The convention of the We-Hate-Bush party is history, mercifully. Why did they bother? Their nominee has been known for months; his choice of running mate, irrelevant. His platform is stupefyingly simple: Whatever Bush did, I’ll do it differently – but with strength.

What really happened? A long parade of second-stringers, has-beens and wannabes tried to get as much face time as possible. Did it work? After day one, the polling outfits reported the lowest ratings of any convention since TV began. The networks must have seen it coming because they offered very limited coverage.

Two things didn’t happen. One, a bump – at this point in 1988, Mike Dukakis was leading by 17 percent. Two, the hate speech. Starting from the early primaries, hacks from the “party of unity” called a sitting, war-time president a traitor (Al Gore), and a liar (too numerous to list). By comparison, the convention vocabulary was completely sanitized. Even Howard Dean advised against calling Bush a fascist for the duration of the convention. Did he mean it was OK before and now OK again?

The upcoming Republican convention will be just as boring and meaningless, unless al Qaida has other plans.

Perhaps it’s time to redesign our campaign “season,” given that communication is quite a lot faster than in the late 18th century. Do we really need nearly a full year? Perhaps so when CSI was number one in the Nielson ratings and the convention didn’t make the top 20.

Mike LeBlanc, East Wilton