Friction and Fiction

If I hear one more person say “We can’t afford more of the same,” I’m going to vomit. In fact, it seems that a precondition for being allowed to speak at the convention was that each speaker fit that phrase somewhere into his or her spiel. And we’ve only had two days. There are still two more.

I am reminded now why candidates fear conventions. They are that strange few-day period when everyone in your party gets to express their yahoo attitudes with whatever flamboyant hats, garments, signs, and dance moves they feel are appropriate. Usually these are the same ones that the people watching at home feel are grossly inappropriate. This, alone, can drive a wedge between the party and the people, which can be dangerous for a party self-appointed to the populist role. But in all seriousness, the Democrats aren’t going to lose votes because of the way their delegates dress or dance. The real danger lies in the temporary suspension that must occur in any centrist message in order for the convention to be a success. It’s not that the Democrats have been particularly moderate thus far in the election. But Senator Obama’s nuanced vision of America has been put on the back burner so that the Democrats can have a self-righteous get together and pat each other on the back with large foam fingers.

And so we happen upon a smidgen of discontinuity. Until Thursday night, when Obama reclaims his message and becomes (officially) the figurehead of the party, we are left with all manner of chaos. Right now we are in a bubble. Until we come out the other side, rationality will give way to party loyalty, and complex thought will cede its place to mindless screaming. This will happen with the Republicans, too. Suddenly, calm and conservative will be replaced by boisterous and gregarious, an uncomfortable transition for any Republican at home to watch. But the same problem will apply to both parties.

At a time when candidates are rushing to the center, trying to win independents, and scurrying after the voters Hillary Clinton dropped like marbles scattering across the floor somewhere left of center, the conventions are more of an archaic obligation than an exercise in reasonable persuasion. It is a time for reaffirmation in one’s political ideology. Pragmatically speaking, however, these giant bashes are entirely counterproductive. The only exception that comes to mind in recent electoral history was the Republican convention in 2004. Then the Republican strategy was to mobilize as many voters as possible, rather than to win over people who already felt iffy about some Bush Administration policies. If they were going to go Republican, then they were going to go all the way. Well, I suppose Zell Miller’s fire and brimstone condemnation of John Kerry might have helped with a few fringe independents.

But now the Republicans are trying to convince the reasonable center and attempting to distance themselves from many of the policies of the past eight years. They are going after the very same independents to which Democrats feel entitled because of some of the recent failures of government. Each party will draw a line in the sand to balance how much they are willing to concede with a number greater than 270. The problem is, the lines overlap, and so the battleground will not be the entire political spectrum; rather, it will be a small strip in the middle. This is how general elections usually work. So it is easy to see why appeasement of a party’s base and retrogression to hard left or right positions are entirely irrational from an electoral perspective.

Let’s leave the abstract for a moment and zoom back into this election cycle. The conventions this year prove problematic for both Obama and McCain in different ways.

We’ll start with Obama. His quest has been to overcome, or at least sell his candidacy as overcoming, divisive politics. Fine, but when thousands of uber-liberals are waving emphatically with face paint and glitter, booing any mention of a Republican or even the word Republican (unless said Republican is there to denounce his own party), the message of unity becomes a little distorted. Obama has no reluctance in pronouncing himself a Democrat, and it is a predicate that he embraces, but he presents himself as a candidate–nay–a person who understands the other side, who can empathize with a certain appeal of the Republican philosophy, and who can use shared core values to hone in on common ground. Unfortunately, those with all the airtime until Thursday night appear not to share this complexity. Obama will be charged with having to drag his party, kicking and screaming, to a negotiating table before he can even invite the Republicans. If he makes a great transitory speech, from little “us” to big “us,” at Invesco Field, then he may be able to pull it off, to salvage some of the cooperative spirit that was rampant before this week. But the convention has not made this task easy. To be fair, there are some speakers who have tried to hold on to Obama’s ideas on unity in his absence, like Mark Warner, who said:

I know we’re at the Democratic convention, but if an idea works, it really doesn’t matter if it has an ‘R’ or ‘D’ next to it. Because this election isn’t about liberal versus conservative. It’s not about left versus right. It’s about the future versus the past.

McCain’s problems will be two-fold. First, along the same lines, McCain has presented himself as a “maverick” who will cross party lines in the interest of common sense and a pragmatic approach to finding solutions. He, too, is fighting for as many independents as he can win over. So the strong pro-Republican rhetoric will obviously not help him, especially at a time when there is a certain stigma attached to the word “Republican.” But the added complication for Republicans will be that their convention will take place after the Democratic convention. And so, when Obama has collected his party and put them back on his platform, Republicans will still be indulging in self-aggrandizement, doing what the Democrats are doing now, and making viewers and independents just as nauseated. So if we can imagine ahead a week from now, McCain will have a scattered and silly party while the Democrats will have been recently reunified behind an electoral purpose. In simple terms, Obama will have a one week head start. And for many independent voters, the frame by frame contrast of next week may be enough to sway them toward the Democratic ticket, even if the reasoning will be concealed in the unfairness of the linear nature of time.

So now there is not much left to do except to wait and see how it all plays out. A day and a half remain before Obama almost scriptedly emerges from middle-America to save his party. Let’s see if I can make it that long without vomiting.