Above, on his perch, the parrot sleeps, but below, in the lobby of the San Diego Marriott, the Pundit Gods sweep by. CNN’s William Schneider is soundbiting his way across the room, a radio microphone shoved in his face. James Carville is chatting with the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen as Norman Ornstein sidles up. The Wall Street Journal’s John Fund is sharing a laugh with the Nation’s Alexander Cockburn, but swivels to shake hands with a rushing Ed Rollins. Over by the couches, I think I see William Satire taking notes while interviewing a delegate, but he is only signing autographs.
Somewhere up in heaven, Plato, Shakespeare, Voltaire, and George Eliot are participating in a celestial edition of The Capital Gang, but here on earth, at this Republican convention, the Holy of Holies is the Marriott lobby. The organizers of the convention put the party poohbahs at the neighboring Hyatt, where the lobby is pristine and elegant. But the media Bigfeet are encamped here, so the tabletops are littered with journalism — newspapers, magazines, convention specials — and the air is filled with confident assertion.
George Stephanopoulos is spinning NPR’s Mara Liasson. A C-SPAN camera crew materializes, while from one of the couches, in front of which National Review’s Kate O’Beirne is standing, an actual nonpundit shouts at Stephanopoulos, “Where’s Craig Livingstone?” Chris Dodd walks in and shares a photo-op with Republican representative Ben Gilman and the ubiquitous Stephanopoulos. I think I see ABC’s Jeff Greenfield signing autographs, but apparently he’s lost his voice and is communicating by note.
David Broder, God bless his soul, was seen interviewing an authentic Republican, but from the sound of it, the interviewee was only repeating the pundit nuggets he’d heard David Broder utter that morning on one of the talk segments.
Nothing moves slowly in this lobby except Strom Thurmond, embracing a female admirer. Trent Lott’s entourage roars by, and one of the security guards nearly runs down the senior senator from South Carolina. That could have been the end. Lott has that politician’s speedwalk that forces aides to jog alongside, fumbling their papers. John E Kennedy, Jr. has the speedwalk too. His entourage — followers and camera crews — is twice the size of Lott’s.
Ranking according to size of entourage: Sex-god editors #1, former presidents like Gerald Ford #2, pro-choice Republican women senators #3, Senate leaders #4. Network on-air talent have a few producers in tow. PBS personalities walk alone. We print reporters don’t have entourages; we just travel in little clouds of irony.
If you go to the other side of the hotel, you can watch people lounging by the pool and observe that Kevin Phillips is the only person who looks gloomy while sunning himself. I run into E. J. Dionne poolside, and Frank Luntz stops by with the lowdown of the dial-test results on Monday night’s speeches, and some beautiful young women stroll past in string bikinis. Sen. Olympia Snowe is being interviewed at a nearby table (you don’t suppose she was talking about, oh, say… tolerance, do you?). The surroundings and weather here are so comfortable the Republicans could have nominated a slug for the presidency and they’d all be feeling cheerful about it.
But one can’t stay poolside for long, because upstairs in the lobby the world is going by. Candace Gingrich, who is surprisingly short, has settled into one of the comfy couches by the door and is laughing with her friends at the Republicans who are spotting her and laughing about her. Jonathan Schell, writing for Newsday, Daniel Franklin of the Economist, and I are figuring out which parties we can crash, when GOP media guru Mike Murphy slides into view. We’re rooting for him to get within quote range, but he drifts away. Sidney Blumenthal of the New Yorker crosses Murphy’s path and joins Jonathan Alter’s conversational clique, while a guy dressed up in an elephant suit is giving everybody high-fives. A cell phone rings and everybody grabs his pocket to see if it’s his.
Carville is back signing autographs, and two reporters from India come up to me to ask who he is. I explain that he’s a politico who has become as famous as a movie star and now gives speeches at $ 25,000 a pop. They can’t get their minds around this concept. “You mean he writes speeches for Democrats?” one keeps asking.
The power hour is 5 a.m. The media celebrities have just finished their gigs on the morning shows — pegged to East Coast time, they begin here before dawn, at 4 and now they’re back with five hours before anything else gets rolling. In a little while, Larry King will come down for his morning jog (no suspenders), and later Peter Jennings will go out for his run (baseball cap low, to hide his fame).
As the day goes on, the lobby gets more and more crowded. We complain that this convention is a vacuous event, knowing this complaint has become so commonplace as to become vacuous itself. So vacuousness chases vacuousness, and punditry rebounds off punditry, and except for the times when we wonder exactly why it is we’re all here, we’re having a wonderful time. And above us all, the parrot sleeps.
DAVID BROOKS
