— Philadelphia
AT LAURA BUSH’S speech last Monday, probably half of the made-to-look-spontaneously-painted posters bobbing in the crowd read: Leave no child behind! And, throughout the Republican convention, Mrs. Bush’s husband continued to promise to be a “uniter, not a divider.” There is a place for everyone in George W. Bush’s new Republican dispensation.
Except, it seemed, for Bush’s fellow Republican presidential candidates. They were left behind. The convention was remarkable for the low profile — the absence, even — of the Texas governor’s primary rivals. Six months ago, when Bush stood on debate platforms with John McCain, Steve Forbes, Gary Bauer, Orrin Hatch, and Alan Keyes, it appeared this primary season would follow the recent Republican routine: One of these men would get the nomination, and the others would reappear at convention time.
This has traditionally had nothing to do with whether the also-rans got along with the anointed candidate. In Detroit in 1980, just four years after his pitched primary battle with Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan approached the ex-president about taking on the vice-presidential nomination. (Reagan eventually settled on George Bush, who had first hurled at Reagan the epithet “voodoo economics.”) In New Orleans in 1988, Jack Kemp got to make the case for the economic policies Bush still distrusted. In Houston in 1992, after running a primary campaign explicitly designed to sabotage Bush, Pat Buchanan was rewarded with a scene-stealing prime-time spot next to Ronald Reagan’s.
Not this year. At the convention, George W. Bush’s rivals fell into three categories, by ascending degrees of invisibility:
P In the first tier were the celebrities without a cause, Elizabeth Dole and John McCain. Largely because of her pioneering town-meeting at San Diego in 1996, she’s famous for being famous. She’s the Andy Williams of the Republican inner circle. So she was perfectly suited to the made-for-TV spirit of Philadelphia 2000.
McCain still possesses a charisma and an elite following that Bush has a hard time matching. He has assembled a feckless shadow court, who resemble the White Russians of interwar Europe or the Orleanists in Balzac. They gather in small groups, like the several hundred “intimate friends” of McCain (most of them from major media outlets) who met at a “private dinner” on Sunday to bathe in the remembered glory of February and March.
But this social prominence hasn’t translated into political clout. When McCain spoke on Tuesday night, it was as a veteran and a patriot, not as the bearer of an alternative vision for the party or the country. As for campaign finance reform, he did not bring it up — except at Arianna Huffington’s Shadow Convention.
P There was a second tier of ex-candidates: those who arrived with delegates, if only a handful. Gary Bauer, who picked up 2 in the course of a long primary run, has for years been a staple of pre-convention platform meetings, weighing in especially on abortion. He skipped them this year, choosing instead to attend as the audio correspondent of the website Beliefnet.org. Perhaps it’s fair to say Bauer was less marginalized than privatized.
Alan Keyes, who endorsed Bush in late July, assembled a mighty 14 delegates. In Philadelphia, it seemed he had been transformed from curmudgeon into socialite. His packed convention schedule included a Judicial Watch luncheon on Sunday, a fiftieth-birthday celebration on Tuesday night, and a pro-life lunch on Wednesday.
The delegateless Utah senator Orrin Hatch can be added to this second tier. He participated enthusiastically as head of the Utah delegation, and was prominent at the Republicans’ public embrace of labor leader Jimmy Hoffa on Monday. It’s tough to tell how much of Hatch’s activity at the convention was due to recent grumbling among Utah Republicans that he was drifting too far to the center.
P Finally, there were those for whom the primary season had been a road out of politics altogether. New Jerseyite Steve Forbes lives about as far from Philadelphia’s First Union Center as the average Texan does from his corner store. But it wasn’t until late in the week that he made even a cameo appearance. Steve Forbes endorsed Bush in late March, but was nowhere near the podium last week.
Former Tennessee governor Lamar Alexander has been dividing his time between the Volunteer State and San Francisco. He was on Gov. Bush’s short list for vice president and spoke to the nominee the morning of the Cheney selection. But he gave up his Tennessee delegate’s seat, making Philadelphia the first Republican convention he missed since 1964.
Which brings us to Dan Quayle. Quayle, too, was absent last week, but his name was probably mentioned more than all the other also-rans combined (McCain excepted) — particularly after the vice presidential selection, which liberal media greeted with headlines like: “Cheney: Another Quayle?” As long as there’s a single Democrat left in the national news business, it seems that Quayle’s name will be invoked whenever Republicans gather.
Christopher Caldwell is senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
