PHILADELPHIA -- They are carrying things to great heights here at the GOP convention, and nobody's taking things higher than Ed Castor.
He's the crane operator working a $1 million German-made Krupp boom crane who lifted the letters on the signature sign. Every network telecast here will typically open with a shot of the ''Comcast, Proud Host, Republican Convention'' at the First Union center. That is, if Castor gets the spelling right and doesn't mix up his letters dangling one at a time from the tip of his 170-foot long fishing rod.
''I can put 300 feet on that,'' said Castor matter-of-factly Wednesday as his ''jib'' on the end of the boom wafted back and forth in winds gusting up to 40 mph. ''I just took a section out that had it out 200 feet.'' So who's in charge of spelling the words right, I asked some rain-coated ground supervisors. ''Him!'' they said, pointing to Ed.
But the man in charge of the whole shebang is Andy Card, the former Massachusetts legislator who is running the convention for Bush & Bush Inc., the family dynasty that is set to nominate their second president in 12 years. Card, a longtime associate of the clan, represents the auto industry in D.C. when he's not helping Bushes run for president. And he's thrilled with Governor George W. Bush's selection of Dick Cheney as running mate. ''When they asked me to take this job,'' said Card in a brief interview, ''the first person I called was Cheney,'' to ask him what he thought.'' The quintessential insider's insider, Cheney's selection is a reassuring development to a lot of party officials.
There are hundreds of GOP insiders who made it a point to inquire, ''What does Cheney think?'' over the past 25 years, covering the span the VP designee ran Gerald Ford's White House staff, joined the GOP leadership during a decade as Wyoming's lone congressman, and ran the Defense Department for Bush Sr. in the Gulf War.
There's another Bay Stater - an adopted one - who is Card's official convention spokeswoman: Leslie Goodman, a veteran party operative from New York and California, has been hanging her chapeau at Harvard's Kennedy School for several seasons. ''I've been here for two-and-a-half months,'' she said during one media stop, cell phone in one ear, and two staff aides whispering into another, and a smart suede shoulder bag stuffed with bumf hanging off one shoulder.
Hers is a maddening chore; there are 15,000 media types descending upon the City of Brotherly Love, and Goodman is supposed to have the answers they demand. It is Card who presides over the daily media feeding, and he's promising to deliver a convention ''very different from what you have seen in the past ... it will all be different.''
Card's self-assurance reflects the confidence of the Bush campaign: they seem to think they have this election won, if they just don't blow it. The poll numbers shift a little here and there, but no poll has had Al Gore up, all year so far, and Bush is ahead in a lot more states. The choice of Cheney is reassuring to a lot of Republicans who didn't want any nasty surprises.
One exploitable issue will be abortion - Cheney and Bush are both prolife. Another distant cloud on the horizon is gasoline prices; Bush and Cheney were both oil company bosses in Texas. But it is impossible to find a Republican here who deems Bush-Cheney a losing ticket.
''We are selecting the next president and vice president of this country here, and the party knows that,'' Card said. Veteran (car) marketer that he is, Card has a slogan, ''the four P's,'' to delineate themes of the convention broadcasts opening Monday night: ''Principles, people, partnerships, and picking-a-president.'' That's five ''P's'' by my count, but Andy throws in more: ''this is not about a party, it's about picking a president.''
The Republicans had a ''16-day program rollout'' script and are following it. GOP conclaves are always tightly scripted and masterfully buttoned-down. This may be the most-scripted and best-buttoned-down. The potentially divisive issue of excising antiabortion language from the platform has been squashed. The GOP Platform Committee will do its work off-site, meeting tonight through Saturday. Prochoice Republicans have been informed there will be no tinkering with the antiabortion platform language.
Opening night is heavy on the ''compassion'' theme'' with worthy teachers, pastors, and adoption experts, sprinkled among ''compassion videos.'' These are unusual topics for convention prime time, but Card justifies the scheme as showing ''how the country is involved in leaving no child behind.'' That sounds suspiciously like Hillary's ''It Takes a Village to Raise a Child'' book, but no one here encourages that kind of thinking.
Tuesday night is wall-to-wall patriotism, with Vietnam vets and General Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf remote-casting from the battleship New Jersey. John McCain will wind it up with a 20-minute speech that will be closely watched for degree of warmth toward Bush, who roughed him up plenty during primary skirmishes.
The GOP brass thought of everything, down to harnessing the hot-air power of volunteers who began blowing up 150,000 balloons for the big drop at the conclusion of Bush's acceptance speech. The party's PR plans took a hit with the Concorde plane crash stepping on Bush's selection of Cheney. But otherwise, to the extent possible, this party is geared up, buttoned-down, and rolling as planned to what the participants honestly anticipate will be a glorious victory in November.
David Nyhan is a Globe columnist.
