Party conventions

We have one week to go before the first presidential convention and every four years, at this time, Americans are usually in heat with presidential fever. That's not quite right. I'll start again.

It used to be from, I think it was 1832 when the convention system started through 1956, to be precise, that the country licked its lips over the great American game, which can be as exciting as a Grand National, that runs for three or four days of nominating a presidential candidate and then a week or a month later, of nominating the opposition candidate. 

When you used to see clips on television of American conventions it was easy enough to look on them as blousy, boring circuses with no acrobats or lions, not even a performing elephant in sight. But the circus crowds and the bands and the waving flags and pennants and the bloodshot speeches, all that was no more than the Derby Day picnic before the gamblers' orgy. The great moment came when a man, always totally unknown to fame but a man always with a baritone voice as resonant as Pinza's, rose on the podium and cried, 'Alabama!' and that was the moment when they could have bawled, 'They're off!'. That was the start of the balloting. 

Until 1956, maybe 1960, we didn't know who would rack up the total of delegate votes that would put one man's name in the books forever as his party's choice and, perhaps, in the following November, the country's choice for president. It was difficult in those days – it's always difficult – to report the conventions for a foreign audience, unless you are prepared to give over several hours for several days to the proceedings. And on television especially, waving banners and 10,000 cheering people look more picturesque and are easier to film than, say, the floor manager of one candidate sneaking out of the auditorium and buttonholing the leader of the New York delegation and begging him not to announce the vote of New York's huge delegation but to ask to pass until Pennsylvania has been called. 

Now let me try and explain what was so typical and so breathtaking about such a move in the convention game. When that baritone, the clerk of the convention, got up and intoned, 'Alabama!' he was giving the signal for the head of the Alabama delegation to rise at his place on the floor and shout into a microphone – and the microphones line the aisles like parking meters – 'Alabama casts its 24 votes for Eric Morecambe!' or whoever. 

More often than not, since this moment is a chief delegate's one instant of glory on national television, he's more likely to intone, 'The great state of Alabama, the first state to unfold the Confederate flag and the first Confederate state to furl it,' – thunderous cheers – 'the great state of Alabama casts its 24 votes for that heroic American, the next President of the United States, Eric Morecambe'.The clerk notes the figure and then booms out, 'Arkansas!' and so on through the alphabet. 

Now, the English alphabet played an inevitable, sometimes a decisive, role in the balloting and the choice of Mr Big. The states were not compelled to deliver their vote in the alphabetical order. A chief delegate could rise and say, 'The state of Kansas wishes to pass.' And this could mean that there was a genuine conflict in the Kansas delegation, that it was split. Some in favour of Morecambe, some in favour of Wise, if that's conceivable. They would try to resolve this split while the other states were being called alphabetically on the roll and responding. Or Kansas might be practically unanimous for Morecambe but had heard, in an overnight caucus, that one of the big states – New York, Pennsylvania, California – was moving toward Wise. Now, of course, some states are bound by the result of their primaries to stay committed to the man their people wanted but no state delegation is ever committed much beyond the first ballot. And also, no state wants to find itself, at the end, having voted for a loser. 

The winner always remembers who voted for him and when he gets to be president, he dips into the pork barrel of presidential patronage and is happy to dispense to the states that voted for him in the convention a federal judgeship here, an aviation contract there, the promise of a new dam, a flock of postal inspectors, some reward of federal largesse. What the smaller and poorer states want most of all at a convention is to back the right horse, all personal preferences and convictions aside. 

Now, maybe you can begin to see the possibilities of a chess game even in such a device as 'passing'. You, Kansas, have, say, only 26 votes and, therefore, might seem to carry very little weight against New York's 96 or California's 110, but the head of your delegation who will announce your vote is a former presidential candidate. 

This happened in 1940. He was the 1936 Republican choice, Alfred Landon. He was, incidentally, buried in the election by Roosevelt but, resurrected at the convention, he was a powerful figure and some time during the convention preliminaries, the word got around that he was doubtful about the two leading candidates whose names were Dewey and Taft. You can bet that he wasn't allowed much sleep on the nights before the balloting. The Dewey and Taft managers were at him, pleading, begging, giving broad hints of gorgeous gifts that might come the way of Kansas if he broke their way. 

Now – and I remember as if it were last week – on the day of the balloting, Kansas, the first day, Kansas passed and then, routinely, went for Taft. Before the sixth ballot, the floor manager of a maverick candidate, a practical unknown, Wendell Willkie, a Wall Street lawyer, not normally a type a Kansas farmer would rush to embrace, Willkie's manager got hold of Governor Landon and worked on him. He also got hold of the floor manager of the Ohio delegation, Taft's home state and took him up and down in a lift 13 times saying, in polite terms, 'Of course, you can't desert your own senator. I know you're for Taft but on the next ballot, can you pass or ask to have your delegation polled?' That's another trick. That means calling on every member of a delegation in turn to shout out his vote. Now this can take an hour or 90 minutes with the Pennsylvania delegation and is another device of managers to gain time. 

The Willkie manager was really asking Ohio to pause and pass and see how Pennsylvania went, since O comes before P. Well, when they came to K, old Alf Landon, the former governor of Kansas and its chairman of the delegation, asked to be heard from the rostrum. The clerk booms, 'The distinguished chairman of the Kansas delegation wishes to address the convention.' He came squeaking up the aisle on a pair of new shoes. 

Obviously something had happened to wean or woo Kansas away from Taft and when Alf Landon stood up and said in his thin voice, 'Kansas gives its 26 votes to Wendell Willkie!' the place fell apart. It took ten or fifteen minutes to bring the convention to order and the effect on the later members of the alphabet was somewhere between ecstasy and panic. Time to desert the sinking ships and get aboard Willkie! 

Other delegations switched but when the clerk had recited every letter, going through to Wyoming since there's no state called Xerox or Yellowbird or Zebra, then there was a great flapping of banners begging for what's known as 'recognition'. This is a request – a very noisy and showy public request – to be called again, to be allowed to switch the vote of your delegation to the apparent winner. This waving of banners by screaming delegates used to be a very billowing sight, like seeing 20 or 30 desert sheikhs dancing in a high wind. 

It was then up to the presiding chairman of the convention to decide whom to recognise first and he'd pretend to peer objectively into the brilliant ocean of faces and banners and he usually recognised a pal and would bang his gavel and shout, 'The convention recognises the great state of Ohio!' which would then dump its favourite and revote for Willkie. 

So it used to go. But the time requirements of television – the advertising revenue of television more than anything else – has drastically shortened and simplified and bypassed all the subtleties of the old game. There is now, I believe, no passing. The polling of a quarrelling delegation is theoretically allowed but the strategy of getting to be president has changed. The shrewdest hopefuls don't just make speeches around the country and leave the game to the convention any more. They start padding around the country YEARS before the convention. 

We learned, only lately, that Jimmy Carter started buddying up to likely allies in all 50 states four years ago. They find out what the people of over 3,000 counties want for themselves – a new bridge, a river cleansing system, a higher subsidy for soybeans, a new law for bussing school children, a new law against bussing school children. And, by the time it comes to the primaries, enough delegates have been pledged, enough local leaders coaxed and corralled, for Carter to astonish the naive collective known as the American people. 

The Kennedy brothers did this, roamed the 3,000 counties, buttonholed politicians from the humblest to the highest level for three inconspicuous years and by the time they got to the convention, the nomination was sewn up. 

So, now, for 16 years anyway, we've been seeing conventions in which there are no public chess games in which the circus preliminaries are the whole show, short of a virtual coronation on the first ballot. 

From a dramatic point of view, from the gamblers' view, this year's conventions are apt to be the dullest in memory. The Republicans, maybe, will stage a brawl but they know in their bones they aren't going anywhere. Jimmy Carter has already checkmated all his rivals and Ford and Reagan are hurling themselves towards a stalemate. 

Which reminds me of something else that has drained the suspense and the juice out of the conventions and, possibly this year, out of the election, which is the reputation for accuracy of the polls. Not the public sentiment polls, but the statistical surveys of delegate sentiment. When they can computerise the form, the records and the metabolism of horses, there'll be no more horse races. They won't need to run. They'll line up and wait for the result to come over a ticker. Well, it was wonderful while it lasted but the convention game is now a horse and buggy ride competing with Star Trek. 

By the way, in case you hadn't heard, Sunday 4 July, is the 200th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence.

This transcript was typed from a recording of the original BBC broadcast (© BBC) and not copied from an original script. Because of the risk of mishearing, the BBC cannot vouch for its complete accuracy.

Letter from America audio recordings of broadcasts ©BBC

Letter from America scripts © Cooke Americas, RLLP. All rights reserved.