I have attended five national party conventions over the years — from 1964 in San Francisco to 2000 in Philadelphia. I worked as staff on platform and rules committees for House members who were also convention delegates from their states.
The platform committee experience I cited from 1976 saw the forces of incumbent President Gerald R. Ford squaring-off against committee delegates who supported California Gov. Ronald Reagan for president. The Ford supporters eventually backed off on some of the hotly contested platform planks to placate the Reagan folks and secure the nomination. Ford went on to lose the general election to former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter. Reagan would be back in 1980 to take the GOP nomination and then defeat Carter.
Here, I want to dig deeper into the question of whether party platforms even matter any more. This year, Republicans completed their nomination process and platform approval at their Milwaukee convention last month. Democrats are poised to officially nominate Vice President Kamala Harris as president in Chicago during the week of Aug. 19, along with her yet-to-be-chosen running mate.
The text of the GOP’s final platform and the Democrats’ draft platform are available online through the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara. That website contains the texts of all national party convention platforms dating back to the Democrats’, 1840 platform which contained nine planks.
James Bryce, an historian, politician and diplomat, in his classic work, “American Commonwealth” (1888), notes that in 1832, the newly-minted American Whig Party, in addition to nominating its candidates for president and vice president, “added to them a series of ten resolutions constituting the first political platform ever put forward by a nominating body.” From that time on, platforms have been a regular feature of national party conventions.
It would be easy to dismiss platform-drafting as little more than make-work to fill the void in otherwise boring conventions at which the nominees have often already been locked-in through the presidential primary process. Platforms do provide an opportunity for delegates to raise what they consider important national issues, debate them before their fellow delegates at the state and national levels, and press for votes on their pet planks.
On the other hand, party pooh-bahs are not big on airing party differences in public. The main purpose of a party convention, after all, is to show the country the face of party unity and a determination to win in November.
This year, Republicans held no public platform hearings or deliberations. Instead, they recycled the same party platform first adopted in 2016 and readopted in 2020. This time, however, Trump prevailed on the platform committee to reduce the size of the document from 60- to 16-pages, and to soften some of its planks (like on abortion and same-sex marriage). The platform committee readily agreed. The convention subsequently adopted the platform by voice vote, without debate, on opening night.
The GOP’s shrunken 16-pager this year is a major exception to the rule that these documents typically keep getting longer and longer over the years, covering an ever-wider variety of subjects in often-excruciating detail. A major reason for this rule of expansion is the increasing direct involvement of interest groups as convention delegates. Yes, Washington lobbyists have influence on legislation in Congress, but delegates, especially those serving on platform committees, get to write the policy prescriptions themselves without even having to twist legislators’ arms.
Of course, that exercise is a long way from enacting actual policy changes through laws. Some partisan purists think the positions taken by national committees and conventions should be considered ironclad “pledges,” binding all party members to execute their platform’s mandates. However, presidents, senators and representatives jealously guard their branches’ prerogatives and processes to get things done.
At least going back to Speaker Newt Gingrich’s (R-Ga.) “Contract with America” in 1994, congressional parties adopt their legislative agenda at the beginning of each Congress, which committee chairs take quite seriously. By the same token, presidents signal their policy priorities through their inaugural addresses, state of the Union speeches and legislative messages.
In summary, party convention platforms do matter because they tend to reflect the general consensus of party members nationwide. But they are competing with an array of other intra-party actors and groups that struggle to leave their own mark on the nation’s direction and policy outcomes. National leaders thrive on these complementary forces. They know that effective governing is 80 percent perspiration and 20 percent aspiration. Party platforms can help stimulate the latter.
Don Wolfensberger is a 28-year congressional staff veteran, culminating as chief-of-staff of the House Rules Committee in 1995. He is author of “Congress and the People: Deliberative Democracy on Trial” (2000), and, “Changing Cultures in Congress: From Fair Play to Power Plays” (2018).