Conventional Wisdom Takes A Beating

ARE WE TOO LATE FOR THE BALLOON DROP?

One of the crosses that I had to bear over a long newspaper career was coordinating national political convention coverage and occasionally attending one of the damned things. This included the brilliantly choreographed extravaganza in Philadelphia in 2000 that culminated with the coronation of George Walker Bush, the man with the vision to lead America into the new millennium and to new heights of prosperity and power.

The dread that I felt the night that Bush gnawed his way through his acceptance speech was palpable because I knew that he was an empty vessel into which every conservative who could get and keep his ear would pour their pet theories, animosities and causes.

I got very drunk later that night and didn't feel so hot the next day. But it is the hangover that Bush has inflicted on the America people that has been so awful.

I had no idea how right I would turn out to be: A catastrophic war to fulfill a neocon wet dream, a stunningly incompetent stewardship of the economy that rewarded Wall Street and devastated Main Street, a tap dance on the balance of powers and the rule of law in the service of an imperial presidency . . . oh, and gutting the Grand Old Party, which is losing voters and congressfolk like fleas jumping from a dying dog.

The difference between the climate at the idyll in Philadelphia and the GOP's convention in New York City in 2004 and today could not be more different, and I expect many a Republican functionary is on a Zantac IV drip in the run-up to the forthcoming confab in Minneapolis.

How do you plan a convention where the president has to be snuck in through a back door, the vice president won't even be attending because he's even more unpopular than the president, and the presumptive nominee is a septuagenarian reminder of the disasters of the last eight years whom not even a friendly Supreme Court will be able to help get elected?

The answer, of course, is to pretend that its Dawn in America and not Lights Out for Republicans.

As well as:

* Making it clear that the men's room at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport is off limits.

* Ridding all salads on sale at the food court of arugula.

* Making sure the tire pressure on all the official convention vehicles is correct.

* Hoping that the TV ratings suck.

* And that the cameras don't linger on David Vitter, Tom DeLay or all the other Big Tenters with legal and ethical woes, let alone the oil company executives smirking in the guest boxes.

* Or that the quadrennial we-love-Negroes minstrel show doesn't fall flat.

* Keeping fingers crossed that there is enough money to keep the lights on and that Cindy McCain keeps her top on.

* That the party's newest hack, Joe Lieberman, doesn't upstage John McCain.

* And most of all, praying that the balloon drop doesn't give the nominee a concussion.