It was quite a week for the Republican Party in San Diego and for its presidential candidate, Mr Bob Dole. The party machine performed magnificently to promote a selective account of Republican policies by papering over divisions for the television audience, the party base was effectively energised, and Mr Doled himself delivered a convincing speech which set out a broad agenda for the campaign. It seems to add up to a real contest for President Clinton, after a prolonged period in which it looked as if he would have a walk over in November.
That it has become increasingly difficult to separate image from content and policy in modern political campaigning is a lesson that was brought home forcefully by the Republican convention. In this respect, as in its continuing international power and influence, the United States leads the world. This justifies the close domestic and international attention the event has received, for here were displayed the man and the policies that could be in charge of the White House for the next four years. Why, then, has the spectacle left so many of the American media dissatisfied with the lack of anything new, and unhappy with the patently successful orchestration of the image: and the message coming from this convention? Is this why the numbers viewing it were so much reduced compared to previous occasions? Or does the political choreography bringing together image and content not represent a triumph of political organisation over a hostile media, to bring the message to a more appreciative public?
It is in the nature of the US presidential system that the candidates have a huge latitude to fashion their own image and their own policies from the range thrown up by their party debates. Mr Dole has chosen a tax cutting, budget balancing economic policy predicated on strong rates of growth to resolve the apparent contradiction between these two elements. But the moderate image presented all week to mitigate the harsher range of policies actually written into the Republicans platform, notably on immigrant rights, abortion and affirmative action, will not be as easy to project on the actual hustings.
In a curious way Mr Dole himself, in his speech and with his personality, contradicts the very televisual values in which his new message has been packaged. The speech reads well and communicates a concern about alternative values that could strike a chord with the electorate. He has made a daring and possibly risky virtue of his age and experience and of the generation gap that separates him from the Democratic incumbent of the White House. The theme of the convention restoring the American Dream by way of tax cuts that will benefit the middle class has a coherence that could be turned to advantage in the campaign, especially if Mr Clinton stumbles on the way.
It is still Mr Clinton's campaign to lose, however, even after such a satisfactory week for the Republicans. He is such a consummately skilled campaign tactician that Mr Dole and his team will have to struggle hard to maintain this coherence, and to prevent the factionalism for which their party had become notorious in recent months re emerging to be exploited by the Democrats. But after this week it will be more difficult for Mr Clinton to present himself as the candidate who can protect Americans against the excesses of a harsh right wing agenda in the name of a non partisan conservatism.