The Mistake by the Lake
Dispatches from the RNC in Cleveland
Cleveland wants to make this convention seem carnival-esque, but the mood on the first full day of events is subdued. Security is ubiquitous, but the service dogs seem unconcerned. This morning, a black lab dragged a local police officer around a nondescript patch of grass. Another one, in the employ of the Secret Service, desultorily sniffed a Dunkin Donuts trash can.
For all the talk of protest, the mood is low key. A few kids in kafiyas are milling around. Somebody tried to steal a gas mask from a police officer and managed to rack up the first arrest thus far. A gaggle of reporters breathlessly followed around an open carry protester. Still, things have been quiet, empty, and cloudy so far. For all the energy and anticipation the only fireworks have been provided by a smelter’s smokestack belching fire into the night sky like a Ridley Scott set piece.
The last time the GOP held its convention in Cleveland, they nominated Alf Landon. That was 1936. Landon had come in second to William E. Borah in the primaries, but locked up nearly all of the delegates at the convention to win the nomination. That November, he ran into the buzz saw of the Second New Deal and carried two states.
As a Kansan I’m honor bound not to speak ill of Landon. He was a competent governor and his daughter a capable Senator for our state. Furthermore, no man or woman was going to deny FDR a second term. But the fact remains that Cleveland is not an auspicious place for a GOP convention. Indeed, eighty years later, the GOP is set to nominate a man that very few delegates, elected officials, activists, operatives, thinking types, and hangers on thinks can actually win the White House.
What is an American political party that does not do its damnedest to win the presidency? Is it even a party, or in some Confucian sense has it shed its party-ness and become not a poor version of the same, but an entirely different category of thing?
The question galls especially given the GOP’s sweeping, even jaw-dropping success at winning at the state and federal levels over the last six years. Since nearly drowning in successive wave elections in 2006 and 2008, the party has rebounded to nearly-unprecedented electoral heights. Republicans dominate state legislatures, gubernatorial mansions, statewide offices, the House of Representatives, and hold a slim but potentially stable majority in the Senate.
Despite this, their failure to take back the White House in 2012 sticks in the collective craw. Angst turned to anger, and anger to a marvelous fit of political pique. Having put forward an able candidate and devoted campaigner four years ago and lost, the Republican primary electorate this year decided to go in what can generously be called a “different direction.” Thus, despite the Democrats quietly and un-enthusiastically proffering a candidate they can barely stand, and which the bulk of the public openly disdains, the GOP sits on the cusp of handing the presidency away.
Own goals are almost unheard of in American politics. It’s hard to conjure another time when one of the two dominant parties decided it had priorities other than victory. Grover Cleveland managed to lose to Benjamin Harrison despite the GOP coalition cracking up between old line cronyists and proto-Mugwumps. But he won the White House back four years later.
It would be Cleveland, wouldn’t it? The Almighty has a sense of humor after all.
One might mention McGovern. Yes, McGovern was a wipe-out. Yes, Humphrey actually beat him in terms of overall Democratic primary votes. Yes, there was an “anybody but McGovern” movement — #NeverGeorge in today’s parlance. And it’s true that McGovern was in some sense an accidental candidate. After Bobby Kennedy’s assassination in the ’68 race, McGovern took up the mantle of his cause, now suffused with the profundity of martyrdom. He lost, but it gave him a potent base in the party. Then, again, in ’72 he became the sole alternative to Humphrey thanks to a would-be assassin nearly killing George Wallace.
But McGovern was one hell of a smart, diligent campaigner. He organized and hustled and prioritized. If anything, his ’72 campaign laid the groundwork for every successful or semi-successful campaign on the left since: mobilizing legions of student activists while attacking the regnant foreign policy and economic consensus.
In the end, “amnesty, abortion, and acid” — and a Vice Presidential nominee’s history with electroshock therapy — helped do him in, but the Democrats did not hand their party over to a lazy candidate widely despised within and without his own party. Instead, an ideological insurgent ran a canny race, got some lucky breaks, and seized a party that was otherwise ambivalent towards him. Think of Ted Cruz’s strategy this year — or Obama’s in 2008.
Trump’s campaign is a different creature. It is disorganized, even shambolic. The RNC team has worked diligently to throw a hyper-professional fete here, but the substance poured into the vessel is its own antithesis, like acid eating through the container encapsulating it.
Alex Jones has already accosted Karl Rove at an airport. Milo Yiannapoulos and his posse of hangers on bustled and beseeched their way through the lobby of the Ritz Carlton during one of my meetings this morning. Rage Against the Machine is loading up on Centrum Silver and promising a free “Prophets of Rage” show. So perhaps the kids in kafiyas will proliferate, congregate, and agitate.
In any event, this slow start won’t last. It’s going to be one hell of a scene.
If you like what you see, sign up for my email newsletter and follow me on Twitter. As ever and always, if you’d like to send me angry emails about this essay, you can do so here.
