Political Conventions: Yesterday’s News

The Democratic presidential nominee played by Tom Selleck in TNT’s coming “Running Mates” springs a big surprise at his party’s national convention, creating the kind of defining moment that has been missing from these events for decades.

Although it’s complete fantasy, we can dream, can’t we?

Future historians and other students of politics will decide which was ultimately better for the U.S., today’s relatively public system of picking national tickets or the earlier method of shadowy deal-making at brokered conventions where dreams and ambitions went up in smoke along with cigars.

From a TV perspective, though, oh, for the chaotic good old years when straw campaign hats were good for something other than flying Frisbees. Those times, that is, when quadrennial nominating conventions meant something. When they were more than rallies focused on a single set of pre-coronated politicians. When they were more than the migraine of single-lasered partisan bluster. When they were more than media reunions where news-starved reporters, star anchors and celebrity pundits speculate about political intrigues that don’t exist and hash over in excruciating detail the importance of party platforms that have no importance.

To say nothing of media obediently delivering themselves to the stunts of dissidents whose boomlets, however worthy of note, get swollen out of proportion because there are gaping holes to fill and not much else to report.

Selleck is so telegenic and commanding that his high-minded Gov. James Reynolds looks to be a more formidable presidential candidate than fanciful “Running Mates” is a movie. Waving its pristine ideals like convention placards, the story’s schmaltzy climax alone is a manipulative jolt delivering a lump in the throat thick enough to block every windpipe in the hall.

Say goodbye to thoughts of surprises, though, for on Monday, choreographed, streamlined, tidied-up reality glossily intervenes. That’s when the Republicans gavel in four days of anointing Texas Gov. George W. Bush in Philadelphia, preceding the infomercial Democrats are planning for Vice President Al Gore in Los Angeles starting Aug. 14.

Speaking of lumps, both men are what the media call “presumptive” nominees, meaning they’re in like Mt. Rushmore. Meanwhile, Dick Cheney is already down as Bush’s running mate, and Gore has promised to announce his choice before the Democrats start their own four days of spin.

So the conventions are in stone before they begin.

Naturally, each party would love gavel-to-gavel coverage of its TV-tailored road show, which is pretty much what will be available from PBS, C-SPAN and all-news MSNBC, Fox News Channel and CNN, which have assigned almost as much staff to the conventions as the parties have delegates.

As for the atrophied news divisions of the broadcast networks, which, along with other media, are widely blamed for a much-chatted-about “disconnect” between the public and politics? Give these fossils a break already.

Although the erosion of their political reporting in recent years is flat-out depressing, they are right on the mark with plans for minimalist prime-time coverage of the conventions: CBS and ABC some each night, ABC an hour on the first night of each convention, and NBC keeping fluid while running most of its coverage on MSNBC, its cable venture with Microsoft.

Sounds like a reasonable plan. Yet . . .

“Every television network, every local television station, every cable service in America should be required to run verbatim both of the major party conventions,” Jim Lehrer insists in a publicity release from “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer,” his weeknight newscast on PBS. “They represent the first time the American people start tuning into what this election is about,” adds the usually sage Lehrer, getting in touch with his inner hyperbole.

Here’s a second opinion.

“The conventions were started to nominate the candidate for president--period,” former NBC News President Reuven Frank noted recently from New York. “Now that they don’t do that, there is no point in the [mass] coverage, except maybe for the keynote address.

“A convention should be covered,” added Frank, who ran NBC News when it was still NBC News. “But send a good reporter, maybe two or three, and a couple of camera crews.” In other words, not blanket but strategic coverage, reporting only when merited, using the same criteria applied to other stories.

“There’s just no news reason for anything more,” Frank said. “The last time I said this, Dan Rather wrote a nasty letter to the New York Times. To Rather and the rest of the guys, the conventions are like the American Legion. They meet each other there and bask in the glow. But all that’s dead. It’s musty. Conventions are now a way for parties to get free time on the air.”

And they’ll be getting it.

How will the all-news networks, for example, populate their moonscape of air time? Surely, you jest. If they can do it with Elian Gonzalez or JonBenet Ramsey on a given day, not a problem.

Expect the usual talk shows galore and self-enraptured pundits pouring redundancies and partisan hypotheses that will be forgotten as soon as they utter them. Expect “The Capital Gang” to gang up on each driblet of trivia and nonsense, and so on and so on.

During the Republican convention, expect floor reporters to cut from the herd and attempt to stampede into a revolt everyone with something dark to say about Cheney’s conservative voting record in Congress.

And when the Democrats meet, expect every protest outside Staples Center to be a “massive” protest, even if it’s not.

Expect, too, polls en masse. Also, prepare for lots of laborious chin stroking over arcane party platforms. These documents “can provide spectacular insight into a candidate’s character,” historian Michael Beschloss wrote recently. There probably aren’t 10 people on the planet, however, who can identify a single plank in the 1996 platform of either major party. Nor will memories of coming platforms improve in 2004.

Will the planned minimalist coverage of the broadcast networks be responsible for this “disconnect”? Hardly. They’re doing it about right in this era of do-nothing conventions.

Meanwhile, we’ll always have Tom Selleck.

* “Running Mates” airs on TNT Aug. 13.

Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. He can be reached via e-mail at howard.rosenberg@latimes.com.