Coronation in Prime Time

By Susan Tifft

The Republicans wonder: Will anybody out there be watching?

When the Republicans gather in Dallas next week for their national convention, they will have a gleaming set, a boffo headliner and a friendly audience in the hall. But then the plot thins. For the first time since 1972, neither spot on the ticket needs to be filled. There are no renegades challenging the incumbent, no festering party feuds. The few philosophical conflicts that do exist are subterranean, more likely to be peaceably resolved in the dim light of back rooms than in the glare of prime time. So confident is President Reagan of a congenial coronation that he will not even arrive in town until Wednesday, the day of his nomination.

So what is there to offer the party faithful at the Dallas Convention Center and millions of television viewers? Desperate to add spice to their celebration of the Administration's first term, G.O.P. strategists briefly considered pumping up their mild ideological divisions into full-fledged floor battles. But the idea was eventually rejected as hokey. Says Washington Lobbyist William Timmons, who has played a major role in every G.O.P. Convention since 1968: "We will have a clean, crisply paced, well-managed demonstration of Republican unity... There will be some powerful messages, well presented. But whether anyone will listen-well, we have to hold our audience somehow."

The Republicans have a tough act to follow. Last month's Democratic Convention, with its history-making nomination of a woman vice-presidential candidate and its stirring speeches, was tailor-made for television. "The Democrats ended up with a sense of movement and energy," says a Reagan aide. "The G.O.P. is moving too, but almost entirely on the shoulders of one man, Ronald Reagan. We needed to find some way to use Dallas to broaden out." The President's strategists hit on a double-barreled solution: the party's rising stars and prominent women will be featured speakers in prime time.

Indeed, the Dallas convention is likely to be as much a soapbox for 1988 presidential hopefuls as a last hurrah for the reigning party patriarch. First up will be Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker, who is leaving Capitol Hill at year's end to position himself for a run at the White House. Says a Baker aide: "The bottom Line for him is to walk out of the convention having shown that he has a little more fire in him than people thought." Kansas Senator Robert Dole, Gerald Ford's running mate in 1976, and New York Congressman Jack Kemp will each have about five minutes in the spotlight Tuesday night. Kemp, who is best known for his supply-side economics and tax-cutting fervor, will have a chance to look statesmanlike in his role as chairman of the platform subcommittee on foreign policy.

Of the class of 1988, Vice President George Bush will get the most play. His acceptance speech Thursday night is slotted for a generous 15 minutes and almost certainly will be broadcast in its entirety. He is expected to stress his varied government experience, an implied swipe at his Democratic rival, New York Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro. Mindful that the party's right wing favors a Kemp-like conservative in 1988, Bush is likely to pound home the message that despite his reputation for moderate political views, he is a true believer in Reagan's policies.

Hoping to make a dent in the gender gap, the G.O.P. is going out of its way to showcase women. United Nations Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick and Secretary of Health and Human Services Margaret Heckler will speak briefly on Monday night. They will be followed by New Mexico Businesswoman Katherine Davalos Ortega, the second Hispanic woman to hold the largely honorific post of U.S. Treasurer, who will close the evening with the 15-minute keynote address. On Tuesday, Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole, touted as a Republican Veep possibility in 1988 if her husband is not the presidential nominee, will have a high-profile slot right after former President Gerald Ford.

On Wednesday, California Representative Bobbi Fiedler will give the seconding speech for Reagan's nomination; Illinois Congresswoman Lynn Martin will second Bush. On the floor, roughly 45% of the delegates will be women. Blacks, however, will be considerably less in evidence: approximately 70 of the convention's 2,235 delegates are black, and there will be only one black speaker in prime time, Fundamentalist Preacher E.V. Hill of Los Angeles.

Like its Democratic counterpart, the Republican Convention will be broadcast by the three major networks in prime time (9 p.m.-11 p.m. E.D.T.), but not necessarily gavel to gavel. To make the proceedings more attractive to the networks, the party has scheduled only 13 hours of floor business over four days, which would make this G.O.P. Convention the shortest in modern history.*

Network executives are wary of airing what may amount to a long-playing commercial. They have not yet said whether they will show the 18-minute movie of highlights of the Reagan presidency, scheduled to run Thursday night immediately before his acceptance speech, or the seven-minute film on Nancy Reagan set to herald her appearance the previous evening. The networks did not air a similar film on Mondale in San Francisco. Network representatives will view the Reagan film this week. Says Ray Lockhart, head of convention planning for NBC: "We'll decide if it's newsworthy after we see it."

Concerned that ABC, CBS and NBC will cut away to adventure series, the G.O.P. has formed its own Republican National Committee network (RNC) to cover the convention. With ten cameras and a staff of 40, RNC is offering commentary-free, live feeds of the podium action to any television and radio station or groups of stations willing to pay a nominal fee of about $200. So far, the Republicans have signed up 38 television groups, including CSpan, Group W and PBS, and two large radio groups, Mutual Broadcasting System and Associated Press. In all, an estimated 1,048 television stations will have access to the party-generated material. Says White House Television Adviser Mark Goode, who is directing the RNC operation: "The country will be pretty well saturated."

As political theater, Reagan's renomination will be as stylized as kabuki. The plan: Alabama, the first state on the roster alphabetically, will yield to Nevada, so that Senator Paul Laxalt, the party's general chairman, can put Reagan's name in nomination for the third time (Reagan lost out to Ford in 1976). The next state up, Alaska, will yield to the President's home state of California, so that Governor George Deukmejian can nominate Bush. Arizona, the third state in line, will promptly move to close nominations. Then there will be a single roll call to endorse the Reagan-Bush ticket.

More interesting TV pictures may originate outside the hall. To re-create a bit of the Old West for out-of-towners, Local Rancher John Ball plans to hold a cattle drive along the Trinity River, ending up less than a mile from downtown every morning of the convention. Some 150 longhorns and about a dozen cowboys will take part in the four-mile outings.

Though it lacks San Francisco's flare for protest, Dallas nonetheless will inspire its share of political sideshows. Activities are planned by gays, nuclear-freeze activists, union members and Moral Majority missionaries. The most elaborate demonstrations will begin the Saturday before the convention, when a consortium of organizations led by ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) kicks off a three-day Alliance for Justice in 1984 program. Organizers expect 2,000 visiting protesters to bunk at a tent city along the banks of the Trinity River. They and like-minded Dallasites plan a door-to-door voter-registration effort and a religious service led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Their goal: to protest the effect of Reagan's policies on low-and moderate-income people.

To keep protesters out of rock-throwing range, the city has encircled the downtown convention center with a controversial $65,000, 6-ft.-high hurricane fence, creating a buffer zone at least 350 ft. wide. The Dallas police department has canceled vacations for its 2,075 officers, each of whom has received special training in crowd control and explosives detection. Says Police Spokesman Ed Spencer: "We've tried to prepare for just about any eventuality."

With 4,470 delegates and alternates, 12,000 journalists and a projected 10,000 guests, the Republican hoedown will be both smaller than the Democrats' and smaller than expected (the party canceled about 12,000 unneeded hotel reservations last month). To ferry conventioneers between the 47 delegation hotels and the convention, G.O.P. organizers will be running a fleet of 120 shuttle buses (price of a four-day pass: $30). Only minor skirmishes over platform positions are expected inside the hall. Conservatives, led by Kemp and Congressman Trent Lott of Mississippi, are pushing for three major planks: a return to the gold standard (tying the value of the dollar directly to the price of gold, a move that, they contend, would lower interest rates and help bring down deficits); an end to the independence of the Federal Reserve; and an ironclad pledge against tax hikes. Meanwhile, the so-called Mainstream Republican Committee, a band of moderate-to-liberal House members led by Iowa's Jim Leach, has been tugging in the opposite direction: they are pro-choice on abortion and flexible on the question of tax increases.

The platform will be considered on Tuesday morning, out of the glare of TV, and disgruntled factions are unlikely to muster the 25% vote necessary to take a squabble to the floor. Says Dole: "The President is the candidate this year, not Jack Kemp or Bob Dole. We do have to protect the President in that platform."

Indeed, the platform, like the convention, promises to be a near-perfect reflection of Ronald Reagan. When he strides up to the beige-and-brown podium Thursday night to give his acceptance speech, he is expected to aim more at voters' hearts than heads, striking many of the themes that have been the hallmarks of his presidency: optimism, patriotism, traditional values. Republicans are hoping that Reagan's rhetorical powers will produce a postconvention bounce in the polls similar to what the Democrats got out of San Francisco. For the Great Communicator, it is another big opening night.

--By Susan Tifft. Reported by Laurence I. Barrett, with Reagan, and David S. Jackson/Dallas

*The previous record low of 17 hours was set in 1972, when the Republican Convention renominated Richard Nixon.

With reporting by Laurence I. Barrett, David S. Jackson