It’s been more than 50 years since the GOP convened a convention when the nominee wasn’t at least “almost certainly” known.
Even in 1976, there wasn’t much suspense despite what some commentators like to try and invent these days. President Gerald Ford was firmly in command of the proceedings in Kansas City, Missouri, in August 40 years ago. The prospective nominee has always been in charge of the agenda since television entered the scene, and thus of at least the theoretical timing of every vote, the order of speakers, indeed every detail of every hour. The objective was to hit the timing marks so the speeches made prime time. Most of the time they did. Sometimes they didn’t. But that was the big task: Making a made-for-TV event without drama into something worth watching.
Until now.
In 2016, it is entirely possible that no one will know how the first ballot will actually turn out. Or the second. Or the third. …
There will be educated guesses. There may even be some very public deals made. But it is highly unlikely that any of the would-be nominees will have 1,237 delegates committed to them by law before the ballot that actually puts them over the top.
Donald Trump needs to win something north of 55% of the delegates yet to be chosen. John Kasich can only win in a multi-ballot convention contest, and Ted Cruz would need to win an improbable 86% of the remaining delegates to seize the first ballot. So if Trump doesn’t dominate the remaining primaries, we are headed to a contested convention.
The prospect of the “open convention” terrifies some and absolutely thrills others — primarily network television executives who are actually going to have a real live drama to report on 24/7 for weeks on end from the closing of the California polls on June 7 through the gavel coming down on … well, it is supposed to come down on July 21 in Cleveland but don’t count on it. The Republican National Convention will come to order on July 18 — more or less. But when it ends … well, that depends.
So what’s the Republican National Committee, and specifically its very able chair, Reince Priebus, to do? Preibus wrested order out of chaos when it came to the primary and caucus schedule, shrunk the number of debates and injected conservative voices into them. Both are historic achievements that will be built upon in the future. The third of the Priebus reforms — moving the convention up to July from the historically later dates in August — is the real payoff as the party will now have an extra month to recover from whatever befalls it in Cleveland.
But now Priebus and company face a new and never before attempted challenge: to try to make a political convention as dull as possible. For the first time in memory, there won’t be any upside in comprehensive saturation television coverage, at least not until there is a nominee and the wreckage on the floor can be cleared from various state delegations home to the inevitable unhappiness of some. The GOP doesn’t need a replay in prime time of the raucous reception given to Nelson Rockefeller at the Barry Goldwater triumph in 1964, and it most certainly doesn’t need the GOP version of the Democrats’ meltdown in 1968.
Republicans cannot control what if anything happens in the streets of Cleveland, but they can in fact make the convention orderly even after this most disorderly of campaigns.
First, the RNC should impose a schedule of votes well before the California primary vote is held so no one can claim perfidy in the aftermath of a perceived advantage.
Second, it should consider convening the Convention Rules Committee early, in Washington, and make it work day in, day out until the rules are settled well in advance of the convention. If that is impossible, drafts of the rules from the professionals at the RNC should be provided early to all camps and circulated widely on the Internet for comment and debate. Transparency has got to be the rule, or a third or more of the delegates will leave screaming, “We was robbed!”
Some will no doubt do so anyway, but minimizing the damage via the appearance and especially the reality of fair play is the goal of the RNC. Which brings us to the actual voting.
Since voting for the nominee is really all that matters, the party should schedule the first vote as early on Monday, July 18, as possible and then adjourn. If Trump or Cruz gets to 1,237 and is the nominee, the winner can sketch out the rest of the three days of events that night. If not, if no one gets a majority of the delegates, the RNC should close the proceedings for the day and let the various camps begin their counting and if necessary their deal-making.
Then schedule two votes a day — at 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. — until a nominee emerges. Daytime voting makes for a lot less drama, and a lot less theatrics before happy hour. The objective for Priebus and gang is to get to a nominee and then hand over the keys to the podium. Team Trump, Team Cruz and Team Kasich should arrive with plans for all eventualities. If you want to be president, you ought to be able to handle assuming control of a convention in mid-proceedings. But by publishing a schedule of votes, the RNC can at least do for the convention what it did for the primaries and the debates: establish order out of what would otherwise be chaos.
The RNC might also be of help to all three campaigns (and any “draft _____” effort that materializes) by agreeing to vet up to five would-be vice presidential selections for each candidate. The idea of competing Veep-vetting teams hasn’t been thought through yet, but it is nightmare for everyone involved — candidates and possible running mates all. (“Donald Trump wants me but only if I turn down Cruz. Ted Cruz says the same thing about Trump. And Kasich’s lawyers want my tax returns as well!”)
It would make sense to turn the whole process over to Mitt Romney’s Veep vetter from 2012, Beth Myers, but have her act under the RNC’s auspices and keep her own counsel about who got put on the list by whom.
Of course some will see in that a secret plot by Romney to get himself put into No. 2. I argued in my 2015 book, “The Queen,” that Romney as a one-term vice president would have been an advantage to the candidacies of either Cruz or Marco Rubio, and even now, that remote possibility may make Myers unacceptable. But it shouldn’t.
Myers knows what needs to be done and how to do it, how to write up the reports and scan the tax returns. There are also some great lawyers who could undertake the vetting on behalf of all the candidates and the RNC, or even a committee of them. Or just ask former White House counsel Fred Fielding to take the field again for goodness sakes, but don’t leave it to chance and improvisation in late June with two or three Veep scouts working the political equivalent of the NFL combine.
Don’t leave to chance anything that can be pre-arranged in a year when the one thing that can’t be known is the most important thing. For once, the GOP convention planners have to do their best to keep it dull. And in the daylight. Far from prime time.
Until there is a winner and the wounded are cleared from the field.
