If John Kerry decides to refuse to accept his party's nomination at the Boston convention in late July, he may well be doing us all a favor in the long run. Quadrennial conventions have long since outlived their actual usefulness, and it's time they were replaced with something else.
I'm not, however, so sure that he'd be doing himself a favor in the short run. Early reaction to the decision among Democrats seems to indicate that they can probably be persuaded to submit to the financial logic guiding the Kerry campaign's thinking; even so, there's enough unease among Democrats quoted in the news accounts so far to make it clear that the Kerry people will have a lot of persuading to do. It's risky to tamper with precedent. Liberals may be liberals because they want to see change in the world, but change in their own habits is another matter entirely. People like coming to conventions, or watching them, exactly the same way for exactly the same reasons every four years.
But Democrats' responses represent the smallest risk. The far bigger problems have to do with giving the media an excuse not to cover the convention and handing the Republicans a weapon. This decision could do both.
I remember being in San Diego in 1996 when Ted Koppel announced he was leaving the Republican convention early. There were chuckles among the journalists hunkering down at the bar at the Marriott, but there wasn't much shock, because the convention was not a news event. Ever since, television networks have been looking for ways to pare back their coverage. This would hand them the perfect excuse, and the way the trial balloon was mocked on the weekend news shows suggests that pressure will build in media-land to ignore Boston.
There's also a money angle for the networks. Once the drama was gone from the roll-call vote of the states, which happened in the 1970s, the saving grace for the networks has been the Thursday night speech in which the presidential candidate accepts the nomination. That's the only night that's guaranteed to bring in solid ratings numbers, and thus the only night for which networks can charge advertisers a hefty price (except when a retiring two-term incumbent is giving a valedictory address, as Bill Clinton did to mammoth ratings in Los Angeles in 2000). If I'm an advertiser and I know Kerry isn't actually accepting the nomination, I haggle over the price of my 30-second spot in a big way.
Beyond that, the networks will be getting heavy pressure from the Republicans not to broadcast the Boston event -- or, as Bush-Cheney campaign manager Ken Mehlman has suggested, to give equal time to a four-day GOP non-nomination rally. Suppose, just by coincidence, that the Republicans decide to hold this rally from July 26 through July 29 -- the dates of the Democrats' convention? Scheduling that would take some cojones, but I think we all agree that they have them. It raises the possibility of George W. Bush speaking opposite John Kerry that Thursday night. Mull that one over. Which speech will the networks carry?
We can all sympathize with Kerry's dilemma. In the past, the release date of a presidential campaign's public financing didn't really matter, because both candidates were still allowed to raise soft money through their party apparatuses. Bush got his $68 million in 2000 about a month before Al Gore got his, so Mehlman is technically correct to say that Bush in 2000 willingly operated under the same disadvantage Kerry now seeks to find a way around. The difference, though, is that it wasn't a disadvantage until the passage of McCain-Feingold. In 2000, Gore and Bush raised pots of soft money for their national committees well after each got his $68 million, and those private donations to each party could finance TV ads that directly promoted each candidate.
Those rules are different now: Soft money is out, and Kerry won't be able to raise it for the Democratic National Committee as Gore did. So, on one level, Kerry is simply trying to change the rules in response to a change of the rules. (Admittedly, his current position would be a bit cleaner if he hadn't voted for McCain-Feingold in the first place back in April 2001.)
It's understandable. But I fear it will backfire one way or another. I take no moral position on the issue; I merely note that when Democrats start making this kind of mischief, for whatever reason -- they have shrewder election lawyers would be a chief one, I suppose -- Republicans almost always out-mischief them. Surely there are other ways around the $75 million problem than this.
Bruce Springsteen announced last week that he wanted to stage a concert in September -- opposite Bush's acceptance speech at the GOP convention. Now that's an idea. Maybe the candidate ought to leave the convention-related mischief-making to the Boss.
Michael Tomasky is the Prospect's executive editor. His column appears every Monday.
