Conventionally Boring

I’m here at the Democratic National Convention this weekend, cursing John Kerry. Why? Because to a political reporter who has weathered every one of these things -- Democratic and Republican -- for the last 40 years, Kerry has taken the thrill out of it.

He’s done that by choosing his running mate, John Edwards, before the convention has even started and by unifying his traditionally combative, disagreeing party simply by not being the despised George W. Bush. What’s there to decide and argue about?

Once again, as indeed has been the case ever since the Democrats needed three ballots in 1952 for Adlai Stevenson to claim the prize, there will be only one roll call for the presidential nomination. It’s been even longer since the Republicans had a floor fight; for that, you have to go back to the three ballots it took to settle on Thomas E. Dewey in 1948.

Gone are the days and nights of multiple ballots and nominees chosen in smoke-filled halls like New York’s old Madison Square Garden in 1924. Then, Democratic delegates sweltered through 103 roll calls before settling on a loser, John W. Davis, a Wall Street lawyer, of all things. Congratulated by a reporter, Davis said: “Thanks, but you know how much it’s worth.” He was hardly the candidate to rail against pro-business President Coolidge.

H.L. Mencken, who covered that convention for the Baltimore Sun, called it “as fascinating as a revival or hanging ... a show so gaudy and hilarious, so melodramatic and obscene, so unimaginably exhilarating and preposterous that one lives a gorgeous year in an hour.”

The first national political convention was held in Baltimore in September 1831 by the short-lived Anti-Mason Party, which opposed the secret society. It nominated a former U.S. attorney general, William Wirt of Maryland, apparently disregarding his confession that he himself had once been a Mason.

Before long, Chicago emerged as the favorite convention city, with both major parties often holding their conventions there the same summer. Other old cities like Baltimore, St. Louis, Philadelphia and Cleveland also were hosts, but never Boston until now.

Before the conventions, presidential nominees were picked by congressional and state party caucuses. Later, a two-thirds majority requirement for nomination often led to multiple-ballot conventions; in 1860, Democrats held 57 roll calls and still fell short of nominating Stephen A. Douglas and had to come back later to finish the job; in 1912, the Democrats chose Woodrow Wilson on the 46th ballot.

Now a simple majority suffices. Long convention floor demonstrations, complete with fistfights, and all-night sessions were customary until the arrival of television, which forced new discipline on the parties out of a misplaced idea that tidiness would be more attractive to viewers than the old political mud wrestling. Television has not been the only spoilsport, however. Delegate-selecting primaries in which the nominees are chosen long before the conventions have further sapped them of drama. So has the pre-convention selection of running mates.

The last really exciting roll call came 48 years ago, when Stevenson at the 1956 convention in Chicago let the Democratic delegates choose between John F. Kennedy and Estes Kefauver to be his ticket-mate. And that contest lasted only two ballots, with Kennedy only 38 1/2 votes short of nomination before a flood of Kefauver votes engulfed him. Kennedy later said that defeat, which saved him from losing in an Eisenhower landslide, was the launching pad for his successful run four years later.

What may have been the last truly wrenching floor fight was in 1968, when President Johnson’s Vietnam War policy was challenged in a torrid, raucous platform fight on the floor and failed by a 3-2 vote. LBJ’s man, Hubert Humphrey, was then easily nominated.

Conventions are known for their oratory. Arguably the most famous speech was delivered 108 years ago -- William Jennings Bryan’s fiery Free-Silver oration: “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this cross of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” It brought him the Democratic nomination but not the presidency. Today, what passes for convention excitement are special-interest receptions and state delegation parties to break the monotony of predictable speeches that not even the networks bother covering.

With no controversial vice presidential pick and issue differences largely papered over, the convention has become little more than a huge pep rally for the troops for the fall campaign. But still they come, with bells on, once every four years for a front seat at a show that continues, for all its faults, to advertise democracy at work.

Jules Witcover, a political columnist for the Baltimore Sun, is the author of “Party of the People: A History of the Democrats” (Random House, 2003).