Why I’m not going to the Republican convention

A popular joke in Washington goes like this: how can you tell the Republican convention from that of the Democrats? The Republicans cannot clap in time to the music.

Political conventions have become county fairs – without the good food, fireworks, rides, and animals. In other words, they are county fairs without all the attributes that make county fairs enjoyable. People will wear funny hats, way too many badges, and cheer themselves hoarse for speeches that will become almost instantly forgettable.

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It’s been a full twenty years since anyone said anything genuinely memorable. The last great convention address was Mario Cuomo’s effort to rally demoralised Democrats in 1984. While the speech was a classic, the Democrats, buoyed by the New York governor’s eloquence, went on from that emotional highpoint to be eviscerated by the Reagan juggernaut.

The 1988 convention brought Bill Clinton to the country’s attention – he gave one of the worst convention addresses in history. It was our future president at his worst; overly wonkish, reciting a laundry-list of policy initiatives, all intellect and precious little of the famous Clinton charm. When he reached the penultimate moment in the speech, intoning, “And, in conclusion,” the Democratic partisans broke into enthusiastic applause. Some sage broadcaster then opined, in one of the worst moments of prognostication in history: “Well, we’ve certainly seen the last of that fellow.”

And that’s just the point. After his big oratorical moment, Cuomo went on to… nothing. Clinton, however, went on to become one of the great political naturals of the 20th century, in a league with both Roosevelts, JFK, Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan. Their performances at the convention, so commented on at the time, had absolutely nothing to do with what came next.

If the bombast is ethereal, so are the policy positions staked out in the party platforms. The last Republican platform led one to expect that George W Bush’s foreign policy would be cautious, husbanding American resources far more than his Democratic predecessor, and disdaining nation-building.

Instead, after the tragedy of 11 September 2001, the Bush administration has pursued one of the most activist, radical foreign policies in the history of the United States, seeing nation-building efforts in Iraq as pivotal to a new American effort to democratise the entire region. None of what was to come can be gleaned from rereading the party platform on foreign policy in the long ago days of the summer of 2000. And I defy any of you to remember what John Kerry’s foreign policy platform was about; and that was only a few weeks ago!

If the verbal pyrotechnics amount to nothing, and the policy platforms are forgotten as soon as they are written, in the modern era neither do conventions do the job for which they were intended – to have a stake in electing their party’s candidate for president. Gone are the days of open conventions, moved by the “Boy orator of the Platte,” electing the youthful unknown William Jennings Bryan as the Democratic nominee for president in 1896. Conventions are now carefully choreographed ads for a party’s nominee; they rubber-stamp, rather then play a significant role in determining who may run the country.

And yet conventions endure. While, like county fairs, they rarely deliver the thrills and chills promised, they continue to serve a modest purpose. Not enough of one for me to disrupt what promises to be a blissfully quiet week ahead, but a purpose, nonetheless. Conventions showcase their nominee to the country – some earnest, undecided voters genuinely do listen to the speeches. It is one of the only times that a candidate has the attention of at least some of the country, without his opponent lurking next to him, as in the presidential debates. Given how close this election is likely to be, George W Bush’s address really will have some impact on the precious few undecided voters this time around.

The president should be alarmed as to how things are going politically. As a senior politician from my home state, pivotal Ohio, put it: “Do you know anyone who voted for Gore, but is wavering, thinking they’ll vote for Bush instead of Kerry?” The answer is that I don’t. My friend’s implication points out the most striking feature of the current campaign – there are a number of Republicans who are wavering due to the president’s radicalism, while it is almost impossible to find any Democrats likely to forsake Kerry for George W Bush.

For while Democrats have quelled coming civil wars within their party, it remains an open question as to whether Republicans can stifle fundamental differences of opinion between realists and neo-conservatives, who many see as having usurped control of the party.

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Indeed, this tension is personified by the people clapping out of time on the convention floor, the Republican base, which remains resolutely anti-imperial, bewildered by the neo-conservative project, and tied to Jeffersonian and Jacksonian traditions – for small government, balanced budgets, individualism, the bill of rights, and resolutely against international social work such as nation-building (the base doesn’t care much for domestic social work, let alone doing such things outside the country). Will this same Republican base turn out to enthusiastically support would-be empire-builders, who stand for a very different set of principles?

Conventions are an always-fascinating snapshot of the collective psyche of the parties: if the GOP isn’t in denial, this convention ought to find it worried.