TWO BIG ENCHILADAS

Two Big Enchiladas. What an approriate title for this entry, on a national day of great drunken and gastro-intestinal excess. Today's big Enchilada was the Super Bowl, which concluded in a nail biting New York Giants upset over the previously undefeated New England Patriots.

The next big Enchilada won't yield results until November. That would be the 2008 Presidential Election, which has created interest that hasn't existed in years.

I'm the guy who spent Super Bowl Sunday napping and resting up from a long week. I hope my friends understand, it's better to fall asleep on the couch than behind the wheel, en route to a party. Besides, there's so much you miss at a party--like the GAME. Then there's the commercials and the always overly-hyped half-time spectacular. Who will ever forget the year the enormous, brown mammary gland of janet Jackson sprung forth like a jack-in-the-box, and put the broadcast industry in a state of terror for years to come.

But that's another subject. I like the company at Super Bowl parties, but as a broadcaster, I despise working them. About 16 years ago, I co-hosted a party at a restaurant-bar in Oxmard's Channel islands Harbor. I watched as the other host dared a sodden guest to jump off a small pier and into the channel...for tickets to Knotts Berry Farm, I believe. Before you knew it, this inebriated ass-clown dashed down the stairs, out of the bar, down the small pier, and dove into the drink. He came back to a hearty round of cheers and, dripping like the Creature From the Black Lagoon, snatched the tickets from my co-host's hand. As the effects of my own vodka-soaked efforts wore off, I considered that no one knew the depth of the water. There was a good chance this beer-belching simpleton could have struck his head underwater and drowned, leaving the restaurant and the radio station I worked for liabel for his untimely demise. It was a chilling thought.

The next year, when I was main host of the party, at the same restaurant, I reckoned we'd been lucky that idiot hadn't killed himself. I decided there would be no repeat performance. Intsead, I peppered the crown with a stream of one-liners, and when I spotted a swacked-out-of-his-mind fossil in a suit, who looked just like Buddy Ebsen, I lead the crowd in a hand-clapping, rousing rendtion of "The Theme from the Beverly Hillbillies." It was a pretty good moment, and sort of made up for the fact the game was another one of those early 1990's Super Bowl blowouts.

Later that week, the Account Executive who handled the restaurant told me they were disappointed I didn't have someone dive off the pier like the last year. I must have had a look on my face like Jerry Lewis in "The Bell Boy." Apparently I was too cautious for that small a market.

On to the second Enchilada, now, which I had a taste of just before the Big Game. To avoid the mind-numbing, endless pre-game chatter, I flipped around to C-SPAN just in time to see a packed Pauley pavillion on the campus of UCLA. A Barack Obama rally was in progress, minus Obama himself. The thousands in attendance were shrieking for the sheer female star power, on a stage set up roughly where Kareem-Abdul Jabbar, Bill Walton and many other old Bruins made college basketball history years ago. Oprah Winfrey, Caroline Kennedy, a surprise appearnce by her cousin Maria Shriver, First Lady of "Cully-fornia," and a passionate Mrs Obama were all there. Stevie Wonder stopped by to lead the crowd in a simple chorus of the candidates name.

These political rallies in '08 have drawn unprecedented throngs. It's been completely engrossing-- more competitive than any presidential primary season since 1972. In fact, the "Horse Race," as they call it, hasn't provided such drama in both parties since well before a lot of us were born--1952.

Back then, there were relatively few primaries, and they were little more than straw polls. A candidate would enter to test the waters and prove his viability to party bosses. The delegate snatching and the heavy lifting was done at the conventions. And 1952 was the first year the entire country would peep through the key hole of the smoke filled room. Thanks to the co-axial cable, the conventions could now be seen from sea to shining sea.

They proved intoxicating theatre. The Republicans gaveled to order with isolationists martialed behind "Mr. Conservative," Senator Robert A. Taft, son of one term President and Supreme Court Chief Justice, William Howard Taft (the man whose bulk was so vast, he got stuck in the White House bathtub). These forces engaged supporters of General Dwight David Eisenhower who was previously non-partisan and sought after by both parties. Ike became a Republican and dealt a death blow to Taft's shot at the nomination.

The Democratic Convention was even more wide open, because President Harry S. Truman had chosen not to run for re-election. As respected as he is today, Truman's job approval rating in '52 hovered close to "W's" range, and he'd lost the New Hampshire primary to Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee.

At the raucus convention in Chicago, Kefauver sought a duel with the intellectual, ultra-articulate, but indecisive former Governor of Illinois, Adlai E. Stevenson. The bespectacled southerner and the bald, divorced darling of the left didn't exactly go at it hammer and tongs--the party wanted to draft Stevenson at all costs--all described for viewers over CBS-TV for the first time by a 35-year-old Walter Cronkite.

No one under the age of 45 can possibly have any functioning memory of a political convention that's anything but a tightly controlled infomercial/coronation. Kinescopes from 1952, at the dawn of coast to coast, live network television, reveal bare-knuckles political dickering, populated by cigar-chomping, bulbous-nosed pols with thinning hair, in rumpled suits, and all caucasian. Politics in the raw, covered day and night, gavel to gavel. At one point, a small fire broke out on the convention floor, stomped out by a few delegates before it could spread. No one knew it, but the exit doors at Chicago Stadium had been chained, and had that fire grown, a tragedy of untold proportions would have transfixed terrified viewers.

The fire went out of the nomination fight as well, when Stevenson prevailed, and named Alabama Senator John Sparkman as his V.P. nominee (even though Sparkman wasa staunch segregationist--all southern Senators were in '52. Thus were the times for the Democratic Party). Come November, the Stevenson-Sparkman ticket promptly got its clock cleaned in the general election by Eisenhower and Tricky Dick Nixon.

Oh, how the political process has changed...as has life in America, in 56 years. An African American man and a Woman are battling, hammer and tongs for the Democratic nomination, through a primary and caucus season that starts before a New Year's hangover can wear off (adding to this exceptional contest, the woman's husband is a former President). A fiery, maverick Senator and ex-prisoner of war duels a miliionaire of the Mormon faith on the Republican side, and no love is lost between the two. All of this is happening under the scrutiny of three all-news cable channels, filling airtime with a steady flow of footage and a pile-on of punditry. It's difficult to believe either party would allow these brusiing battles to continue for eight months, then play out, embarassingly, at the conventions, before a weary public.

The media would love it. CBS, NBC and ABC gave up on the conventions long ago, limiting coverage to one or two hours of a four day event. Who could blame them? Even those brief hours caused the networks to hemorrhage viewers. With compelling stories on both sides (Obama vs Clinton speaks for itself; Romney is largely uninteresting, but McCain could shoot a cold stare, or engage in some "straight-talk" that might send his handlers into spin control. The possiblity for eruption is there), 2008 would be different, for sure.

With so many talking heads telling us what we were supposed to have seen and heard, interpreting every word, every wince, consulting body language experts to read the candidates mind, the element of theatre would only be heightened. The excitement would cause even more nationally televised spittle to fly from Chris Matthews mouth, as his eyes grow deranged with euphoria.

I'm not sure how America would react to nominations actually decided at the conventions. Most don't suspect that politics is a cold-blooded and dirty as it is. They're unware of "push polling," the art of calling prospective voters and planting false information about the opposition. They aren't cognisant of the craven menaces of the political world who feverishly work to suppress voter turnout, thereby increasing the likelihood of a strident ideaology taking power...without plurality or overwhelming mandate, as we've seen these last seven years. Or the question of whether voting machines are a safe, tamper-free way of casting ballots.

All that being said, this current scrapple, a race like nothing we've seen in over a generation, could run, at least, through March. If memory serves me correctly, It was June of 1972, when Senator George McGovern bested Hubert Humphrey in the California Primary to take all of the two-hundred-some delegates, and clinch his ill-fated Democratic nomination.

At the convention in Miami, Humphrey's people tried to get the rules changed and have the delegates apportioned by percentage of the vote. This fight went to the convention floor. Willie Brown, former Mayor of San Francisco, who was then a California state legislator, stood at the podium in a loud, plaid suit. Brown's scalp was inching toward the center of his head, the rest of his skull covered by a wild 'fro. His arms spread, his fists raised, he raved and screamed and demanded the convention "...Give me back my del-a-ga-tion!!"

And they did. The convention went on, a fractious, chaotic affair that poured its disorganization and crumbled decorum into the living rooms of all who watched. Senator McGovern chose a running mate who would soon reveal he had had electro-shock therapy (Senator Thomas Eagalton of Missouri), and gave his acceptance speech at close to 2 AM on the east coast. McGovern, of course, went on to a historic, resounding, embarassingly huge defeat at the hands (and underhandedness) of the miscreant President, Nixon.

In short, a messy, turbulant convention won't do either party, or the nation, any good. But be advised: It would make great TV.