Some high profile candidates have decided not to attend their parties’ national conventions later this summer. This is news, but one is inclined to wonder why. After all, would you want to spend three days in August, listening to speakers as they introduce some “great and distinguished American” who will then launch into an hour long recitation of stale applause lines before a couple of thousand people who are paying absolutely no attention?  The speaker could read pages from the Obamacare legislation and not a member of the audience would notice.

Would you go if the event were held in, say, Charlotte, North Carolina?  How about Tampa, Florida?  In August?