The Robert MacNeil Report; Irrelevant Convention

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Good evening, Jim Lara is off tonight. The Democratic National Convention flowed smoothly through its second day today with only the tiniest eddies of dissent disturbing the harmonious mainstream. Tonight the convention will hear the platform largely fashioned to Jimmy Carter's taste and is expected to approve it with only minor quibbles. The candidate himself has spent the day in isolation in his hotel suite, sitting in blue jeans and bare feet honing the pros of his acceptance speech. Around that peaceful scene, they're still swirling a storm of the most intense speculation, rumor, and purported inside information on the only suspenseful game in town

his choice of a running mate. Targets of the most active speculation tonight are Senators Edmund Muskie of Maine and Walter Mondale of Minnesota. But if anyone besides Governor Carter knows any more than that, he's not telling, except that the Governor's Press Secretary Jody Powell says the list is still six senators long. Inevitably, in the absence of the violent battles of the last two Democratic conventions, many people this week are calling this one dull, and indeed it is not so far a very thrilling spectacle for television. Other people are saying the convention is pointless because the arithmetic of the nomination is long settled. One Ohio delegate told me today it's an exercise in futility. We've done nothing and expect to do nothing, and he was a Carter delegate. As the radical change in primaries and delegate selection rules made the convention as we know it irrelevant. If not, what's the purpose of the cheering crowds when the horse race has already been won? And that's what we consider tonight. Does this convention really matter?

Max Lerner is an author and lecturer who has been watching conventions for more than 30 years. He was professor of American civilization at Brandeis University for 25 years and is now a syndicated columnist for the New York Post. Mr. Lerner, first of all, how do you see this convention fitting into the spectrum of democratic conventions over the last two generations? Well, it's quieter, of course, and more harmonious. Democrats are supposed to be the party that's always divided, and they turn out not to be. But I think that's deceptive. I would say that all politics is theater, basically. I think we're expecting theater to be the showy stuff, but theater can be beneath the skin. And I would say that if you look for the dog beneath the skin, you'll find that it's a wolf. Here, as always, as always, and the wolf part of it, underneath the skin, the theater part of it, obviously,

is the struggle inside a party, which is still very much a party of sections of classes, and particularly of left-right and center. That struggle has not been done away with. It's been tapered over. So you feel that this tranquility is a tactical mask to you for the moment? Well, one thing that's happened is, of course, that the South has been brought back into the mainstream by Carter, and that's been going on for some time. This is the manifestation of it. Another thing that's happened is that the 1972 ownership of the party by the left wing is now over. But that's, again, the outward thing. The left wing is still very much there, very, very much there. And the struggle between the various sections of the party is very much there. Jimmy Carter, in a way you have to feel a little sorry for a man that's come up this fast, that suddenly finds himself in command,

much earlier in the game than he thought he would be, and finds now that he has to try to keep everybody happy, but fundamentally he is bright enough to know that they are after him, and will be after him when the convention is over, and ultimately, if he gets elected. Do you feel that something vital and essential to the political convention is lost when the nomination, the central drama of the convention, is so clearly absent? Well, it's lost in the sense that it isn't as good TV show, obviously not. And it's lost in the sense that the commentators, like ourselves, we've had our basic reason for being taken away, which must be gossiping and guessing, and reporting what all the fights are about, and so on. And suddenly, we find ourselves without that function. But basically, a convention is a means by which people from the party all over the country get together and see each other's faces,

and swap experiences, and so on. You know, the Democratic Party, I like the Republican Party, is a loose conglomerate of various state and local groups that come together for one purpose, and that purpose is the highest stakes of power in the presidency. And that is still true, because even though the nomination has an effect taken place, the election is still ahead, and I don't think the election by any means is over. Thank you. Richard Wade is a longtime activist in the Democratic Party and headed Senator McGovern's New York campaign four years ago. He's Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York. Professor Wade, what is the purpose of this convention? Well, the purpose is the historic purpose that Max has just spoken of. It's the only time that a party gets together in a national sense. Otherwise, it's just a loose association of 50 different states. And they come together to nominate a candidate and also to adopt a platform.

And there's no way around it, just because it happens to be dull, and just because the outcome is already established, there's no way around keeping the integrity of the party through a dull convention because you're going to have to have a convention sometime in the future. Which is essential. It's the only time the party gets together, and without it, there would be no national party in either sense. Many people, both political scientists and critics of convention television coverage, have argued for years that television has been making these conventions falsely suspenseful, disguising the fact that they've often not been great deliberative or decision-making bodies. John Kenneth Galbraith said a few years ago, only television sustains the myth. Has the myth in this case been ripped away? Do you see any truth in those criticisms? No, I think that you can't make an uneventful convention eventful simply by putting it on a screen. The first convention that was on television was the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia in 1948. And that was a genuinely, he had incumbent president,

but it was a genuinely exciting moment when they put the civil rights plank on the floor. Whether they've been television or not, it would have been just as important and just as significant. And if I may go back to 1964, I don't suppose that this convention will be as boring as that convention in Atlantic City. That did have some very emotional moments, that didn't it? It had emotional moments, readiness and system of the candidates of John Kennedy. Yes, but it was held in Atlantic City for the simple reason there wasn't a serious convention at all, and they held in the resort. And that was the purpose of being there, and therefore you had parties, and you had fun, and the nostalgic trip that took place during the memory of the... But one thing ought to be remembered on that occasion in 1964, the man who won the Dalton Convention was dumped by his own party three years later. That's interesting. You argued on this program a few months ago when we were discussing the primary process, that it was a good idea you thought to separate the nominating function from the, as it were, party identification function,

have the nomination in one process, and then have the convention, as I recall. Now, are you happy that, in a sense, that's happening? No, my argument was just a little bit different. What I said then was I'd like to have a convention where the primaries were, as they are now, and that you would elect the delegates the way they had been elected, but they would not nominate the president at the convention. What they would do is establish anybody who had over 15 percent of the delegates would go on a ballot, and then they would be elected by the Democrats at home in a general election amongst Democrats three weeks later. In other words, to make the convention, an issue is convention to start with. It would make that much more important. And then secondly, to nominate the people who would then go on a primary ballot for a general national primary. That was my argument, but now I still think it'd be better than the way we have it now. I'd forgotten that rather complicated refinement of the delegates. Thank you.

Ben Battenberg, a Waughtonberg. I think your pardon is the. During a lot with the Duke of Edinburgh, whose other name was Mount Batten, his original name was Battenberg. Ben Battenberg is the co-author with Richard Scamin, of the book The Real Majority. He was Senator Jackson's issue man for this year's platform and deliberations. Mr. Waughtonberg, you were one of those who worked towards this convention moment for a candidate who lost. Do you and the Jackson delegates feel their presence here at that point list as a result? Well, personally, I think a lot of people go through the exercise of what could have been if we had done this or what could have been if that had happened. That's on a personal level sure. That's a feeling that many of us have. But if you look at it on a more abstract level, I think it is the convention process generally. And this convention does have a point as both of my colleagues have indicated. This convention is introducing the candidate really to the American people.

It's introducing a. And to the party. And to some extent. Well, and to the party to some extent. But specifically to those tens of millions of people who watch the networks and really for the first time, largely because of network scheduling are forced to concentrate on this kind of thing. It introduces the platform to the American people. Not a platform is oftentimes an exercise in baffled gap. But still, when you have a collection of warring tribes as we do in this democratic party, and they are able to agree on something, it's then very useful to say, well, have they really agreed on something just as people have said to paper it over? Or is there a root of some substantive harmony? Is there a way to put this thing back together? Again, my own view of having worked on that platform is that we are on the road to putting something back together. Again, if there are some common threads that Democrats write left and center can agree on, even in foreign policy, for example. How many of those tens of millions of people you hypothesize would actually, do you think,

listen to the platform being read? Well, well, when they just get sort of headlines, the party is agreed on, sir. You never really, nobody ever reads a platform. Just as people don't vote for senators and congressmen because they say, well, he voted correct on subsection 7 of HR2722. That's not the way people vote. You get a sense of what this beast called the Democratic Party is really all about. And for example, tonight, Admiral Zumwalt is going to be introducing the defense plank. Well, that is something that could not have happened four years ago. So that's a change in his body. This foreign policy plank, Pat Moynihan, played a great role in helping to shape that thing. Now, that's something that wouldn't have happened four years ago out of a government convention. So there are changes. There are changes of nuance. There are changes of substance that have gone on. And this convention, this process, allows that to be disseminated to the American people. And it introduces not just the candidate, not just the platform, but in effect the party.

It tells the American people, that this is what we Democrats are like now, as opposed to perhaps what we were four years ago and even eight years ago, when the general impression was that if those people that we saw in our television screens took the dog for a walk around the block, they'd come back with a different animal, that they weren't, that they were a party, but they weren't able to govern. Now, so there's an image thing at work here. Is people, we'll see these delegates and see the candidates, they'll say, well, you know, maybe they can do something. And maybe they can't. I'd like to ask you all. You've all outlined various functions, the convention performs besides actively deciding on a presidential candidate. But most of those presuppose in this country with such extraordinary geography and diversity, difficulty communications, presuppose of television audience and that's what television's been arguing all these years. What happens if you remove the excitement of the nominating process, progressively from these conventions? Isn't the audience going to go away and the other aspect you'd like them to do, would be exposed to the soul of the party,

see the party identifying itself. A kind of four-day commercial, if you like, for the party. Exactly. Every four years. You need an audience for that. Aren't you in danger of scaring that audience away by removing the... Well, but we have... The only reason that the nominating function has been removed is because of the peculiarity of certain events. I mean, the reason there's no nominating struggle is because Carter won what all those primaries, 20 odd primaries, had a few things happened differently. Had you'd all won in Wisconsin, had Jackson not dropped out after Pennsylvania, had Brown start earlier, had Humphrey come in. You would have had one of the biggest hottest conventions. You really had a chance of a multi-ballot, brokered convention with everybody screaming and yelling and it would have been just marvelous theater. I mean, it might have been probably worse for the nominee because in fact, dull conventions, the polls show, dull conventions, while people may turn it off and say it's very dull. The person who gets nominated, his poll rating tends to go way up and it's in hectic conventions when those polls are very nervous. And in McGovern's instance, for example,

he was the only nominee in it. Ever since we started public opinion polling, whose public opinion rating went down after those four days of exposure because of all that. Right. We're going to see, given what happened in the primaries, is that in the next batch of primaries, four years from now, people like Brown and Humphrey won't make that mistake of allowing thinking that a vacuum was going to last until the convention. They'll get in early. And I think that means, I happen to believe, by the way, that the primaries, as they are now constituted, are going to have most of the drama, most of the theater will be in the primaries. That doesn't mean, however, that the convention may not still be a battlefield when it comes. We still have to see that. But may I suggest one other thing, even if we have it the way this is, we knew Harry Truman was going to be the candidate in 48. And my memory of the 48 convention is that the really great moment was when Harry Truman got up to deliver his acceptance speech, and it was the most thrilling thing. All the newspaper men got up on the tables and just cheered.

The real surprise was that this little fellow really was a man. He was a president. He had stature, you know. The only thing I've seen in newspaper and standing up so far for this time is the invocation. I would say you asked originally when you were talking to Max about whether or not this was an artificialness unity. To some degree, I don't know whether artificial is the word, but the reason we have the unity is that a man from the outside who doesn't come from any established wing of the Democratic Party has gotten the nomination, and the wings that are disaffected, the Jackson, or you would all, or the governor, whatever the case may be, still have a feeling they can influence. The man who's going to get this nomination. And therefore they're stuck with him, and they better do what they can. And that they think that they can in that sense influence, and that he's got support for the liberal part of the party, from the center and from the right,

and therefore no one is disaffected enough to make a fight. Normally what happens at a convention is the people who lose the candidate, then make a stand on credentials, rules, or platform. But that's not happening this time. If the Carter had a longer record and had been associated with one part of the party, I could assure you of a grand fight and good TV, or if you all enjoyed this time, or if you only had 1,100 delegates, no matter what his record was, you'd have a hell of a fight going on, because everybody would be trying to embarrass him for one reason. How does, until recently, a Jackson worker view that, that the candidate is influenceable as Professor Wade believes, or that they've got a grin and bear it as Max Learner suggests? Well, you do both. You try to, well, you grin and bear it, and then you do what you can. Is there a lot of, I'm not speaking for you personally, but is there not only for Jackson sympathizers, but is there going to be a lot of grinning and bearing Carter? Oh, well, yes, among all the pros and all the people who want to be considered Democrats, there's going to be a lot of surface grinning and bearing it,

and then immediately below that, they're going to be trying to perform the other function, which is to influence the candidate. You know, you have to distinguish between two groups. My hunch is, as I move around, especially at the parties where there's a lot of talk, my hunch is that the people who are most skeptical about Carter are on the left, rather than on the right and in the center. I think much of the real critical waiting to see what this so-and-so is going to be like, comes from the left. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, the Jackson people, I don't know, let me speak for myself. I would say that Carter's positions on many of the important issues of our day are not terribly far from Jackson's. You know, in my judgment, it was not an accident that Jimmy Carter nominated scoop Jackson for president in 1972. There's a certain tradition that they both come out of. It is not going to an alien camp. This is, it's also curious when you say it put it that way that we had a little reunion for the

Governor and Delegate delegation from New York last night. Our nostalgic occasion. Our nostalgic occasion. And what we all took great pride in the fact that the Democratic platform of 1976 looks just like George McGovern's campaign in 1972. At almost all the issues, including the Carter's acceptance of the Humphrey Hawkins principal, the question to my notes. I'm honestly acid. You ought to read the foreign policy plan but the fence section, it really isn't so. But those weren't, but those were not in the, in the... No, no zero defense budget. No zero budgeting on defense for instance. No, McGovern had done it the other way around saying he was going to cut it by a certain amount of money. But nonetheless, the principles of that campaign, including he got in a great trouble with a thousand dollar notion, but the principle is even extended in this 1976. Well, I would argue very vigorously that that's not what this platform reflects. Well, could we? We're very close to a negative income tax in the platform,

which was what McGovern started with. But that's where you were at Humphrey and George, meaning you were for before McGovern. That's what the Democratic Party is. It's the new things that were added in 1972 that aren't early. Surely Professor Wade, if what you say was true that this was virtually the McGovern platform warmed over. The liberals would have no reason for doing anything but rejoicing over Carter's influence on them. And they, in fact, are doing nothing. They're making no fights on the floor. No, no, I'm talking of how they really feel as you talk about him. You know this is so. Now, there are some, I think, on the right that are also skeptical, but most of it comes from the wing that had controlled a 72 convention. Mr. Learner, would the choice of vice presidential candidate, for instance, if it were Senator Mondale, who's perceived as more liberal than Carter, nullify those liberals with anything like that? Oh, I think it would. I think if you take three who presumably were the last three that he was considering, Glenn and Mondale and Muskie,

I think if Glenn were chosen, the liberals would feel pretty badly. I think if Mondale was chosen, they'd feel very good. I think if Muskie is chosen, they will accept it. And my wrong about that. I think that's right. I'm not sure that those are the three that are left, but if that's true. Yeah, yeah, that's, that's, that's, that's plausible enough. But the, you know, the exercise that Governor Carter has to go through is not as a first priority to please the delegate to this convention. He's already the nominee. He has to figure out who hurts him most in November. And in that instance, it may well be that Mondale hurts him the most, which is so, so that he will, he will forego that wonderful pleasure of making, making peace with the liberals here, and maybe go to one of the other two, with the thought in the back of his mind saying, well, you know, what I would like to do for number one on my agendas to get elected. Okay. The man has a revenue's hunger for power. Of course it's a single minded hunger for power. It's not unknown among us. It's not unknown. But when you talk about how peaceful everything is,

remember that under the skin as I say there's, there's something going on. Even within him as indeed there are things going on among people on the left center, and right, this is what I mean when I say all politics is theater. Could I ask, could I ask this and see what your view is? What kind of an image of the democratic party is likely to emerge from this convention constructive dynamic unity, or some horrific harmony? Somebody on the floor yesterday said, this party is addicted to creeping sanity. And I would think if you, if you tracked the hajira of this particular party from 1968 to 1972 to 1976, this is a moderating party, a moderating platform. It's coming back into the center, back into the mainstream. It's kind of had some ups and downs and great turmoil. And people would tend to think that this is once again a responsible mainstream party. That's a very serious disease creeping. Particularly in our party.

Yes, I don't think it'll last, I agree with Ben though, in reference to the general image of the democratic party that's going to come out of this convention is that the party that was torn so badly apart in 1968 and 1972 is now generally, generally united on a very limited basis on a candidate they don't know an awful lot about and on a platform that generally is acceptable to everyone else. And also because they see down the road in August, Republican Party is going to be badly divided. And I think the specter of Republican difficulty is one of the reasons that we have a good deal of unity in the democratic party now. Well, that may change. There is a dramatic candidate that the republicans have and that is Reagan if he makes it. But I think if Reagan makes it, it may well galvanize the Democrats in the country as a whole into the kind of real unity. I mean, the best unity a party can have, by the way.

We all know that this is never a unity for. It's always a unity against. Right now, the Democrats have what I would call a species unity because they are trying to be unified for something and they don't know yet what they're unified against. Now, if Ford comes in as the candidate, I think that the election may not have that dynamic electric quality that we're talking about. I think if Reagan comes in, it may well be that the Democrats as a whole in the country will really get together because they will have a symbol to be against. And it's from this standpoint that my hunches that Ford will be the better candidate for the republicans. Cheers. Mostly, I would say one thing about unity in a party. The last time we had unity was 1964 and we had great difficulty in 68. The republicans had the great unity in 72 and then now having a great deal of difficulty. These things are cyclical, they're different. And the notion just because we have one dull convention that all the television people will be out of business.

It's just not true. I'm glad to hear that. Is the convention in general, the convention as an institution in serious decline as so many things are changing. State and local party organizations tend tending to disintegrate over the years, partly under the influence of television people moving to the suburbs, the proliferation of primaries, the new campaign, delegate selection laws, federal financing, all these things is the convention looking at it ahead in a long term in a declining institution. If you look at it on the state level, that is to say where conventions really began. They have in fact been declining around the country. The primary has taken the place of the conventions. The only reason I think the national convention will sustain itself is because the only way in which you can bring together the representatives of 50 states. Except for the convention. That's not a professor where I just pointed out. There really is no entity called the Democratic Party. I mean, this is, I think why the press was so late in picking up on Watergate then,

and they couldn't believe that anybody would really want to break into Larry O'Brien's office. There's nothing there but a list of creditors. We don't have a party. We have a debt. We have a debt. We have a debt and a group of political warriors who get together in different cities every four years and that's all our rest of the party. I would add a footnote to that and that is that what's really happening around the country and the states and local communities is that people are thinking independently about politics. Our more than thinking as partisan people. If that's true, if the independence are increasing all over the country, then there is another function that the convention has in addition to just bringing the party together and that is trying to appeal to the independence. Having each of the party appealing to the independence, and showing its best face, in effect, and trying to get that marginal voter who is the crucial decisive voter, and that function of the convention may well increase. What you were both seeming to say was that it must continue because this is the only way to illustrate the party nationally, but what if the convention nevertheless declines,

whether it's the only way or not? I think what we're arguing is that it can't on a national level as opposed to a state level. It can't really decline too much, or there isn't any party left. The way the party is only the convention. By our rule, that's really what it is. Everything else is interiming from convention to convention. This is the only time that there is a full party. There's a national committee, but that's not the party. And when Mayor Daley dies, it will totally disappear. There are some states. They only organize it. There are state party structures that are the reality. They are affiliated to a national party. I have to end it there. Thank you all very much. We'll be back tomorrow night. I'm Robert McNeil. Good night. It is the only way in which you get out of the way. For a transcript of tonight's program,

send one dollar to the Robert McNeil Report, box three, four, five, New York, New York, 1-O-O-1-9. This program was produced by W-N-E-T and W-E-T-A, who are solely responsible for its content. It was made possible in part by grants from public television stations and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.