THE BELL CURVE:

How we reacted to the political conventions we survived over the past two weeks depends, for most of us, on how we went in. We’ll have to wait until Nov. 4 to discover how many minds — if any — were changed. But mostly we were preaching to the choir.

In one area, however, there was almost universal agreement, even across party lines. The Republicans won the balloon vote in a landslide.

I marveled when the balloons began cascading over the podium as John McCain finished his acceptance speech. I knew who was choreographing all those balloons — 100,000 of them — like a general with an overview of the action, moving his troops about a battleground. There was a director at headquarters, too, but the commander in the field was my friend and neighbor, Newport Beach’s balloon man, Treb Heining. And when I caught up with him at home last weekend, I found him deeply satisfied with the balloon performance and deeply irritated at media suggestions that it screwed up.

“It went off exactly as planned,“ Treb told me, “and it was over-the-top successful. The media should be reporting facts instead of problem rumors.”

So we talked about the facts behind the Republican balloons. That covers two decades of history, but we’ll join the process several months ago when the producer of the 2008 Democratic convention told Treb the Democrats wouldn’t be using him this time around, mostly because the acceptance speech had been moved to an outdoor stadium not friendly to balloons.

Treb, who had offered his services to both parties, was astonished, especially after the Democrats’ determination to reverse the balloon drubbing they took at the 2004 convention.

So he came up with a terrific plan for stadium balloons that didn’t persuade the Democrats and finally relieved Treb, he now realizes, of the stress of back-to-back conventions.

So his next step for the Republican gig was selecting a high school music department in St. Paul, Minn., from which to recruit an army of volunteers to inflate the balloons.

The carrots he offered were contributions to the school’s music program and the opportunity for the kids to spend a day inside the excitement of convention preparations.

So Treb had no problem attracting recruits who awaited him when he arrived four days before the start of the convention with his tried-and-true equipment and crew.

There were 48 hours of uncertainty that the convention might have to be delayed because of the backwash of the violent storms striking the Gulf Coast. But Treb couldn’t wait for confirmation to instruct his inflation crew and put these newly minted experts to work on the complex compression lines Treb set up on the convention floor. There, several dozen students, working in groups of four, inflated and tied 100,000 balloons in about five hours, during which 19 rolls of tape were used on aching fingers.

Once the balloons were inflated and distributed among the rafters above the conventioneers in 18 carefully pre-arranged stations, it became a waiting game.

“I had a chance, then, to take a deep breath and think,” Treb said. “ I was seated near the top of the press rows, about 50 feet from the speakers. You get a different perspective there. You feel awed when you find yourself that close to history being made, when you realize what you are seeing a few feet away is being sent out to the far corners of your country and the world.”

As the ending of McCain’s speech approached, Treb says he felt the only scratches of concern that passed immediately when the drops got under way.

Although it may have seemed chaotic to those of us watching on TV, every drop was planned. Treb was working from a chart of the 18 drop stations that included a listing of the nature and quantity of balloons at each. So as the field commander, Treb was shouting such orders into the production phone system as “No. 13 , drop blue” and the attendant at station 13 would pull a cord and a bevy of blue balloons were turned loose to enjoy their few moments of fame. In that manner, 100,000 balloons joined the party with precise timing and color.

“Before we get to that final speech,” says Treb, “balloons are seen as kind of a distraction, in the way of serious business. Then comes the drop, and for maybe a half-hour afterward, the balloons become the No. 1 focus. And that’s worth all the time and effort we put into them.”

We’ll probably never know precisely, but if there is a balloon vote out there somewhere, Treb may have done the Republicans a serious and unwitting service. And the Democrats have no one to blame but themselves.

JOSEPH N. BELL lives in Newport Beach. His column runs Thursdays.