It’s a week until the opening of the 41st Republican National Convention and two weeks till the opening of the 47th Democratic National Convention, political institutions that go back in unbroken chains to 1856 and 1832. Four years ago the Wall Street Journal asked me to reflect on the national conventions I have attended, going back to 1968, and this article that led the Journal’s Saturday Review section was the result. In the weeks that followed I attended my 21st and 22nd national conventions in Tampa and Charlotte, neither of which was as memorable as many I described in the Journal article.
