Gustav Keeps Us Guessing

So, a perfect storm? Hurricane Gustav appeared as though it would land earlier today in New Orleans. The delegations had been told to be flexible as the schedules were to be in flux all day long. Former Maryland State Delegate and current Maryland Parole Commissioner Carmen Amedori, who is also keeping a blog for The Sun, and I entered the Xcel Center around 3pm and proceeded to Radio Row.

As one can imagine, the convention is a media circus. Between TV, Radio, Print, Blogs, and Vloggers there seems to be nearly a one to one ratio between journalists and convention attendees. They all are looking for original content for their respective medium.

Parts of the convention hall have been set aside for different media outlets. One wide hall has been dubbed Radio Row from where the personalities can broadcast their shows. This area is swamped with pols and convention attendees. I saw Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas giving an interview. Some of these pols will go from mic to mic right down Radio Row for interviews hitting dozens of media markets within an hour.

Carmen was interviewed by Baltimore local talk show host Les Kinsolving. I was interviewed by video journalists from the "The Weekly Standard" online, YouTube, and also gave my first bilingual interview to Channel 24 in Buenos Aires, Argentina!

The business of the convention began shortly before 3pm. While the proceedings were shortened and the typical evening pageantry was cut, there was actually business to be done. Every four years, the convention provides the national party an opportunity to revise the platform which has been cut from 40,000 words to 20,000. The goal was to make it more readable and accessible for a voter that wants to learn exactly what the party believes.

Also, the rules that the party uses to govern itself are also reviewed, amended and approved every four years. This may not sound that interesting, but Presidential primaries are under the purview of the committee. The scheduling of primaries has huge implications and is of major importance to the party and its members.

So, both the rules and the platform among a few other items had to be approved. Committees composed of delegates from each state work on these matters discussion in the days leading up to the convention. They approve their revisions and vote to send them to floor of the convention. Once their reports reach the floor they receive rubber stamp approval by the delegations.

After this, Both Laura Bush and Lynn Cheney addressed the convention this afternoon along with the Gulf Coast Governors, who had taped and delivered their short speeches about the readiness of their respective states as they geared up for the landfall of Gustav.

As I left the Xcel center, I passed through the hall where print media is located. Reuters, AP, The New York Times, Tribune Company among other outlets were there. They all had created newsrooms to report on the happenings complete with televisions and catering stations. The interesting thing was that every single one of the tv's was tuned into CNN with the exception of three and those three were sitting next to a tv that was tuned to none other than CNN. Sure, there's no such thing as a liberal media echo chamber!

There is nothing scheduled for the evening so we can fill our schedules as we please.