Conventional Wisdom

Starting in 1948, our national political conventions began their long evolution into televised spectaculars. For a couple of decades, coverage expanded to engulf prime time on almost all the television stations then available to Americans. Conventions mattered because they were a major part of the shared experience of voters during the presidential campaign season. That doesn’t mean convention success translated into Election Day outcomes. For example, one of the most effective conventions of the past forty years – the Democratic assembly in San Francisco in 1984 – occurred as the nominee was headed to a landslide defeat by Ronald Reagan. Still, that national experience affected voters in the short run, with Walter Mondale briefly holding his only lead over the incumbent president in post-convention national polling.

Convention coverage continued to change in the years following 1984. The rise of cable and satellite channels fragmented audiences and squeezed budgets. Given other alternatives, audiences voted with their remotes and switched to other programming in droves. Networks began shrinking their coverage. And, even when they were focused on the conventions, their bevies of correspondents and analysts, and loads of political retread filled increasing portions of the time allotted to the whole affairs.

This year network coverage has been starting at 10PM (EDT) and the audiences have been modest. Most Americans apparently are perfectly content getting their political conventions in small bites that scarcely interrupt regularly scheduled programming. For the tiny percentage of the group formerly known as good citizens but now are considered vaguely dysfunctional political junkies, there is a cluster of all news channels that provide attention to the events at the Democratic convention all evening. Notice I said attention, not coverage. Because these stations give huge amounts of time to the talking heads they gather to sprinkle conventional wisdom and group think story lines over the actual events and speeches at the gathering in Denver. The same thing is undoubtedly planned for the Republicans in Minnesota (although one anticipates that Fox News’ semi-official GOP coverage will be a bit more of the cheerleader variety).

So, if you want your convention experience straight – that is, you want to see what is happening and being said inside the hall, all I can say is thank God for CSPAN. It provides unfiltered coverage of the speeches and some of the caucus events all week. You can get a sense of what the experience is like for those attending. And, even more refreshing, you can draw your own conclusions about what is being said. Perhaps some may want to take advantage of new technologies and tune in to the convention online at sites such as CNN.com, which is carrying the evening sessions gavel to gavel and commentary free. This is certainly an attractive option for those who have one eye on the election and the other on the race for the fall’s second biggest contest – baseball’s World Series.

Even if you’re not compulsive about knowing what is actually happening at the conventions, the experience of watching portions of it, unedited, is worth your time. And, I promise, you won’t miss the conventional wisdom of the on-air talkers drowning out the speeches.