How much of the convention are you watching?

The Democratic Convention is on this week, and I really ought to be watching more of it.

After all, I’m mildly interested in the upcoming presidential election, and the conventions are when the parties put together the complete package of who their candidate is and what he stands for. Besides that, there’s the whole obligation-as-a-newspaper-editor thing. For some reason, people seem to think newspaper editors ought to know what’s going on in the world. Go figure.

I have watched some of the convention, mind you. Monday night, for instance, I watched former Rep. Jim Leach, a Republican, explain why he was supporting Barrack Obama. Of course, the main reason I watched Leach is that the Iowan was once my own congressman. In fact, he was the very first congressman I ever voted for. As speeches go, Leach made some nice points, but he was about as interesting as watching cotton grow. So I think I deserve some credit for sitting through it.

But the upshot is that by the time the headliner of the night, Michelle Obama, spoke, I was ready to not be watching the convention anymore. Mrs. Obama is a good speaker, and would no doubt make a classy first lady; but I couldn’t bring myself to watch her entire speech. Promising myself to read all about it in Tuesday’s newspaper, I headed off instead to check my Facebook page.

Tuesday night wasn’t much better. I spent the early hours of the evening helping the local soccer association sign up players for the upcoming season and, by the time I got home, I was civic-dutied out. Part of me would have liked to have watched the Hillary drama unfold, but it just wasn’t in the cards. And you know what? When it really comes down to it, helping see to it that local kids have something fun to do on Saturdays this fall is a lot more important to me than watching a political pep rally.

And really, that’s all the party conventions are anyway. The real business of the convention could be completed in a day, but the event is spread out, for no other purpose than to springboard the frenzy of the fall campaign. When you read about how meticulously scripted the actual nomination process is, right down to the details of who will call for the "nomination by acclamation," it becomes pretty obvious that there's little "real" about the convention. It's all theatrics.

Not that they're the worst thing in the world, mind you. At the end of the day, it's probably good to at least have a vague realization that the conventions are happening. After all, they're no worse than the charades we'll see in the weeks to come known as "debates."

But as must-see TV, the conventions just don't make the grade.

Oh, sure, I’ll probably still tune in to a bit of the conventions. It’s always fun to watch the candidates give their acceptance speeches, see the balloons drop and watch the crowds go crazy. If nothing else, you’ve got to appreciate the conventions as a unique slice of the American-style democracy.

But if you’re looking for someone who will watch as much of the conventions as humanly possible, recording every minute to the DVR for future playback and evaluation, you’ll have to look someplace else. Because, quite frankly, I’ve got better things to do with my time. And I think you do, too.