The Price of Passionless Conventions
Young people today often complain that politics are boring and do not matter. The age group between eighteen and twenty-four has the lowest participation rate for any voting age bloc. It is easy to blame this sad state of affairs upon the youth for a lack of interest in the democratic process. But on the eve of the national Democratic and Republican conventions, the blame for political apathy should be placed upon the professional politicians where it belongs.
There was a time when the political conventions represented reality television. There was suspense regarding the nature of protest demonstrations, the nomination of candidates, the credentials and seating of some delegations, and the wording of party platforms. The gavel-to-gavel coverage of network television provided object lessons in the lively and contentious nature of a vibrant democracy. Would Lyndon Johnson in 1960 accept the second spot on the Democratic ticket with John Kennedy? In 1964, Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller battled for the soul of the Republican Party. Ronald Reagan challenged incumbent Gerald Ford in 1976, and in 1980 Ted Kennedy contested the nomination of President Jimmy Carter.
On the other hand, today we have political coronations in which managers seek to control and manipulate the democratic process. Citing security fears regarding terrorism, protesters are kept far away from the convention halls and parade permits are denied. The greatest controversy surrounding the tightly-controlled nomination of John Kerry in Boston appears to be the allotment of prime-time speaking spots which are at a premium with the networks limiting their programming to only three hours per evening. The junior Democratic Senator from New York, Hillary Clinton, was initially denied one of these valuable slots, but her voice will now be heard in prime time. The keynote address is noteworthy, however, in that it will be given by Barack Obama, the Democratic African-American Senate nominee in Illinois who seems assured of election following the withdrawal of his Republican opponent. The Hispanic slot at the Democratic convention belongs to New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson.
This desire to micromanage convention scheduling owes much of its origins to the 1972 Democratic convention in which floor fights over the platform and spontaneous demonstrations postponed George McGovern’s acceptance speech into the wee hours of the morning. But these efforts to control the convention thwart participatory democracy.
The 1968 Democratic national convention offered a vigorous floor fight over a plank denouncing the Vietnam War and Lyndon Johnson’s escalation of that conflict. Yet, in 2004, when the Democrats confront a Republican candidate who has lied to the American people in order to gain support for a war of aggression in Iraq, there is apparently going to be no platform provision opposing the war. The party is prepared to nominate two Senators who voted in favor of authorizing President Bush to engage in the Iraqi adventure. Dennis Kucinich, the Democratic Congressman who ran as an antiwar candidate, evidently believes that his forces lack the support to bring this issue to the convention floor. As we continue to send young people to fight and die in Iraq, antiwar Democrats are being effectively shut out of the convention.
In 1964, many young activists were disillusioned when leading liberals in the Democratic Party failed to seat the Freedom Democratic Party delegation from Mississippi Most of the state’s regular Democratic Party organization consisted of segregationists whom the national party did not want to offend. Four years later many young people continued to work within the political system; campaigning for Eugene McCarthy or Robert Kennedy and lobbying for an antiwar plank in the party platform. Others felt betrayed by the 1964 Atlantic City convention as well as the party establishment’s endorsement of Vice President Hubert Humphrey in 1968.
The alienated youth came to Chicago to mock and protest Humphrey’s nomination. They were met with what the Walker Commission later termed a “police riot.” The Chicago 1968 Democratic national convention featured plenty of action in the streets of Chicago and on the convention floor. Television cameras captured Chicago Mayor Richard Dailey giving an obscene gesture to Connecticut Senator Abraham Ribicoff, who denounced the mayor for employing Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago. Meanwhile, television provided us with gruesome images of the violence taking place outside the convention. It wasn’t pretty, and it wasn’t civil. But it was passionate, and politics mattered.
I don’t want us or the Democratic Party to return to 1968. But the dull events planned for Boston offer little hope for the return of a vibrant democracy. If we want young people to believe that politics matter, then the democratic process needs to encourage the voicing of dissident opinions. One expects no such open discourse from the Republican Party of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. But if the Democrats really want to be the party of the people and attract young voters, then they must endeavor to restore the historic passion of the political process so missing from our increasingly-staged political conventions.