In the summer of 1972, Richard Nixon was president, and thanks to Watergate, knew as much about Democrats' plans for the coming election as they did.
Which wasn't a lot.
The Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach that July was among the most contentious in the party's modern history. A young Stetson University professor was caught in the middle.
Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota was the presumptive nominee, and Wayne Bailey liked his politics. But the first-time delegate's vote was pledged to Alabama Gov. George Wallace, who had carried every county to win the Florida primary that year.
Bailey didn't feel that he really had a choice. Or did he? Resolving the dilemma would turn out to be a real-life civics lesson for the founder of Stetson's political science department.
Now 77, Bailey will be voting as a delegate this week for the 10th time at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C. He's one of a dozen delegates from Volusia, the largest delegation ever to attend a national convention from the county. (Flagler County didn't have any delegates elected this year.)
"When he goes, everybody knows him," said Phil Giorno, a fellow delegate and chairman of the Democratic Executive Committee of Volusia County, a position Bailey held for 22 years. "If you stay close to him, you get into the 'in crowd.' He's just a wonderful mentor to Democrats all over."
Bailey has always had to balance his political activity with the objectivity demanded by his science. One-time students include former Democratic Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia and Republican Mike Haridopolos, the conservative president of the Florida Senate.
As much as he supports his party, Bailey loves the system even more.
"It never fails to impress, the amazing capacity of the system, as ragged as it is, to come together and produce a more or less articulate expression of the alternatives," he said last week, seated at his book-strewn desk on the top floor of Stetson's Lynn Business Center.
While he harbors concerns for the future, particularly the unfettered influence of big-moneyed interests, on this occasion he was asked to look back. His string of consecutive conventions was interrupted four years ago, when the number of Florida's delegates was halved as punishment for the Legislature's decision to violate national party rules in moving up its primary.
Now that he's headed back for another, he looked back at some of the moments that stood out from the first nine.
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In 1984, it was Bailey who, at the elbow of a friend, found access to the inner circles.
Bill Crotty was a Daytona Beach attorney with a national reputation as a political fundraiser. Crotty, who died of pneumonia in 1999, was the national fundraising coordinator for Walter Mondale the year he tapped Geraldine Ferraro as the first woman vice presidential candidate.
Bailey remembers sitting in the hotel room with Crotty and Mondale, watching the convention coverage on TV, waiting for the moment when Mondale would be introduced to the crowd at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.
It was a pivotal point in American politics, as Bailey remembers it, as Mondale promised to reduce the budget deficit created by President Ronald Reagan.
"Let's tell the truth. It must be done, it must be done," Mondale told the American public. "Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won't tell you. I just did."
The attempt at candor was spun as a promise to raise taxes. Reagan won in a landslide, taking every state except Mondale's home of Minnesota.
"That kind of clarity became an example for politicians to feint, as in boxing, instead of throwing a punch," said Bailey -- his diplomatic way of saying politicians learned from Mondale not to be so honest with their audiences.
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At the 2004 convention in Boston, Bailey again was near the center of things. Max Cleland, his friend and former student, was the speaker tapped to introduce nominee John Kerry. Bailey remembers how he and two students joined Cleland and Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy for lunch at a posh waterfront restaurant.
"The students were just goggle-eyed that they were sitting there, listening to Kennedy and watching all these notables come by to greet him," Bailey said.
But what Bailey remembers most of that election was another turning point. Cleland had been defeated in his Senate re-election bid two years earlier, despite leading in early polls. A late TV ad questioned his commitment to national defense, pairing his image with that of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.
It was such an outrageous attack on Cleland -- a decorated war hero and triple amputee from wounds in Vietnam. Even Republicans like John McCain came to his defense.
It didn't help Cleland on Election Day. Bailey felt the tactic was used again against Kerry, another decorated war hero whose service record commanding boat patrols in Vietnam was challenged in ads that were so prevalent they became synonymous with political attacks: swiftboating.
Bailey's takeaway lesson? "You can use almost any message, if you're clever enough," he said, "and turn it in your direction."
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Bailey was far from the center of power at his first convention in '72.
Times were different, though, with the three broadcast networks providing nearly complete coverage of events, so much so that even the 37-year-old Bailey wound up on TV, speaking from the convention floor. Bailey doesn't remember what he said, just that so many students reached out to him later to say they saw him on TV.
He would be glad that was his only appearance.
The convention was so contentious that sessions that began in the early evening went nearly until sunrise. The bickering would mean McGovern wound up giving his acceptance speech long after most television viewers had gone to bed.
"Can you imagine?" Bailey said. "I recalled sitting there, like I needed toothpicks in my eyes" to keep them open.
Suddenly, he was startled by a bright light in his face. It was a TV cameraman, hoping to capture an image of him napping on the convention floor.
"That woke me up pretty quickly," he added.
When it came time to cast his vote, Bailey recalled how deftly his mentor, then-Gov. Reubin Askew, handled the dilemma. Askew, who supported school desegregation, didn't want to have to cast has vote for Wallace, the strict segregationist.
"So he went to the restroom to avoid casting a vote for Wallace," Bailey recalled with a smile.
Askew was a politician, Bailey, a teacher of the process. True to the system, Bailey cast his vote for Wallace.
The conventions are more theatrics than real drama these days, the role of delegates largely ceremonial. Yet their responsibilities provide another real-life civics lesson, about the difference between the direct popular votes of a democracy and the indirect elections of a republic.
It practically takes a political science professor to appreciate, but it's a lesson worth recalling in case the Nov. 6 presidential election is as close as in 2000. Then, Americans will be reminded -- it's not the total number of votes that elect a president; only the votes in the electoral college do that.
As an elector, Bailey will be in position to cast one of Florida's 29 votes if a Democrat carries the state. He smiled at the thought of his small but crucial role in the process he's dedicated his life to teaching.
"I tell my students," he said with a self-deprecating chuckle, "if they vote for Obama, they're really voting for Wayne Bailey."
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