Now that Walter Mondale is back in the national spotlight, I decided to dig up the speech he gave when the Democratic National Convention nominated him to run for president in 1984. Mondale has always kind of fascinated me, perhaps because the 1984 campaign is one of the first I remember taking an interest in, and also because he chose Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate, a moment that seems at once the triumph and the death knell of ERA-era feminism.

In reading the speech with an eye for discovering why Mondale lost that election so resoundingly, my eye lit upon these words: "Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won't tell you. I just did."

Note to self: when running for public office, don't promise to raise taxes.