TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/election/80elect/80elect.007

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                                                                                July 28, 1980

NATION

The G.O.P. Gets Its Act Together


After a dramatic bobble, Reagan picks the logical partner for
a tough campaign


     There was no question who the Republican presidential
candidate would be, of course, but there was much uncertainty
about what kind of candidate he would be. Would Ronald Reagan
insist on a vice-presidential nominee who would appeal only to
true-blue conservatives?  And in accepting the Republican
nomination, would he sound a trumpet call for those same
conservatives, relying chiefly on the increasing strength of the
right to carry him to the White House -- if it could?  After
four days of flag waving and festivity at the G.O.P. convention
in Detroit, the answer was clear. Failing in a dramatic and
ill-considered maneuver to get Gerald Ford on the ticket as
vice-presidential candidate, Reagan settled for the logical
choice, George Bush. And in his warm and well-presented
acceptance speech the following night, he cast his appeal to all
classes of Americans, to blue-collar workers as well as
business executives, to women, to minorities, to immigrants. To
them all, he quoted the hero of liberalism, Thomas Paine, when
he declared, "We have it in our power to begin the world over
again."

     Reagan's victory was tarnished by a stunning stumble:  his
unseemly, eleventh-hour attempt to make a deal with Ford.
Convinced that if the former President were his running mate,
the ticket would be invincible, Reagan through intermediaries
appealed to Ford's loyalty to the party and to the country. The
Californian even offered to share his presidential powers with
the ex-President. But all to no avail. Ford in the end declined
to join the ticket, and the curious episode served only to raise
questions about the nominee's judgment -- and how far he was
willing to go to win election in November.

     Despite the Ford episode, the Republicans went home from
Detroit more united than they have been since the Eisenhower
years. The Reagan-Bush ticket is in some ways an unlikely
alliance, one made not to satisfy the hearts of Republican
conservatives but to suit their new sense of pragmatism and
their determination to capture the White House. Reagan embodies
the hard-line, return-to-old-values politics of the ideological
purists who marched over the cliff with Barry Goldwater in
1964. Bush, though almost equally conservative, is an offspring
of the party's Eastern Establishment, which the G.O.P.
ideologues repudiated that same year. United, Reagan and Bush
have a solid chance of winning in November. Their victory would
help restore the Republican Party as a major force in national
politics and give it a large voice in setting the direction of
American society for years to come. Proclaimed Republican
National Chairman Bill Brock from behind the red and white
carnations on the convention podium:  "This party is a new party
-- we are on our way up."

     The Republican right wing that loyally supported Reagan
was very much in control of the Detroit convention -- of its
machinery, its rules and its platform. The Sunbelt's polyester
suits and white cowboy hats and STOP ERA buttons far
outnumbered the striped ties and horn-rimmed glasses of the
Northeast. Recognizing that there was no way to wrest back the
control that had once been theirs, the moderates simply sat back
and watched the show. Massachusetts Congressman Silvio Conte,
a liberal firebrand on the platform planks against abortion, the
Equal Rights Amendment and school busing for racial
desegregation, Reagan's convention managers and a majority of
the delegates were determined to keep anyone from bolting the
party as the moderated did in 1964. Most conservatives and their
presidential nominee are now more tolerant of doctrinal
differences within the party, and they are anxious to broaden
its base. Put differently, winning is more fun than losing. Said
Arizona Congressman John Rhodes, the convention's permanent
chairman: "Four years ago, we had the purists against the
pragmatists. This year 90% of the people here are pragmatists.
It's a good omen."

     No matter what their political views, virtually all
Republicans at the convention were enthusiastic about their
nominee. Despite the steaming Midwestern heat (97 degrees F on
the second day at the convention), which taxed the arena's air
conditioning, the thousands of delegates, alternates and guests
chanted "Viva! Ole!", sang God Bless America, danced in the
aisles and blew on party horns for 15 minutes after awarding the
nomination to Reagan. Said Terrance Martin, 84, a delegate from
Lake Havasu City, Ariz., as he stood clapping to celebrate
Reagan's nomination:  "This is what I've been working for since
1920, when I got involved in the Harding campaign. This time,
we've got the right man at the right time."

     As Reagan made clear in his 45-minute acceptance speech,
he is determined to pursue a more centrist course in the
election than is suggested by the language of his platform. The
speech was not filled with great content;  much of it was no
more than a rephrasing of his campaign positions, superficial
and rhetorical. But the great strength of the speech was
Reagan's relaxed but forceful delivery. Said he:  "We face a
disintegrating economy, a weakening defense and an energy policy
based on the sharing of scarcity. The major issue of this
campaign is the direct political, personal and moral
responsibility of Democratic Party leadership -- in the White
House and in Congress -- for this unprecedented calamity which
has befallen us."  Reagan promised to freeze federal hiring,
increase U.S. defenses, cut taxes and take measures to
stimulate stronger economic growth. But at the same time, he
reached out to groups that might be disaffected by his
conservatism. Early in his speech he pledged as President to
work with the 50 Governors to "eliminate discrimination against
women."  At the end, his voice choked by emotion, he asked for
a moment of silent prayer, then declared:  "God bless America."
 The delegates, who had interrupted him 70 times with applause,
cheers and blaring horns, leaped to their feet for a 20-minute
ovation. Over and over again they sang God Bless America and
This Land Is Your Land. A few even sang Boola-Boola, in honor of
Yale Graduate ('48) Bush.


     Reagan's unaccustomed role as a healer of political
divisions was much in evidence at the convention. After a dozen
years of ardently wooing the party, he had the nomination in his
grasp, and he was not about to let the party splinter as it did
in 1964. During the primary campaign, Reagan complained to
reporters that they were incorrectly perpetuating "the notion
that [in his films] I never got the girl in the end. In fact,
I was usually the steady, sincere suitor -- the one the girl
finally turned to."

     Thus when the G.O.P. turned to him at last, Reagan
cautiously avoided Goldwater's mistake of coming on too strong.
Instead of extremism, Reagan seemed to be telling the faithful.
It is pragmatism that is no vice. At his request, the far-right
spokesmen held down their rhetoric. Anti-ERA Leader Phyllis
Schlafly was very quiet, unusually so. Fundamentalist Preacher
Jerry Falwell, whose Moral Majority organization has registered
2 million new voters, made no ringing speeches. Even former
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who is anathema to the
extreme right, was welcomed with applause when he appeared on
the podium. This time, said Pennsylvania's Thornburgh, the
Republicans have no desire to "leave the battlefield littered
with the wounded from an ideological tong war."

     The convention opened with an outpouring of oratory and
patriotic pageantry. Pat Boone led the Pledge of Allegiance,
Glen Campbell and Tanya Tucker (whose living arrangements might
not please pro-family delegates) sang the National Anthem.
Billy Graham gave the first evening's invocation. Then the
speaker got down to the main order of business:  indicting Jimmy
Carter for weak leadership, bad judgment and general
ineptitude. William Simon, who was Treasury Secretary in the
Nixon and Ford administrations, blamed Carter for high
inflation, high interest rates and high unemployment. Said
Simon:  "Surely, this administration will go down in history as
the worst stewards of the American economy in our lifetime."

     The most blistering attack -- and the best received by the
delegates on opening night -- came from Gerald Ford, who
accused Carter of having "sold America short"  and of having
"given up on the presidency."  Ford clearly relished getting
even with Carter for having attacked Ford in 1976 because of
what Carter dubbed the "misery index" -- the sum of the
inflation and unemployment rates. It was then 12%. Said Ford:
 "Just two months ago, it was 24% -- twice as high. That's twice
as many reasons that Jimmy Carter has got to go."  Continued
Ford: "You've all heard Carter's alibis; inflation cannot be
controlled. The world has changed. We can no longer protect our
diplomats in foreign capitals, nor our workingmen on Detroit's
assembly lines. We must lower our expectations. We must be
realistic. We must prudently retreat. Baloney!"

     To keep the convention flowing smoothly, Reagan's floor
manager, Illinois Congressman Bob Michel, and Reagan's
convention director, William Timmons, worked behind the scenes,
massaging disgruntled conservatives and moderates to keep them
from violating the theme of unity. Said Connally, who watched
the proceedings from the galleries:  "The word went out that
everyone ought to be courteous, reasonable. Underlying it all
was the sobriety of success."  The word was passed by 17 Reagan
ships, wearing red and white hats. Reagan stalwarts recognized
those hats as the same kind that Ford's forces, who were also
led by Timmons, wore when they beat back Reagan's challenge on
the floor of the 1976 convention in Kansas City, Mo. Groused
North Carolina Delegate Tom Ellis:  "They didn't even have to
buy new hats. They're the same hats with the same bodies that
were against us four years ago."

     The Reagan whips blocked a move by far-right forces,
organized by Howard Phillips, national director of the
Conservative Caucus, to keep Kissinger from addressing the
convention. Said Phillips:  "We hope that Ronald Reagan will not
be the third President to work for Henry Kissinger."  (Kissinger
insisted that he had no such aspirations. Said he: "I am not
here as a job seeker.")  Similarly, the Reagan lieutenants
vetoed moderate moves that might discomfit conservatives. Thus
when New York Republican National Committeeman Richard
Rosenbaum urged convention managers to schedule a brief tribute
to Nelson Rockefeller ("We have to make room for decency in
politics"), he was rebuffed. Reagan's advisers reasoned that a
tribute to Rockefeller, even though he was dead, might reopen
the bitter ideological quarrel of 1964.

     Despite many moderate Republicans' anger over several
hard-line platform planks, all efforts to amend them were
squelched. To protest the platform's repudiation of the ERA,
some 4,500 women (and a few men) marched through downtown
Detroit as a sidewalk band mockingly played I Want A Girl Just
Like the Girl That Married Dear Old Dad. But when John Leopold,
a member of the Hawaii delegation, proposed from the floor that
the platform be reconsidered, he failed to stir support from any
delegation.

     Illinois Senator Charles Percy suffered an even tougher
defeat at the hands of his own state's delegation. He took
vigorous exception to the platform's judiciary plank, which
proposes that only people who oppose abortion should be
appointed federal judges. "The worst plank that has ever been
in a platform," railed Percy at a special caucus of the
Illinois delegation. But at a Reagan lieutenant's request, two
Illinois delegates were prepared to deflect Percy's challenge.
The delegation voted by 75 to 27 to table Percy's motion.

     With dissent stifled on the floor, Reagan could afford to
spend the second day of the convention soothing hurt feelings.
He met in the morning with 17 women, including his daughter
Maureen, 39, who describes herself as a feminist. He promised to
seek out women for high appointive office and work to repeal
state and federal laws that discriminate against women. Said
former G.O.P. National Chairman Mary Louise Smith, an ERA
supporter: "We came away feeling good."

     Reagan made a gesture toward blacks, who have given him
little support in the past, by appearing at a reception for the
56 black delegates and 78 black alternates (in 1976 the party
had 76 black delegates). He told them that he opposes
Democratic proposals for helping minorities with "more handouts
and Government grants" because they are simply another kind of
welfare -- "insulting and demeaning, another kind of bondage."
His listeners applauded, though they were not entirely won over.

     Reagan intervened personally with convention officials to
enable NAACP Executive Director Benjamin Hooks to speak at the
convention that evening, but only after Hooks promised to say
nothing that might embarrass the Republicans. Hooks urged the
Republicans to work for full employment, low-cost public
transportation and an extension of the Voting Rights Act, which
is to expire in 1982. His plea was politely received by the
delegates -- again on instructions from Reagan's floor
lieutenants.

     The delegates needed no such prompting when Nancy Reagan
appeared in the gallery for the first time, or when Barry
Goldwater, looking frail after a hip operation, approached the
microphones to reminisce about 1964. When the delegates' roars
of "We want Barry" subsided, he quipped:  "Thank you, folks.
Can I accept the nomination?"  John Connally also drew
enthusiastic cheers and applause by quoting Senator Edward
Kennedy's caustic comments on Carter's economic and foreign
policies. Said Connally:  "We agree with Senator Kennedy that
we need a new President."  New York Congressman Jack Kemp, a
leading proponent of the deep tax cuts that Reagan is urging,
drew an equally rousing reception when he predicted a "tidal
wave"  Republican victory in November.

     The final speaker of the evening was Henry Kissinger. He
had met earlier in the day with Reagan, who sought to smooth
over their differences in an effort to build a bridge to the
foreign policy establishment. After the session, Kissinger said:
 "I felt that the Governor's position, as it was explained to
me, was one that I find compatible with my own."  In his speech
that evening, Kissinger warmly described Reagan as the "trustee
of our hopes" for relief from the Carter administration's
"feeble and apologetic"  diplomacy. But Kissinger made no
mention of the issues on which he and Reagan disagree, chiefly
his policy of detente with the Soviet and his negotiation of
the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks.

     Kissinger emphasized his belief that the U.S. must "catch
up" with the Soviet Union in military strength. Like Reagan,
however, he stopped short of calling for U.S. military
superiority, as demanded by the G.O.P. platform. When pressed by
reporters about whether catching up meant going beyond the
Soviets, Kissinger became evasive. He said the issue is "not a
numbers game" and that U.S. strength must be built up, "whatever
label you give it."  At the same time, however, Kissinger
continues to believe that the U.S. should be willing to
negotiate with the Soviets. He indicated that he had been
assured that a Reagan administration would be "prepared to
negotiate to push back the specter of nuclear war, to reduce
arms and to establish rules of international conduct on the
basis of strict reciprocity and principle."  Kissinger also
warned that the U.S. must not abandon the Third World. Said he:
"We have many true friends in the developing world...They wait
for our leadership; they require our protection."

     On the third night of the convention came the moment that
had eluded Reagan for twelve years. But first he had to endure
a long, windy keynote speech by Michigan Congressman Guy Vander
Jagt, who recited Henry Van Dyke's interminable America for Me
[Sample verse: I know that Europe's wonderful, yet something
seems to lack: The Past is too much with her, and the people
looking back. But the glory of the Present is to make the
Future free -- We love our land for what she is and what she is
to be.] and quoted Thomas Jefferson and Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow. Finally, the speeches were over, and Reagan's name
was put in nomination by his old friend Laxalt. The nomination
was seconded by several people, and then the states began
casting their ballots. Montana's 20 votes pushed Reagan's total
above the 998 that he needed for the nomination, and pandemonium
broke out. Some 12,000 red-white-and-blue balloons, which dozens
of volunteers had spent nine hours blowing up, dropped from the
ceiling as Manny Harmon's Convention Orchestra played Sousa
marches.

     Surrounded by wife Nancy, sons Michael, 35, and Ron, 22,
and daughters Patricia, 27, and Maureen, a broadly grinning
Reagan watched the proceedings on TV from his 69th-floor suite
in the Detroit Plaza Hotel. He gave his wife a victory kiss and
then drove the short distance to the Joe Louis Arena to
acknowledge the cheers of his supporters and to clear up the
confusion over his running mate.

     On the following night, after he had formally accepted the
nomination and delivered the address witnessed by millions of
Americans, Reagan again stood on the platform, this time with
Bush at his side. The very fact that they were together
indicated the political changes in the men and, more important,
in their party. Both G.O.P. wings have set aside their
differences to form a practical alliance. The glue that holds
this coalition together is based largely on economic issues.
But is also is helped by the poor performance of the Carter
administration and the fact that the new Republicanism is coming
to life at a time when traditional party loyalty is warning,
making shifts of allegiance easier for voters.

     Presidential politics is, more than anything else,
personality politics. The campaign will take many unexpected
twists and turns before Election Day on Nov. 4. But last week,
in Joe Louis Arena, the Republican Party seemed clearly to have
stolen a march on the Democrats in the contest to form a new,
right-center coalition and become the new majority.


     -- By Frank B. Merrick. Reported by Laurence I. Barrett and
Walter Isaacson/Detroit.
_______________________________________________________________
NATION
"Not a Cross Word Between Us"

The New Pragmatism Overcomes Even an Old Antagonism


     For George Bush, the vice presidential nomination is not
just a consolation prize but a goal that he has pursued for two
years -- or so his aides are now saying. At their first strategy
meetings in 1978, one adviser told TIME last week, Bush and his
campaign planners recognized that Ronald Reagan might well be
unbeatable in 1980. So, says his aide, Bush decided at the outset
to campaign for the Oval Office and simultaneously to position
himself for the vice presidency.

     Bush stoutly denies this story. "Absolutely not," he says.
And, since it makes his campaign seem thoughtfully planned rather
than indecisive or excessively gentlemanly, the tale may indeed
contain an element of after-the-fact rationalizing. But Bush's
campaign could hardly have been better designed to make him Vice
President than if that really had been its purpose from the
start.

     Even before those initial 1978 strategy sessions, Bush was
careful to touch base with Reagan. He and his campaign-manager-
to-be, James Baker, paid a courtesy call on Reagan in California
in 1977 to inform him that they were setting up a committee to
explore a Bush run for the nomination. Baker recalls that Bush
and Reagan chatted for a "very cordial 30 minutes."

     This year in the heady weeks after his unexpected victory in
the Iowa caucuses in January, Bush failed to define a set of
positions -- "to go from George Who to George What," in Baker's
words. Such positions might have made Bush seem a clear-cut
alternative to Reagan, but also an incompatible running mate. And
even after Bush suffered a stunning defeat in New Hampshire in
February, he steadfastly refused advice from some of his staff to
criticize reagan harshly, though that is the standard strategy
for reviving a faltering campaign. That refusal was widely
ascribed to Ivy Leaguer Bush's disinclination to get into a
rough-and-tumble fight, but it turned out fortunately.

     During the campaign, Bush seemed just sufficiently moderate
to win six primaries from Reagan, including those in the key
states of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Michigan. That gave him
266 delegates and showed that he had enough electoral appeal to
be an attractive choice for Vice President.

     Reagan's staffers favored Bush, if they could not get their
"dream ticket" with Gerald Ford. But there was one big problem:
Reagan himself doubted whether Bush was tough enough for the job.
Another problem: Nancy Reagan did not particularly care for Bush.

     The two nominees do not know each other at all well. Apart
from Bush's visit in 1977, they had met primarily on the dais at
party functions and at the pre-primary debates. One was the now
celebrated affair in Nashua, N.H., where Reagan invited four
other candidates into what was supposed to be a one-on-one
confrontation, and a thoroughly flustered Bush would not agree to
a change in the rules to let them speak. The incident left an
unfavorable impression of Bush not only on the New Hampshire
voters but on Reagan. Says Nevada Senator Paul Laxalt: "Reagan
thinks Bush choked in Nashua."

     Reagan also worried a bit about Bush's advocacy of the Equal
Rights Amendment and his opposition to a constitutional amendment
that would ban abortion, stands that arouse the passionate
dislike of some of Reagan's followers. Finally, says one
Republican National Committee official, Reagan by last Wednesday
"was getting sick and tired of having George Bush's name shoved
down his throat by his staff."

     Still, after Ford finally said no to the vice presidential
nomination, Reagan immediately settled on Bush and the two began
presenting an image of good fellowship. At a joint press
conference, a reporter asked how they got along personally.
Replied Reagan, with a broad grin: "We've been together for a
couple of hours this morning, and I didn't get much sleep last
night, and there has not been a cross word between us." Another
reporter asked if it bothered Bush that "you are the No.2 choice
for the No.2 spot?" Replied Bush: "What difference does it make?
It's irrelevant. I'm here."

     The two do have some differences, however. Careful though
Bush was not to attack Reagan personally during the primaries --
the only thing he did tko emphasize the contrast between Reagan's
69 years and his own 46 was to brag endlessly that he jogs two or
three miles a day -- Bush did lash heartily into some of Reagan's
positions. The most important was Reagan's advocacy of a 30% cut
in income tax rates over three years, a proposal that the
nominee not only repeated but stressed in his acceptance speech
last week. During the primaries, Bush derided that idea as
"voodoo economics" and "pie in the sky."

     Bush also attacked Reagan's suggestion that the U.S. might
blockade Cuba in reprisal for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
A blockade, he said, would tie up the entire U.S. Atlantic Fleet
for no useful purpose: "The Cubans didn't invade Afghanistan. The
Soviets did." And while Bush did not stress his positions on the
ERA and abortion during the campaign, he did not conceal them.
Democrats will make what they can of these differences.
Democratic National Chairman John C. White, for example, portrays
Bush as a weakling for accepting the very conservative Republican
platform: "That by-golly ambition got him. He caved in
completely."

     In fact, Bush seems a moderate only in comparison to Reagan,
and not all that moderate even by those standards. They share
much of the same basic conservative philosophy: Bush has assailed
Big Government and its omnipresent regulation almost as often as
Reagan himself, and Bush has just as frequently demanded a bug
U.S. military buildup and a stern policy toward the Soviets. Bush
too has emphasized tax cuts as an essential part of his economic
strategy. He insisted last week that he fully supported Reagan's
call for a 10%, $36 billion first-stage reduction in 1981.

     The real differences between Bush and Reagan are in style
and manner. The son of a Connecticut banker and Senator, educated
at Andover and Yale, frequently dressed in red tie and blazer,
Bush is the very embodiment of the Eastern Republican
Establishment that many of Reagan's rougher-hewn followers
detest. Thirty-two years in Texas, where he made a fortune now
estimated at more than $1.8 million in the oil business, have
left no trace of the Sunbelt in his voice or manners. As a
Congressman (1967-70) who later served brief terms as Ambassador
to the U.N., chairman of the Republican National Committee, envoy
to China an director of the CIA, he also is a member of the
Washington Establishment to which Reagan is a complete outsider.

     During the primary campaign, Bush's background hurt him.
Publisher William Loeb effectively sneered at him in New
Hampshire as a "clean-fingernails Republican." But now that Bush
is the running mate, his credentials ought to help. He brings to
the ticket Washington expertise and foreign policy experience,
two things that Reagan conspicuously lacks. More fundamental,
Bush appeals to a sector of the electorate crucial to a Reagan
victory: voters who are receptive to a conservative appeal but
have long distrusted Reagan as a potential far-right extremist.

     Such voters, says Haley Barbour, who managed Gerald Ford's
Southeastern campaign in 1976, "will like Reagan better for
choosing Bush. It shows he is pragmatic and not the kamikaze
right-winger that some people would have you believe." William
Durham, who ran Howard Baker's short-lived campaign in South
Carolina, believes that the choice of Bush will especially help
Reagan with young professionals who are economically conservative
but socially liberal and who so far have found Reagan "difficult
to swallow; they don't know what's behind him."

     Bush himself is a more mature, more forceful campaigner than
when he set out on the long primary trial. His voice is still
reedy but his delivery, once rapid to the point of being jumbly,
has become measured. His speeches are no longer strewn with the
preppy ("fantastic") or jargony ("power curve") phrases that
bombed in New Hampshire. Harder to measure, but more important,
his bubbly optimism seems to have changed into a more tempered
and somber attitude. Though he still laughs easily with the
press, his comments to reporters these days often have a hint of
asperity. At last week's joint press conference with Reagan, Bush
told a questioner: "I'm not going to get nickel-and-dimed to death
with detail" about his differences with the presidential nominee.

     One of the more effective campaigners for Bush is his wife
Barbara, 55, who comes from a background much like his. The
daughter of a wealthy publishing executive in Rye. N.Y., she
graduated from the fashionable Ashley Hall school for girls in
Charleston, S.C., then attended Smith College for one year. She
dropped out to marry Bush over 35 years ago, after they had met
at a dance while both were home on Christmas vacation. Mrs. Bush
maintains that "I'm a nester" who likes nothing better than to
putter around their home in Houston on weekends. Nonetheless, she
campaigns tirelessly for Bush -- and unlike Nancy Reagan, who
generally prefers to be on a platform with her husband and close
at hand, Barbara Bush often goes off on her own separate campaign
tours.

     Mrs. Bush jokes effectively about her winter-white hair and
wrinkle-creased face. She drew a laugh from a women's Republican
club last winter by remarking that every so often someone would
tell her: "My, your son gave a good speech -- only they don't mean
my son." She plays the totally supportive wife, constantly
reciting her husband's qualifications for high office. In answer
to a question, she remarked: "I'm not running for President, so I
am not going to tell you my position on abortion. But I would
love to tell you what George's is."

     George's position now is to be totally supportive of Reagan.
On the night of his own nomination, Bush kept his speech
phenomenally short (five minutes), remarking toward the close:
"This is Ronald Reagan's night. He is the man whom you and the
American people are waiting to hear." And if the ticket wins?
Bush would be absolutely loyal. He told TIME last week: "The most
important thing is to have a Vice President that the President is
comfortable with. The worst thing would be to have a Vice
President whom he would have to look at over his shoulder to make
sure he wasn't going to push him off a cliff." George Bush is not
like that. And Reagan knows it.

By George J. Church, Reported by Douglas Brew\Detroit.

________________________________________________________________
Part Ritual, Part TV Show

DOES A POLITICAL CONVENTION HAVE ANY REAL PURPOSE? YES


     Twenty thousand people poured into Detroit last week to
attend the Republican National Convention. They did so at great
personal expense and not inconsiderable inconvenience, and they
did so even though they knew that the convention does not really
do what it was designed to do: select a presidential candidate.
The delegates have become bit players in what amounts to a ritual
drama.

     From the first full-scale convention in 1831 until 1972, the
delegates actually did select a nominee, although the question
was frequently settled by party leaders and bosses well before
the convention met. In fact, no convention since 1952 has taken
more than one ballot to pick its candidate.

     But the drive for a true change in the role of the
nominating convention began after the Democratic disaster in
Chicago in 1968, at which the wheel-horses of the local political
organizations chose Hubert Humphrey over Eugene McCarthy, to the
accompaniment of street rioting.

     So many Democrats that year opposed the war in Viet Nam so
strongly that incumbent Lyndon Johnson chose not to seek re-
election, and although the convention dutifully picked Johnson's
Vice President, Humphrey lost the election at least partly
because of the discontent that the convention left behind.

     Reformers in the Democratic Party then rewrote their rules
and turned the selection process over to the voters, who were
asked to stage a primary or caucus in each state. Primaries were
not new. For years they had been essentially "beauty contests"
that tested a candidate's appeal to the voters but did not
usually bind the convention delegates. In 1952, for example,
Estes Kefauver swept through the 15 primaries, only to be denied
the nomination by party bosses who gave it to Adlai Stevenson
instead. Under the new rules drafted after 1968, the results of
the primaries became blinding on convention delegates. "Direct
democracy" had triumphed. The convention, rather than choosing a
President, simply celebrated the result. Says Kansas Senator
Nancy Kassebaum, whose father Alf Landon was nominated at a
"real" convention in 1936: "I miss the rough-and-tumble. This is
all a little sanitized."

     The convention is now a series of rituals: wearing a funny
hat, collecting buttons and hangovers; even appearing on
television -- no small inducement. And the odds on being seen back
home have improved over the years. The 1980 convention floor was
packed not only with hordes of network reporters but also flocks
of local television crews from all over the country, videotaping
their delegations.

     The importance of television can hardly be overstated. It
was in 1972 in Miami Beach that Richard Nixon took the modern
convention to its full contemporary role -- a four-day-long TV
show. His aides actually wrote a script for the convention. Last
week's extravaganza went so far as to include the appearances of
key Republicans on morning and evening television news shows as
part of the daily convention schedule. The timing, the lighting,
the selection of entertainers, the sequence of speakers, the
music, the makeup on the politicians' faces, everything was for
television.

     To the delegates in the huge studio of the Joe Louis Arena,
the TV men were the stars. High above the convention floor, the
anchorman looked down on the proceedings like actors regarding an
audience. On the floor, the delegates jammed up around the
Rathers and the Brokaws, who were elegantly attired in starched
shirts, collar pins, expensive suits -- and sneakers to save their
feet. Between interviews, the media celebrities signed
autographs.

     Television years ago captured the political convention. But
the political convention also captured television. The ratings
wars depend in part on the network performance at the
conventions, and the networks spare no expense ($30 million and
1,800 people for the 1980 Republican Convention) to make a show
of it. The networks have in some measure replaced the parties as
the vehicles of organization and information. Without television
there is no convention. Without television there is no campaign.
But with television, the convention is more than a few thousand
people perspiring in the same large room. With television, the
political convention is a national event.

     To be sure, much of what is seen is falsified, show-biz
fashion (Donny and Marie Osmond "lip-synched" their songs). In
the age of television, however, access to the medium is access to
the voter. Reagan Pollster Richard Wirthlin believes there are
two periods in the general election campaign during which voters
make their decisions. The first is at convention time; the second
is in the last ten days of the campaign. The convention commands
attention and helps the nation decide who shall be President.

     That the delegates are extras in a stage production
certainly reduces their importance at convention time. But their
importance in politics is not diminished. These are the workers,
the activists, the spear carriers in the political armies that
form every four years. Their reward is the pleasure of a shared
cause, the satisfaction of a victory they helped to produce. For
them the convention is a reunion and a reassurance that others
care about the same things. They share their enthusiasms, their
passion for politics, and they, like conventioneers everywhere,
have parties and enjoy themselves. Says a first-time
conventioneer, Lois Lipson: "I'm an inveterate people watcher.
Last night I met Liz Taylor. I've never had so much fun in my
life."

     They all had fun in Detroit last week, but the convention
commanded less than the overwhelming attention of the American
people. The barrage of opening-day speeches drove many viewers to
even the dreariest local programming. Only Wednesday night's
drama of the bargaining over Jerry Ford and Reagan's Thursday
night acceptance speech provided good theater. It is possible
that the convention will soon adjust to the public impatience:
shorter conventions, fewer and shorter speeches and less of the
boring ritual. The politicians will adapt, or if they do not,
television will simply reduce its coverage when there is not real
conflict to report. Coverage of next month's Democratic
Convention will probably use even more hours.

     Nonetheless, the conventions, as pageants and pep rallies
and political institutions, will continue to serve an important
function. For all their tedium, their cost and their
predictability, they are a vital link between the presidential
candidates and the nation in the age of television.

By John F. Stacks.

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THE PRESIDENCY/HUGH SIDEY
We Had to Pinch Ourselves


     Now the nation must get serious about Ronald Reagan, and it
may not be all that easy.

     For a few of us he has been around almost forever. His was
the voice of the Big Ten football games coming out of the maw of
the cathedral radio from station WHO in Des Moines during the
depths of the Depression. Some of his major league baseball
broadcasts, with vivid descriptions of crowds and players, with
soaring enthusiasm at the crack of the bat, turned out to be
faked in the Iowa studio, which was the way it was done in those
days. But by the time we found out, he was in Hollywood, which
made "Dutch" Reagan seem just that much more talented.

     From the dying Gipper at Notre Dame to George Custer in
Santa Fe Trial, Reagan floated through our lives as a two-
dimensional celluloid diversion. He never seemed to change much
even when he became Governor of California. There he was in his
white suit, eating jelly beans. Old Dutch was fun.

     When he took to national politics there still was something
unreal about him. He was a nice guy in an airplane, with a pretty
wife, bumping around the country, dismayingly pleasant, shuffling
his file cards and giving audiences his rouser on family and
freedom. A lot of people thought that one morning they would wake
up an he would be gone, back with his old footage on one of those
sunny hills where aging actors go to wrinkle, with only their
memories watching.

     So when Dutch stood there the other night in his Eastern
Establishment dark suit, giving a speech that could have been
written by a Democrat and invoking the ghost of F.D.R. in the
name of the Republican Party, some of us had to pinch ourselves.

     Reagan is for real. But one must wonder sometimes if he
totally understands that, or understands the deadly game he has
just joined. Demonstrating that he has three dimensions and that
he is serious about governing is Reagan's greatest challenge. He
is a far piece from WHO and those ice cream sports jackets that
Governors wear and even the fantasyland that was operating in
Detroit.

     The Reagan hard core of course was there with shining eyes,
their enduring faith only deepened and hardened. But beyond
convention euphoria, a lot of Americans still are tentative in
their belief, as measured by the pollsters and by almost anyone
traveling this country in the past few days. It is Reagan against
a mean world now, not just out to capture the ears of burned-out
farmers or the romantic urges of adolescent movie addicts.

     There are a couple of things going for him. The conservatism
found in the convention hall may be something new in this nation.
The body of this Republicanism came there out of personal
experience and alarm, driven to conservatism and Reagan not by
birthright but because of the tax burden, Government regulations,
inflation and interest rates, fear of another war. If they
reflect the majority of his nation, then Ronald Reagan has only
to preach his gospel and to keep smiling and he could win.

     And once again as event swirled through Detroit we saw the
pervasive power of the electronic media in public life. It may be
that in our time no man can either achieve the office or be an
effective President without being at least half actor, able to
get the nation's attention and educate and inspire those who stop
to listen. We know Reagan is at least half actor. but, to steal
the title of his autobiography, Where's the Rest of Me?