W(h)ither the Nomination?

Back in the way before when (well, prior to 1968, actually -- how significant a year) the party conventions in the US often selected who would be the candidate. The exception would be when the president in situ had managed not to balls things up (Eisenhower, 1956, Roosevelt, 1936, 1940), but even then you would probably have some intra-party Ralph Nader/Huey Long of his day putting a spanner in the works.

These were times when the practicalities of democracy in a large country necessitated delegation. People often confuse the concepts of "delegates" and "representatives". The former is not impelled to represent the views of his voters. He is elected to consider the facts and to come to a decision.

At party conventions, this led to all sorts of fun and games, and the nail in the coffin of "delegation" came in 1968 in Chicago, when Hubert Humphrey was nominated, despite not contesting a single primary. Eugene McCarthy may not have won the Democratic battle, but he won the democratic war.

Since then, the party conventions have slowly ceased to be televisual feasts of bloodletting, and their popularity with an audience that would watch live evisceration if Sharon Osbourne and Piers Morgan were on the judging panel has inevitably waned. Few tuned in to see the selections of George W Bush and John Kerry in 2004, because the viewer knew that such stage-managed events would contain little of any interest.

So, the party convention ceased to be an election and became a coronation. But at least it was held in a convention hall.

Now all pretence has been abandoned. The acceptance speech of Barack Obama will not take place in the Pepsi Center in Denver. It will be at the Denver Broncos Stadium. The spectacle of politics finally meets the spectacle of sport and, with all the marching bands and singing, I suspect that it will be hard to tell the difference. I have little doubt that at least one Homer Simpson clone will leave the event after the nomination, only slightly bemused (given his intake of Dudweiser and hot dogs) that he couldn't remember the fourth quarter, or who won.

I thought that this non-convention-centre acceptance speech was a genuine first, but apparently not. JFK, on whom Obama is so blatantly modelling his campaign and his speeches, gave his acceptance speech at the Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles before a crowd of 50,000.

Obama will appear to say much but will in fact say very little. We know that. Although he probably won't use the meaningless bon mot "we have nothing to fear but fear itself", he will doubtless use the emotional appeals to Americanism that only the cynics in America (and there aren't that many of them) will see through. Let's spot how many times these words are used in the acceptance speech.

freedom
obligation
the american people
together
build
lay the foundations
All Americans, all people of the world
difficult times
the right to a home, the right to a job
Justice (possibly for all)
social conscience
choice
Time for change
secure
new generation
tomorrow
our children's future
go forward (together)

and finally;

Today our concern must be with the future. For the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do.

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