Mencken wouldn't recognize the shows the Democrats and Republicans plan on staging over the next two weeks. Politicians have learned a few things.
One lesson is: The more news a national convention makes, the worse things are likely to get for the party that holds it. Journalists love conflict, and disunity is disastrous in politics.
Defeat at the polls followed violence in the streets outside the Democrats' 1968 convention hall in Chicago. Ronald Reagan's convention challenge to incumbent Gerald Ford helped put the president in a hole too deep for him to dig out in 1976.
That, however, was the last time a nomination got decided at a convention. Now everything gets scripted in advance, down to the announcement of a running mate before the delegates hit town.
Why, then, do these dinosaurs matter in the 21st century? Because the country is divided evenly between the two major parties. Because millions of Americans haven't made up their minds about who they think should be the next president. Because an election hangs in the balance, with national polls showing a tight contest between Barack Obama and John McCain.
Both men will try to use their conventions to sell themselves to undecided swing voters and shore up partisan support. They'll flesh out their biographies and make their best case to the country that they've got the answers for economic problems at home and security challenges abroad.
Democratic strategist Mark Penn recently went so far as to predict that "the party that wins the battle of the conventions will likely win the election."
That might be an overstatement, but his remark suggests that there is real significance to the scenes that will play out in prime time over the next two weeks.
Even those whose minds are already made up, or are too young to vote, have reason to tune in, and not simply to their man's event. They might see something exhilarating or preposterous or, at the very least, unexpected.
Who could have known, for instance, that when they caught the keynote speech at the last Democratic convention - delivered by some guy with big ears and a strange name - they were meeting a man who might be the next president of the United States?
