Politico | The convention speeches that changed America

This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Jeff Greenfield on politico.com on August 14, 2020.

On Monday, August 17, the 47th Democratic National Convention kicks off in no particular place, on a string of video broadcasts, without a live audience or an army of journalists or a whirl of parties awaiting the delegates afterward. The following Monday, the Republican National Convention ends not with a bring-down-the-house floor speech by Donald Trump, but with a quiet click when the president stops talking into a camera and someone presses “stop”.

Thanks to Covid-19, the nation’s quadrennial moments of political theatre are, for the first time, entirely virtual.

Is there any reason to mourn the absence of the traditional political convention? Will there be a single tear shed for the staged balloon drops, the roll-calls with all the suspense of a Soviet Politburo vote, the voice-vote endorsement of a platform that the nominee will feel free to ignore?

The obituaries for conventions have been written many times, and surely a lot of that old-fashioned folderol was going to end up consigned to history one way or the other. But there’s one convention feature that the parties are very much going to miss: the speech before a packed arena, with thousands shaking the rafters with their cheers.