At Heritage We the People: Why self-government is central to American exceptionalism.
| Unelected unions: Why workers should be allowed to choose their representatives.
|
Around the Country
Quick Thoughts
| Do Political Conventions Matter? Delegates have known for months (or longer) who their parties will nominate for President. With such predictability, the national conventions have been taken for granted and a few myths have arisen. Chief among these myths is that conventions no longer matter. As AP Managing Editor Michael Oreskes puts it, they’re “the largest, most expensive infomercials in human experience.”
In reality, national political conventions are vital to both the political parties and the American people. The national convention allows each party to frame the election. It’s the occasion for releasing the national party platform, which spells out the central philosophical theme and key policy positions on which the candidates run. Moreover, conventions can make or break a party’s chances on Election Day.
For instance, at the 1912 Republican Convention, the party leadership chose the constitutional conservatism of incumbent William Howard Taft over the radical constitutional reform of Teddy Roosevelt. Taft won the nomination but lost the general election to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.
In 1968, Hubert Humphrey’s warm embrace of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Vietnam policy combined with the complete mismanagement of the convention's protestors sealed Richard Nixon’s victory. Humphrey’s last-minute surge, propelled by organized labor, couldn’t dig him out of the hole of the Chicago convention.
Barry Goldwater’s defiant 1964 acceptance speech, in which he declared that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice,” galvanized the Right but allowed liberals to tie the albatross of extremism around conservatives for years.
Conventions also matter to the average American voters, many of whom are beginning to pay attention to the race for the first time. Conventions present to the American electorate, in prime time, the nominees of each major party. It’s a chance for the candidates to shine, or be melted by the spotlight.
In 2008, America met Sarah Palin, John McCain’s Vice Presidential candidate. Palin’s speech electrified the convention, energized the Republican Party, and gave the ticket a bump in the polls. People forget that McCain led Barack Obama by a couple of points just before the financial crisis erupted.
And let’s not forget that the conventions matter to the ratings-starved mass media. Conventions are like the summer Olympics—there’s nothing else to watch but reruns of “NCIS” and “Everybody Loves Raymond.” The conventions offer a pre-packaged, easy to follow format in an enclosed space.
Yet, the most important speech you’ll hear may not be the one the media hypes. Ronald Reagan’s spontaneous remarks at the 1976 Republican convention, looking forward to America in the year 2076, caused delegates to wonder whether they had nominated the right man in Gerald Ford. Obama’s moving keynote address in 2004 overshadowed John Kerry’s acceptance speech, introduced the state senator to a national audience, and prepared the way for him to win the presidential nomination four years later.
Modern conventions are full of unexpected twists and turns. For example, the so-called 1980 “dream ticket” of Ronald Reagan/Gerald Ford—pushed by pragmatists on both sides—suddenly collapsed when former President Ford acknowledged that what he had in mind was a “co-presidency.” Presidential nominee Reagan was uninterested in sharing the office, and besides a plural chief executive wasn’t exactly what the framers had in mind.
Political conventions have been a part of the American political process since the 1800s. For die-hard politicos, conventions are “the seventh-inning stretches of presidential politics, a pause to consider the interminable prelude and the coming climax,” as George Will put it. For the rest of America, they are the opening kick-off of the presidential campaign. They offer a chance to meet the candidates and find out the party’s message. Elections, after all, are about choices. And Americans have a choice to make—none greater than this year, when America is at a crossroads.
 | 
Visit ConstitutionOnline.com. Your first stop for clause by clause analysis of the Constitution. |
Parties, under some denominations or another, must always be expected in a government as free as ours. When the individuals belonging to them are intermingled in every part of the country, they strengthen the union of the whole while they divide every part.
~ James Madison
For more quotes, visit westillholdthesetruths.org
| |  | |
No comments:
Post a Comment