"From the beginning of the presidential nominating conventions in the 1830's really through the 1950's, you had conventions that actually did real business"
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Nostalgia can be a sly political weapon, and Michael Beschloss wields it with the practiced calm of a court historian. By reaching back to the 1830s and stretching his timeline through the 1950s, he frames today’s conventions not as imperfect but as fundamentally downgraded: once, they “did real business.” The phrase is doing heavy lifting. “Real” implies the current version is theater, a made-for-TV coronation where outcomes are settled long before the balloons drop. It’s a critique that lands because we’ve all watched the choreography: roll-call votes that aren’t suspenseful, speeches written to go viral, conflict carefully kept offstage.
The intent isn’t just antiquarian. It’s a reminder that parties used to be arenas of negotiation, coalition-building, and occasionally messy accountability. Those older conventions were smoke-filled in both senses: exclusionary, boss-driven, and often undemocratic, but also genuinely contingent. Delegates mattered; deals were struck in public view (or just behind it) because candidates weren’t crowned by a primary calendar, donor ecosystem, and media narrative months in advance.
Beschloss’s subtext is a warning about what’s lost when politics becomes performance: less deliberation, fewer pressure valves, and a thinner sense that parties are institutions rather than marketing platforms. In the modern era, “unity” is staged as a product, not argued into being. His context as a historian gives the line its bite: it invites you to miss the drama while remembering why it disappeared.
The intent isn’t just antiquarian. It’s a reminder that parties used to be arenas of negotiation, coalition-building, and occasionally messy accountability. Those older conventions were smoke-filled in both senses: exclusionary, boss-driven, and often undemocratic, but also genuinely contingent. Delegates mattered; deals were struck in public view (or just behind it) because candidates weren’t crowned by a primary calendar, donor ecosystem, and media narrative months in advance.
Beschloss’s subtext is a warning about what’s lost when politics becomes performance: less deliberation, fewer pressure valves, and a thinner sense that parties are institutions rather than marketing platforms. In the modern era, “unity” is staged as a product, not argued into being. His context as a historian gives the line its bite: it invites you to miss the drama while remembering why it disappeared.
Quote Details
| Topic | Nostalgia |
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