Lori Sturdevant: History shows that a lot rides on this event

Forgive Twin Cities leaders, please, for the nervous edge in their voices as they extend wishes for a good convention to the throngs arriving this weekend for the Republican National Convention.

There's a lot riding on this convention -- for John McCain and his fellow Republicans, to be sure, but also for the Twin Cities. It's this area's chance for a breakthrough into the top tier of major-event destinations -- the very thing local boosters from Gov. John S. Pillsbury in the 1880s to Gov. Rudy Perpich in the 1980s strove mightily to achieve, with mixed results.

Minnesotans who know their local lore can attest that national political conventions can go sadly wrong, to the lasting detriment of cities that host them.

If it were otherwise, the grand Industrial Exposition Building -- or more likely a remodeled version thereof, perhaps still topped by a landmark 260-foot tower -- might still be standing on the east side of the 3rd Avenue bridge in Minneapolis. Old St. Anthony, between the river and the university campus, would have matured into the city's convention headquarters, complete with hotels, restaurants and entertainment venues. A downtown divided by the river, not concentrated on its west bank, could well have developed.

All those possibilities were lost after the public-relations disaster that was the 1892 Republican National Convention, author and political commentator Barry Casselman says. A few prominent members of the visiting press corps went home to report that our fair city wasn't up to the lofty standards of the nation's political elite.

Casselman tells the story well in his just-released book, "Minnesota Souvenir: Republican National Convention 2008."

(The book is available at www.pogopress.com and ought to be tucked into every delegate's Minnesota goodie bag.)

The bad reviews weren't totally unjustified, Casselman says. Minneapolis was still a young city in 1892. It had 24 hotels, but only one, the West, was up to top East Coast standards. The city's restaurants included a few kitchens set up temporarily for the convention. One had a menu consisting entirely of pork and beans.

The Chicago Herald's assessment of Minneapolis was especially harsh, which may have had something to do with the convention business rivalry that had sprung up between the two cities. Minneapolis is "a primitive region inhabited by hospitable if uncouth natives," the paper reported. One hotel, presumably the West, was badly overcrowded, it said.

The Boston Advertiser was prescient when it wrote, "Minneapolis will not soon be selected again by the Republicans as a place for holding a national convention."

Those negative notices and the recession of 1893 dealt a lethal one-two punch to the Exposition building, and left the city's convention business reeling for many years. Within a few years of hosting the convention, the Exposition building went bankrupt. It became a warehouse for the Savage Seed Company and was torn down in 1940 to make way for a Coca-Cola bottling plant.

Among his other credits, Casselman is a dean of local restaurant reviewers. Trust him when he says that the criticism of 1892 won't be heard this week. Among American cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul have moved into the epicurean big leagues.

But there's still a potential downside for the Twin Cities this week, Casselman said: "We're at risk because of how we'll handle the protests."

Casselman means to cast no aspersions on the local gendarmes. They are well-trained professionals, and they've been schooling themselves in the finer points of crowd control since well before Minneapolis and St. Paul won the convention bid in January 2007. Their resources have been pumped up by a $50 million federal grant for convention security. They will be joined by an estimated 3,500 trained reinforcements from around the region and the nation.

But even for the best of personnel, it can be difficult to walk the fine line between overreacting and underreacting to protester provocation. Lean too far one way, and the cops look thuggish; the other, they look like wimps, unable to maintain order. Neither misstep looks pretty on national television -- or does the city's future convention business any good.

Minnesotans of a certain age still wince at the memory of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, 40 years ago last week. A Minnesotan lost his bid for the White House, many historians say, because of how Chicago police behaved in Grant Park. Mayor Daley's cops didn't do the reputations of the mayor and the city any good, either.

Seattle saw a replay of that kind of police vs. protester war in 1999, at a gathering of the World Trade Organization.

Both Minneapolis and St. Paul are served by aspiring DFL mayors who know that their own future prospects are on the line during this most Republican of weeks in their towns. Both R.T. Rybak and Chris Coleman are savvy enough to know that for them, this week isn't about partisan politics. It's about business. And in the long run, what's good for business in the Twin Cities has been proven to be good for its political leaders, too.

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One more thing: Rybak has asked folks who will still be here when the elephants are gone to put aside their Minnesota reserve, come right up to a police officer this week, and thank them for their service. What a good idea.

Lori Sturdevant is a Star Tribune editorial writer and columnist. She is at lsturdevant@startribune.com.