After two weeks of near-nonstop coverage on cable and the Internet and six nights of prime time speeches, it’s reasonable to ask the question: are political conventions worth it?
The original convention function of choosing a party’s nominee has long-since passed, replaced by a state-by-state primary system that weeds out the field.
The Democrats have not had anything close to a brokered convention since 1980, when Ted Kennedy, though trailing Jimmy Carter after the primaries, hoped to capture the nomination at the convention. Carter, however, won easily on the first ballot.
The last fight for the Republicans was 1976, when sitting President Gerald Ford entered the convention short of the number of delegates needed for the nomination. Still, Ford defeated Ronald Reagan in the first round of voting by the delegates.
Since then there have been predictions of brokered conventions, but none has come to pass. Instead, the conventions have evolved into made-for-television pep rallies, and expensive ones at that.
Taxpayers spent $36.5 million for both conventions this year. Notably, that money comes from taxpayers who voluntarily contribute three dollars on their annual returns, but it’s still taxpayer money.
Taxpayers have no such choice about whether to pay the growing costs for convention security. This year’s bill came to an astounding $100 million for both conventions.
We’re up to $136 million for both shows, and that does not include the private and corporate spending that supports the many parties, receptions and other events at conventions.
Does a nation roaring toward fiscal ruin really need this extravagance? What was the return on investment?
Neither President Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney presented anything of substance different from what they have said multiple times on the campaign trail. Had the speeches been anywhere else, the media would have treated the contents as just more of the same from the daily stump.
Vice President Joe Biden has reminded audiences so many times during the campaign that Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive, that the audience in the convention hall said the line with him.
In between the self-congratulatory puffery, which is a fine-tuned specialty of American politics, there were odd moments of note.
Clint Eastwood’s bizarre and obviously unscripted imaginary dialog with President Obama was one for the ages, but not of political consequence. In Charlotte, delegates swooned over Sandra Fluke’s rambling speech, which was nothing more than a self-important tantrum.
We paid a steep price to provide the late night comics with new material.
The media, yours truly included, are co-conspirators in this questionable exercise. The conventions are two weeks of hand-delivered show prep for cable news and talk radio. Conventions have elevated even further the recently-minted staple of reporters interviewing each other.
We learned this year that even if conventions are necessary, they don’t have to be four days. Was there any business left undone by the three-day schedule? Would two days suffice?
Here’s a proposal: hold both conventions in the same city during the same week, with each party taking two days. One party has Monday and Tuesday, with Wednesday as a changeover day, and the other party takes Thursday and Friday.
Or, we could do away with conventions altogether and, in their place, have more debates. We could even have one or two debates among surrogates chosen by the parties.
Granted, we wouldn’t get an aging actor talking to an empty chair, but voters might actually hear or see something that would help them make up their minds.
And that would be worth it.