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A stage where speakers, audience can see eye to eye
Continuing a downward trend that began in 1996, the podium will be four feet high for McCain, Bush and other GOP speakers.
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You could say the Republican Party has dropped to an all-time low -- when it comes to convention podium height.
And that's intentional, meant to ensure that when John McCain takes the stage next month at Xcel Energy Center to accept the nomination from the GOP convention, he won't, like candidates in the past, loom high above the mere mortals among the delegates.He will address them almost face-to-face, only eight steps and four feet off the floor.
"It's a step in the evolution of podiums. They've come down lower and lower," RNC operations director Mike Miller said Thursday during a tour of the St. Paul arena's transformation.
Before 1996, Miller said, the podiums would soar some 10 feet above the delegate floor in a so-called "battleship formation," with a wall in the front, and from which the bigwigs gazed down and waved.
"It was so high that the delegates in the front row couldn't see the speaker," said Miller, 71, who is working his 10th GOP convention. "We had to put in television monitors for the folks in the front row."
The podium dropped to six feet in San Diego in 1996 and stayed there in Philadelphia in 2000 and New York City in 2004.
McCain's people requested this year's lower stage.
"The campaign really wanted to actually get the deck down lower so he would be more like at a town hall meeting setting," said Greg Lane, project manager for Freeman Company, the contractor in charge of transforming the hockey arena into a convention hall.
How low is too low?
"You don't want the delegates waving signs to obscure your speaker from the television cameras, but that shouldn't be a problem," Miller said.
Unlike the last GOP go-around in Madison Square Garden, where a circle-in-the-round extension went in on Night 4 for President Bush's speech, Miller said no drastic mid-convention podium change is planned.
Democrats mum
As for Barack Obama and the Democratic National Convention coming up this month in Denver, podium height is a well-cloaked secret. A week from today, DNC officials say, they will unveil a bold, unique stage setup. Until then, they're declining to say how far above it all Obama will stand.
When Obama went over the top in the delegate count and spoke at Xcel Energy Center on June 3, he stood upon a longer, narrower 4-foot-high stage, the same height as the RNC podium, but not an eight-step, 45-foot-by-50-foot platform like McCain will use.
For the first time, Miller said, a high-definition video wall, 50 feet wide by 30 feet high, will rise behind the RNC podium. Ending the fourth week of a six-week makeover, Miller said everything is on schedule.
"Right now," he said, "things are going so well, we wonder where the glitches are."
Curt Brown • 612-673-4767
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