Reading Conventions: Political Stories from 1988

Reading Conventions: Political Stories from 1988 Wayne Fields Author's Preface: The following might most appropriately be described as a literary analysis of a political event. That is to say it examines the 1988 nominating conventions the way more conventional "texts" are typically studied, reading them as though they were "authored" in a manner comparable to a novel or poem. The point is to see how the shape, even the aesthetics of the thing being considered , might inform our general understanding of its nature and implications even if it was not composed in the usual way. Like all stories, those that unfolded in Atlanta and New Orleans were rooted in events that had taken place years earlier, and, like all important stories, they have a life that continues beyond 1988. Sieges and Ceremonies In mid-November of 1963 the next national nominating conventions were less than a year away, and yet their ultimate cast of characters remained largely unanticipated . When it eventually opened, the 1964 Democratic convention belonged to Lyndon Johnson rather than to John Kennedy, staged with the theme, "Hello Lyndon," and offering a party replete with movie stars and Broadway celebrities. President Kennedy appeared only in a poignant documentary introduced by his brother Robert—himself only one presidential term from his own memorializing film—that concluded with pictures of the dead president walking in the twilight and the father playing with his toddler son, aU the while accompanied by Richard Burton's rich bass intoning the reprise from Camelot. Lyndon Johnson's bash—held in Atlantic City eight months after Kennedy's assassination and four weeks after Republicans, under quite different circumstances, had nominated Barry Goldwater— was a carefuUy orchestrated display of harmony. Concealed from view—at least insomuch as party managers could manage—were the deep divisions between the old Kennedy faction and the new president, and the chasm that still yawned between the Wayne Fields is Professor of English and Director of American Culture Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. © Rhetoric & Public Affairs Vol. 1,No. 1,1998, pp. 89-116 ISSN 1094-8392 90 Rhetoric & Public Affairs Old South and the newer version just becoming visible on the political horizon. For only the second time in party history (it had happened in 1936), there were no roUcall votes, and the platform advertised itself as a "covenant of unity."2 Striking then, is the fact that, when the '64 Democratic convention was recalled in Atlanta in 1988, it was remembered for dissension rather than harmony. Jesse Jackson's reference to the Mississippi Freedom Democrats and their challenge to that state's official delegation, his tribute to Fannie Lou Hamer and to the distance between Atlantic City and Atlanta, was a reminder of the deep and sometimes terrible tensions that, no matter how skillfully concealed, still divided Democrats. But Jackson's message also affirmed a traditional role for national conventions, to move from disagreement toward at least some outward appearance of unity. Neither reconciliation nor harmony, however, had played a prominent role in the '64 Republican convention in San Francisco. Followers of Barry Goldwater took the hall like a victorious army occupying a hated city. Enraged by the liberal platform of 1960—especiaUy the civil rights plank promising "vigorous support of court orders for school desegregation" and a commission on Equal Job Opportunity— and even more by the influence Nelson Rockefeller had on its final shape (two days before the convention, Nixon and Rockefeller had drafted a 14-point compact on platform issues), conservatives felt, in the wake of Nixon's nomination, mistreated and trivialized. Goldwater called the Nixon-Rockefeller agreement the "Munich of the Republican Party." The year 1964 introduced a very different Republican party to America, one in which the offended conservatives had taken control, a power they exercised with a vengeance. They booed Rockefeller loudly and joyously when he introduced a platform amendment denouncing efforts of the John Birch Society, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Communists to infiltrate the party, and then voted his amendment down. Amendments intended to strengthen the civü rights plank were also loudly defeated. The eastern liberals engaged in their own efforts at provocation, hoping for an...