Conventions and Debates - ‘08
I’m barely old enough to remember how it used to be; George McGovern was on the radio a couple of weeks ago to share how pivital party conventions were. Essentially, the party bosses worked it all out on the floor, and primaries meant something, true, but the convention was for all the marbles. Sen (ret) McGovern was glad things all changed after his ‘72 bid against Nixon.
Partly from an enlightenment that befell American voters, and partly because of chaotic upheaval that showed it could usurp a party’s ‘coming out’ of it’s candidate by delaying nominations until well after prime time, primaries have permanently taken the role of party candidate selection. Ordinary folks, not back room deals, now had the voice.
Debates, though? these have become a matter of real regression, and Americans shouldn’t, but do, take the media event we know as ‘the debates’ seriously. Imagine today’s model to that of the REAL debate age: Lincoln standing in the corner of a portico in Alton, IL, first speaking, usually by-heart as was fashion in the day, an hour-and-a-half long speech. Teleprompters and television commercial breaks were still a good 90 years away. Then, incumbant US Senator Douglass, all five-foot-three of him, had his turn and performed brilliantly, though pale from the fever that dogged him throughout the final days of the (18)’58 Senatorial race in Illinois. His ‘highly charged’ speech went a good hour nevertheless, the crowd rapt and packed in small folding wood-slat chairs. THIS, folks, was how a REAL debate was, and should be now, and certainly can be, but sadly, isn’t.
If that wasn’t enough, neither of these stalwart politician/statesmen got to see what the press and random voters would hurl at them in terms of the tough questions, which invariably came during another solid hour (or two) following the speeches. Question topics varied; everything from military conscription protocol, the slavery issue, to REALLY crazy ideas like women’s voting rights….dozens of impromptu questions were rapid-fired to them, particularly Douglass (in Alton, anyway–I don’t know how he was treated in his hometown of Jacksonville, IL two days prior) but each candidate was obliged to take his best shot at providing a meaningful answer. If either candidate didn’t answer to the crowd/press’s satisfaction, well the same question simple was re-hurled by another voter, and anything was fair game. This wasn’t limited to the famous Lincoln-Douglass debates of ‘58, this was American politics.
SIDETRACK: William Henry Harrison, as he spoke and debated his way to the White House, was known to be one of the most forminable of all candidates to ever take to the podium, and had a brain that matched his eloquence–so he could answer all the audience’s questions at the end of a debate.
Now, of course (and I realize I used a Senate race instead of a presidential race as an example), candidates are prompted well in advance their ‘debate’ questions so that they can have their answers nice and rehearsed and slick. Keep this in mind, friends, if you catch ‘the debates’ this fall. They sure ain’t what they used to be, and haven’t been since at least Eisenhower’s first candidacy.
Back to conventions: they are on for the same reason they’ve always been on, and that’s for party unity, to form a united effort to beat the opponent who belongs to the opposing party. Conventions deliver equal parts comfort and confidence.
SIDETRACK II: The ’superdelegates’ term that media pundits banter around with authority (recall the term ‘The Super South’ of a few years back), these only remind voters that large-population states NY, CA, and my IL, to name only a few), pack a wallop because the larger a state’s population, the more clout the winning candidate gains by winning that particular primary.
So..it all can be a bit bewildering, or sickening, TV being integral to it all. Conservative? Liberal? Who knows? Out in the world, I run into both all the time, as do you. If I watched much TV, I’d run into both there, too. It’s my job, and yours, to embrace views that have portholes of different perspectives. My high school social studies teacher, Mr Hoffman (who was taught by my favorite college history professor, the late–and I’ll add extremely challenging–Dr Heytmen), told us that ‘frame of reference’ is what shapes our views, but the ’sharpest knives in the drawer’…
(they both used that term a lot)
…don’t reveal their biases. Television doesn’t need us as allies in any of this biases, which takes us back to the conventions, whose purpose is to pump up our biases, and so on.
As I recall, the late Kurt Vonneget had some fun with this human (circular) pattern of reason. He shared the luxury of having fun with this with us.
To rope this post in properly, I guess I’d like to say that whoever wins, I’ll support him. Lazlo Toth (who??) said that. Actually, to quote him properly, he said this:
‘The President of the United States is MY president, and the American people elected him. As such, he has my support and he will be in my prayers. Stand behind the president! Fight!’. (I through the ‘Fight!’ part of the quote because he wrote it–the whole thing–that way a dozen times while doing his writing.
I’m sure the late Mr. Toth (I read his stuff in college–he could be absolutely hilarious) would say the same thing if our president someday, probably soon, was a lady. His male biased-ness is only a feature of his times, not his tolerance.