I was hoping that this weekend’s Republican State Convention would be a good opportunity to meet other Republicans and get fired up for the upcoming election season. It was. Luke Esser and team did a great job accommodating 1,179 delegates (a 100% increase in attendance over the previous non-presidential convention), which reflects the enthusiasm of Republicans across the state in 2010. There were many first time delegates and there was a legion of great candidates; everyone thinks we can win in 2010.
In forthcoming notes I want to discuss the rhetoric of the candidates and the candidates themselves. For now, let me briefly recap the events and comment on just one issue, which is the schedule of the convention and what it tells us about the purpose of the convention. This sounds dry but it became an important issue for many.
In terms of their ideas of what the convention was about, delegates seemed to break into two groups. One group essentially saw the convention as an opportunity to see candidates firsthand, network with other grassroots Republicans, and plan for the upcoming year. I’ll call these people the Conventioneers. The other group hoped the convention would be more like a constitutional convention or a debating society where a platform would be drafted and negotiated in detail. I’ll call these people the Debaters.
If you’ve been to political conventions before, you probably won’t be surprised to learn that the Debaters were somewhat disappointed by the amount of actual debating that occurred.
Here’s how the whole thing worked, which is fairly representative of these things generally. On the first day, there were classes -- how to use new media, how to manage a political campaign, etc. This is learning time and social time. That night, there was a dinner. Dino Rossi was there and Michelle Malkin set the audience on fire. After dinner, prominent candidates hosted open gatherings in hotel rooms. As a friend of mine said, “this is where the fun begins.” Well, truth be told it doesn’t get very crazy but prominent elected officials are around and they were all very friendly and approachable. Rob McKenna had a room and was very friendly to everyone. Dino Rossi had a big room and, with his wife Terri, was very social and tirelessly posed for photos with delegates and guests. Clint Didier had a “tailgate party” to which he wore his two (three?) superbowl rings (which look huge even on his huge hand). Cathy McMorris Rodgers was there. Don Benton was there. I’m sure there were a hundred important people I didn’t even recognize. People took this time to meet each other, share ideas and compare notes from different parts of the state.
The next day, Saturday, is/was the big meeting where candidates give speeches, the keynote speaker speaks (Mitt Romney was great; his speech is accurately recounted here http://wp.me/pjvHX-Te) and the platform is passed. Then everyone goes home. The platform part starts in earnest around 2. Then the whole thing ends at 5 sharp. So there isn’t much time to debate the platform. Thus the disappointment among the Debaters.
In fact, precious little real debate occurred at all since mostly we debated the rules that would govern the debating and then we debated which issues we should probably set aside to debate later and then after that we basically ran out of time. Oops!
Trust me, I don’t want to hear again about Robert’s Rules of Order for quite a while.
Here is my perspective, though. My perspective is that the Debaters are not being realistic about the schedule or about the true importance and purpose of conventions. To debate the platform from the ground up, including every amendment, would require weeks. Even a single proposition could take hours to debate among over a thousand participants. We could have spent a summer in Vancouver and, while Southwestern Washington is a nice place, we’ve all got other plans this summer.
Some argued that debating the platform was “the people’s business that we were sent here to do.” I would disagree. Everyone knew that there was a platform committee. They took months to draft a platform. Everyone knows that it is unrealistic to draft a new platform on the spot in open debate. Our actual responsibility is to elect sensible people to the platform committee and then to accept their work unless they have clearly failed to represent the party well. Really there is no other way to do it. I think 90% of the delegates thought that the document was representative of the state of the party today and that relitigating all the various issues that were no doubt debated in the platform process would be pointless. The fact that large groups are bad at crafting documents is, after all, why the convention has a platform committee (and is why legislative bodies generally have committees).
So I think the Debaters were being unrealistic about the schedule and about our role. But also I would argue that the Debaters have an unrealistic understanding of the real purpose and true potential of conventions in general. The reality is that state platforms are not read by normal human beings (the kind of voters who actually wind up swinging elections in the real world). Therefore, platforms do not generally have a major impact on elections in the United States. That’s the fact.
What does have a major impact? The energy and message of the grassroots party organizers and influencers These are the people who are going to have and distribute yard signs, donate money, doorbell, speak with their neighbors, write blogs, organize events, tweet and in a thousand ways help the party actually win.
What matters coming out of a convention is that those influencers are fired up, informed, have plans, and perhaps have made a few new contacts in the party with whom they can coordinate. That is the important thing about a convention. The platform, assuming it does an adequate job representing the party, is not.
So my conclusion is that the Debaters both had an unrealistic idea of what can be accomplished at a convention and a very weak sense of the real life relative importance of the things that happen at a convention. The Debaters might think the social part of the convention was annoying or irrelevant (compared to the “substantive issues” of the platform) but they’re missing the point. The mingling may be “where the fun begins,” but it may be the most impactful part of the event, too.
That said, I do think the platform process can be improved. It might be better to make drafts of the platform public on WSRP.org at various stages. Feedback could be solicited from the community. Conceivably a system could be set up to track delegates, systematically tally their feedback to early drafts and expand the circle in some formal way. I would be all for that. I would also support moving from a system with one representative per Washington county, which is absurdly antidemocratic, but I’ll talk about that in my next post. Finally, I think the rules should just call for an up or down vote on the platform. We should be straight about whether we want extensive debate or not. If it’s just not on the table, then the Debaters shouldn’t be teased by rules suggesting that the broader community can reopen and debate every issue.
Thanks for reading, pals, and, as Secretary of State Sam Reed said at the convention, “stay united!”
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