Don’t let anyone tell you that the presidential nominating conventions are meaningless.
They are not just four days of partying for the thousands of local political hacks who stream into a big city in search of free food and drink.
They mean something more than that.
Between 1980 and 2016, I covered 16 of them in 14 different cities (Philly and New York twice each).
And in every single case, I could tell whether or not a political party and its presidential nominee were coming out of the convention hall fired up and ready to win, or glum and hopeless, just going through the motions of a campaign that was destined to fail.
Last month, the Republicans gathered in Milwaukee for the coronation of Donald Trump as its presidential candidate for the third election in a row.
As the Milwaukee convention ended, the MAGA faithful were upbeat and in a good mood, except for the fact that Trump delivered an acceptance speech for over 90 minutes, to the point where you could see delegates streaming out of the hall to catch shuttle buses back to their hotels.
Whatever momentum Trump had coming out of Milwaukee went up in a puff of smoke the minute President Biden withdrew from the race and it became apparent that Trump would instead be running against Vice President Kamala Harris.
On Monday, Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, are going to have their moment in the sun at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Democrats are on a sugar-high that they need to keep going through Nov. 5; and there’s nothing like a good convention to make that happen.
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After I covered the 2016 conventions for WVXU in Cleveland, where Trump was nominated, and Philadelphia, where Hillary Clinton was the nominee, I said no mas to the conventions; 16 of these exhausting grinds is more than one human being should have to bear.
But I did learn a lot about the dynamics of political parties and presidential parties. I learned what works and what doesn’t in all those convention halls. Here’s a sampling of the good, the bad and the ugly.
The good
The 1992 Democratic National Convention, where Bill Clinton and Al Gore were nominated, was held at Madison Square Garden in New York City, in the heart of Manhattan.
Logistics is always a big deal for reporters; the hardest thing about covering the conventions is not the politics, but getting from point A to point B.
Madison Square Garden was perfect. I was holed up with the Ohio delegation in the very nice Holiday Inn in Times Square and I could walk to the Garden. No cursed shuttle buses.
Clinton and Gore came out of that convention like a house afire; the enthusiasm was palpable. During those four days in MSG, I must have heard the audio system blaring the Clinton-Gore theme song 10,000 times — Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow)”
One bit of political genius was to put Clinton and Gore on a bus for a cross-country campaign tour, which pulled out of Times Square on the morning after the convention and, eventually, reached Ohio for campaign stops.
It was the perfect convention.
The only one that could top 1992 in New York for enthusiasm was also a history-making event — the crowning of Barack Obama, the first Black presidential nominee, at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver.
That was simply breathtaking.
The first three days of the convention were held in a pro basketball/hockey arena that is now known as the Ball Center.
I was on the convention floor for part of the roll call vote on Obama’s nomination (media floor passes were good for only 20 minutes at a time). When Obama reached the delegate threshold for the nomination, I saw countless people on the floor openly weeping tears of joy.
It was a very moving experience.
The next night, the convention moved to Mile High Stadium, the home of the Denver Broncos. So many people wanted to be there for Obama’s acceptance speech that it took an NFL stadium to handle the crowd.
It was an incredibly powerful speech.
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“I owe a debt to all those who came before me,’’ Obama said, standing on stage as the first African American presidential nominee. “In no other country is my story even possible.”
As the crowd filed out of the football stadium and as I pounded the keys of my laptop on deadline, one thing was clear — this man would be the 44th president of United States.
The 2008 election was over, then and there.
The bad
Bill Clinton was running for re-election in 1996; and Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas was his opponent because, as Dole famously said, “somebody’s got to do it.”
On one hand, the Republican National Convention was a pleasant experience, for both media and delegates, because it was held in San Diego, the city where the weather is always perfectly sunny with crisp, cool ocean breezes.
On the other hand, for delegates and party officials, it was an unmitigated disaster because everyone inside the convention hall knew perfectly well that Dole had absolutely no chance of winning.
That’s why many delegates spent their days and nights on bus trips to nearby Tijuana instead of sitting in their seats on the convention floor listening to endless and meaningless speeches.
Even Dole himself seemed to realize how hopeless it was.
Bob Dole had a reputation as a dour, scowling man, devoid of humor. Nothing could be further from the truth. I traveled a lot with him on campaign buses and planes that year and he became one of my favorites because of his sense of humor and his many acts of kindness to those of us who traveled with him.
He was a great guy.
But he had no chance in 1996.
And the delegates at that convention left San Diego with their suitcases full of trinkets from Tijuana and their hearts full of despair.
The downright ugly
Lots of competition in my 16 conventions for this honor, but the one in Cleveland in 2016 — the next to last I covered — wins the prize for the absolute worst.
First of all, Republicans gathered in Cleveland to nominate Donald Trump, who had made it clear he hated the news media, calling us “enemies of the people” and “the worst people on Earth.”
Those of us wearing media credentials around our necks ignored that gibberish from the candidate — it was water off a duck’s back.
What we couldn’t handle was how Trump’s hatred of the media spilled over into how news people were treated at that convention.
I was to have stayed with the Ohio delegation in a hotel on Cleveland’s lakefront. But that hotel was not big enough to handle all the Ohio GOP’s delegates, party officials, fat cats, and hangers-on in addition to the Ohio media contingent.
So we were loaded up on shuttle buses and taken out to Case Western Reserve University, where we were bunked in athletic dorms that ring Case Western’s track and football field.
Every dorm room had three bedrooms, a kitchen, bath and common area. Three in a room — I was roomed with two other media guys from Dayton and Youngstown.
Every morning, I got up before dawn and walked down to the Starbucks for a muffin and coffee because I knew it may be the only meal I had until late night. Then I’d either catch the shuttle to the delegation hotel or take the Metro downtown.
The Ohio delegation didn’t care if we showed up for their breakfast meeting or not. The news of the day would often come from the high-profile guest speakers at the breakfast meeting.
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We watched them stuff their faces with ham and eggs while we sat in the back recording the speeches and scribbling in our notebooks.
The room we were staying in was infested with thousand of black ants. They were there long before we got there.
I remember waking up in the middle of the night and feeling something around my feet. I got up and looked and found a large mass of black ants crawling on the bed and my feet.
We were literally and figuratively treated like dirt.
That’s when I decided I had had enough of presidential nominating conventions.
Forever and ever.
