Remember 2008

Pundits sometimes lament a lack of drama at modern nominating conventions. The nominees are already known, it has been said, so nothing substantive happens; the delegates gather for a coronation rather than to make a decision.

There is some truth in this, but few are likely to offer such utterances for several cycles to come. For the Denver and St. Paul conventions, like so much in this extraordinary election, exploded with news and drama. Neither silly hats and buttons nor incanted sound bites and choreographed cheering concealed the huge impact of what happened during the past fortnight in Colorado and Minnesota.

Friction between the Clinton camp and the Obama campaign colored the first half of the Denver convention. Then Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) endorsed the victor in terms as unequivocal as her critics could wish. And she was followed by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, who made the case for Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) more deftly than any other politician, including the talented nominee himself, is capable of doing.

The extent of the Clintons’ support and effective campaigning for Obama in the weeks until Election Day remains to be seen. But in Denver, they finally drove talk of Democratic disunity underground. It was there that, for the first time in 20 months, the party came together with apparent singleness of purpose.

A week during which the stars (and weather) aligned for Obama ended at Invesco Field; the astonishing spectacle earned instant applause but then a measure of reappraisal a few considered caveats in the days that followed.

Then came St. Paul. At first it seemed headed for GOP disaster, with Hurricane Gustav making landfall close to New Orleans on the convention’s opening day. Just as a great swath of voters across the country was tuning in to the election, the memory of Hurricane Katrina loomed over Republicans like the Ghost of Failures Past.

As it turned out, however, all levels of government, including a Republican governor of Louisiana, appear to have handled the crisis with efficiency and aplomb, allowing the GOP to emerge with earned credits on day two of the convention.

And then Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the vice presidential nominee, made her Wednesday night debut — wowing a massive television audience inadvertently supplied by the tactically self-defeating attacks of her critics. The Palin momentum carried forward into Thursday, delivering a viewership for the nominee, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), even greater than had watched Obama at Invesco.

And so, this morning, the Republican candidate is ahead in polls close to the end of a cycle that should favor Democrats from the top to the bottom of the ticket. The campaign has been pushed, at least temporarily, onto a new course by an avalanche of political drama at back-to-back conventions.

Conventions remain hugely important. If in future years you hear the suggestion that they are vacuous, and reveal nothing but each party’s willingness to generate a simulacrum of excitement over pre-packaged rhetoric, respond by simply saying, “Remember 2008.”