Fixing the Wrong Thing

When the two national political parties begin working together to make things “better,” better beware. During the last campaign, Democrats and Republicans formed a commission to grab sponsorship of the last presidential debate away from the League of Women Voters. The result was that the two presidential campaigns were able to dictate ground rules that resulted not in a real debate but in an excessively restricted and programmed question-answer session.

Now the parties have joined in a new bipartisan commission to do something about the national political conventions. The commission has been directed to propose ways of streamlining the conventions so that they are more appealing to Americans on television. This is in obvious response to the poor ratings that the conventions drew last summer and to network television’s reluctance to carry the entire proceedings. Frank Fahrenkopf Jr., the retiring Republican national chairman, said that there had been criticism from the media that the conventions “have become nothing more than staged activities in which nominees give canned speeches.”

The problem is that this dog is barking up the wrong tree. What needs fixing is the pre-convention nominating process that goes on forever and produces winners long before the delegates gather. The prospective nominees thus have control of the convention program and arrange things so that there is a minimum of uncertainty and controversy. This year even the names of the vice presidential running mates were known in advance, so the conventions were robbed of any remaining tidbit of suspense.

What the national parties must do is shorten the primary campaign and start it someplace other than Iowa or New Hampshire. They need to be willing to have actual issues debated on the convention floor. They need some spontaneity and real action--perhaps even a multiple roll-call contest for the nomination. They do not need more programming, but less. Fix the primary process, and the convention problem will fix itself.