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Barack Obama's Convention

Staged Unity in Denver

Occasionally, serious issues are up for debate at political conventions in the United States. But not at the Democratic convention in Denver. Political analyst and sociologist Norman Birnbaum writes that the Democrats scripted a tightly-controlled performance of unity.

Having just been to the Democratic National Convention in Denver, one could come away regretting having missed some of the lively parties held in the evenings. There is very little else to regret. Television has provided the essentials. For every Denver blog worth reading, there are 10 which are notable only for their authors’ self-important obtuseness and querulousness.

Why, however, should unknown citizens not have the same right as our media stars -- to make fools of themselves? The major theme of newspaper and television reporting, sedulously repeated by bloggers claiming that they have independent perspectives, was entirely exaggerated. Would the Clintons, defeated in their bid to return to power, take their revenge by somehow sabotaging or stealing Obama’s show? Of course not: the Clintons, more than anyone, have no taste for permanent residence in the political wilderness. To give less than full support to Obama would be to risk being blamed for his defeat, should that happen. Should he win, despite their efforts to defeat him, his revenge would be pitiless. In either case, the Clinton’s chances for a return to power of some sort would be very reduced.

The Clintons are intelligent. They know that each American election has its own dynamics, and that the outcome of this one does not depend upon their pushing their followers to the voting stations. They also know that those who voted for Senator Hillary Clinton in the primaries and are reportedly ready to vote for Republican candidate John McCain or abstain will, in their great majority, vote for Obama. The rest are the candidate’s to win, or lose, and that is not up to them.

The fact that the Clintons' two speeches calling for voters to back Obama were treated as great events attests only to the absence of real events at the convention. There have been Democratic conventions in which the issues facing the nation were openly, strenuously, sometimes violently debated: racial equality in the late forties and through the sixties, or the war in Vietnam immediately thereafter.

From the Denver gathering, though, one would never come to the conclusion that the Democratic Party is in any way divided. Issues of war and peace, the balance of state and market, the tug o' war between the federal and state governments -- none of that is contested in today's Democratic party.

True, conventions are supposed to unify parties, allow them to temporarily set aside their differences for the sake of winning the presidency and achieving working majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

The difficulty is that they are not solely internal party gatherings. They are also supposed to be occasions during which the parties address the nation, re-introduce themselves to the voters, present new champions as well as honoring departing old war-horses. These functions are often in striking contradiction with one another. Honesty and openess were not salient at Denver, and the tiresomely repeated term “diversity” meant mostly that there are many ways in which to say “Yes.”

Controlled and stage managed by the Obama machine with a rigour that would not have been out of place in a People’s Republic (every speech was edited, and parts were sometimes censored out), the convention was utterly devoid of debate. It was a fair, a Kermesse, with a decent showing of rock stars, film actors and actresses, miscellaneous celebrities of every sort (but few or no scientists, perhaps in deference to the Biblical literalists.) And, of course, there were the rich, buying shares of power or at least proximity to it.

There was, at the end, a very large compensation. Obama introduced himself to a surprised and even fascinated American public in 2004 with a speech at the Democratic Convention in Boston. The candidate (as he was then) for the Illinois Senate had an unusual appearance, life history, and message: it was time for a new politics which would put the divisions of the past generation behind us.

In Denver, with substantial numbers of Democrats and half the nation doubting his capacity to master the challenges of the pPresidency, he met his critics head on. In a speech remarkable for joining specific policy prescription and larger vision, sobriety and passion, personal commitment and a call to the citizenry to rise, he took the offensive.

For better or for worse , American presidential contests are not only matters of competing programs and social projects, different cultural and social blocs, clashing political traditions. They are also personal combats. At Denver, Obama threw back at McCain the question of which of the two had a presidential temperament. It remains to be seen how McCain and the Republicans will answer, but one consequence was instantly clear: the Democrats at Denver were inspired.

How did the speech affect the nation? We will not know, even when the polls give us their answers. There are some 50,000 historians, political scientists and social psychologists in our universities. Fifteen-thousand political journalists were at the convention. There are thousands of chroniclers and writers, and innumerable veterans of recent politics not at all reticent about sharing the lessons they have learned. We can add the professional advisors and consultants who live not for but from politics -- thousands in Washington alone. They have one thing in common: They cannot really predict how and why our citizens will vote. (The historians, for example, are still arguing about the elections of 1832.)

Now, it's on to the twin cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul in Minnesota for the Republican convention. It will look different -- it will be far whiter and, McCain's selection of 44-year-old Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, older.

But the conventions will quickly merge in public memory, particularly given that the campaign promises to be bitter and close. The larger world will make itself felt. The Europeans, whether they know it or not, are rendering McCain considerable service -- by legitimating Bush’s aggressive (and hypocritical) confrontation with Russia.

The ultimate result, to be sure, will be a consequence of our own history. If it is as open as our progressivist ethos claims, Obama will win. If we suffer, as our pessimists fear, from what Sigmund Freud called the repetition compulsion, McCain will enter the White House. The Democratic Convention (and its imminent Republican sequel) will count only as an historical footnote. Serious readers know, however, that frequently footnotes contain the key to the text.