Conventional hoo-ha

Sorry, news fans, almost nothing could have bumped the Republican
National Convention from the covers of the Big Three newsweeklies this
week.

Maybe if the Concorde had crashed into Manhattan -- and had been
loaded with the owners of major league baseball teams instead of German
tourists. Maybe if John Rocker had Uzied the press box at Yankee
Stadium. Maybe if Al Gore had dropped out of the presidential race in
favor of Chelsea Clinton.

But none of those events could probably have changed things.

Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report, which have not
triplicated their covers in many months, had each already decided they'd
rather be in Philadelphia this week, no matter how dead, predictable and
pre-packaged things were going to be there.

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Each magazine puts a different spin on its Bush-Cheney-convention
packages. But

Time ("Inside the Bush Dynasty: The Making of a Candidate") and

Newsweek ("The Avengers: Taking Aim at the Age of Clinton") go ga-ga in providing the casual reader/voter with the basic angles and background.

Newsweek devotes 27 editorial or pictorial pages to the life stories of George W. Bush and his VP Dick Chaney. There are sidebars on their wives, a piece on how Bush might govern, a Q&A with ex-President Bush and a photo gallery of other current Republican political dynasties.

Time has 27 pages -- or is it 28? It depends on how or what you count. Whatever. Time also thoroughly covers the basics, but focuses more heavily on the extended Bush clan. There's even an illustrated sidebar on the status of Cheney's shaky heart, plus a forgettable three-page Q&A with George W. and a double-page Bush family tree that the editors would have been wise to have pruned.

As for political spin, neither Time nor Newsweek is ever going to be accused of being in the sack with the conservatives at National Review or even Fox News. Neither betrays any fondness for Bush, for Republicans or for any of the principles of conservatism.

But both are on the same page about Bush's character: He's a team builder, a good delegater, a cautious, under-experienced man of privilege who's no genius but arguably smart enough to be president.

Time's discussion of

Cheney's near-perfect conservative voting
record in Congress, however, shows how easily certain slants -- what are known less euphemistically in some circles as "liberal media bias" -- can creep into mainstream "news" stories.

Take, for instance, Newsweek's piece on the choice of Cheney, who was Bush's father's Secretary of Defense during the Gulf War. "Backseat Driver" is shorter and not nearly as informative as Time's six-page spread, which includes a short piece on Cheney's daughter Mary, who is gay.

Newsweek's article on

Dick
Cheney (which probably should have done more than merely mention Cheney's daughter Mary only in passing) is no puff piece.

But unlike Time's Richard Lacayo, Newsweek's Bill Torque and Mark Hoenball made sure to provide brief explanations for Cheney's nearly pure conservative voting record in Congress, which Democrat operatives were quick to point out prove he is a hard-core right-wing gun nut out of touch with a modern, caring liberal society (or something like that).

Take, for instance, Cheney's vote in 1986 against a call for the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in South Africa. The Cheney corner's explanation, as Newsweek's writers point out but Time's doesn't, was that Mandela's political party was run by Commies.

Time merely -- and either sloppily or unfairly -- says Cheney was still "fumbling" around to explain a decision that, without elaboration or context, makes Cheney look exactly like what Dems want him to look like: some kind of closet racist.

Time also failed to find space or time to provide Cheney's reasons for several other politically incorrect votes, such as one against armor-piercing "cop-killing" bullets (he thought -- horrors -- that existing laws would suffice).

Time's liberal tilt is apparent throughout its Cheney stories package. It manages to make Cheney's staunch positions sound like something shocking and shameful, not what they are -- good old-fashioned, Goldwaterian conservatism, not wishy-washy New Republicanism.

Such Limbaughian quibbling aside, however, Time and Newsweek each do thorough and commendable jobs of providing mainstream readers with what they need to know. Mega-packages like these -- well-reported, well-written and interestingly illustrated -- are still what the news mags do best.

U.S. News, the smaller of the Big Three newsweeklies, can't compete with Time and Newsweek's bigger staffs and deeper pocketbooks. Its convention coverage touches on the basics, and its

Terence
Samuel does a decent impersonation of a partisan Democrat while describing Cheney's icky voting record.

But in many ways, U.S. News' nine-page historical look at the 1948 Republican and Democrat conventions -- both held in Philly at the dawn of the TV age -- is the most interesting package of the three.

"Philadelphia
Story," by Roger Simon, includes great photos of the noisy, rowdy, unscripted conventions that nominated Truman and Dewey and whose workings were still dominated by party operatives, not primary results.

Simon's story, which is from a long, long technological time ago, is as much about media as politics. In 1948, radio and newspapers were about to be blown away by the "telecameras" of a new medium that still had much to learn about its own workings and power.

Simon describes how network TV crews learned to do live interviews and how TV quickly forced floor speeches to be shortened. And, as Time magazine said then, Simon shows how television made the balloting and floor demonstrations "bigger and more exciting than they actually were."

That part about conventions being "more exciting than they actually are" is, as we know, no longer true in the day of scripted, pre-packaged party conventions. Which is why Simon's piece -- about a wilder, nuttier time -- might be good to read while you're waiting for the thrills of the 2000 Democrat Convention to begin.

Quicker convention reads
The

Weekly Standard's special convention issue is largely moot, now that all the speechifying is over. But in

"Prime Time
Bush," Fred Barnes said that Bush's acceptance speech last night was -- after choosing a good VP (which Barnes says he did) -- the next crucial big test he has to pass on the road to winning the White House.

Barnes said Bush "repeatedly told his aides to make the speech more direct, simple, and personal" and to be "from the heart." Bush wanted it to be "passionately personal," said Barnes, "which means more personal than any presidential nominee's acceptance speech yet uttered and more personal than any speech he's ever given.

"He wants, according to a senior aide, 'to confirm in people's minds who Bush is and the best things about him.' He'll have succeeded," wrote Barnes, "if he creates the image of a candidate whose agenda is distinct from anyone else's and of a man who is personally different from the ordinary run of politicians." Whether Bush fulfilled Barnes' predictions or succeeded in creating a White House-capturing image is now known to all.

In its current issue,

The
Economist says in its critical but ultimately friendly "leader" (editorial) that it's not brains but temperament that is the most important measure of a candidate's qualifications to be president. And the editors say Bush is "ready" to be president.

In its article "Preparing America for Compassionate Conservatism," the British magazine -- which supported John McCain in the primary -- quotes George W. Bush's public verbal attack on an unnamed reporter who had once predicted his father wouldn't be nominated for president. The story is intended to show Bush's querulousness (it's British for "inclined to find fault") and vindictive streak, and it comes complete with two fully spelled-out f-words.

But the article goes on to speak most highly of Bush's "compassionate conservatism," giving warm intellectual hugs to the idea of using churches and charities instead of government social agencies to help the poor. It examines compassionate conservatism's tenets, then pronounces it an ambitious and substantive policy agenda, not an empty slogan.

The piece says, yes, Bush may be centrist and pragmatic. But his ideas about privatizing welfare, Social Security and shaking up America's nuclear defenses "are as radical as anything America has seen for a while." And that is not bad, it's good.

In the end, the Economist couldn't have been nicer to Bush. It concludes there's no way of knowing yet if Bush "is presidential material." But "by the measures of intelligence, temperament and policy, he is prepared -- or as prepared as anyone ever is -- for this desperately hard job."