THE FIRST NATIONAL POLITICAL CONVENTION THAT I EVER WENT TO WAS ONE I DIDN’T really attend. It was 1976. I had spent the previous 18 months trying to get Congressman Mo Udall elected president and had failed. (Not that it was entirely my fault.) The Democrats had come together in New York to nominate Jimmy Carter, whom we had chased all over the country, only to lose narrowly to him in almost every primary. We lost in Wisconsin when everybody went to bed thinking we’d won, and the Milwaukee Sentinel got caught with a Dewey Defeats Truman headline in its early editions. Then, in May, with the campaign barely breathing, we lost to Carter in Michigan by fewer than 2,500 votes. I still have nightmares.
