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Party conventions are strange things, but we learn a lot from them

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Political conventions are strange tribal gatherings whose frequent emotional outbursts, frenzied responses to obscure issues and peculiar sense of embattled joy might prove upsetting to normal people. But for all their weirdness they are important tools of self-government because, at them, party insiders show you who they think they are.

Not a pretty sight, you say? But that matters. Especially if there's something more-than-usual wrong with a political party you want to discover it before you vote.

To be sure, much that happens at such gatherings seems like empty noise. For starters, any convention worth the cost of renting the hall will have a few 'red meat' speeches to 'energize the base' and let journalists use cliches as though they were going out of style.

Ordinary citizens often regard these predictable performances with predictable horror. Like sports fans trying to deafen their neighbours with endless blasts on cheap plastic horns because they idolize journeymen athletes paying for the "home" team that pays best, intense partisans can seem unbalanced and unselective in their enthusiasms. But you can learn a lot from the particular things that bring the faithful to their feet at any particular convention.

When, say, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie pushes Republican delegates' 2012 hot buttons it gives an unfiltered look at how they see the world. And love it or hate it you want to understand it because you never know, they might win.

Other speeches are revealing because they're not for insiders. Carefully tailored to a wider audience, they show how a party wishes outsiders would see them, how they think they are misunderstood and how they hope to fix it. Like Ann Romney's reasonably powerful attempt to "humanize" her husband because, face it, people don't feel at ease with Willard M. Romney even if he goes around saying "call me Mitt".

Then there's the standard American bit where delegates whose vote was determined in primaries five months ago stand on cue to say: "Mr. Chairman, the delegation from the great state of confusion proudly cast their votes for the next president of the United States, Paul E. Titian" before he predictably tumbles into permanent obscurity.

Formulaic? Absolutely. But revealing because of it. Consider how many Canadians find this rah-rah patriotism about states hard to find on a map off-putting precisely because it's one fascinating way American political culture differs from our own, regardless of party.

Then there was the response by Republicans delegates on opening night when an otherwise tedious speech indicted Barack Obama for waiving the TANF work requirement (see "frenzied responses to obscure issues" above) and audience members waved copies of the United States constitution.

Try to imagine Canadians rewarding a rousing line in political speech by waving copies of the Charter of Rights or the British North American Act they'd brought with them anticipating this golden moment. Or, indeed, see whether anyone waves the constitution when the Democrats meet in Charlotte, N.C., next week. Or whether they, like the Republicans, have a real-time debt clock prominently on display. Such details matter. They reveal the soul of the party.

Another important moment at this year's Republican convention came when Artur Davis, a former black Democratic congressman and Obama backer from Alabama, urged undecided independent voters and unhappy Democrats to listen to the latter party's convention in Charlotte and ask themselves whether they heard their own voices there. This message, especially from this messenger, speaks volumes about who Republicans want to be and think they are.

Fewer and fewer people are watching these spectacles, apparently. But that's revealing too, and bad, because it reflects growing disengagement with politics when government is bigger, more intrusive and more broke than ever.

Journalists, who love knock-out punches in debates because they're easy to cover, long for convention triumphs like Ronald Reagan's 1964 and 1976 speeches, or disasters like the riots at the Democrats' 1968 Chicago debacle. But such drama is rare and unnecessary.

The general tone of a convention that doesn't end with the candidate's hopes or even the hall in flames remains a highly revealing self-portrait of the party that held it. Even if gatherings of political junkies are inevitably also very weird.

Come to think of it, that's important too.

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