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WASHINGTON (AP) -- Modern political conventions are like a Super Bowl minus the game.

They are the bling on the body politic: shiny, pretty and a touch goofy. They exist to be seen, more than to do.

They are like a Miss America pageant where the fix is in. The Olympic opening and closing ceremonies without all that sweating in between.

It's the party having a party. Politics is put to choreography, each song chosen for certain effect, each sign -- even the crude, seemingly spontaneous ones -- part of a script.

What's the point? Is there a point somewhere in that sea of nutty hats?

In essence, conventions tell voters it's time to focus on their choices in the November election as the diversions of summer slip away.

The Democrats in Denver and the Republicans in St. Paul, Minn., will honor their past and trot out their rising stars. Mostly what they'll do is showcase Barack Obama and John McCain with every bit of eye candy, pleasing rhetoric and excitement they can muster -- as long as that excitement is not generated by dissent.

Democrats are thanking their lucky stars their protracted primary contest ended with a winner. They faced the prospect of a divisive, brokered convention, rare in modern times, until Obama finally prevailed over Hillary Rodham Clinton.

When 75,000 people come out to hear Obama accept the nomination at Invesco Field at Mile High, home of football's Denver Broncos, on Aug. 28, that won't be his biggest crowd of the year. But it will be his biggest crowd with so many voters watching on TV.

That kind of priceless exposure is the principal reason for the modern political convention. Americans will see Clinton bury any lingering animosity from being defeated by Obama in the primaries. They'll see McCain the GOP iconoclast take the party forward as his own.

Another reason to meet is old-fashioned organization.

Obama's rally will double as a staging ground for voter registration when the tens of thousands in the audience are implored to use call lists and text messages to bring people around the country on board.

But the convention as a struggle between party factions over power and ideas? That's so yesterday.

The one thing worse than being boring for the modern convention is being fractious. Organizers would rather you turn off the TV than see disharmony.

What suspense exists in the proceedings is grafted on to them -- namely, the candidate's choice of a running mate, announced during or shortly before everyone gets together.

Blame democracy for the dearth of drama.

Presidential candidates used to be picked by members of Congress who caucused in the Capitol. Cycles of reform followed but the back-room boys stayed in the thick of it one way or another, well past the first Democratic convention in 1832 and the first Republican one in 1856.

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