The first promise Susan Molinari made in her keynote address Tuesday night was to keep the speech short. She did. She had no choice. Like every other speaker at the convention, Molinari faced three lights as she stood at the podium. The first light was timed to go off when a speaker was 30 seconds from the end of his time. The second went off when 20 seconds remained. By the time the third light brightened, the speaker had ten seconds to shut up. After that, the microphone was set to go dead — the electronic-age version of the old vaudeville hook. Nor was ad libbing encouraged; the convention staff controlled the TelePrompTer. (We can understand why: After all, Newt Gingrich’s “beach volleyball” opening was not in the prepared text.) The only speakers who didn’t face the lights were the various clerics who opened the show each day — which may explain why the invocations tended to ramble.
To make as certain as possible that the message coming from the podium was the one that ended up on television, convention planners did their best to deny floor passes to political handlers. These are the sweaty-looking assistants who set up interviews for the politicians they work for. A pro- choice governor looking to air his views at an impromptu press conference on the convention floor couldn’t find a national audience because his handler wasn’t there to direct the right film crew to him. “Without their handlers,” chuckled one convention choreographer, “they don’t know WABC in Pittsburgh from Lesley Stahl.” That was the point.
