First of all, there's no mention of political parties in the Constitution, so you begin American history with not only no political conventions but also no parties.

To people who remember JFK's assassination, JFK Jr. will probably always be that boy saluting his father's coffin.

We [the United States] are the world's only superpower right now, so everyone notices every bit of what we do or don't do.

Then you get to the last half of the 20th century, Americans are getting very skeptical about their leaders and their institutions, and another place that is affected is parties and conventions.

Lincoln was able to say, you know, "It will make me very unhappy if I lose the presidency, but I'm committed to larger things." If you look at candidates and say this is someone who can be happy to go back to their family or they have larger convictions. Franklin Roosevelt jeopardized his presidency by telling Americans in 1940, "We might have to fight Hitler." He loved being president, but he loved defending freedom more.

The founders were very worried that if parties developed in America, you might have something like the modern Italian system, where you have 20 different parties that divide Congress and the country and can't govern.

The original thing that fascinated me most was why we expect leaders, and especially presidents, at times to destroy themselves - and that's a sign of being a good leader or a good president. We usually don't expect that of almost anyone else in any profession, in particular, in public life.