We can only hope that Tim Chapman’s clarion call — “The New Republican Platform Must Not Abandon Conservatism” — will be heard in whatever room in Milwaukee the Trump campaign plans to sequester the platform delegates, behind doors locked to the media and the public. Since 1980, GOP platforms have been, in Chapman’s words, “the safe harbor buttressed by permanent principles” that have tremendously expanded, and diversified, the Republican electoral base. Unfortunately, the 2024 GOP platform process is a throwback to 1972, when the Nixon White House, in its imperial-presidency phase, micromanaged everything. But even then, Nixon didn’t treat the delegates as if they were in a witness-protection program.
In modern times, the relationship between GOP presidential campaigns and the platform process, while varying from one quadrennial to another, has emphasized the independence of the latter. This was most obvious in 1976, when the candidate with the most floor delegates, Gerald Ford, did not have a majority on the platform committee, which rebuked both the president and his secretary of state for their détente with the Soviet Union. This extraordinary outcome has been a caution to every presidential candidate since.
In 1980, Reagan’s campaign managers, hit with a conservative tsunami, pretended to steer it with a PR surfboard. The media bought the ruse. Meanwhile, in the subcommittee considering social issues, the delegates refused to allow Reagan’s representative to speak to them. When the full committee considered restoring the pro-ERA language the campaign had earlier wanted to maintain, its advocates were left to fight alone. Even their leader, Representative David Stockman, ducked the fight to spin a reporter in the corridor.
When asked about the platform, Reagan’s reply — that he hadn’t had time to read the whole thing but understood there were a lot of good things in it — was smart. A few weeks later, he gave a major campaign address praising it. And years later, in his last months at the White House, he expressed thanks for all three — 1980, 1984, 1988 — of what were widely considered as Reagan platforms.
During the proceedings in 1984, President Reagan’s representatives asked for a last-minute change: drop a comma in the pledge not to raise taxes. Reagan’s request was soundly rejected because it would have opened the door to devious tax hikes.
In 1988, the Bush campaign’s policy czar, Governor John Sununu of New Hampshire, was not happy to come down to D.C. His initial comment: “God, I hate this city.” He had only two objections: a constitutional amendment on parents’ rights and a reference in the disability plank to “little people.” So parental rights were kept in but without the Constitution, and, ironically, “little people” would be covered by what became President Bush’s major legislative achievement: the Americans with Disabilities Act. Robert Novak reported that Bush would be happy with the platform if the platform staff was happy with it.
Neither the White House nor the Bush reelection campaign tried to influence the platform drafting in 1992, even in casual conversation. Their respect for the autonomy of the process was extraordinary. In subcommittee, two well-intentioned Bush staffers tried to sell the delegates on a new Civilian Conservation Corps. When they could not assure the delegates that the president personally wanted this, it was rejected.
The 1996 platform was the most contentious. Senator Bob Dole wanted some unspecified watering down of the pro-life plank, to be achieved by stacking the relevant subcommittee with his picks. Even some of them would not go along, and he would have been overwhelmingly repudiated in full committee. To save him from humiliation, Phyllis Schlafly and Paul Manafort, his manager for the platform, came up with a face-saver: an appendix listing major amendments that had been defeated. The phones in the Dole hotel HQ were then disconnected to prevent the senator from wrecking the deal, an admirable instance of staff sabotage to protect their candidate from self-harm. Nothing, however, could prevent Dole from responding to a reporter questioning whether he had read the platform. His reply — “Hell no, nobody reads the damn thing” — might have been different if he had realized the document was a heartfelt tribute to his service and sacrifice to the nation.
In 2000, the platform chair, Governor Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin, was widely expected to have a cabinet post in the George W. Bush administration, but the campaign did not lay heavy hands on it. The document was drafted with an inclusive eye to Bush’s speeches and policy papers so that, when the proceedings began, the campaign agents had but one problem. They wanted the Education Subcommittee to adopt a significant expansion of the federal role in schooling but could not find a majority on that panel. Thus, while the oblivious media roamed the hall looking for an abortion fight, real drama unfolded in the room with education, as the Bush representatives stalled action to await the arrival of a young congressman from Mississippi who, they assumed, would give them the majority. To their dismay, he arrived, declined to do their bidding, and they settled for half a loaf.
The platform of 2004 was a small miracle, put together by the staff of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist in no more than two weeks after the abrupt departure of an executive director who had, up to that point, done virtually nothing to start the process. His dereliction was unnoticed by the world as the Frist team combined elements from 2000, Bush campaign materials, and the heroic response of the president and the nation to the tragedy of 9/11. They should have gotten medals.
The platform interaction with the McCain campaign in 2008 consisted of one meeting at the campaign HQ, where his advisers understood we were doing our best to minimize divergences between the candidate and his party, especially on campaign finance. McCain must have understood that too because, after he personally received the entire draft with little yellow sticky notes marking the places where we were advancing his ideas, we heard no complaints from Arizona.
Mitt Romney’s campaign representative in 2012, Lanhee Chen, visited the RNC to read the draft platform shortly before the convention. Requesting no changes, he did note that language construable as the gold standard appeared twice in the document. He was informed that this was sometimes done so that, if one controversial item were purged, the other might survive. Delegates to the 2024 platform should take note.
The 2016 Trump campaign’s involvement with the platform text consisted of one meeting at the RNC for his representative, John Mashburn, to read the draft. He suggested two small deletions. Many would argue that the remainder of the document helped the candidate win in November by appealing to Evangelicals and others wary of his earlier behavior — an example of winning by policy commitments rather than personality.
None of this platform past is necessarily prologue to whatever happens in Milwaukee in July, but cumulatively it suggests a few pieces of advice for the nominee. First, the delegates are not campaign fodder. Almost all of them will be there to defend their families, their neighborhoods, and the nation from great evils, and they deserve your respect. Second, you can live with disagreements in the platform as long as they are not all-out repudiations. There will always be some daylight between you and the delegates, but you must minimize it, not advertise it. And hard as it may be to accept, the victory all of them are working for is not entirely about you. The question is: How do we smuggle copies of Chapman’s article into that cloistered room in Milwaukee?