Senator Taft and a young battling district attorney from New York who had earned a national reputation as the prosecutor of several notorious racketeers, he was Thomas Dewey. Taft and Dewey. Other contenders had aroused interest and inspired delegates around the country, two senators, four governors and so on.

There was also a sort of freak candidate who'd aroused the enthusiasm of a bunch of young New York journalists, never exactly the nucleus of a president's hopes. This man was named Wendell Willkie, he'd always voted Democrat, he was a Wall Street lawyer but of Midwestern rural origins a tousled shambling bear of a man who had no political qualifications whatsoever. As another disqualification in the isolationist Republican Party, he backed Roosevelt to the hilt about helping Britain, but he was no threat to Dewey and Taft not were for very long the other 11 men put in nomination.

On Wednesday evening as usual the balloting began. The other odd 11 candidates split about 1,000 votes. Dewey led with 360, Taft had 189. To the exasperation of the regulars, the upstart Willkie, a Roosevelt man precisely pinning down the dual appeal of Willkie as an honest Midwest farm boy but also a successful tycoon called him "the bare foot boy from Wall Street". Willkie had 105. Through the next three ballots, immense waves of we want Willkie washed through the galleries.

Later the old timer swore that a positive legion of young people had got in on forged tickets. Dewey declined down to 250, Taft started going up to 254, Willkie held to an alarming 306. Came the fifth ballot and then we could hear the various campaign manager scurrying between the delegations begging this State to hold fast urging a wobbling state to pass, which you could do and register its vote at the end, all sorts of tactical activity on the floor. The fifth ballot would probably stall Willkie and keep the balloting going for days.

In 1924, in New York, the Democrats balloted through a sleepless 2 weeks and 103 ballots before they got their man who had never even entered the race.

Well the fifth ballot was going along according to early form and then the Clerk, the big baritone got to 'K' in the alphabet and asked for the vote of Kansas. Hearing this over the radio, the following pause and large murmur as of a heaving sea was to say the least tantalising, the Kansas delegation had been solid for Taft and the head of the delegation was Governor Alfred Landon who four years before had been the party's choice to run against and to be massacred by Roosevelt. The convention chairman banged his gabble, he intoned the chairman of the Kansas delegation wishes to come to the podium and that was followed by a sort of huge rustle of wonderment, the sort you hear at a race track when they announce that the favourite has been scratched.

The next ticking seconds I shall never forget, the sound of a man walking past all the microphones at the end of each row of delegates, he had new shoes on and they went squeak, squeak, squeak, they were the shoes of Governor Landon, they stopped squeaking, there was a crackle at the microphone and then we heard its thin piping prairie voice say "the great state of Kansas throws its 24 votes to Wendell Willkie". The roof fell in, the desertion of Kansas from Taft set off a clamour of other appeals to reverse their vote, which was done. Willkie was just short of a majority, so the sixth ballot was a formality. The fallen Taft and Dewey threw in the towel and released their delegates and so did four of the others and the nomination was made unanimous.

So the point in response to my old disappointed friend is that you used to go to a convention no more sure of the winner than a visitor to Wimbledon is about who the champion will be. The new institution, which I called the sneaky villain that has robbed the convention of its suspense and us of all our excitement, is the direct primary. The election early in the year of party members inside a state who have declared themselves to be for this presidential candidate and against all others. You can look through histories of presidential elections, I've just revelled through one 600 pages long, it goes from George Washington to Eisenhower and the word "primary" does not appear in the index.

There were one or two primaries 50, 40 years ago. New Hampshire held the first in March and it had maybe a a psychological effect in boosting a little man's reputation or deflating a big man's, so there were, say, seven primaries they were always interesting but they were not compulsory to enter. By now 39 states have them. And the new twist is these delegates aren't as in the old days chosen to use their best judgement when they get to the convention, they are elected to pledge themselves to one man and nobody else.

In 1960, very early in the year, the Kennedy brothers John and Bobby one of the other went into most of the 3,000 counties of the United States asking what do you want a new bridge, a school, a soya bean subsidy you'll get it. They sowed up most of the delegations long before they got to vote in Los Angeles. By 1960, we knew once for all that the old system was dead. In fact, 1952 was the last year in which either party needed more than one ballot to pick its man. The big news story about the Election will be on Tuesday the 3rd of November 'Election Day'; I trust the 15,000 reporters will be at the ready.

Among the many amenities that the City of New York extended to its Conventioneers was a little hand bill courtesy of the Police Department, it ended 'if somebody stitched you up with a gun and asks for your money, give it to him' enjoy your visit to New York.

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