ABSTRACT
The pre-arranged script for the Republican convention at Miami allowed for spontaneous demonstrations of specified length, which the chairman would gavel to order. The convention was the most complete metaphor for the Nixonian conception of politics: a well-managed, carefully staged business. "The business of America is business", Calvin Coolidge once said, but the Nixon administration tried to install a more penetrating perception: "Run America like a business". The moves, possibilities, elements of surprise, squad "cuts", and internally defined objectives of the game celebrate exactly the world of America's technological elites. The loose clothing, the casual manners, the forced and eccentric hedonism, the resistance to precision and organization and discipline—these were not expressions of contempt for "the Protestant ethic" or for classic American individualism. Americans of all persuasions, loving frontier situations, defend their own forms of lawlessness.
