by Peter Mackler
WASHINGTON, July 21 (AFP) - They`ve lost much of their audience and all of their suspense; they`re filled with long speeches and hokey pageantry. But US political conventions can still help make or break a presidential campaign.
Gone are the days of the smoky backrooms where politicians thrashed out the future of a nation. Gone are the furious floor flights and frantic maneuverings that had produced legendary moments of high political drama.
Never again will a convention go to the 103 ballots it took the Democrats to come up with a losing candidate in 1924 or the 46 votes they needed in 1912 to anoint Woodrow Wilson and send him on his way into history.
Equally unlikely is the possibility of a new "dark horse" candidate emerging from near-obscurity to scoop up the party standard, like Democrat James Polk did in 1844 en route to the White House.
H.L. Mencken, an acerbic pundit from the early 20th century, found the political convention "as fascinating as a revival or a hanging. It is vulgar, ugly, stupid and tedious."
"Yet," he added, "there suddenly comes a show so gaudy and hilarious, so melodramatic and obscene, so unimaginably exhilarating and preposterous that one lives a gorgeous year in an hour."
But that was another era.
An hour a night is all the conventions can expect this year in prime-time coverage by major television networks that have seen interest in the galas steadily fade and ratings plummet.
Indeed, with the nominations now virtually wrapped up in a series of state party contests, the conventions have become little more than gaudy, carefully orchestrated coronations.
The presidential candidate picks his own running mate and dictates most of the party platform. For all its balloons and euphoria, the convention itself has the spontaneity of a four-day campaign commercial.
The last real convention shootout goes back nearly three decades to 1976, when then-president Gerald Ford fought off a strong challenge by Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination.
The last time the Democrats battled on the floor was in 1960, when John Kennedy outgunned Lyndon Johnson, although the 1972 gathering did produce a flutter when opponents of nominee George McGovern tried to challenge his delegates.
But if today`s conventions lack the heart-stopping moments of yesteryear, they still serve a vital function for each party in sharpening the image of its candidate and its message for the coming campaign, analysts say.
Tom Patterson, a professor of government and the press at Harvard University`s Kennedy School and author of "The Vanishing Voter," said the national exposure afforded the final acceptance speech could be critical to a candidate`s chances.
"It`s unique, in an era largely of 10-second sound bites on television and 30-second ads, to be able to speak without interruption for 45, 60 minutes to the American public," he said. "It`s quite an unusual opportunity."
Not surprisingly, conventions have historically provided parties with a "bounce" in opinion polls, averaging about six points over the past 10 elections, according to the Gallup group. But the gains for each candidate often neutralise each other.
The conventions also provide a window for both parties to monopolize the attention of a country that Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution think tank called "the most non-political industrial democracy in the world."
"It becomes very difficult, but not impossible, for Americans to ignore it," Hess said. "But in the course of not ignoring it, they are very likely to learn some useful things, differences between the two major parties."
No matter how well-scripted the event is, however, things can go wrong, such as in 1968, when anti-Vietnam War protests in the streets of Chicago tore the Democratic Party apart and set the stage for Richard Nixon`s victory that November.
In 1992, the Republican conservative wing hijacked the party`s convention in Houston, Texas, with a strident right-wing message that scared off moderates and ultimately helped turn the White House over to Bill Clinton.