Democrats set the tone with a controversy-free convention
By PHILIP GAILEY
Published August 1, 2004
Last week's Democratic convention in Boston will be remembered as a remarkable exercise in anger management and political discipline. It was all about not turning off undecided swing voters before John Kerry had a chance to turn them on.
Democrats did their best to contain their loathing for President Bush, and Kerry's enforcers made sure the anger of the rank-and-file did not manifest itself on prime-time television. The party platform was about as controversial as the L.L. Bean catalog, and speeches were reviewed in advance and scrubbed by the Kerry campaign to remove anything that could be construed as Bush-bashing. Even Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, who is not known for breaking political kneecaps, was told to tone down his speech - and he wasn't even in prime time. With a few exceptions, everyone was on their best behavior.
It looks like Democrats really mean it when they say there is nothing they won't do to get George W. Bush out of the White House. Divisive issues were swept under the rug to clear the way for Kerry to make his case that he can be trusted with the nation's economy and security - the two overarching issues of this campaign.
The party platform is where liberals normally are pacified. Presidential candidates toss red meat to party ideologues, knowing that most voters neither read nor care about platforms. The platform approved without dissent in Boston ignored partial-birth abortion, gay marriage, the death penalty and global warming - issues that are high on the liberal agenda but were treated as distractions by the Kerry campaign. On the war in Iraq, the platform says only there is room for principled disagreement, even though delegates would overwhelmingly disagree. In Boston, hedge politics replaced wedge politics.
Some things, however, don't change. Democrats like to celebrate their diversity, and rightly so. Like the Clinton Democrats, however, the Kerry Democrats don't have much tolerance for diversity of opinion. No one expected to find an antiabortion Democrat on the list of speakers. It simply isn't allowed. Feminists would object, just as they did at the party's 1992 convention, when Robert Casey, then governor of Pennsylvania and a genuine New Deal liberal, was denied a speaking role because of his opposition to abortion. But what about a Democrat who shares Kerry's position - that he personally opposes abortion and believes "life begins at conception"? Would his campaign have allowed a convention speaker to express that view? Not a chance.
Republicans will be pitching their convention to those same swing voters next month in New York City, and like the Democrats, they will have to take care not to offend or scare them by showing the party's true colors. It's not clear if Kerry-bashing will be permitted, but the convention will showcase prominent Republican moderates who disagree with President Bush on such issues as abortion, gay marriage, immigration policy and deficit spending. The Bush campaign is hoping the likes of John McCain, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rudy Giuliani will reassure moderate voters who are turned off by the likes of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft - the cold, hard faces of the Republican right. The party's social conservatives are unhappy that one of their own is not making a prime-time speech (don't George W. Bush and Dick Cheney count?). The question is, will they be as willing to suppress their frustrations and ideological passions in New York as liberal Democrats were in Boston?
Bush doesn't want to make the same mistake his father did when he allowed Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson to become the shrill voice and angry face of the 1992 Republican convention in Houston. Buchanan and Robertson delivered divisive speeches that brought religious conservatives to their feet cheering while moderate Republicans listened in dismay and disgust. The Houston convention was a political disaster for George H.W. Bush.
As political theater goes, the Boston convention delivered about as much as one could expect from an event so tightly scripted and staged, so lacking in suspense and spontaneity. This election will not be decided by the speeches at either party's convention. Kerry's acceptance speech gave undecided voters an opportunity to begin taking his measure. For some, the speech may have been enough to close the deal. But it probably failed to erase the doubts of other voters who still haven't reached a comfort level with the Massachusetts senator.
The glow of the Boston extravaganza, and the one to come in New York, will fade soon enough as the fall campaign revs up and voters begin weighing Bush's record and Kerry's promises. The next three months will bring presidential debates where the stakes are high. Unexpected events - at home and abroad - could put this election beyond the control of the candidates' handlers and pollsters, leaving the candidates on their own, without TelePrompTers and scripts. The fall campaign should more than make up for the lack of suspense at the conventions.
