Everyone agrees. The story is that there is no story. The candidates have already been chosen. The platform has been written to avoid controversy. That's why the early focus has been on the sideshows (since everyone knows that politicians get booed at baseball games, was it wise of Kerry to throw that first ball? What will Teresa Heinz Kerry say next?).

So here's the story behind the story.

There are, first of all, the delegates, who this year are virtually all voting the way they are told to vote (and for the most part want to vote, because they want to beat Bush). Then there are the 15,000 mainstream journalists who outnumber the delegates three to one, who are, as the phrase goes, stenographers to power. Both these groups are partakers of the conventional convention wisdom: that because polls show Kerry does better among those who know him, the goal of this convention is to tell his story. (And, his group of a dozen political strategists who meet daily would add, in the words of consultant John Martilla, "to make sure that prominent in the narrative is his ability to handle issues of national security.")

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