Flashy Show Is Not Without Its Discontent

There is the magnificent veneer: a triumphant Bill Clinton accepting the Democratic presidential nomination amid a sea of bobbing balloons and hosannas from the crowd.

And then there is the less flashy, more real stuff underneath: The blood and guts, wounded hearts and rising egos, the gnawing ambitions that manage to scratch their way across the fresh face of every presidential convention.

Here in never-placid New York, the Democrats have managed to pull off what so far has been a rather peaceful display, calm at least by the party’s usual standards.

But there are many reminders that politics often derives from the gut, not the mind.

Clinton may be coasting to the nomination tonight, but buzzing around like summer mosquitoes have been former California Gov. Edmund G (Jerry) Brown Jr., the Rev. Jesse Jackson, New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo and former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas. To greater or lesser degrees, each has done his part to make Clinton squirm, ganging up at times in alliances that make little sense other than to confirm the Democratic reputation for killing their own.

Then there are women and minorities, thankful for prominent roles in the televised festivities but, to be honest, a little sore that 216 years after the first Independence Day, they are still on the outside looking in at a white male ticket.

Little of this discontent has been played out on the convention floor. Yet it is found in the corridors of the fancy hotels where delegates congregate.

At least the city appeared to be cooperating; by Tuesday, only one convention-goer had been mugged and demonstrations were fairly low-key.

“Everything was decided before we got here,” said a middle-aged delegate from Hawaii, a man a little uncertain about exactly why he was here. “But they’re feeding us well.”

It was a calculated risk, holding the convention in New York, with its well-organized protest groups and penchant for occasional mayhem.

But with hordes of blue-uniformed police populating the corners near the Madison Square Garden convention site, crime has been kept to a minimum.

The public protesters have been few and far between, in part because Democrats have tried to accommodate their interests. On Tuesday night, for instance, officials scheduled two people who are infected with the HIV virus. This calmed some AIDS activists.

One lone protester parked himself in front of Madison Square Garden the day the festivities began and held up an impressively large sign that declared “God Is a Republican.” Several Democrats sought to persuade the man otherwise. He remained unmoved.

More subtle, and potentially more troubling to the sense of unity that Clinton and his running mate, Tennessee Sen. Al Gore, hope to carry away from this convention, have been protests from Democrats themselves.

While most attending the convention speak optimistically about Democratic chances in the fall, many do so with explanations that are rooted less in enthusiasm about Clinton than the promise of running against a weakened Republican incumbent.

Thomas Ritchie Sr., an Ohio labor leader, was on the floor of the convention hall, commenting on the heightened sense of excitement he felt this year compared to 1988. Is that because Clinton is a better candidate than Michael S. Dukakis, he was asked.

“It’s because of four years of mismanagement and trickle-down,” he replied.

A specific vein of discontent has opened up among some of the women at the convention. During the week’s first meeting of female delegates, several speakers said that while they were pleased at the showy prime-time speaking slots given several women, they had more basic concerns: No woman was seriously considered as the vice presidential nominee and there is no woman in the highest hired circles of the Clinton campaign.

“I’m willing to support two white men on the ticket this time, if they promise to support two white or black women next time,” delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton from Washington, D.C., declared, drawing guffaws from her audience, who could not imagine the latter scenario.

One California delegate, meanwhile, took the Monday night convention opening--which featured scantily-clad dancers from the Broadway show “Will Rogers Follies”--as evidence of insensitivity.

“They were putting on a show where there were pompons on women’s breasts and behinds like every used-car salesman’s convention,” she said. “There’s still a good-old-boy mentality.”

Clinton’s campaign and many of its delegates play down the impact of such sentiments.

“I was one of four co-chairmen of the Dukakis campaign, and I remember hearing the same kind of complaints then,” said Rep. Norman Y. Mineta of San Jose, referring to the general griping. “I think that’s part of the exercise.”

In a convention where everything was decided well before anyone arrived, the chief political sport has been watching the presidential wanna-bes circle ominously around the almost-nominee.

With an estimated 15,000 journalists drawing them like moths to a hearty flame, Cuomo, Jackson, Tsongas and--most vocally, Brown--have risen to the challenge.

Tsongas spoke to supporters Sunday and Monday, not bothering to mention Clinton’s name in his halfhearted endorsement. The sum total of his remarks: “I’m here this day to be supportive, and if I had won I would have expected everyone to support me.”

Cuomo, the king of the political hill here, has repeatedly waded into the fray, unhelpfully telling reporters that Clinton should concede the need for big tax increases.

For icing, he told Cable News Network that “Clinton and Gore can’t lose unless they do something dramatically wrong.”

Brown, for his part, has engaged in the convention’s most-publicized dispute, a lingering who-blinks-first contest with Clinton over whether and under which conditions he might endorse the ticket.

On the convention floor, meanwhile, conformity is so valued that an early convention script pinpointed precisely when a “spontaneous demonstration” would occur: 55 minutes and 50 seconds after 10 p.m. (Predictably, the script was off by a good half an hour.)

The fresh naivete of some delegates--Brown’s in particular--has led to heated battles over issues like who gets to sit where.

“Someone said to me: ‘We’re supposed to embrace, in unity,’ ” said Maria Martinez, a poet from San Francisco who is attending her first convention as a delegate for Brown. “I said: ‘Wait! This is a convention!’ ”

Her colleague, Cupertino resident Sandra McNealy, wanted everyone--particularly the Clinton supporters--to know that the open bickering between the two camps is not meant to cast a shadow over the convention.

“We’re all for unity,” she said, nodding vigorously.

So why keep arguing? Your candidate lost, didn’t he?

“This isn’t a ballgame,” she said solemnly. “This is politics. In politics, everyone has an opinion. And a right to express it.”