It is difficult for journalists to cover party conventions. The counterintuitive reason is that their perception of what matters is skewed by how close they are to the drama of what’s happening.
Most Americans consume convention coverage very differently, in small doses from their homes. They catch a speech here or there, they form an opinion, and they go to bed. Their perception of the events at a party convention could hardly be more different than that of reporters who spend the entire week breathlessly reporting every minor development.
Conventions are made-for-TV events, and it is through television that one is most likely to get an accurate impression of how effective the event is. This is hard for many journalists to accept, because it forces them to question all the travel and the hassle of the 18-hour workdays that go into convention coverage. But it is true.
And it’s why, despite its newsworthiness, the story about plagiarism by one of Melania Trump’s speechwriters is likely to end up being only the slightest bump, if that, on the road to this November’s general election. So will so many other stories about poor planning, such as the placement of low-grade speakers in prime time slots.
Each of these represents a missed opportunity for the Trump campaign, but probably the only speech that will matter at this week’s convention and will still matter a week from now is the one Donald Trump himself gives on Thursday night.
That, at least, is how it should and could be, unless Trump, his supporters and his surrogates make a mess of their reaction to the ambivalence of Ted Cruz’s speech Wednesday night.
Cruz left a certain amount to the imagination with his speech, declining to issue an explicit endorsement of Trump. He congratulated Trump and he said not a word against the nominee, which is not nothing, given that Trump, during the campaign, disparaged Cruz’s wife’s looks and linked his father to the assassination of President Kennedy. But it was seen a glass half empty by many delegates on the convention floor, and they booed Cruz for avoiding a full-blown endorsement.
They, like so many reporters, need to remember that most fusses in the convention hall are invisible to the public. Booing served no purpose other than to amplify the very thing that Trump’s passionate supporters objected to.
From the dais, Newt Gingrich took the right approach. He sought to make lemonade instead of focusing on sourness, pointing out that Trump was the only candidate who fit Cruz’s exhortation to vote for a candidate who would uphold the Constitution. But Team Trump, including the nominee himself, proved incapable of taking Cruz’s partial slight in stride.
Two sources told Time’s Zeke Miller that Trump’s team encouraged the booing within the convention hall. Chris Christie, ever the Trump flunky, scrambled to find the nearest mic and tell NBC News that Cruz had delivered “an awful, selfish speech, which showed everybody why he has richly earned the reputation he has on Capitol Hill.” And Trump himself tweeted, “Wow, Ted Cruz got booed off the stage, didn’t honor the pledge! I saw his speech two hours early but let him speak anyway. No big deal!”
A sour-grapes approach only magnifies a controversy that could have remained minor. The blow-up nearly overshadowed the excellent speech that Mike Pence, Trump’s running mate, delivered just a few minutes later.
Trump could win the presidency. The most recent poll, taken right before the convention, showed him narrowly leading a four-way race. But if he is to win, he needs occasionally to overcome the impulsive-driven behavior of the team he leads by example.
