After a dramatic bobble, Reagan picks the logical partner for a tough campaign

By Frank B. Merrick. Reported by Laurence I. Barrett and Walter Isaacson/Detroit.

There was no question who the Republican presidential candidate would be, of course, but there was much uncertainty about what kind of candidate he would be. Would Ronald Reagan insist on a vice-presidential nominee who would appeal only to true-blue conservatives? And in accepting the Republican nomination, would he sound a trumpet call for those same conservatives, relying chiefly on the increasing strength of the right to carry him to the White House--if it could? After four days of flag waving and festivity at the G.O.P. convention in Detroit, the answer was clear. Failing in a dramatic and ill-considered maneuver to get Gerald Ford on the ticket as vice-presidential candidate, Reagan settled for the logical choice, George Bush. And in his warm and well-presented acceptance speech the following night, he cast his appeal to all classes of Americans, to blue-collar workers as well as business executives, to women, to minorities, to immigrants. To them all, he quoted the hero of liberalism, Thomas Paine, when he declared, "We have it in our power to begin the world over again."

Reagan's victory was tarnished by a stunning stumble: his unseemly, eleventh-hour attempt to make a deal with Ford. Convinced that if the former President were his running mate, the ticket would be invincible, Reagan through intermediaries appealed to Ford's loyalty to the party and to the country. The Californian even offered to share his presidential powers with the ex-President. But all to no avail. Ford in the end declined to join the ticket, and the curious episode served only to raise questions about the nominee's judgment--and how far he was willing to go to win election in November.

Despite the Ford episode, the Republicans went home from Detroit more united than they have been since the Eisenhower years. The Reagan-Bush ticket is in some ways an unlikely alliance, one made not to satisfy the hearts of Republican conservatives but to suit their new sense of pragmatism and their determination to capture the White House. Reagan embodies the hard-line, return-to-old-values politics of the ideological purists who marched over the cliff with Barry Goldwater in 1964. Bush, though almost equally conservative, is an offspring of the party's Eastern Establishment, which the G.O.P. ideologues repudiated that same year. United, Reagan and Bush have a solid chance of winning in November. Their victory would help restore the Republican Party as a major force in national politics and give it a large voice in setting the direction of American society for years to come. Proclaimed Republican National Chairman Bill Brock from behind the red and white carnations on the convention podium: "This party is a new party--we are on our way up."

The Republican right wing that loyally supported Reagan was very much in control of the Detroit convention--of its machinery, its rules and its platform. The Sunbelt's polyester suits and white cowboy hats and STOP ERA buttons far outnumbered the striped ties and horn-rimmed glasses of the Northeast. Recognizing that there was no way to wrest back the control that had once been theirs, the moderates simply sat back and watched the show. Massachusetts Congressman Silvio Conte, a liberal firebrand on the platform committee at five previous conventions, backed out of serving on the panel this year. Said he: "What's the use? The numbers aren't there."

But despite the fervor of a few right-wing ideologues, who were chiefly responsible for the hard-line platform planks against abortion, the Equal Rights Amendment and school busing for racial desegregation, Reagan's convention managers and a majority of the delegates were determined to keep anyone from bolting the party as the moderated did in 1964. Most conservatives and their presidential nominee are now more tolerant of doctrinal differences within the party, and they are anxious to broaden its base. Put differently, winning is more fun than losing. Said Arizona Congressman John Rhodes, the convention's permanent chairman: "Four years ago, we had the purists against the pragmatists. This year 90% of the people here are pragmatists. It's a good omen."

No matter what their political views, virtually all Republicans at the convention were enthusiastic about their nominee. Despite the steaming Midwestern heat (97 degrees F on the second day at the convention), which taxed the arena's air conditioning, the thousands of delegates, alternates and guests chanted "Viva! Ole!", sang God Bless America, danced in the aisles and blew on party horns for 15 minutes after awarding the nomination to Reagan. Said Terrance Martin, 84, a delegate from Lake Havasu City, Ariz., as he stood clapping to celebrate Reagan's nomination: "This is what I've been working for since 1920, when I got involved in the Harding campaign. This time, we've got the right man at the right time."

As Reagan made clear in his 45-minute acceptance speech, he is determined to pursue a more centrist course in the election than is suggested by the language of his platform. The speech was not filled with great content; much of it was no more than a rephrasing of his campaign positions, superficial and rhetorical. But the great strength of the speech was Reagan's relaxed but forceful delivery. Said he: "We face a disintegrating economy, a weakening defense and an energy policy based on the sharing of scarcity. The major issue of this campaign is the direct political, personal and moral responsibility of Democratic Party leadership--in the White House and in Congress--for this unprecedented calamity which has befallen us." Reagan promised to freeze federal hiring, increase U.S. defenses, cut taxes and take measures to stimulate stronger economic growth. But at the same time, he reached out to groups that might be disaffected by his conservatism. Early in his speech he pledged as President to work with the 50 Governors to "eliminate discrimination against women." At the end, his voice choked by emotion, he asked for a moment of silent prayer, then declared: "God bless America." The delegates, who had interrupted him 70 times with applause, cheers and blaring horns, leaped to their feet for a 20-minute ovation. Over and over again they sang God Bless America and This Land Is Your Land. A few even sang Boola-Boola, in honor of Yale Graduate ('48) Bush.

Reagan's unaccustomed role as a healer of political divisions was much in evidence at the convention. After a dozen years of ardently wooing the party, he had the nomination in his grasp, and he was not about to let the party splinter as it did in 1964. During the primary campaign, Reagan complained to reporters that they were incorrectly perpetuating "the notion that [in his films] I never got the girl in the end. In fact, I was usually the steady, sincere suitor--the one the girl finally turned to."

Thus when the G.O.P. turned to him at last, Reagan cautiously avoided Goldwater's mistake of coming on too strong. Instead of extremism, Reagan seemed to be telling the faithful. It is pragmatism that is no vice. At his request, the far-right spokesmen held down their rhetoric. Anti-ERA Leader Phyllis Schlafly was very quiet, unusually so. Fundamentalist Preacher Jerry Falwell, whose Moral Majority organization has registered 2 million new voters, made no ringing speeches. Even former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who is anathema to the extreme right, was welcomed with applause when he appeared on the podium. This time, said Pennsylvania's Thornburgh, the Republicans have no desire to "leave the battlefield littered with the wounded from an ideological tong war."

The convention opened with an outpouring of oratory and patriotic pageantry. Pat Boone led the Pledge of Allegiance, Glen Campbell and Tanya Tucker (whose living arrangements might not please pro-family delegates) sang the National Anthem. Billy Graham gave the first evening's invocation. Then the speaker got down to the main order of business: indicting Jimmy Carter for weak leadership, bad judgment and general ineptitude. William Simon, who was Treasury Secretary in the Nixon and Ford administrations, blamed Carter for high inflation, high interest rates and high unemployment. Said Simon: "Surely, this administration will go down in history as the worst stewards of the American economy in our lifetime."

The most blistering attack--and the best received by the delegates on opening night--came from Gerald Ford, who accused Carter of having "sold America short" and of having "given up on the presidency." Ford clearly relished getting even with Carter for having attacked Ford in 1976 because of what Carter dubbed the "misery index"--the sum of the inflation and unemployment rates. It was then 12%. Said Ford: "Just two months ago, it was 24%--twice as high. That's twice as many reasons that Jimmy Carter has got to go." Continued Ford: "You've all heard Carter's alibis; inflation cannot be controlled. The world has changed. We can no longer protect our diplomats in foreign capitals, nor our workingmen on Detroit's assembly lines. We must lower our expectations. We must be realistic. We must prudently retreat. Baloney!"

To keep the convention flowing smoothly, Reagan's floor manager, Illinois Congressman Bob Michel, and Reagan's convention director, William Timmons, worked behind the scenes, massaging disgruntled conservatives and moderates to keep them from violating the theme of unity. Said Connally, who watched the proceedings from the galleries: "The word went out that everyone ought to be courteous, reasonable. Underlying it all was the sobriety of success." The word was passed by 17 Reagan ships, wearing red and white hats. Reagan stalwarts recognized those hats as the same kind that Ford's forces, who were also led by Timmons, wore when they beat back Reagan's challenge on the floor of the 1976 convention in Kansas City, Mo. Groused North Carolina Delegate Tom Ellis: "They didn't even have to buy new hats. They're the same hats with the same bodies that were against us four years ago."

The Reagan whips blocked a move by far-right forces, organized by Howard Phillips, national director of the Conservative Caucus, to keep Kissinger from addressing the convention. Said Phillips: "We hope that Ronald Reagan will not be the third President to work for Henry Kissinger." (Kissinger insisted that he had no such aspirations. Said he: "I am not here as a job seeker.") Similarly, the Reagan lieutenants vetoed moderate moves that might discomfit conservatives. Thus when New York Republican National Committeeman Richard Rosenbaum urged convention managers to schedule a brief tribute to Nelson Rockefeller ("We have to make room for decency in politics"), he was rebuffed. Reagan's advisers reasoned that a tribute to Rockefeller, even though he was dead, might reopen the bitter ideological quarrel of 1964.

Despite many moderate Republicans' anger over several hard-line platform planks, all efforts to amend them were squelched. To protest the platform's repudiation of the ERA, some 4,500 women (and a few men) marched through downtown Detroit as a sidewalk band mockingly played I Want A Girl Just Like the Girl That Married Dear Old Dad. But when John Leopold, a member of the Hawaii delegation, proposed from the floor that the platform be reconsidered, he failed to stir support from any delegation.

Illinois Senator Charles Percy suffered an even tougher defeat at the hands of his own state's delegation. He took vigorous exception to the platform's judiciary plank, which proposes that only people who oppose abortion should be appointed federal judges. "The worst plank that has ever been in a platform," railed Percy at a special caucus of the Illinois delegation. But at a Reagan lieutenant's request, two Illinois delegates were prepared to deflect Percy's challenge. The delegation voted by 75 to 27 to table Percy's motion.

With dissent stifled on the floor, Reagan could afford to spend the second day of the convention soothing hurt feelings. He met in the morning with 17 women, including his daughter Maureen, 39, who describes herself as a feminist. He promised to seek out women for high appointive office and work to repeal state and federal laws that discriminate against women. Said former G.O.P. National Chairman Mary Louise Smith, an ERA supporter: "We came away feeling good."

Reagan made a gesture toward blacks, who have given him little support in the past, by appearing at a reception for the 56 black delegates and 78 black alternates (in 1976 the party had 76 black delegates). He told them that he opposes Democratic proposals for helping minorities with "more handouts and Government grants" because they are simply another kind of welfare--"insulting and demeaning, another kind of bondage." His listeners applauded, though they were not entirely won over.

Reagan intervened personally with convention officials to enable NAACP Executive Director Benjamin Hooks to speak at the convention that evening, but only after Hooks promised to say nothing that might embarrass the Republicans. Hooks urged the Republicans to work for full employment, low-cost public transportation and an extension of the Voting Rights Act, which is to expire in 1982. His plea was politely received by the delegates--again on instructions from Reagan's floor lieutenants.

The delegates needed no such prompting when Nancy Reagan appeared in the gallery for the first time, or when Barry Goldwater, looking frail after a hip operation, approached the microphones to reminisce about 1964. When the delegates' roars of "We want Barry" subsided, he quipped: "Thank you, folks. Can I accept the nomination?" John Connally also drew enthusiastic cheers and applause by quoting Senator Edward Kennedy's caustic comments on Carter's economic and foreign policies. Said Connally: "We agree with Senator Kennedy that we need a new President." New York Congressman Jack Kemp, a leading proponent of the deep tax cuts that Reagan is urging, drew an equally rousing reception when he predicted a "tidal wave" Republican victory in November.

The final speaker of the evening was Henry Kissinger. He had met earlier in the day with Reagan, who sought to smooth over their differences in an effort to build a bridge to the foreign policy establishment. After the session, Kissinger said: "I felt that the Governor's position, as it was explained to me, was one that I find compatible with my own." In his speech that evening, Kissinger warmly described Reagan as the "trustee of our hopes" for relief from the Carter administration's "feeble and apologetic" diplomacy. But Kissinger made no mention of the issues on which he and Reagan disagree, chiefly his policy of detente with the Soviet and his negotiation of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks.

Kissinger emphasized his belief that the U.S. must "catch up" with the Soviet Union in military strength. Like Reagan, however, he stopped short of calling for U.S. military superiority, as demanded by the G.O.P. platform. When pressed by reporters about whether catching up meant going beyond the Soviets, Kissinger became evasive. He said the issue is "not a numbers game" and that U.S. strength must be built up, "whatever label you give it." At the same time, however, Kissinger continues to believe that the U.S. should be willing to negotiate with the Soviets. He indicated that he had been assured that a Reagan administration would be "prepared to negotiate to push back the specter of nuclear war, to reduce arms and to establish rules of international conduct on the basis of strict reciprocity and principle." Kissinger also warned that the U.S. must not abandon the Third World. Said he: "We have many true friends in the developing world...They wait for our leadership; they require our protection."

On the third night of the convention came the moment that had eluded Reagan for twelve years. But first he had to endure a long, windy keynote speech by Michigan Congressman Guy Vander Jagt, who recited Henry Van Dyke's interminable America for Me [Sample verse: I know that Europe's wonderful, yet something seems to lack: The Past is too much with her, and the people looking back. But the glory of the Present is to make the Future free--We love our land for what she is and what she is to be.] and quoted Thomas Jefferson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Finally, the speeches were over, and Reagan's name was put in nomination by his old friend Laxalt. The nomination was seconded by several people, and then the states began casting their ballots. Montana's 20 votes pushed Reagan's total above the 998 that he needed for the nomination, and pandemonium broke out. Some 12,000 red-white-and-blue balloons, which dozens of volunteers had spent nine hours blowing up, dropped from the ceiling as Manny Harmon's Convention Orchestra played Sousa marches.

Surrounded by wife Nancy, sons Michael, 35, and Ron, 22, and daughters Patricia, 27, and Maureen, a broadly grinning Reagan watched the proceedings on TV from his 69th-floor suite in the Detroit Plaza Hotel. He gave his wife a victory kiss and then drove the short distance to the Joe Louis Arena to acknowledge the cheers of his supporters and to clear up the confusion over his running mate.

On the following night, after he had formally accepted the nomination and delivered the address witnessed by millions of Americans, Reagan again stood on the platform, this time with Bush at his side. The very fact that they were together indicated the political changes in the men and, more important, in their party. Both G.O.P. wings have set aside their differences to form a practical alliance. The glue that holds this coalition together is based largely on economic issues. But is also is helped by the poor performance of the Carter administration and the fact that the new Republicanism is coming to life at a time when traditional party loyalty is warning, making shifts of allegiance easier for voters.

Presidential politics is, more than anything else, personality politics. The campaign will take many unexpected twists and turns before Election Day on Nov. 4. But last week, in Joe Louis Arena, the Republican Party seemed clearly to have stolen a march on the Democrats in the contest to form a new, right-center coalition and become the new majority.

The New Pragmatism Overcomes Even an Old Antagonism

By George J. Church, Reported by Douglas Brew\Detroit.

For George Bush, the vice presidential nomination is not just a consolation prize but a goal that he has pursued for two years--or so his aides are now saying. At their first strategy meetings in 1978, one adviser told TIME last week, Bush and his campaign planners recognized that Ronald Reagan might well be unbeatable in 1980. So, says his aide, Bush decided at the outset to campaign for the Oval Office and simultaneously to position himself for the vice presidency.

Bush stoutly denies this story. "Absolutely not," he says. And, since it makes his campaign seem thoughtfully planned rather than indecisive or excessively gentlemanly, the tale may indeed contain an element of after-the-fact rationalizing. But Bush's campaign could hardly have been better designed to make him Vice President than if that really had been its purpose from the start.

Even before those initial 1978 strategy sessions, Bush was careful to touch base with Reagan. He and his campaign-manager- to-be, James Baker, paid a courtesy call on Reagan in California in 1977 to inform him that they were setting up a committee to explore a Bush run for the nomination. Baker recalls that Bush and Reagan chatted for a "very cordial 30 minutes."

This year in the heady weeks after his unexpected victory in the Iowa caucuses in January, Bush failed to define a set of positions--"to go from George Who to George What," in Baker's words. Such positions might have made Bush seem a clear-cut alternative to Reagan, but also an incompatible running mate. And even after Bush suffered a stunning defeat in New Hampshire in February, he steadfastly refused advice from some of his staff to criticize reagan harshly, though that is the standard strategy for reviving a faltering campaign. That refusal was widely ascribed to Ivy Leaguer Bush's disinclination to get into a rough-and-tumble fight, but it turned out fortunately.

During the campaign, Bush seemed just sufficiently moderate to win six primaries from Reagan, including those in the key states of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Michigan. That gave him 266 delegates and showed that he had enough electoral appeal to be an attractive choice for Vice President.

Reagan's staffers favored Bush, if they could not get their "dream ticket" with Gerald Ford. But there was one big problem: Reagan himself doubted whether Bush was tough enough for the job. Another problem: Nancy Reagan did not particularly care for Bush.

The two nominees do not know each other at all well. Apart from Bush's visit in 1977, they had met primarily on the dais at party functions and at the pre-primary debates. One was the now celebrated affair in Nashua, N.H., where Reagan invited four other candidates into what was supposed to be a one-on-one confrontation, and a thoroughly flustered Bush would not agree to a change in the rules to let them speak. The incident left an unfavorable impression of Bush not only on the New Hampshire voters but on Reagan. Says Nevada Senator Paul Laxalt: "Reagan thinks Bush choked in Nashua."

Reagan also worried a bit about Bush's advocacy of the Equal Rights Amendment and his opposition to a constitutional amendment that would ban abortion, stands that arouse the passionate dislike of some of Reagan's followers. Finally, says one Republican National Committee official, Reagan by last Wednesday "was getting sick and tired of having George Bush's name shoved down his throat by his staff."

Still, after Ford finally said no to the vice presidential nomination, Reagan immediately settled on Bush and the two began presenting an image of good fellowship. At a joint press conference, a reporter asked how they got along personally. Replied Reagan, with a broad grin: "We've been together for a couple of hours this morning, and I didn't get much sleep last night, and there has not been a cross word between us." Another reporter asked if it bothered Bush that "you are the No.2 choice for the No.2 spot?" Replied Bush: "What difference does it make? It's irrelevant. I'm here."

The two do have some differences, however. Careful though Bush was not to attack Reagan personally during the primaries--the only thing he did tko emphasize the contrast between Reagan's 69 years and his own 46 was to brag endlessly that he jogs two or three miles a day--Bush did lash heartily into some of Reagan's positions. The most important was Reagan's advocacy of a 30% cut in income tax rates over three years, a proposal that the nominee not only repeated but stressed in his acceptance speech last week. During the primaries, Bush derided that idea as "voodoo economics" and "pie in the sky."

Bush also attacked Reagan's suggestion that the U.S. might blockade Cuba in reprisal for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. A blockade, he said, would tie up the entire U.S. Atlantic Fleet for no useful purpose: "The Cubans didn't invade Afghanistan. The Soviets did." And while Bush did not stress his positions on the ERA and abortion during the campaign, he did not conceal them. Democrats will make what they can of these differences. Democratic National Chairman John C. White, for example, portrays Bush as a weakling for accepting the very conservative Republican platform: "That by-golly ambition got him. He caved in completely."

In fact, Bush seems a moderate only in comparison to Reagan, and not all that moderate even by those standards. They share much of the same basic conservative philosophy: Bush has assailed Big Government and its omnipresent regulation almost as often as Reagan himself, and Bush has just as frequently demanded a bug U.S. military buildup and a stern policy toward the Soviets. Bush too has emphasized tax cuts as an essential part of his economic strategy. He insisted last week that he fully supported Reagan's call for a 10%, $36 billion first-stage reduction in 1981.

The real differences between Bush and Reagan are in style and manner. The son of a Connecticut banker and Senator, educated at Andover and Yale, frequently dressed in red tie and blazer, Bush is the very embodiment of the Eastern Republican Establishment that many of Reagan's rougher-hewn followers detest. Thirty-two years in Texas, where he made a fortune now estimated at more than $1.8 million in the oil business, have left no trace of the Sunbelt in his voice or manners. As a Congressman (1967-70) who later served brief terms as Ambassador to the U.N., chairman of the Republican National Committee, envoy to China an director of the CIA, he also is a member of the Washington Establishment to which Reagan is a complete outsider.

During the primary campaign, Bush's background hurt him. Publisher William Loeb effectively sneered at him in New Hampshire as a "clean-fingernails Republican." But now that Bush is the running mate, his credentials ought to help. He brings to the ticket Washington expertise and foreign policy experience, two things that Reagan conspicuously lacks. More fundamental, Bush appeals to a sector of the electorate crucial to a Reagan victory: voters who are receptive to a conservative appeal but have long distrusted Reagan as a potential far-right extremist.

Such voters, says Haley Barbour, who managed Gerald Ford's Southeastern campaign in 1976, "will like Reagan better for choosing Bush. It shows he is pragmatic and not the kamikaze right-winger that some people would have you believe." William Durham, who ran Howard Baker's short-lived campaign in South Carolina, believes that the choice of Bush will especially help Reagan with young professionals who are economically conservative but socially liberal and who so far have found Reagan "difficult to swallow; they don't know what's behind him."

Bush himself is a more mature, more forceful campaigner than when he set out on the long primary trial. His voice is still reedy but his delivery, once rapid to the point of being jumbly, has become measured. His speeches are no longer strewn with the preppy ("fantastic") or jargony ("power curve") phrases that bombed in New Hampshire. Harder to measure, but more important, his bubbly optimism seems to have changed into a more tempered and somber attitude. Though he still laughs easily with the press, his comments to reporters these days often have a hint of asperity. At last week's joint press conference with Reagan, Bush told a questioner: "I'm not going to get nickel-and-dimed to death with detail" about his differences with the presidential nominee.

One of the more effective campaigners for Bush is his wife Barbara, 55, who comes from a background much like his. The daughter of a wealthy publishing executive in Rye. N.Y., she graduated from the fashionable Ashley Hall school for girls in Charleston, S.C., then attended Smith College for one year. She dropped out to marry Bush over 35 years ago, after they had met at a dance while both were home on Christmas vacation. Mrs. Bush maintains that "I'm a nester" who likes nothing better than to putter around their home in Houston on weekends. Nonetheless, she campaigns tirelessly for Bush--and unlike Nancy Reagan, who generally prefers to be on a platform with her husband and close at hand, Barbara Bush often goes off on her own separate campaign tours.

Mrs. Bush jokes effectively about her winter-white hair and wrinkle-creased face. She drew a laugh from a women's Republican club last winter by remarking that every so often someone would tell her: "My, your son gave a good speech--only they don't mean my son." She plays the totally supportive wife, constantly reciting her husband's qualifications for high office. In answer to a question, she remarked: "I'm not running for President, so I am not going to tell you my position on abortion. But I would love to tell you what George's is."

George's position now is to be totally supportive of Reagan. On the night of his own nomination, Bush kept his speech phenomenally short (five minutes), remarking toward the close: "This is Ronald Reagan's night. He is the man whom you and the American people are waiting to hear." And if the ticket wins? Bush would be absolutely loyal. He told TIME last week: "The most important thing is to have a Vice President that the President is comfortable with. The worst thing would be to have a Vice President whom he would have to look at over his shoulder to make sure he wasn't going to push him off a cliff." George Bush is not like that. And Reagan knows it.

By John F. Stacks.

Twenty thousand people poured into Detroit last week to attend the Republican National Convention. They did so at great personal expense and not inconsiderable inconvenience, and they did so even though they knew that the convention does not really do what it was designed to do: select a presidential candidate. The delegates have become bit players in what amounts to a ritual drama.

From the first full-scale convention in 1831 until 1972, the delegates actually did select a nominee, although the question was frequently settled by party leaders and bosses well before the convention met. In fact, no convention since 1952 has taken more than one ballot to pick its candidate.

But the drive for a true change in the role of the nominating convention began after the Democratic disaster in Chicago in 1968, at which the wheel-horses of the local political organizations chose Hubert Humphrey over Eugene McCarthy, to the accompaniment of street rioting.

So many Democrats that year opposed the war in Viet Nam so strongly that incumbent Lyndon Johnson chose not to seek re- election, and although the convention dutifully picked Johnson's Vice President, Humphrey lost the election at least partly because of the discontent that the convention left behind.

Reformers in the Democratic Party then rewrote their rules and turned the selection process over to the voters, who were asked to stage a primary or caucus in each state. Primaries were not new. For years they had been essentially "beauty contests" that tested a candidate's appeal to the voters but did not usually bind the convention delegates. In 1952, for example, Estes Kefauver swept through the 15 primaries, only to be denied the nomination by party bosses who gave it to Adlai Stevenson instead. Under the new rules drafted after 1968, the results of the primaries became blinding on convention delegates. "Direct democracy" had triumphed. The convention, rather than choosing a President, simply celebrated the result. Says Kansas Senator Nancy Kassebaum, whose father Alf Landon was nominated at a "real" convention in 1936: "I miss the rough-and-tumble. This is all a little sanitized."

The convention is now a series of rituals: wearing a funny hat, collecting buttons and hangovers; even appearing on television--no small inducement. And the odds on being seen back home have improved over the years. The 1980 convention floor was packed not only with hordes of network reporters but also flocks of local television crews from all over the country, videotaping their delegations.

The importance of television can hardly be overstated. It was in 1972 in Miami Beach that Richard Nixon took the modern convention to its full contemporary role--a four-day-long TV show. His aides actually wrote a script for the convention. Last week's extravaganza went so far as to include the appearances of key Republicans on morning and evening television news shows as part of the daily convention schedule. The timing, the lighting, the selection of entertainers, the sequence of speakers, the music, the makeup on the politicians' faces, everything was for television.

To the delegates in the huge studio of the Joe Louis Arena, the TV men were the stars. High above the convention floor, the anchorman looked down on the proceedings like actors regarding an audience. On the floor, the delegates jammed up around the Rathers and the Brokaws, who were elegantly attired in starched shirts, collar pins, expensive suits--and sneakers to save their feet. Between interviews, the media celebrities signed autographs.

Television years ago captured the political convention. But the political convention also captured television. The ratings wars depend in part on the network performance at the conventions, and the networks spare no expense ($30 million and 1,800 people for the 1980 Republican Convention) to make a show of it. The networks have in some measure replaced the parties as the vehicles of organization and information. Without television there is no convention. Without television there is no campaign. But with television, the convention is more than a few thousand people perspiring in the same large room. With television, the political convention is a national event.

To be sure, much of what is seen is falsified, show-biz fashion (Donny and Marie Osmond "lip-synched" their songs). In the age of television, however, access to the medium is access to the voter. Reagan Pollster Richard Wirthlin believes there are two periods in the general election campaign during which voters make their decisions. The first is at convention time; the second is in the last ten days of the campaign. The convention commands attention and helps the nation decide who shall be President.

That the delegates are extras in a stage production certainly reduces their importance at convention time. But their importance in politics is not diminished. These are the workers, the activists, the spear carriers in the political armies that form every four years. Their reward is the pleasure of a shared cause, the satisfaction of a victory they helped to produce. For them the convention is a reunion and a reassurance that others care about the same things. They share their enthusiasms, their passion for politics, and they, like conventioneers everywhere, have parties and enjoy themselves. Says a first-time conventioneer, Lois Lipson: "I'm an inveterate people watcher. Last night I met Liz Taylor. I've never had so much fun in my life."

They all had fun in Detroit last week, but the convention commanded less than the overwhelming attention of the American people. The barrage of opening-day speeches drove many viewers to even the dreariest local programming. Only Wednesday night's drama of the bargaining over Jerry Ford and Reagan's Thursday night acceptance speech provided good theater. It is possible that the convention will soon adjust to the public impatience: shorter conventions, fewer and shorter speeches and less of the boring ritual. The politicians will adapt, or if they do not, television will simply reduce its coverage when there is not real conflict to report. Coverage of next month's Democratic Convention will probably use even more hours.

Nonetheless, the conventions, as pageants and pep rallies and political institutions, will continue to serve an important function. For all their tedium, their cost and their predictability, they are a vital link between the presidential candidates and the nation in the age of television.

Now the nation must get serious about Ronald Reagan, and it may not be all that easy.

For a few of us he has been around almost forever. His was the voice of the Big Ten football games coming out of the maw of the cathedral radio from station WHO in Des Moines during the depths of the Depression. Some of his major league baseball broadcasts, with vivid descriptions of crowds and players, with soaring enthusiasm at the crack of the bat, turned out to be faked in the Iowa studio, which was the way it was done in those days. But by the time we found out, he was in Hollywood, which made "Dutch" Reagan seem just that much more talented.

From the dying Gipper at Notre Dame to George Custer in Santa Fe Trial, Reagan floated through our lives as a two- dimensional celluloid diversion. He never seemed to change much even when he became Governor of California. There he was in his white suit, eating jelly beans. Old Dutch was fun.

When he took to national politics there still was something unreal about him. He was a nice guy in an airplane, with a pretty wife, bumping around the country, dismayingly pleasant, shuffling his file cards and giving audiences his rouser on family and freedom. A lot of people thought that one morning they would wake up an he would be gone, back with his old footage on one of those sunny hills where aging actors go to wrinkle, with only their memories watching.

So when Dutch stood there the other night in his Eastern Establishment dark suit, giving a speech that could have been written by a Democrat and invoking the ghost of F.D.R. in the name of the Republican Party, some of us had to pinch ourselves.

Reagan is for real. But one must wonder sometimes if he totally understands that, or understands the deadly game he has just joined. Demonstrating that he has three dimensions and that he is serious about governing is Reagan's greatest challenge. He is a far piece from WHO and those ice cream sports jackets that Governors wear and even the fantasyland that was operating in Detroit.

The Reagan hard core of course was there with shining eyes, their enduring faith only deepened and hardened. But beyond convention euphoria, a lot of Americans still are tentative in their belief, as measured by the pollsters and by almost anyone traveling this country in the past few days. It is Reagan against a mean world now, not just out to capture the ears of burned-out farmers or the romantic urges of adolescent movie addicts.

There are a couple of things going for him. The conservatism found in the convention hall may be something new in this nation. The body of this Republicanism came there out of personal experience and alarm, driven to conservatism and Reagan not by birthright but because of the tax burden, Government regulations, inflation and interest rates, fear of another war. If they reflect the majority of his nation, then Ronald Reagan has only to preach his gospel and to keep smiling and he could win.

And once again as event swirled through Detroit we saw the pervasive power of the electronic media in public life. It may be that in our time no man can either achieve the office or be an effective President without being at least half actor, able to get the nation's attention and educate and inspire those who stop to listen. We know Reagan is at least half actor. but, to steal the title of his autobiography, Where's the Rest of Me?