I don’t think I’m revealing a big secret when I say every political journalist in America is longing for a contested Republican convention in Cleveland. And a few, like me, are even fantasizing about Hillary Clinton falling short of the requisite delegates to win her party’s nomination, which would lead to glorious floor fights when the Democratic convention convenes in Philadelphia.

More likely, the Democratic gathering will be another engineered love fest with the Clinton forces bending over backward to assuage disappointed Bernie Sanders fans. The Republicans, though, could definitely end up in a battle that would provoke one faction or another to abandon the eventual nominee and split the party. That is the kind of story that political reporters, commentators and cartoonists wait their whole careers to cover.

For nearly 200 years of America’s history, conventions were scenes of high drama, low tactics, backroom intrigue and public contentiousness. Abraham Lincoln’s come-from-behind victory over William Seward at the Republican convention in 1860 was a triumph of sharp wheeling and dealing, and the choice provoked the Southern states into secession. In 1968, the Democrats met in Chicago with riots in the street and chaos on the convention floor. Even those of us with decades in the news business have never gotten the chance to cover a national political convention that went beyond the first ballot, let alone instigated civil war.

In recent years, conventions have become nothing more than infomercials. With no doubt about who the nominees would be, television networks have sharply limited convention coverage and forced the parties to stick to a strict pre-scripted program in order to get a couple hours of air time per night. I have a feeling this year things will be different. The showdown between Donald Trump and all the people who want to deny him the GOP nomination will receive unlimited attention on TV.


In my lifetime there have been notable convention battles, such as Teddy Kennedy’s failed effort to dump President Carter at the 1980 Democratic convention, Ronald Reagan’s similarly unsuccessful push to deny President Ford the GOP nomination in 1976 and Nelson Rockefeller’s confrontation with Barry Goldwater’s insurgents in 1964. The last time the nominating process went beyond the first ballot, though, was way back in 1952 when Democrats finally chose Adlai Stevenson who went on to lose the general election to the Republican nominee, Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The horse-racing term “dark horse” was adopted by the political world to describe an obscure candidate who rises to victory through multiple ballots. In 1924, Democratic convention delegates spent more than a week casting 103 ballots before dark horse John W. Davis, a former ambassador to Britain, rose to the top -- only to slip back into obscurity after losing the fall election to President Coolidge. Four years earlier, Republicans did better when they took 10 ballots to bring in a dark horse of their own, Ohio Sen. Warren G. Harding, who went on to win the White House and then die in office.

It would be far too much to hope that a new dark horse would end up in the winner’s circle this year. That sort of thing just never happens anymore. But journalists can always dream. After all, no one expected Donald Trump.