Henrietta Hay's Column

Let's face it. I'm a political junkie. I watch the national conventions on TV every four years. I cheer at one and boo at the other, but I'm the one that sticks around at the end until the balloons start popping as the people go out.

I know quite well that political conventions today have nothing to do with the selection of candidates for the presidency. They are colorful, noisy political extravaganzas designed to sell a candidate. But they still represent something important. They are part of a political ritual that is purely American and has a long and interesting history.

The people who go to the conventions are the real party workers. They are the ones who have worked hard and spent a lot of money and taken a lot of guff for years. They go to mill around and cheer and wear funny hats and hope they'll manage a few minutes on national television. But basically they go to make a statement. They're the ones who are politically committed to somebody or something.

Sure, some of the things they say are the same things that have been said for a hundred years but I find that sort of comforting and highly entertaining. "Ms. Chairman, the great state of Colorado, home of the most beautiful scenery in the world, almost home of a new airport, the ski capital of America, home of John Elway and the brand new Rockies, casts its votes for Joe Dokes." And the conventions are great fun - if you have a slightly wacky sense of humor and can stand the crowds and the heat.

I have never attended a national convention, but my mother helped nominate Wendell Willkie in Philadelphia in 1940. I couldn't watch the show on television, there being no television, but afterward she was as excited as I ever saw her. There were lots of women delegates that year, but I doubt that any of them exerted any power or spent any time on the podium except to count votes and fetch water.

This year, fifty years later, there is something new in the political picture. Everybody is yelling for CHANGE. We've got it. WOMEN. This is the year the women are not just stuffing envelopes and making coffee and waving banners. They are flexing their political muscles all across the country. They are the change. A combination of the anger caused by the Hill-Thomas hearings, and some really substantial fund raising for women is bringing women of both parties into positions of power.

Emily's List, a Democratic fund raising organization, had a party for the seven women running for the Senate. In one night they collected $750,000 to be added to the $2.25 million they had already raised this year. Most of this money has been given by women. The National Women's Political Caucus is raising more money than ever before for women candidates in both parties. Money talks, and women are finally able to speak the language.

And that's why I got mad during the Democratic Convention, not at the politicians but at the TV coverage. Seven Democratic women are running for the U. S. Senate and were scheduled to speak to the convention. Senator Barbara Mikulski, one of the two female senators who are hoping for more company this year, was introducing women candidates, including the seven Senate hopefuls. I heard Barbara Boxer and Maxine Waters and then CNN chose to cut to a discussion by the commentators telling us what we should be thinking. What I thought at that point was, "Hey you guys, you still don't get it!" So I didn't hear the other six, and that's when I turned the set off and went for a walk. What I did not realize until later was that C-SPAN skipped the chatter and had their cameras on the podium all the time.

Convention watchers like me prefer to see and hear what is going on in the convention hall, since that is the way to get a feel for the event. I know I am in the minority in this weird hobby of mine. Most Americans think the conventions are a complete waste of time and in a pragmatic sense they are. TV has turned it into an event for announcers. Sure it drags and gets boring a lot of the time, but there are always a few great moments of high drama that make it all worth while.

So I'm a political junkie. This is a wonderful year to be one. I think we'll see a lot more women in the halls of Congress.