Conventional Precedents Don’t Look Good for Dole

I didn’t think it was possible, but in the last few weeks TV has offered counter-programming interesting enough to lure me away from “Fangs,” the Discovery Channel’s show on predators. (Did you know that a praying mantis kills a scorpion by decapitating it and then eating its head? Me neither. And they say TV isn’t instructional. Ha!)

Anyway, leave it to C-SPAN, the network for elitist high-brows like me, to do the trick. In the weeks before the Republican and Democratic conventions, C-SPAN has rebroadcast highlights from both parties’ past conventions. I caught portions of all of them dating to 1952. You’ve never seen such hats!

No wonder ratings for this year’s conventions are so low. Compared to those true political conventions of yesteryear, which were deemed failures unless they sported at least one fistfight on the convention floor between a delegate from Mississippi and one from New York, the ’96 shows don’t quite measure up. It’s the difference between Humphrey Bogart and Bruce Willis. Yes, both supposedly do the same thing, but it’s all about style, man.

I watched very little of the Republican convention. For my tastes, a little Susan Molinari goes a long way.

Now the Democrats come along and offer Jim Brady and Christopher Reeve on opening night. I thought I’d stumbled into a Barbara Walters special. Their stories have moved me in other forums but not at a national political convention. I probably won’t tune in again until President Clinton speaks.

My C-SPAN convention-gorging offered historical perspective. Other viewers might have a different perspective, but what struck me after watching the 44-year cavalcade of conventions was how relatively sedate the world seems these days. If most Americans agree, that is not good news for someone challenging an incumbent president.

Now just a minute. I’m not suggesting we’ve found utopia in the Clinton administration. But in watching the conventions unfold one after the other, the nominees’ speeches indicate that the world often looked perilous to them. Not even Bob Dole tried to make the credible case that we’re living in a perilous time. The best he can do is say he’s a better man than Bill Clinton and can improve on the situation.

Contrast that with almost any other convention over the last 44 years. Throughout the 1950s and into the 1960 election, the nominees addressed the Communist “menace.” It was standard procedure for candidates to tell Americans that the world was in a state of perpetual risk.

The ‘60s conventions had that and so much more. Vietnam loomed right through the 1972 election, and candidates also had to address social upheaval that resulted from the war and the civil rights movement.

In 1964, Barry Goldwater warned in his convention acceptance speech that the Democrats would lead us into a dead-end war in Vietnam. Call him Mr. Prophetic. The Democrats countered that Goldwater was too unrestrained to be entrusted with nuclear weaponry.

By 1968, the country was in full-blown chaos. Candidate Richard Nixon talked of wars both at home and abroad. The war issue was still hot in 1972. In 1976, challenger Jimmy Carter could play both the Watergate crisis and growing economic problems in arguing for his election.

Four years later, Ronald Reagan tapped into a sour national mood, hammering Carter with most of the same problems Carter mentioned in 1976 and then adding the Iran hostage crisis on top of them. Walter Mondale and then Michael Dukakis could legitimately point to soaring budget deficits in 1984 and 1988, but even that wasn’t enough to oust the Republicans. Bill Clinton had a halting economy to fall back on in 1992.

If President Clinton watched the same C-SPAN footage I did, he’s probably feeling pretty good these days. The country isn’t fighting a war. The economy is OK. There is no major social unrest. The nation’s problems, when seen in the historical context of what we’ve been through since World War II, are numerous but not overwhelming.

I have no sense that we’re living in the good old days, but after you’ve watched nominee after nominee over 44 years talk about nuclear peril and crushing inflation and riots in the streets and constitutional crises, things look downright placid in 1996.

That doesn’t mean Dole is doomed, but let’s just say that compared to what previous presidential challengers have been able to throw at an incumbent, he has a problem.

C-SPAN didn’t do Dole any favors. If anything, it showed he may be a crisis or two short at a chance of beating an incumbent president.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by calling (714) 966-7821.