“Don’t turn the delegates into robots”: A History of Conventions

“Don’t turn the delegates into robots”: A History of Conventions

In this final segment to my History of Conventions series, I sit down with journalist Elisabeth Drue. Ms. Drue is known affectionately as the “Dean” of election reporting. She has spent the last 40 years documenting the many swerves and u-turns of the campaign trail.

Q: Let’s start in the beginning. There weren’t political parties in the early days of the Republic, correct? So, no political conventions. What did the founding fathers think of political parties?

Elisabeth Drue: George Washington opposed political parties. Thomas Jefferson opposed political parties. There was this overwhelming feeling among the founding fathers that political parties would lead to division and factionalism. Guess what? They were right. Alexander Hamilton – I kid you not – Alexander Hamilton thought that political parties were “akin to yeast infections.”

Q: Yeast infections? What did Alexander Hamilton know about yeast infections?

Elisabeth Drue: Some say he picked one up from Maria Reynolds, his mistress. Not only did the Hamilton/Reynolds affair become the first sex scandal in American history, with Reynolds’ husband blackmailing Hamilton, but Alexander Hamilton caught the fungus.

Q: And fungi are akin to political parties?

Elisabeth Drue: In Hamilton’s estimation.

Q: When was the first convention and why did the idea catch on?

Elisabeth Drue: You have to go back to 1832. There was a movement known as the freemasons, still around today of course. Many citizens accused the freemasons of being a secret society that acted as a shadow government. There actually was some truth to the accusation. Henry Clay, for instance, the great senator from Kentucky, led the freemasons. Secretly, of course. The freemasons of the 19th century were like the Bohemian Grove of modern day America.
Anyway, the anti-Masons formed a political party to counter the freemasons. They held a convention. Why did the idea catch on? There was democracy at the convention. On the floor of the convention you had delegates from all over the country, from the West – Illinois and Kentucky in those days – from Congress, from the East. It was very much a representation of the overall distribution of power in America. The anti-Mason convention illustrated the electoral topography of the growing and expanding United States.

Q: Interesting. No wonder why the convention system caught on. It actually gave democracy a more blue-collar feel than the caucus system. What happened to the anti-Masons?

Elisabeth Drue: The anti-Masons convened a convention for the 1940 presidential elections. The anti-Masons elected William Henry Harrison for president. The Whig Party then came along and nominated the same man. The anti-Masons couldn’t compete with the Whigs, so rather than nominating another candidate the party folded into the Whigs. The Whigs of course would fold into the Republicans.

Q: And William Henry Harrison would die a month into his administration.

Elisabeth Drue: Yes, but here’s where things get interesting from a historical perspective. The anti-Masons nominated Daniel Webster to be Harrison’s vice president. The Whigs nominated John Tyler. John Tyler was from Virginia and supported the slaveocracy. Daniel Webster was from New England and had abolitionist leanings. Had Webster become president following Harrison’s untimely death, who knows how events would have swung. Webster might be the name we venerate today, rather than Lincoln.

Q: Fascinating. Let’s get back to something you touched on. The convention system in your estimation offered greater democracy. That’s not the image we have of party leaders meeting in smoke-filled back rooms to decide nominees.

Elisabeth Drue: True. And there’s no doubt, party leaders did indeed meet in smoke-filled back rooms. Major decisions were made there. At the Republican Convention of 1920, for instance, the delegates were deadlocked. Party leaders then retreated to a back room, smoke-filled. The leaders compromised and threw their votes to a senator from Ohio. He’d been a dark horse in the days leading up to the convention. But that’s how Warren Harding got his party’s nomination.

Q: Is that more democratic than the caucus system?

Elisabeth Drue: I would argue yes. In the caucus system party leaders – mainly congressmen and the monied elite – would gather and appoint the nominee. In the convention system there were floor votes. Yes, there were back room dealings. But, concurrently, there were ballot votes, sometimes hundreds of them. So there was simultaneous democracy and oligarchy, and that is what defines American democracy.

Q: But what about meritocracy? Shouldn’t the definition of American democracy include quality of candidate? Sarah Palin is the most recent example of our lack of meritocracy, but what about Warren Harding? He looked the part of the president. His portrait suggested presidentiality. Is that enough?

Elisabeth Drue: He also ran on a promise of normalcy, which after the First World War was exactly what the country wanted.

Q: How many ballots did it take for the Republican Convention of 1920 to elect Harding?

Elisabeth Drue: Ten. But that’s nothing. It took 49 ballots to elect Franklin Pierce in 1852. It took a stunning 103 ballots for the Democrats to elect John Davis in 1924.

Q: Who?

Elisabeth Drue: John W. Davis. He was a congressman right before World War I and President Wilson’s ambassador to England during the war. An important diplomatic post. He might have been America’s best diplomat. In the 1924 presidential election he lost to the incumbent Calvin Coolidge, who took over from the deceased – perhaps poisoned – Warren Harding.

Q: All I know about Calvin Coolidge is that he was Ronald Reagan’s favorite president.

Elisabeth Drue (laughing): Let me tell you a little known Ronald Reagan/convention story. In 1976, President Gerald Ford went to the Republican Convention in Kansas City not sure who would be his vice president. The main reason for this was that the Republicans hadn’t definitely decided that Gerald Ford would be their presidential nominee. Ronald Reagan was very much in the mix. In fact, when the Republicans gathered on the floor for the ballot, they elected Ford by less than 100 votes. To unify the party Ford went to Reagan to help him select his vice president. Reagan chose John Wayne.

Q: Really?

Elisabeth Drue: Yes, and Ford chose Bob Dole. Maybe John Wayne would have helped Ford win the election.

Q: I’ve read that Ford lost the general election not because of Jimmy Carter but because of Ronald Reagan.

Elisabeth Drue: Reagan exposed Gerald Ford during the primary season. But Ford didn’t lose because of Reagan. Ford lost because he pardoned Nixon.

Q: That’s not what Gerald Ford believed. Gerald Ford blamed the Reagan challenge.

Elisabeth Drue: Well, certainly a case can be made. But if that’s the case, we might blame Ted Kennedy for challenging and exposing Jimmy Carter. In 1980, there was a movement by Kennedy to release the Carter delegates from their pledge to vote for Carter. At the convention in New York there were delegates who wore buttons. The buttons had a picture of a robot with a slash through it. “Don’t turn the delegates into robots,” the buttons read.

Q: “Don’t turn the delegates into robots,” that’s terrific. I don’t remember that.

Elisabeth Drue: You’re too young to remember. But Americans like yourself have become very skeptical of conventions, of delegates, of politicians. With good reason, of course. But before the skepticism, the convention system acted as a screening process, what today we call the vetting process. In the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries delegates were mainly party leaders, party workers, officeholders. That meant that they worked with the candidates. They knew the candidates. Their likes and dislikes, their personalities, their loyalties. Today, we don’t know the candidates. We know commercials. In the old system, the delegates screened the candidates for the electorate. There was public trust in that relationship. There’s no public trust in the relationship today.

Q: Can you pinpoint when the change actually took place? When did the system begin to put forth candidates who shouldn’t qualify for the presidency?

Elisabeth Drue: Well, that’s a tough question. Remember, Harry Truman entered the White House with little experience, a senator in his second term, a vice president in his second month in office. And look how that turned out. Truman became a top-notch president. What we wouldn’t do for another Truman today. But, to answer your question, I think you have to take a look at 1960. You had a very popular candidate in John Kennedy. Popular among the American electorate, I should say. Delegates however distrusted Kennedy. These were the old school delegates, party leaders, officeholders. Kennedy served in congress for a total of 14 years and he was basically an absentee congressman. He didn’t take his job seriously. His legislative record was abysmal….
1960 saw one of the first influential primary seasons. John Kennedy ran in seven Democratic primaries. That’s it. He won them all. And that’s how he made his case to the Democratic Party. But, you had these competing forces: the old school delegates from the old convention system meeting the new system, the electorate participating in the primaries. Kennedy wouldn’t have won in the old convention system. The delegates who knew Kennedy from working with him in the congress would have put forth Lyndon Johnson. But in the new system, the primary system, the electorate went Kennedy.

Q: I wonder if Bill Clinton would have fallen into the same category. Would he have won in the old convention system?

Elisabeth Drue: No way. In 1992, the old school delegates had no interest in Clinton. An Arkansas governor with a reputation as a playboy? He was very much in the mold of Kennedy, very much an affectation of the primary system. If the old convention system reigned in 1992, the Democrats would have put forth another name. Al Gore. He was by far the most respected man among the old school delegates.

Q: And today? What would the old convention system do with Barack Obama?

Elisabeth Drue: I think Hillary would have made her case. Much like Kennedy in 1960, Hillary won the major primaries. Both Kennedy and Hillary won California, New York, Massachusetts, Ohio, Pennsylvania, the states needed in November. The old convention system would have elevated Hillary based on that compelling record.

Q: Isn’t the Democratic Party’s conception of superdelegates a throwback to the convention system?

Elisabeth Drue: Yes it is. But the superdelegates are there to support the primary system, to enforce the primary system. It’s not like the old days.

Q: Did you support Hillary during the primary?

Elisabeth Drue: I did. Vociferously.

Q: Will you vote for Barack Obama in November?

Elisabeth Drue: You know, up until last week I hadn’t decided. I wouldn’t vote for McCain but I thought I might leave my ballot blank. Now, I’ll vote for Obama.

Q: What happened last week?

Elisabeth Drue: McCain named his running mate. Sarah Palin is to politics what Katie Couric is to journalism. It’s fine to have her on an early morning talk show, or stashed away up there as governor of Alaska, but you don’t want her running the evening news…

Q: Or the nation’s business.

Elisabeth Drue: Or the nation’s business. The appointment of Palin is an embarrassment to women. Women should be nauseated by the Republicans’ obvious tokenism. It’s paternalism all over again. What was the feminist revolution about with this sort of gut rot?

Q: You sound like a voter, not an objective journalist.

Elisabeth Drue: Journalism has changed, Brian. Just look at the anchor on the CBS evening news. It’s all about lights, camera, sensuality. Who will smile wider for the camera when Katie Couric interviews Sarah Palin?

Elisabeth Drue is an award-winning reporter and author. She has covered every election for the Washington News from 1968 to the present. She has written books on many of the elections, including 1968: Hubert Horatio Humphrey and the Losing of the White House and There You Go Again: the Coming of Ronald Reagan. She also is the author of books on two presidents, Reagan’s World: The Unmasking of the 1980s and Bill and Hillary: Turbulence and Zeal, and one vice president, Dick: the Life and Lust of a Vice President. All of her books are available at amazon.com and many of her articles are available in the archives of the Washington News.

(To celebrate the summer of 2008, a summer of conventions after all, I am writing a series on the presidential conventions of the latter half of the 20th century. To read earlier parts of this series, please click on the link “More articles by Brian Josepher” below. You will see the “History of Conventions” articles to the right.)

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“Don’t turn the delegates into robots”: A History of Conventions