Seeing the first Bush-Kerry presidential debate a few nights ago prompted another memory from my first semester of graduate school 20 years ago. In 1984, the incumbent President Ronald Reagan, a Republican, was being challenged by former Vice President Walter "Fritz" Mondale, the Democratic nominee. During the Fall '84 semester, Mondale spoke at a campaign rally on the UM's Diag and -- as best I can recall -- that appearance took place just a few days after the first Reagan-Mondale debate.

Nowadays (and perhaps then, too) political analysts talk about "rallying the base" of support within a candidate's own party, then "reaching out to the middle," i.e., moderate and undecided voters. Although it did not occur to me 20 years ago, the fact that Mondale was still rallying the base (very few cities in America are more liberal than Ann Arbor) in mid-October was a sure sign of how deeply in trouble Mondale was. In fact, despite by most accounts winning the first debate, Mondale ended up losing the election 59-41%. Mondale carried only his home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia.

I attended the Mondale rally along with two other grad students. We found a spot behind a tree and got a decent view. Mondale was accompanied at the rally by former Sen. Gary Hart (D-CO), Mondale's nearest rival during the primary campaign. I searched pretty hard on the web for any record of the rally, but couldn't find anything. Twenty years ago would probably be too far back for web-archived newspaper accounts of the event. Further, given Mondale's lopsided defeat, it's understandable that nobody associated with the campaign would create a web-based tribute to Election '84.

Many of you will remember Hart from his failed 1988 campaign, which he started in many people's minds as the front-runner. Suffice it to say that Hart, the self-proclaimed "candidate of new ideas," got into trouble from something resembling one of the world's oldest ideas.