Democratic National Convention, 1988 - 22 July 1988

On the morning that the 20-odd Democrats were swarming out of the searing heat of Atlanta and swarming into the deep freeze of their high tech auditorium, I was watching an engrossing film on public television about the habits of seagulls.

It seems that they have not one cry but several and the one most important for their survival is a warning wail which the brightest of the bunch, the lifeguard or whatever he’s called, lets out at the approach of a predator. The wail is then taken up by the whole team, gaggle, swoop, or whatever is the collective noun for seagulls and they go into hiding.

Now I’ve been watching seagulls from spring through the autumn for over 50 years but I never knew this. I’ve watched Democratic conventions for just about as long but there’s no crisis or riot or threat of an approaching predator – the Reverend Jesse Jackson for instance – that I haven’t seen before.

Now that the hullaballoo is all over and the competing egos have held their hands high like boxers and sworn to live together in perpetual peace and amity it will I’m sure be remembered as just another typical Democratic convention. For much more than a century the Democrats have been a less than harmonious alliance between politicians of very different stripes – southern conservatives, northern liberals, leftist trade unionists, rightists, Bible-thumping Baptists.

The Republicans always love to revel in the scenes of the Democrats’ dissension and the younger Republicans enjoy the delusion of believing that this is something new and fatal to the party’s pulling itself together before November, but over a century – in fact 128 years ago – Abraham Lincoln, speaking for the Republican party which was then only four years old, warned his colleagues not to get too ecstatic about the storm goings on in a Democratic convention.

He said, “We think of them as midnight cats on the tiles tearing each other apart. They’re not tearing each other apart; they’re breeding more cats.”

This is worth bearing in mind by anyone who is unduly alarmed by the more turbulent scenes in and outside the Atlanta auditorium. Meanwhile the Republicans are doing what the other party always does during a nominating convention, staying mum and taking to the beach or the hills.

Vice President Bush, while still being coached by his friends not to remain a wimp, not to say things in public like “Gee willikers” and “By Jiminy”, he was off in the Rockies looking for trout and a running mate. The president was last seen for the umpteenth time waving with Nancy to the cameras from the steps of Air Force One and winging off to the Santa Ynez mountains and his ranch and his beloved wood-chopping.

Asked, rather dumbly, if he would be watching the Atlanta circus he said, “No, I’m going to look at the horses instead” which is about as believable as any other retired pro, George Best for example, saying he never watches the Cup Final.

When the president goes up to the mountains all we see are blurred telephoto pictures taken from a mile or two away of him and Mrs Reagan out on their horses. It’s all very soothing and pastoral.

What we don’t see is the staff, 20 or more officials, who live or sleep, rather, in Santa Barbara about an hour away. By day they have specially-built quarters up at the ranch and there’s one man, probably the most anonymous, unseen American alive who is never farther from the president’s side than a 10-second call.

He’s the man with what they used to call the box, which contains the code changed every day that can alert the allied nuclear sites around the world on the president’s say so. Not his alone, we are told, but the say-so of the president and his National Security Council, if it’s on hand.

Well apart from this ever-present haunting reminder of the unthinkable, the president will get daily reminders in the form of intelligence reports on all the things he must be prepared to do something about now, which Governor Dukakis and Senator Benson and Mr Jackson mean to do something about from next January on. There is, for the Republicans, the good news that unemployment at just over 5% is lower than it’s been since 1974, that the economy is humming along, that in the past two months yet another quarter-million jobs have been created and that inflation stays very low, though one report the president will undoubtedly see has a government official worried that if unemployment falls by another two-tenths of one percent inflation might rouse itself again.

It was these three trends vital to the prosperity of any nation – low unemployment, low inflation, more adult Americans at work in proportion to the total population than at any time in the nation’s history – these were the three facts that persuaded me, looking coldly over the election prospects a month or so again to say that at that moment, and at this, I could not see Mr Dukakis winning more than nine states, leaving Mr Bush, by Jiminy, with 41.

The result of this provisional guess was some very comical mail and one explosive letter from a gentleman in London which began, “At last you are unmasked. You hypocrite. You are a Republican.” There’s not much point in replying to such a letter since the man obviously hasn’t a clue to the difference between a secret ideologue and a reporter.

As a citizen I have voted for Democrats, Republicans, Independents very often and preserve my right, of course, to do so, but I’ve been covering politicians longer than the oldest racing correspondent has been watching the nags and my predictions or guesses at who’s going to win have nothing to do with any secret fondness for a particular horse.

After watching so many hundreds of politicians at it for so long and noting that they have much more in common in practice than they have in pretension. I’m almost prepared to go as far as Alexander Pope and nod agreement to his famous line “For forms of government let fools contest; what 'ere is best administered is best.”

Beyond the bawling and sobbing Democrats and the vacationing Republican leaders in fact out there in America there are two national anxieties that cannot be put on hold. They are the continuing enquiry into the tragic accident in the Persian Gulf and the sudden reversion to hard-line dictatorship of the Sandinista government of Nicaragua.

First the fateful decision of Captain Will Rogers to believe his eyes and his radar and open fire on what he believed was an attacking aircraft. The details are dense and still unravelling and the only good news is that the United Nations ICAO –International Civil Aviation Organisation – is making its own investigation.

The relevance of that investigation, and of the Iranians’ testimony and of the study the US Navy is itself conducting can be bluntly put: ought the United States navy to have been there in the first place and ought it to stay there?

The hurly-burly of the Democrats convention and the coming second circus in New Orleans have so far dulled the domestic debate about the Gulf and it will probably stay dimmed or vanish altogether so long as Iraq seems to hold the upper hand in its long war with Iran. For the present, the weight of opinion in Congress is all on the president’s side.

Even the Democrats are not going on about the expense or unreliability of the complex battle technology that’s having to be used – as the navy men constantly lament – "in a lake". Just as the Democratic opposition to the aerial attack on Libya retreated almost apologetically as Gaddafi was seen to have been scotched so it appears now as if the American naval presence in the Gulf has effectively shrunk the Ayatollah’s prestige, at least wounded his power to paralyse neutral shipping.

The other anxiety may seem like a very specialised topic to bring up during the week that one of the two parties is busy anointing its presidential and vice presidential runners but it puts up to Mr Dukakis a rude challenge to the curious and very strange form of presidential government he’s been hinting at this week, which is that of a triumvirate.

To placate the wrath of the Reverend Jackson’s large and voluble following Governor Dukakis, as you’ve heard, yielded to the reverend by promising a role that has never before been given to a loser, a loser in the old days in the balloting or in these later days in the primaries. Mr Jackson, we are told, is to be a full partner in the campaign and perhaps in the administration with Mr Dukakis and Senator Benson.

Now the Nicaraguan government has suddenly blasted the Arias peace plan by returning to its old totalitarian habits – jailing political opponents, closing the Catholic radio station, suppressing the only opposition newspaper, La Prensa, expelling the American ambassador and confiscating the biggest privately-owned sugar plantation.

So how does this concern the jubilant trio of leaders in Atlanta? It has immediately spurred a move in Congress for renewed military aid to the Contra rebels. Mr Dukakis is a sworn opponent of such aid. Jesse Jackson abominates it, but Senator Benson voted for it. What will he do now?

It will confront Governor Dukakis with a taunting test of his theory that by himself remaining a man of the centre and having on his right hand a white southern conservative and on his left hand a black radical liberal he will somehow have everybody voting for him. It may be a naive theory but it’s certainly novel.

But the way the rationale – or rather, the political argument – for placating Mr Jackson at all costs is that he will secure a black vote which no doubt he will, but we shouldn’t forget that in 1984 the Democratic candidate Mr Mondale took 92% of the black vote. He also took one state and lost the other 49.

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