CHAPTER LIV THE NOMINATING CONVENTION AT WORK We have examined the composition of a National convention and the normal order of business in it. The more difficult task remains of describing the actual character and features of such an assembly, the motives which sway it, the temper it displays, the passions it elicits, the wiles by which its members are lured or driven to their goal. A National convention has two objects, the formal declaration of the principles, views, and practical proposals of the party, and the choice of its candidates for the executive headship of the nation. Of these objects the former has in critical times, such as the two elections preceding the Civil War, been of great importance. In the Democratic Convention at Charleston in 1860, a debate on resolutions led to a secession and to the break-up of the Democratic party. But of late years the adoption of platforms, drafted in a vague and pompous style by the committee, has been almost a matter of form. The second object is of absorbing interest and importance, because the presidency is the great prize of politics, the goal of every statesman's ambition. The President can by his veto stop legislation adverse to the wishes of the party he represents. The President is the supreme dispenser of patronage. One may therefore say that the task of a convention is to choose the party candidate. And it is a task difficult enough to tax all the resources of the host of delegates and their leaders. Who is the man fittest to be adopted as candidate? Not even a novice in politics will suppose that it is the best man, i.e. the wisest, strongest, and most upright. Plainly, it is the man most likely to win, the man who, to use the technical term, is most "available." What a party wants is not a good President but a good candidate. The party managers have 2 H 465 therefore to look out for the person likely to gain most support, and at the same time excite least opposition. Their search is rendered more troublesome by the fact that many of them, being themselves either aspirants or the close allies of aspirants, are not disinterested, and are distrusted by their fellow-searchers. Many things have to be considered. The ability of a statesman, the length of time he has been before the people, his oratorical gifts, his "magnetism," his family connections, his face and figure, the purity of his private life, his "record" as regards integrity-all these are matters needing to be weighed. Account must be taken of the personal jealousies and hatreds which a man has excited. To have incurred the enmity of a leading statesman, of a powerful boss or ring, even of an influential newspaper, is serious. Several such feuds may be fatal. Finally, much depends on the State whence a possible candidate comes. Local feeling leads a State to support one of its own citizens; it increases the vote of his own party in that State, and reduces the vote of the opposite party. Where the State is decidedly of one political colour, this consideration is weak. It is therefore from a doubtful State that a candidate may with most advantage be selected; and the larger the doubtful State, the better. Hence an aspirant who belongs to a great and doubtful State is prima facie the most eligible candidate. Aspirants hoping to obtain the party nomination from a National convention have sometimes been divided into three classes, the two last of which, as will appear presently, are not mutually exclusive, viz. Favourites. Dark Horses. Favourite Sons. A Favourite is always a politician well known over the Union, and drawing support from all or most of its sections. He is a man who has distinguished himself in Congress, or in the war, or in the politics of some State so large that its politics are matter of knowledge and interest to the whole nation. He is usually a person of conspicuous gifts, whether as a speaker, or a party manager, or an administrator. The drawback to him is that in making friends he has also made enemies. A Dark Horse is a person not very widely known in the country at large, but known rather for good than for evil. He has probably sat in Congress, been useful on committees, and gained some credit among those who dealt with him in Washington. Or he has approved himself a safe and assiduous party man in the political campaigns of his own and neighbouring States, yet without reaching National prominence. Sometimes he is a really able man, but without the special talents that win popularity. Still, speaking generally, the note of the Dark Horse is respectability verging on colourlessness; and he is therefore a good sort of person to fall back upon when able but dangerous Favourites have proved impossible. That native mediocrity rather than adverse fortune has prevented him from winning fame is proved by the fact that the Dark Horses who have reached the White House, if they have seldom turned out bad Presidents, have even more seldom turned out distinguished ones. A Favourite Son is a politician respected or admired in his own State, but little regarded beyond it. He may not be, like the Dark Horse, little known to the nation at large, but he has not fixed its eye or filled its ear. He is usually a man who has sat in the State legislature; filled with credit the post of State governor; perhaps gone as senator or representative to Washington, and there approved himself an active promoter of local interests. Probably he possesses the qualities which gain local popularity, geniality, activity, sympathy with the dominant sentiment and habits of his State; or, while endowed with gifts excellent in their way, he has lacked the audacity and tenacity which push a man to the front through a jostling crowd. More rarely he is a demagogue who has raised himself by flattering the masses of his State on some local questions, or a skilful handler of party organizations who has made local bosses and spoilsmen believe that their interests are safe in his hands. Anyhow, his personality is such as to be more effective with neighbours than with the nation, as a lamp whose glow fills the side chapel of a cathedral sinks to a spark of light when carried into the nave. A Favourite Son may be also a Dark Horse; that is to say, he may be well known in his own State, but so little known out of it as to be an unlikely candidate. But he need not be. The types are different, for as there are Favourite Sons whom the nation knows but does not care for, so there are Dark Horses whose reputation, such as it is, has not been made in State affairs, and who rely but very little on State favour. There are seldom more than two, never more then three Favourites in the running at the same convention. Favourite Sons are more numerous—it is not uncommon to have four or five, or even six, though perhaps not all these are actually started in the race. The number of Dark Horses is practically unlimited, because many talked of beforehand are not actually started, while others not considered before the convention begins are discovered as it goes on. To carry the analysis farther, it may be observed that four sets of motives are at work upon those who direct or vote in a convention, acting with different degrees of force on different persons. There is the wish to carry a particular aspirant. There is the wish to defeat a particular aspirant, a wish sometimes stronger than any predilection. There is the desire to get something for one's self out of the struggle-e.g. by trading one's vote or influence for the prospect of a Federal office. There is the wish to find the man who, be he good or bad, friend or foe, will give the party its best chance of victory. These motives cross one another, get mixed, vary in relative strength from hour to hour as the convention goes on and new possibilities are disclosed. To forecast their joint effect on the minds of particular persons and sections of a party needs wide knowledge and eminent acuteness. To play upon them is a matter of the finest skill. The proceedings of a nominating convention can be best understood by regarding the three periods into which they fall; the transactions which precede the opening of its sittings; the preliminary business of passing rules and resolutions and delivering the nominating speeches; and, finally, the balloting. A President has scarcely been elected before the newspapers begin to discuss his probable successor. Little, however, is done towards the ascertainment of candidates till about a year before the next election, when the factions of the chief aspirants prepare to fall into line, newspapers take up their parable in favour of one or other, and bosses begin the work of "subsoiling," i.e. manipulating primaries and local conventions so as to secure the choice of such delegates to the next National convention as they desire. In most of the conventions which appoint delegates, the claims of the several aspirants are canvassed, and the delegates chosen are usually chosen in the interest of one particular aspirant. The newspapers, with their quick sense of what is beginning to stir men's thoughts, redouble their advocacy, and the "boom" of one or two of the probable favourites is thus fairly started. Before the delegates leave their homes for the National convention, most of them have fixed on their candidate, many having indeed received positive instructions as to how their vote shall be cast. All appears to be spontaneous, but in reality both the choice of particular men as delegates, and the instructions given, are usually the result of untiring underground work among local politicians, directed, or even personally conducted, by two or three skilful agents and emissaries of a leading aspirant, or of the knot which seeks to run him. Four or five days before the day fixed for the opening of the convention the delegations begin to flock into the city where it is to be held. Some come attended by a host of friends and camp-followers, and are received at the depôt (railway terminus) by the politicians of the city, with a band of music and an admiring crowd. Before the great day dawns many thousands of politicians, newspaper men, and sight-seers have filled to overflowing every hotel in the city, and crowded the main thoroughfares so that the horse-cars can scarcely penetrate the throng. When the chief delegations have arrived, the work begins in earnest. Not only each large delegation, but the faction of each leading aspirant to the candidacy, has its headquarters, where the managers hold perpetual session, reckoning up their numbers, starting rumours meant to exaggerate their resources and dishearten their opponents, organizing raids upon the less experienced delegates as they arrive. Some fill the entrance halls and bars of the hotels, talk to the busy reporters, extemporize meetings with tumultuous cheering for their favourite. Meanwhile, the more skilful leaders begin (as it is expressed) to "plough around" among the delegations of the newer States, often more malleable, because they come from regions where the strength of the factions supporting the various aspirants is less accurately known, and are themselves more easily "capt |