The 1996 Republican convention - 16 August 1996

Somebody said, it may have been me, that until the 1996 Republican convention the seaside city of San Diego was famous in modern times because its huge Victorian hotel was where the then Prince of Wales first met – guess who? – Mrs Ernest Simpson. And what, we're bound to ask, what will San Diego now become famous for? Will it be known as the revival ground of the Reagan revolution? The burying ground of Bob Dole's political career?

The so-called extremists at the convention, many of the Christian right and the followers of Mr Pat Buchanan said, even before the convention was over, that they expected to lose the election. But the acceptance of so many rightist Buchanan planks in the Republican platform made San Diego the incubator for a new, more conservative, all powerful Republican Party in 2000 AD.

The first thing to notice about not just San Diego but party nominating conventions in general, is that every four years, they get less and less coverage on television. Television spread itself first on the convention system in 1952, and it was a revelation to the public and a godsend to newspaper reporters, who, until then, had had to watch and report all the droning speeches in the auditorium and then stay up through three nights trying to buttonhole delegates and the campaign managers of the competing candidates, to try and find out what luck they'd had in getting states to commit themselves to their man. Came television and scores of television reporters did it for you.

Now sharp boys and girls in the class will at once have seized on that phrase "competing candidates" and asked what could it possibly mean? There's no more competition. The winner in the competition has been decided usually a month or more before the party holds its convention. To put it another way the primary system killed the convention system. Let me explain...

Since the Freemasons met in Baltimore in 1832 to pick a presidential candidate, the nominating convention was the place where the delegations fought through many ballots to pick their man for president. No system of choice could have been more democratic. The delegates of any one state, let's say Texas, had been chosen from county conventions, whose winners went to a state convention, whose winners joined the other state winners and became the Texas delegation to the convention city, usually Chicago, because it was the railroad hub of the continent.

Now this is the main point. Sometimes, the Texas delegation for instance, would be all of one mind, backing one candidate. But most state delegations arrived in Chicago unpledged, as they said, split between two candidates. And some of the delegates wanted neither, but went for what they called "their favourite son," namely the governor of their state. When the convention met, and after the preliminary welcoming speeches, the real business began: the putting into nomination of the candidates. Everybody's man was named and eloquently idolised in long speeches, including usually, the names of about six governors. This all took two days because the moment a nominating speech was done, all the fans of that man, however pathetic he might be as a candidate, went parading and bouncing around the arena. The public was meant to judge the popularity of the candidate by the length of time his fans could keep up a demonstration. It could last a minute, it could last an hour. This was very comical and immensely boring, and it's one thing, thank goodness, that's been lost.

Once the nominating procedure was over, then the balloting began. The states were called in alphabetical order by a resounding baritone and the head of each delegation called off the number of their votes and the man they were going for. If a state was divided, any delegate could ask to have each member polled. I saw this done many times. Twice, once, for New York, and since they had something like 90 delegates, 90 votes, you could go out to lunch or dinner till the final New York tally was called. But the balloting was the dramatic part. In 1924, it took the Democrats ten days and nights and 103 ballots to pick their man. They took no breaks because during an overnight recess you could cajole and bribe and make deals. So they brought little cots into Madison Square Garden and the delegates slept while their alternates went on voting.

I believe 1960 tolled the death knell of the system, because by that time, more and more states were holding presidential primary elections, which voted directly for the party candidate, and would send to the national convention a delegation totally pledged to him. The balloting became a formality. So thanks now to 42 states having primaries, the party's choice is known before the convention. All the wheeling, the plotting, the cajoling, the cunning or blatant methods of persuading delegations to change their votes overnight, all gone with the wind, leaving only a few memorable stories behind.

Like the quiet deal that guaranteed the nomination of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. The night before the balloting, the chairman of The Pennsylvania Railroad, one Simon Cameron – not a Lincoln man – he came, at the convention, to Lincoln's campaign manager and offered to swing Pennsylvania over to Mr Lincoln if he, Simon Cameron, could become Secretary of War in Lincoln's incoming cabinet. Well the manager, one David Davis, wired Lincoln at home in Illinois – in those days it would have been execrable bad taste for any likely candidate to appear in the convention city – Mr Davis put the offer to Lincoln and old Abe, to the vast relief of his biographers, living and unborn, wired back, "Make no deals for me!" Next morning a sad Mr Davis showed the wire to Mr Cameron. "Well," said Mr Cameron. "That I suppose is that." "Hell!" responded David Davis. "He is there and we are here!" Pennsylvania on the next ballot went for Lincoln. Mr Cameron did become Secretary of War, and, incidentally, Mr David Davis went to the Supreme Court.

But since we have known for months that Bob Dole was to be the Republicans' man, just as two weeks from now, President Clinton will be, saving an act of God, the Democrats' man, the conventions have lost all suspense, all drama, and have turned into rather blasé coronations. Is there anything we can learn from them?

Well by now we've long forgotten, if we ever knew, the votes of the primaries in each state. Who went for Dole in the beginning? Was the South strong or hesitant for him? Can he possibly take California? Now we can only guess what the convention has done, if anything, to affect the public's view of the Republican Party. And the only way we can do that is to watch the polls. One poll says Mr Clinton's 20 per cent advantage was cut in half after Mr Dole chose as his vice -president, Mr Jack Kemp, known at large as a very voluble not to say unstoppable speaker, but the one Republican who has expressed a deep and steady concern for the plight, the social plight, the poverty, the drugs, the decay, of the inner cities. But another poll says it was General Powell's passionate speech more than the appointment of Mr Kemp that made the difference.

In looking over any poll, we're made to remember how in 1976 Jimmy Carter was leading Gerald Ford by 33 per cent in the election Carter won by only two per cent. More to the point, this time, I think three years ago, in New Jersey's election for governor, Mrs Whitman was 21 per cent behind the Democrat, a month before the election she came out for a 30 per cent tax cut across the board, and won. Can Mr Dole's 15 per cent proposal do the same? Is the public, the voting public, which in this country is only 50 per cent of all eligible adults, is the public still as mesmerised by the idea of a tax cut as it was all through the 1980s? In other words, does the voting public believe that the downside of the Reagan prosperity, the deficit, was due to Reagan's tax cut or was it due to the stubbornness of a democratically controlled Congress that wouldn't go all the way with him?

And as for the authority of the polls, we should not forget that you can contrive the answer to a polling question by the way you frame it. Look at this, it was done only a month ago. Same poll, question put a little differently: If the election for president were held today and the candidates were Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, whom would you vote for? Answer: 48 per cent for Clinton, 36 per cent for Dole. Question: Who are you planning to vote for, or are you still undecided? Answer: Clinton 30 per cent. Dole 23 per cent, undecided 40 per cent.

One figure which remains more or less the same in most polls is the number, the unprecedentedly large number of voters who don't like either candidate. Could they be the same as undecided? Or an addition to the increasingly large body of Americans who declare themselves to be independent. Another clutch of polls that appear to agree gives the same number of Americans who say they want something called smaller government – whatever that might mean – it's now 2-1 which should be a happy omen for the Republicans.

It does seem true enough that the popularity of Mr Dole, with the charismatic help of General Powell and Mr Kemp, has gone up in the country at large and Mr Clinton's lead has gone down. But after a convention, the sheer energy, hoopla, the dazzling focus on one party, always gives it, in the week or two after its convention, a lift in the polls. It will happen to Mr Clinton in the weeks immediately following the Chicago coronation at the end of this month. If it doesn't happen, we'll know for sure that the president is in a lot of trouble.

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