‘92 DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION : Conventions ‘Ain’t What They Used to Be’ : Politics: They have become coronations and warm-ups for the battles of October, lacking tension, high drama. Strategists say their survival is at stake.

NEW YORK —  So this is a national political convention?

Then whatever happened to the suspense, the tension, the smoke-filled rooms? Where is the rancor, the dramatic roll calls, the horse-trading for delegates’ votes, the inner-party battles over issues?

Deprived by the primaries of their role in choosing the party’s presidential nominee and haggling over issues, the quadrennial national political conventions of lore and legend have been transformed into something else--a combination of coronation, pageant and preseason warm-up for the battles of October.

“It really is a chance to kick off the general election campaign and get a sustained look at the nominee,” says Thomas Donilon, a veteran Democratic operative.

But as Democratic and Republican strategists alike contemplate the shrinking network television coverage and the possibility that bored voters might become still more disenchanted, some have begun to suggest that conventions will have to change even more if they are to survive.

“You’ve got to go way back in the past and let the convention pick the nominee, or you’ve got to go way into the future,” says Paul Ericson, political director for Patrick J. Buchanan’s GOP campaign. “Left to itself, the convention will continue to deteriorate.”

“They sure ain’t what they used to be,” agrees Bush-Quayle spokeswoman Torie Clarke as she looks ahead to the Republican conclave next month. “And, in our case, it’ll probably be pretty boring.”

The rumblings of unease have reached new levels, in part, because of the way Ross Perot has challenged long-held assumptions. The Texas independent is talking about convening his own conclave this summer in a dozen cities at once. That prospect has jarred those who had not considered an alternative to the traditional gathering under a single roof.

And, in a year of a voter rebellion, the traditional idea of a convention “at which all the political hacks are present may be an American nightmare come to life,” says Susan Estrich, who managed Michael S. Dukakis’ unsuccessful 1988 presidential campaign.

“There’s something really crazy about assembling 4,000 delegates onto the floor of the convention when they have no real role at all, other than to applaud and float balloons,” she says. “Not one thing that matters is coming to a fight.”

To be sure, conventions still carry an adrenaline all their own. At the height of festivities here this week, there are few who will argue that the gatherings be curtailed. Instead, they quote William Jennings Bryan’s praise of the convention as a “snapshot of the nation.” They wax enthusiastic about the value of assembling party leaders and rank-and-file in one place at least every four years.

And to those who pine for tension and high drama, they argue that the conventions so admired by political aficionados were either historical anomalies or much less momentous than they have been made out to be.

“The nostalgia for those days is just a lot of nostalgia,” says John C. White of Texas, the former Democratic Party chairman. “What they think happened at the old conventions never really happened.”

Nonetheless, in the clarity of interregnum that followed the last presidential election year, party leaders had already begun to talk about overhauling the institution. It was only two years ago that Democratic Party Chairman Ronald H. Brown suggested that the party might be better off scaling back its convention from four nights to two.

Similarly, an independent commission whose members included past chairmen of both parties suggested that the Republicans and Democrats agree to give up a night of network television coverage in return for free air time in the fall.

This summer, conventions will again run a full four nights. Tonight, the Democratic nominee--as he has at every convention since 1952--will again be selected on the first ballot. And officials of both parties are still demanding all the coverage they can command.

But network coverage this year will reach an all-time low. And that has renewed the discussion about finding a different way.

“If people just turn off on the Democrats this week--and I’m convinced they will,” worried Bush spokeswoman Clarke said as she looked ahead to the Republicans’ convocation next month--”then the networks may just decide to cut us back even further.”

At its heart, the debate about what new form national political conventions might take is a discussion about what the convocations should really be about.

Are they a vehicle for having delegates select a nominee, as they did amid high drama and scores of ballots in the middle of this century, when conventions and not primaries determined which candidate would represent the party?

Are they to provide a forum for open debate about the party’s course, as they did until 1980, when leaders began their effort to gloss over signs of discord to create the illusion of unity?

Or, are their purposes more modest: to mobilize the party faithful, to beat up the opposition, to establish a favorable image of the candidate in uncommitted voters’ minds?

Some argue that the parties ought not rule out taking a step backward. “Maybe you’ve got to go back to the back room and the high drama, and accept the process is unsavory but you like the results,” said Ericson, the Buchanan aide.

Most analysts rule that out. Trying to strip power from the primaries is likely to add to voters’ discontent, they say. And the prospect of allowing bitter debate on the convention floor is still considered self-defeating.

Instead, most of those weighing new forms for conventions have concluded that their most important task is to create a mood of national excitement. And, with network television increasingly uncooperative in that task, they are not looking closely at Perot.

The timing and the structure of Perot’s event remains far from clear. But his expected plan to use multiple sites linked together by communications satellites to bring the event home to Americans is clearly alluring.

“The experience of American history is that things evolve with time, and, clearly, conventions have to evolve,” says Dick Moe, a former aide to Walter F. Mondale, the Democratic presidential candidate in 1984. “They’ve got to find a new way if they’re going to survive.”