The Convention

Campaign staff, friends, movie stars, politicians and parties – the days in LA were a frenzy of chaotic activity and tense inactivity (a lot of time "holding"). Expert staffers – our fast friends – shepherded us from place to place, warned us of the consequences of missing a motorcade (Gore’s in, Dad’s in: they’re gone), and made sure our friends and family had what they needed.

Worrying about where to be and what to wear the night of my father’s speech had worked well to distract me from what was really going on. But when Hadassah introduced my dad to the delegates and the international TV audience, the reality suddenly came through. Thousands of "Hadassah" signs bobbed in the air – a name that few people could spell last week was now being beamed into homes across the country! When my dad stood up to accept the nomination, I turned to my brother Matt and started to cry. That our dad was running for Vice President of the United States was beyond anything we could have imagined growing up together.

By the time members of "The West Wing" cast dropped into our skybox to say ‘hello’ and posed for a photo with us, it was getting hard to remember what relationship the Convention had to reality: we were officially "through the looking glass."

The Campaign

The day after the Convention ended we began a four-day trip down the Mississippi on the Mark Twain Riverboat. We floated slowly past perfectly green shores under a brilliant, cloud-specked sky. The beauty of the river and the warm welcomes we received in towns along the way pushed any confusion lingering from the Convention aside: we were off on a journey to see new places and meet new people.

Breaking off from the Gores and the riverboat cruise, we Liebermans stopped in a small town before heading to LaCrosse, Wisconsin, our home for this Sabbath. We were greeted by a John Cougar Mellencamp song, which soon gave way to the high school marching band, sweating in their wool uniforms as they played their best song over and over again. The crowd that gathered to greet Dad and Hadassah was not large – but their openness and excitement and gratitude at the opportunity to interact with a candidate for national office was a glimpse of what I would come to see in the weeks ahead as the most moving and energizing aspect of life on the campaign trail.