hort of violence in the streets involving the throngs of protesters coming to Philadelphia, the Republican National Convention opening this week is not likely to galvanize America's attention. Cynical, alienated, too busy making money or vacationing, most voters have better things to do than watch a tightly scripted infomercial for either party. A new poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press records a sickening dive of public interest in the GOP convention since 1992: from 53 percent to 44 percent in 1996 to 34 percent this year.
Conventional wisdom has it that low participation helps the Republican Party, since its natural base is a smaller group of more motivated, better-educated, wealthier voters. It is true that since the Reagan years the GOP has managed to hold in coalition two fractious wings: traditional business interests and social-issue activists from a poorer, more ethnic, more Southern population. But that still leaves out a lot of America. The challenge for the Republican Party is to make real its ''big tent'' rhetoric and use the convention to broaden its base.
There is some reason for optimism. The Republican platform committee, hewing to the instructions of its nominee-in-waiting, George W. Bush, has toned down much of the harsh rhetoric in the party's planks on affirmative action and education. And convention managers promise there will be no organized Democrat-bashing, which has turned off voters in the past.
Still, there is no substitute for substance. The Republicans could do the most to attract the vast middle of the country to their cause with solid, workable programs on health care, education, and the environment - not by squandering an unprecedented surplus on more tax cuts for the richest Americans.
The payoff for a genuine effort would be nothing less than the revival of American democracy - a president elected by a real majority. When less than 50 percent of voting age Americans bother to cast ballots and less than 50 percent of those vote for the winner - this was Bill Clinton's sorry position in 1992 - it is hard to claim a true victory, much less a mandate.
