Word: podium
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Very little was left to chance. The proceedings were so carefully scripted that virtually the only suspense was whether all 50,000 balloons in the Dallas Convention Center would disgorge on cue when Ronald Reagan and George Bush appeared on the podium for their victory waves the final evening. The party's conservative leadership was in such firm control that minority dissenters to the platform had no chance to raise their criticisms on the floor. Many of the principal speeches were edited by two Reagan campaign staffers, which may have been why there was such a similarity...
Santa Barbara, Calif. On Thursday night the glowing pair will be , posing again, this time on the podium in Dallas as thousands of cameras capture the political moment of the week...
...From the podium this week in the Dallas Convention Center, the President's tone will surely be more generous and magisterial. That is all according to plan. During the campaign, explains a political adviser, "you'll see aggressive speeches alternating in phases with 'statesmanlike' material." In his statesman mode, the President will let his optimism gush, encouraging voters to attribute the upbeat national mood to the presence of Ronald Reagan in the White House. Given the Democrats' recent flag-waving, middle-class tilt, he will work hard to protect his motherhood-and-apple-pie franchise...
Television's habit of cutting away at will from the podium began, with far more justification, in the days when conventions were a gaudy and contentious rite where delegates really debated and decided. Television boasted of the civic responsibility of its gavel-to-gavel coverage, but even then it was contrasting the shouting orator and the snoozing delegate or chasing politicians down hotel corridors, arguing that this was where the real news was being made. It was also where journalistic reputations were being made, which is why in its own interest each network lavished so much money on coverage...
...feeling abused. Though the Republicans and Democrats all but turn over their halls to television, the political parties do try to deny it one wish: television wants controversy; the parties aim for tranquillity. You can expect to see in Dallas, as in San Francisco, cameras diverted from the podium to watch the networks' high-priced news performers, wearing Mickey Mouse headsets and pushing through crowds, foraging forlornly for nonnews. At the convention's transcending moments, the big speeches, television is at its best. In San Francisco, these speeches were endlessly ballyhooed in advance in the irritating way television...