With this cheerful welcome, Iowa Sen. Lester Dickinson opened the 1932 Republican National Convention: “It’s about time that you folks quit talking about your families at home and how you’d run the government if you got the chance and take your seats. Let’s get this convention started.” Some 1,153 delegates grudgingly took their seats inside the massive Chicago Stadium.
In a time when political conventions were raucous weeklong events where anything could happen (and frequently did), the 20th quadrennial GOP gathering was, in the words of Time magazine, “singularly colorless.” Just like the president they had met to renominate. And that had the party faithful in a deep funk.
The Great Depression was in its third year. Conditions were growing worse every week. Compounding the problem, incumbent President Herbert Hoover seemed to have no plan for helping the country claw its way back to prosperity.
Though initially popular when first elected amid the booming Roaring Twenties economy in 1928, Hoover’s approval ratings tanked along with the stock market. Millions of unemployed workers saw him as the personification of all their problems. Add to that that he was a drab, buttoned-down business type who went fishing wearing a suit and tie.
As a result, the nearly 2,500 delegates and alternates meeting in hopes of him getting another four years in the White House displayed all the excitement of a funeral directors convention. Then, as now, folks who attend their party’s national convention are politicians. They knew that come November, their candidate would be DOA at the polls. It’s pretty hard getting motivated in a situation like that.
Suddenly, someone came up with an idea to generate at least a little enthusiasm.
Once Hoover and running mate Charles Curtis were nominated, a bundle of balloons was released from the stadium ceiling. It was a modest display by today’s extravagant standards. (In 2016, for instance, Democrats dropped more than 100,000 balloons in an orgy of descending latex.)
In 1932, it was a first, and the delegates loved it. In the convention’s closing moments, the childlike joy of tossing around brightly colored balloons and popping them finally brought some joy to the proceedings. Republicans left with a bounce in their step and a faint hope that maybe, just maybe, their nominee’s chances of winning weren’t so bleak after all.
But the “balloon bounce” didn’t last long. Hoover was soundly swept out of office that Nov. 8 by Franklin Roosevelt, winning just 59 electoral votes. Roosevelt turned out to be so popular, he remained president for the rest of his life.
Yet something lasting did emerge from that otherwise dour GOP gathering. The balloon drop marking a convention’s closing is now a firmly rooted political tradition. People liked it so much that even the Democrats eventually adopted it, though their relationship with the rite has been rockier than the Republicans’.
For example, there were no balloon drops at their 1984 and 1988 conventions, with Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis eventually losing both elections. They were also missing from Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 conventions, which was understandable because the first was outdoors and the latter was moved inside at the last minute. There were balloon-drop disasters at the 1980 convention and again in 2004, when, instead of cascading down on delegates like Niagara Falls, technical glitches made them trickle to the floor in a dribble. Both candidates lost their races, too.
Sadly, there’s probably no place for the balloon-drop tradition in this election cycle’s largely virtual conventions. Not a single balloon was dropped at the conclusion of last week’s Democratic gathering, and there likely won’t be balloons when the Republican convention wraps up Thursday night. Sure, Democrats had fireworks. But pyrotechnics are shared with the Fourth of July, New Year’s Eve, and lesser events. Balloon drops pretty much strictly belong to political conventions.
Like so many other things in this bizarre year, we will somehow manage to carry on without them. But at least one group is happy to see the tradition skipped this time around: custodians who would otherwise have to clean up the big mess after the party ends.
J. Mark Powell (@JMarkPowell) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He’s VP of communications at Ivory Tusk Consulting, a South Carolina-based agency. A former broadcast journalist and government communicator, his “Holy Cow! History” column is available at jmarkpowell.com.
