A Brokered Convention: Great Television, Bad Politics

April 3rd, 2016 9:45 AM

The television cameras loved it.

New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller was standing at the podium of the Republican National Convention having the time of his life.”These extremists feed on fear, hate and terror,” he said. The cameras panned to the New York delegation on the convention floor, standing quietly. But the hall was not quiet. While the high command of the party’s about-to-be presidential nominee, conservative Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, had a tight control of the Goldwater delegates on the floor, the galleries were another question altogether. 

As Rockefeller, the very embodiment of the Eastern liberal Republican Establishment, spoke, the galleries erupted in a chorus of boos. The cameras loved it.  As seen here. They zeroed in on Rockefeller, who stepped aside to allow the convention chairman, Kentucky Senator Thruston Morton, try and gavel the convention to audience. Allotted five minutes speaking time, Rocky’s time was being oozed away and as the cameras zoomed in they heard this back and forth between Morton and Rocky as Morton tried to restore order by pounding his gavel. Snapped a visibly unhappy Rockefeller: “You control the audience and I’ll make my five minutes.”

It was fabulous television. The television execs of the day couldn’t ask for more. But as serious politics?  The images broadcast across the land were disastrous for both Goldwater and the GOP.

The 1964 Republican Convention is not the only convention where there was great television that made for disastrous politics.

Take this scene from the CBS coverage of the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. Take a look here to see a young floor correspondent named Dan Rather on the floor of the convention when over zealous security guards literally take Rather down as he tries to report on the intra-party struggles over Vietnam policy and the fight between the Democratic Establishment as represented by soon-to-be-nominee Vice President Hubert Humphrey and the insurgents supporting Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy. The entire scene of Rather’s literal, physical fight was seen across the nation and narrated live by a furious CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite. At one point Cronkite referred to Rather’s assailants as “thugs.”

What does any of this have to do with the 2016 race for president on the GOP side?

Easy. If there’s one thing Donald Trump and Ted Cruz agree on - they who have millions of votes between them - a brokered GOP convention, an idea being pushed by all manner of GOP Establishment types - will make disastrous politics. But without question it will make for great television.

Which raises the obvious question. When various GOP figures promote the idea of a brokered GOP convention, do they have any idea what this would look like on television? Bad enough for Goldwater in 1964 and Humphrey in 1968 that the television networks of a mere three networks were present to record - at a semi-distance at that - the Rockefeller and Rather dramas. But this is  the early twenty-first century. You can bet that a heavy proportion of the delegates on the floor of the Cleveland GOP Convention will have smart phones. It is more than safe to say that anything, the smallest movement, the quietest dissent - not to mention the raucous turmoil that would inevitably and quickly engulf a “brokered convention” would make for fabulous television. There isn’t a cable news executive breathing whose heart would not pound with excitement at the images that would quickly start coursing through the cameras, images of the chaos that inevitably accompany a brokered convention. Remember that the 1964 Goldwater convention and the 1968 Humphrey convention were the exact opposite of a brokered convention. They were done deals. No one was going to upset either man at their respective conventions. Yet the message transmitted by the cameras in each case was that the convention in question was in utter turmoil - chaos, a mess, filled with a nest of extremists and thugs who should never be allowed within a country mile of the White House.

None of this history has stopped Ohio Governor John Kasich - and he’s far from alone - for pining for a brokered convention. As seen here at CBS:

John Kasich guarantees brokered GOP convention 

Reports CBS:

Ohio Gov. John Kasich has a message for everyone who's worrying that Donald Trump is close to securing the 1,237 delegates he needs to win Republican nomination outright: it's not going to happen, for him nor any other candidate.

"Nobody's going to have the delegates they need going to the convention," he said. "Everyone will fall short."

He said said once the delegates arrive in Cleveland, they'll focus on which candidate has the best chance of winning in November.

"We will go into Cleveland with momentum and then the delegates are going to consider two things: Number one, who can win in the fall--and I'm the only one that can, that's what the polls indicate," he said. "And number two, a really crazy consideration, like who could actually be president of the United States.”

For the record, both Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are vehement opponents of a brokered convention. Good move. 

What Kasich and other supporters of a brokered convention seem clueless to understand is just how much a brokered convention would damage - make that fatally damage - the “winner” that emerges from said convention. Good Lord. Can you imagine the “victory” of a nominee who actually has not received the millions of votes of a Trump or a Cruz trying to cope with the flood of televised images portraying said winner as a handmaiden of back room deals and special interests? Cable networks would be flooded with images of X person entering this backroom or emerging from same, or whispering an instruction here or a threat there, forever blackening the reputation of the so-called “winner.” 

This Republican presidential fight is a long way from over. But at this stage it seems crystal clear that the voters of the GOP have increasingly made up their mind. They want to chose between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Between their repeated 1-2 finishes the two have gained well over 50% of the GOP vote. 

The last thing…the very last thing…the Republican Party needs is to see the nation flooded with images of a “brokered convention” that in fact reeks of contempt for the average conservative voters who have thought long and hard about their choices and, collectively, have emerged with two out of the original seventeen. 

If one thinks one knows the outcome of this volatile race, one is a fool. But it is far from foolish to understand that based on the most basic experience of television coverage of political conventions, the televised coverage of a “brokered convention” - now supplementing the television networks with cable news, freelance cell phones and social media - would be anything but an utter disaster for the nominee and the party at large. 

Brokered convention selfies, anyone? No thanks.