TAMPA — Clichés are hackneyed and well-worn phrases we’ve heard
too often. But that doesn’t mean they don’t contain some wisdom.
The operative one for Tampa this summer is, “Be careful what you
ask for — you may get it.”
Tampa got it all right. But as the city ties itself in knots
trying to prepare for the Republican National Convention here in
late August, many locals are wondering if it’s too late to pass
this hairball off to some other unsuspecting city. The whole
business reminds me of Mark Twain’s take on being tarred and
feathered: “Except for the honor, I’d as soon skip it.”
But Tampa rushed in, where angels had enough sense not to tread.
So skipping it is no longer an option. In 2009 and 2010, Tampa city
fathers and mothers duked it out with Phoenix and Salt Lake City
for the honor of hosting the convention. After August 30, when
5,000 delegates and alternates, 15,000 journalists, and perhaps as
many as 30,000 hell-raising demonstrators have departed what’s left
of the city, it may not be altogether clear who “won” this
competition. (When this contest was going on, I was pulling for
Tampa to take the silver.)
Boosters, the political class, and those in a position to turn a
few bob from the festivities are always trying to get big events
for their cities. The economic impact and the “exposure” make these
circuses beneficial for all, they croon. These claims are highly
suspect. I’d be hard pressed to put my finger on any way my life is
better because Tampa has hosted several Super Bowls.
And putting on a national political convention, Tampa’s
political and law enforcement officials are learning to their
sorrow, is a lot more complicated, dangerous, and a damn sight more
expensive than putting on yet another Super Bowl. The complications
keep multiplying, like clowns popping out of the little car at the
circus. And the cost of the affair is beyond operatic.
Downtown Tampa will essentially be in lock-down for the
melancholy four days. While the party that purports to represent
the American bourgeoisie makes its case for how it will put the
country back in business, downtown bourgeois will have a difficult
time conducting any business at all. Auto-sclerosis alone, caused
by cars, cabs, buses (oh my lord, the buses), and street cars
schlepping thousands of conventioneers, journalists, cops, and
demonstrators around would be enough to make normal business
extremely difficult. Add roving bands of demonstrators and the
chaos, fear, filth, and noise they bring with them, and downtown
Tampa, other than hotels and restaurants, becomes a free
enterprise-free zone for the duration of the free enterprise
party’s stay.
The biggest convention wildcard, and the biggest expense by far,
will be attempting to control and pick up after thousand of vandals
that we insist on calling by the cuddlier name of demonstrators.
Estimates of how many demonstrators will invade Tampa start at
about 10,000. But some predict as many as 30,000 lawless resolutes
will show up to raise hell, break stuff, intimidate conventioneers,
disrupt, and generally trash the place and the event. Tampa has set
up specials areas and decreed rules for demonstrators. But
hard-core demonstrators have no respect for rules and will do as
they damn well please.
The federals will spend $50 million in tax money for security
for the convention. Much of the $55 million the local host
committee has promised to raise (whether they will be able to meet
this goal in this economy is an open question) will be spent on
security. Every fourth person in downtown Tampa in late August will
be a cop of some sort or a demonstrator. It’s a melancholy measure
of how scratchy our politics, and more importantly our culture, has
become when the city hosting the national convention of one of our
major political parties has to spend more than a half million
dollars on 1,400 gas masks. Tampa taxpayers are justified in
wondering how much of the tab for all this destructive mayhem they
will be obliged to pick up.
One of my hopes for convention days is that our local thieves,
villains, and petty crooks do not have a field day plying their own
dark trades once they realize how totally tied up the local cops
are keeping junior bankers separated from anarchists.
Perhaps what is most remarkable is that all this expense,
anxiety, and heartache must be endured merely to accommodate four
days of orchestrated political speeches so boring that half the
delegates won’t show up for them, and that the television networks
will largely ignore (unless the candidate or some party official
says something that can be turned into a negative story). The only
hope of any real news coming out of the convention is if Mitt
Romney holds off announcing his VP pick until then.
One of the booster’s dreams is that the thousands of journalists
in town that week and with little political to write about will
write glowing stories of how swell Tampa is, leading those not
already privileged to be here to conclude what a great place Tampa
would be to live or to operate a business. This demonstrates the
boosters’ inclination to go with hope over expectation.
I was born in and have lived a significant part of my life in
Tampa, and so am familiar with its many charms. But there are
snakes in this garden as well. And national journalists, already
cranky at being obliged to attend for four days to conservative
Republicans that they don’t like, are just as apt to write pieces
even snarkier than this column as they are to praise Tampa.
This has already started. The Daily Show with Jon
Stewart will broadcast from Tampa during the convention. In
announcing this the show’s producer told the local daily, “We look
forward to enjoying the beaches and the exciting nightlife. Plus we
assume this counts as a visit to our grandparents.” Very droll.
Florida’s age demographics are not as different from those of the
rest of the country as they once were. But Stewart’s job is to be
funny, not right.
Another target of opportunity for journalists wishing they were
elsewhere and looking to get even is Tampa’s brutal August weather.
Even if there is no hurricane in residence or bearing down on the
city — August is mid-hurricane season hereabouts — moving about
in Tampa during the day in August requires a tolerance for
temperatures in the mid-nineties. Walking outside at night is like
dog-paddling through warm onion soup. Conventioneers let out on the
town at 11 p.m. should not be surprised at temperatures still at 85
with saturation humidity. (Miami resident Dave Barry once suggested
the legend on Florida license plates be changed from “The Sunshine
State” to “It’s NOT a dry heat.”)
OK, perhaps I’m just a worrier. Perhaps things will be
relatively calm during the convention and Mitt Romney and whoever
he chooses to run with him will be given a good send-off into the
general election campaign (this assumes Mitt has a coherent message
by then). Perhaps Tampa will enjoy many of the benefits boosters
promised as a result of landing this pearl beyond price.
But let’s not rule out the possibility that the folks in my home
town will, after the fact, be envying the care-free days being
enjoyed by the good burghers of Phoenix and Salt Lake City while
we’re sweeping up glass and calculating how much this political
rodeo and masa-cree is going to cost us. And also wondering who on
earth brought this thing down on us, and what were they
thinking.
