If you've never been involved in organizational or party politics, you may not know this. So let me school you.
The President or Ranking Elected Official is in essence the Chairman of his party
The President or Ranking Elected Official hand-picks the leadership, the Party Chair, Platform Committee Chair, Convention Chair, etc.
The President or Ranking Elected official picks all the Delegates & Alternates.
If the state party rules dictate that the delegates are elected or chosen in caucus, the President or Ranking Elected Official organizes elections to make sure his loyalists are elected.
The only people interested in the platform are wacky activists. The job of the Platform Chair is to make sure the wacky activists don't put anything in the platform that would be embarrassing or harmful to the President or Ranking Elected Official.
This is why the platform committee chair (and all the other leadership positions) are usually skilled, experienced, loyal political people like Congresspersons (Rep. Deborah Wasserman Schultz), Governors (Former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland) or big city Mayors (Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa). You pick powerful, experienced people so that the convention goes exactly how you want it to.
How incompetent are you that you let a bunch of wacky activists ruin an entire day of your convention, allowing video to be taken that might be used for the next ten years against your party?
