"Political conventions are a noble relic of the days before ever earlier primaries and caucuses took over the job of selecting national presidential nominees.

Parties still party at conventions, which set the themes and showcase the speeches of the luminaries lined up to inspire faith in the national nominees.

I’ve attended three national conventions as a reporter and have fond memories of each.

Miami in 1972 was wild when George McGovern climbed to the podium well after midnight on nomination night. Those Democrats knew how to fight.

New York in 1980 still showcased party divisions when Jimmy Carter tried to chase Ted Kennedy around the stage for a photo-op.

Philadelphia in 2000 was a love fest among well-heeled Republicans where George W. Bush won the GOP nod and chose Dick Cheney as his running mate. Black support for the compassionate conservatives was featured front and center.

Washington and Lee University in Lexington has earned its place in national convention lore as the best predictive place to learn what a national party will do months later when the party out of power in the White House nominates a presidential contender to take it back.

Since 1948, the W&L Mock Convention has missed only once. In 1972, the school, where 95 percent of students participate in predicting what each state delegation will do, chose Kennedy instead of McGovern. Richard Nixon won re-election over Mc-Govern that year in a landslide, causing more than a few people to later suggest the W&L students had picked the right candidate and the Democrats, the wrong one.

Lexington will be a rocking place next weekend when close to 1,800 W&L students try to predict what Democrats will do this summer in Denver after all the primaries. So far, 2008 has been anything but easy to predict.

Helping the students party and predict will be an impressive lineup of speakers.

Logan Gibson, my 21-year-old daughter, spent months as Mock Convention speakers’ chairwoman inviting and cajoling, pleading and touting, calling and visiting enough Democrats to fill a right rocking rostrum.

She even visited Bill Clinton’s Harlem office to try to sign up a former president, but couldn’t grab him off the campaign trail. Needless to say, I’m quite proud of her success at nabbing others.

Speakers at next weekend’s W&L 100th anniversary convention do know a little about political oratory.

Jesse Jackson, who won a Virginia Democratic presidential primary in 1988 by beating then-U.S. Sen. Al Gore, will address the convention Friday night.

U.S. Sen. Jim Webb, D-Arlington, will speak as a keynoter on Saturday.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson and former Gov. and now Richmond Mayor L. Douglas Wilder are fired up and ready to go.

Other names set to address the convention are Geraldine Ferraro, Carol Moseley Braun, Harold Ford Jr. and Max Cleland.

This is a convention likely to chart new political territory in America by picking either a black U.S. senator or a female senator as its nominee.

Bill Clinton was a hit at the 1988 Mock Convention, where he partied with the undergraduates. He wowed the student body with his jazz saxophone skills, according to student lore.

Del. Chris Saxman, R-Staunton, was a W&L student in 1984 and remembers that convention fondly.

The convention almost nominated Ferraro for vice president that year, and thus would have correctly picked the entire Walter Mondale-Ferraro ticket, but a little booze and some conservative enthusiasm got in the way, as Saxman recalls.

"We were all set to nominate Ferraro as VP, and a wave of conservatism shot through the very jovial undergrads and we nominated Lloyd Bentsen instead," Saxman said.

The Staunton delegate noted that the drinking age was "still 18 at the time."

Saxman said he remembers he was sober at the convention "since I was working security - confiscation activities mainly."

Every four years for the past century, W&L students participate in the nation’s most accurate mock convention, so candidates will have their eyes on the results in Lexington just as South Carolina Democrats roll in with their primary results.

In an unpredictable year, the students may have their party work cut out for them." (Bob Gibson, The Daily Progress, January 19, 2008)