It’s now upon us. After all the civic high-fiving over landing this mega event, after the unrelenting “next year,” “this year,” “next month” and “this week” countdown, it’s here: the Republican National Convention.
For a host city that is not a New York or a Chicago, it is a unique shot at international cred and global gravitas. It’s exposure exceeded only by the Olympics. It’s the once-in-a-lifetime stage to preen in front of political and corporate America. It’s an economic infusion, whatever the actual numbers, during a stubborn recession in the visitor-challenged, dog days of late August around Tampa Bay.
It’s also unnecessary. We can’t keep meeting like this.
With ever-ratcheting debt in the trillions, we’re still tossing money at this throwback to a political era long past. For the record, the Federal Election Commission is giving the Charlotte and Tampa conventions $18 million apiece. And the feds peeled off $50 million each just for security. Worst yet, the latter might be necessary given our polarizing politics, zero-sum rhetoric and–in Tampa’s case–visceral beacon that is the party of Grover Norquist, Ted Nugent, Todd Akin and Ayn Rand. Arguably, this is a perversion of American “exceptionalism.”
These atavistic gatherings have a stated purpose of nominating an official presidential candidate and adopting a party platform. That surely was the case in 1856 when the first Republican Convention nominated California’s Gen. John C. Fremont for president in Philadelphia. Not since Ronald Reagan made a serious run at Gerald Ford in 1976, however, has one of these primary-era conventions been anything other than an obscenely expensive, logistical-lockdown coronation.
They are rubber-stamp pep rallies for more than 4,000 party officials and worker bees–aka delegates and alternates–who wear silly hats and sillier expressions. The platform could be done on Skype. “The parties have chosen to make (the conventions) into an infomercial,” recently noted former CBS News anchor Dan Rather.
“Energizing” the party faithful–as if the prospect of one’s candidate winning the most powerful position in the world is insufficient motivation–is not reason enough to perpetuate this quadrennial exercise in excess.
You want economic impact? Bring in the Shriners, the NAACP or the AMA to convene. No security paranoia. No national guard. No balloon drop. You want a self-congratulatory political event? Ask The Villages for a schedule.
The best protest against vulture capitalism, voucherized Medicare, Tea Party infestations and the Romney-Ryan-Rand ticket: the ballot box.