You have had presidential candidates over the last 30 years who would have had a very hard time getting nominated under the old system. One example is John Kennedy.

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.

I'm defining [presidential courage] pretty narrowly. It's not only taking a big political risk but it's also the risk that in the hindsight of history, people think it's wise.

So the result was that as one approached a political convention for most of the 19th century and for most of the 20th century until the 1960's, part of the drama was the fact that you didn't know ultimately who was going to be the nominee at the end of that convention week.

The point is that you see candidates running in these different kinds of contests. A primary shows you something that's different from a state party convention, which shows you something that is different than what a caucus shows you.

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.

We cannot be spun, or at least we'd like to think that we cannot be. And the presidents who are trying to - too overtly to try to say, here is what you historians and what you later Americans should think of my presidency, 30 or 40 years later, they look silly.