Party Conventions
The American party convention is a distinctive institution, with no exact counterpart in other Western democracies. For much of the nineteenth century, and in a vestigial form down to the present, conventions made up of delegates selected by subunits of the state and national parties chose nominees for elective offices. In their full vigor, they also adopted platforms that set forth the party's position on salient issues, created agencies to manage party affairs, and stimulated unity and enthusiasm within the ranks.
Before the invention of the delegate convention, parties in many states relied on their members in the legislature to nominate candidates for statewide offices. At the national level, the Democratic-Republicans utilized a congressional caucus between 1800 and 1824 to choose candidates for president and vice president. After the repudiation of the congressional caucus in 1824, presidential candidates in that year, and in 1828, were placed in nomination in various ways: by state legislatures, state party conventions, and legislative caucuses. But by 1844 most state parties had adopted the convention system.
The distinction of holding the first national convention fell to a third party, the Anti-Masons. Originating in New York in 1827, the party acquired formidable strength there and in adjacent states by 1830. Its imaginative leaders aspired to build the Anti-Masons into the major opponents of the dominant Jacksonians. A preparatory convention, held in Philadelphia in September 1830, issued a call for a second convention to meet in Baltimore on September 26, 1831. There the delegates nominated William Wirt of Maryland, a former attorney general under Presidents James Monroe and John Adams, for the presidency, with Amos Ellmaker of Pennsylvania as his running mate. They also adopted an "Address to the People," appointed a national committee, and scheduled a future convention to meet in December 1835.
The two major parties also held national conventions in preparation for the 1832 election. The adherents of Henry Clay, newly mobilized under the National Republican label, met in Baltimore in December 1831. Delegates from eighteen states attended. Clay was nominated with only one dissenting vote, together with John Sergeant of Pennsylvania. The Democrats convened in Baltimore in May 1832. Over three hundred delegates represented every state except Missouri. Because it was universally accepted that Andrew Jackson would run for a second term, the main purpose of the convention was to select a nominee for the vice presidency. After adopting a rule that a two-thirds vote would be required for any nomination (a rule that held until 1936 and that greatly enhanced the South's power in the Democratic party), Martin Van Buren of New York was placed on the ticket with Jackson.
Over the next few decades, the national convention evolved forms and rituals that were to persist down to the mid-twentieth century. A temporary chairman delivered a rousing keynote speech, designed to promote party harmony and lambaste the opposition. On occasion, disputes over the credentials of rival delegations from a state required tactful settlement. Then the platform would be debated and adopted. Next came the florid nominating speeches, followed by boisterous demonstrations staged by the nominee's adherents. This phase of the proceedings was often protracted when state delegations put forward favorite sons, usually to enhance their bargaining positions. The climactic event was the balloting, when each state delegation was called upon to announce its votes. On about one-half of such occasions, a single ballot sufficed, but at other times the roll calls might continue until exhaustion (and back-room deals) produced a victor. In 1924 the Democrats required 103 ballots to select John W. Davis in the lengthiest of all conventions. With rare exceptions, the most memorable of which was Franklin D. Roosevelt's flight to Chicago in 1932, the nominees did not deliver acceptance speeches until after the advent of television.
The old-style conventions were arenas where the chieftains of rival factions met in "smoke-filled rooms" to negotiate the choice of nominees. When deadlocks developed between preconvention favorites, they were broken by the selection of a dark horse. The first such outcome occurred in 1844, when the Democrats settled on James K. Polk. The adoption of party platforms, initiated by the Democrats in 1840, occasionally engendered extensive controversy. The Democrats, in particular, engaged in some notable wrangles. Most divisive were those in 1860 over the slavery issue, in 1896 over the plank endorsing "free silver," and in 1948, when the convention's stand on civil rights produced serious defections in the South.
Twice national conventions were unable to resolve factional feuds. In 1860, when the Democrats met in Charleston, numerous southern delegates bolted after losing a platform fight. A second convention in Baltimore failed to heal the schism. The rump convention then nominated Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois; the seceders chose John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky. In 1912 Theodore Roosevelt belatedly challenged the renomination of his one-time protégé William Howard Taft. After a bitter wrangle over the seating of contested delegates, the Roosevelt supporters withdrew, formed the Progressive party, and hailed the militant ex-president as their standard-bearer.
In the post-World War II era, many new influences undermined the importance and altered the character of the national conventions. The direct primary (first introduced in 1912, but of minor importance until the 1950s) enabled party members to vote directly for delegates pledged to particular candidates and thus greatly reduced the convention's decision-making role. Increasingly after 1952, success in winning primary contests determined the nomination. Since that year, only single ballots have been needed to select nominees.
With the advent of television coverage, the format of the conventions was tailored to accommodate the new medium. Key events were carefully staged for prime-time audiences, fewer candidates were placed in nomination, demonstrations were curtailed, and television commentators prowled the floor to reveal what lay behind the scene.
After 1968, elaborate measures to reform delegate-selection procedures in order to reduce the influence of bosses and make the conventions representative of the rank and file of the parties completed the transformation of the national conventions. They became quadrennial media events, where the results of the primaries were ratified and the prize was awarded to the individual who had won the most delegates. The victor, in turn, was now accorded the privilege of naming his running mate. The conventions survive, but they bear only a superficial resemblance in form and function to those that held sway from the Age of Jackson through the era of the New Deal.
Bibliography:
Richard C. Bain and Judith H. Parris, Convention Decisions and Voting Records, 2nd ed. (1973); James S. Chase, Emergence of the Presidential Nominating Convention, 1789-1832 (1973).
Author:
Richard P. McCormick
