Anticipating the Democrats’ Convention Circus

Got all that Oscar hype out of your system?

Ready for some real drama? An epic 40 years in the making? Cast of thousands, rich with back stabbing, power plays, suspense?

My favorite blockbuster opens citywide Aug. 14. It runs for only four days, but those four days will last you for four years.

The Democratic Convention is coming. Not since 1960, when the Democrats nominated JFK, has L.A. hosted a political convention.

And what a time we’re in for. I’ve covered enough political conventions to know that just because Al Gore has already locked up the delegates doesn’t mean we’re in for four days so dull that ironing bedsheets looks enthralling.

A foregone main event means fewer distractions from the warmup acts. Conventions are democracy’s circuses, and the protests and public exhibitions its sideshows.

So step right up, ladeeeeez and gentlemen, and see the amazing hydra-headed, double-talking, spineless freak of nature known as the Body Politic.

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Gore, of course, is the guy with his name above the title. But look for a big cameo role, with triumphant soft-focus memories, as Bill Clinton hands over the sash and scepter of Mr. America to his second in command.

The casting of featured players is where the suspense comes in.

Will Richard Riordan, the Republican mayor who strove and sweated and shook down his big-bucks buddies to get this convention here in the first place, be uninvited? Could the Dems snub him after his support for Clinton and his 1994 endorsement of Dianne Feinstein? Riordan is no Mayor Richard Daley, whose lips could be read at the chaotic 1968 Chicago Democratic convention angrily inviting a U.S. senator to do something to himself that rhymed with “lucky zoo,” and Daly didn’t mean the menagerie in Lincoln Park.

Will a Californian get the second spot on the ticket? Probably not. If Gore feels he already has both the women’s vote and California in the bag, he won’t need Feinstein--or the ticking baggage of her husband’s business dealings with China, which the GOP would love to blow up.

Gore’s people may think Gray Davis is vice presidential timber; our dour governor makes Gore look lively. But the Gray Eminence has no intention of taking a job with less power and more funerals. Davis is also in bad odor at the moment with the state party for backing the open primary system, which served him so well in 1998.

And who will show up for the “This Is Your Life, Democrats” nostalgia segment?

Jerry Brown, mayor of Oakland, two-time California governor who took three shots at the presidency? Willie Brown, mayor of San Francisco? It was Willie Brown who stood at the cusp of the old and new Democratic Party in 1972, when he faced down the old-guard forces blocking California’s delegates for peace candidate George S. McGovern and demanded, “Give me back my delegation!”

What of Tom Hayden, almost an emeritus legislator now, but in 1968 Defendant Hayden was one of the Chicago Seven. Which side of the arena doors will Hayden be on this time?

And to what poor soul has fallen the job of wrangling local politicians--mayoral candidates, council members, supervisors, term-limited legislators--desperate for podium time with Big Al?

For a big finish, I suggest a Hollywood-digitized Will Rogers and his eternal disclaimer: “I belong to no organized political party. I’m a Democrat.”

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In a no-contest convention, the networks will be desperate for pictures and sound, and the protesters know it. Those wonderful Democrats bring 4,366 delegates and 15,000 journalists with them. All those empty notebooks, all those 24-hour newscasts!

For old-hand protesters, the fetus-wavers and the neo-McCarthyites, no distance is too far to travel for air time. For our many home-grown protesters, this is an opportunity they’ve waited 40 years to snag. Demonstrating in the wake of riot and earthquake--the usual occasions that bring the network sluggers to town--is unsporting and counterproductive. Politicians are always fair game.

L.A.’s reinvigorated labor movement could take its grievances, not only up to the doors of Staples Center with picket lines, but inside, where concession workers are at odds with management.

And if all that doesn’t promise entertainment enough, there is this prospect. Just as the feared traffic jams vanished mysteriously along with the homeless during the Olympics, this August, traffic jams could vanish mysteriously again, along with another potential civic embarrassment: Monica S. Lewinsky.

Patt Morrison’s column appears Fridays. Her e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com.