Our Great Political Theatre

Red-meat partisan rhetoric from prominent politicians. A keynote speech to stir the party faithful. Red, white and blue balloons dropping down to frame the newly crowned nominees and their beaming families. These are the staples of modern political convention — but they’re not really necessary to officially nominate a president. Given that some or all of these familiar rituals may fall by the wayside this week as Republicans continue to calibrate their convention’s tone in the wake of Monday’s landfall of Hurricane Gustav, it’s worth exploring what work a national political convention actually has to accomplish.

The list is quite compact and includes adopting a party platform and operating rules and formally nominating the party’s nominee for the general election — actions that are necessary to trigger the presidential campaign’s eligibility for public money and get the nominee’s name on some state ballots. The rest of the usual convention stagecraft — acceptance speeches, keynote addresses and even the traditional roll call vote — are optional bits of political theater. “There is no rule that there has to be an acceptance speech. That’s the whole purpose behind the primary system,” said Brad Blakeman, who ran the 1988 GOP convention in New Orleans for nominee George H.W. Bush.

The party platform and operating rules are not among the sexier aspects of a convention, but they are among the few concrete actions that are actually required. The convention must be officially called to order, the presidential ticket nominated — though not necessarily by a roll-call vote — and the party meeting must be called to a close. There’s not much else that really has to happen. “Just like corporations must have board meetings from time to time, so must the party,” Blakeman said. “Every four years, the rules have to be ratified or technically, legally, you’re out of business.” The bulk of this business was taken care of in Monday’s truncated session.

Convention speeches by John McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin continue to be moving targets, depending on the damage along the Gulf Coast. Convention planners said Monday, however, that they now expect McCain to accept the nomination in St. Paul and that the gathering may be able to largely get back on schedule.

For McCain, the timing of his official acceptance is no mere technicality, because almost as soon as he becomes the nominee, his publicly financed campaign money kicks in — in this case $84 million, the maximum he can use through the general election Nov. 4. If McCain accepted the nomination early he would have to make the money stretch further — no small consideration since he has reportedly raked in $10 million since announcing Palin as his vice presidential running mate. “They’d like to have three more days using the private money, which is, I’m sure, how they budgeted it,” said Brad Smith, a former Federal Election Commission chairman.

Traditionally, after a nomination becomes official on the Thursday night of a convention, Smith said, on Friday morning a representative of the campaign would walk into the FEC with paperwork. The FEC would then notify the Treasury Department, which would cut the public financing check to the campaign, or transfer the money electronically. In some cases, state laws require official notification from the party upon nomination, which Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan said the party will have ready to go whenever McCain officially becomes the GOP nominee. “I have several state laws that I must comply with by Thursday,” Duncan said. “I see no problem whatsoever. We’ll get it all done by then.”

In fact, presidential candidates have accepted party nominations in person only for the past 76 years or so. Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke to convention delegates in Chicago in 1932 when he became his party’s nominee. Previously, candidates were officially notified after conventions ended, sometimes not until weeks later.