Major Party Presidential Conventions Coming Up Soon

When I was eleven years old, in the summer of 1968, I watched my first presidential nomination conventions for both the Republican and Democratic Parties.  They dragged on for days and usually went deep into the night...and were carried on all three major networks CBS, NBC, and ABC.  In the first one, for the GOP, Richard Nixon won a majority against second-place contender Nelson Rockefeller from the left and third-place Ronald Reagan from the right.  Despite his opposition, Nixon had a pretty easy go of it, once his main threat to the nomination, George Romney, had dropped out of the race months earlier after he claimed he had been "brainwashed" about Vietnam by U.S. officials on a visit there.  It was the Democratic Convention, held in Chicago and the site of the infamous police riot against protesters and innocent bystanders, that gripped my attention.  In the aftermath of the Robert Kennedy assassination, the only sizeable opposition left to establishment candidate and sitting vice-president Hubert Humphrey was Gene McCarthy, whose performance against incumbent president Lyndon Johnson in the New Hampshire Primary had ushered in the latter's withdrawal from the race for his own reelection.  That convention was insanely disorganized, divided, and rancorous...it put Humphrey at a big disadvantage against Nixon in the general election campaign...but it was very interesting to watch...

I also saw the Democratic and Republican Conventions in 1972, both held in Miami Beach.  McGovern withstood a rules challenge from Humphrey to win the Democratic nomination while Nixon won his party's nomination nearly unanimously.  I felt that the Democratic convention was interesting because there was a legitimate contest going on there as well as a wide gulf between various factions...right-winger George Wallace had many delegates there...but on the Republican side it was just a procession of speakers.  Sadly, that's what these presidential conventions have evolved into nowadays: a preplanned, orchestrated public relations program promoting each party's candidate and its platform.  They're very careful now to ensure that the maximum number of TV viewers have access to their respective shows, now carefully contained within prime time hours.  How utterly boring...

I have no desire to watch either convention this year...that's probably just as well since I'll be working every evening they're on the air.  The Republican Convention, held in Cleveland, will be starting a little more than a week from now, on Monday July 18 and last through Thursday the 21st.  The Democrats will follow the Republicans exactly a week later from Philadelphia, also going from  Monday through Thursday.  As for outside demonstrations, there are plans for protests from leftist groups at both convention sites...