My colleague, Jim, and I are basking, like many of you, in the afterglow of the parties’ nominating conventions. I spent the week in Tampa covering the Republicans; Jim made the trip to Charlotte to see the Democrats.

Quickly, let’s review the two parties’ completely different messages:

“We need to sound the alarm!” the Democrats declared. “If we elect Mitt Romney, Goldman Sachs is going to show up at your house with a U-Haul!”

“We need to sound the alarm!” the Republicans stated. “If we reelect Barack Obama, the Chinese government is going to show up at your house with a U-Haul!”

If I had a nickel for every time a politician or “political expert” came up to me in Tampa and said we needed to sound the alarm about something, I’d have enough money for a nice lunch.

That may not sound like much, but consider how many nickels it takes to add up to ten dollars and that I was only in town for five days.

No matter whom I vote for, I worry that a Congressman is going to show up outside my house at 3 a.m. cranking one of those old-timey police sirens until I write a check for his or her reelection campaign.

“I’m sounding the alarm!” the politician will be yelling at me. “The 2014 midterms are only two years away! It’ll be the most important election of your lifetime!”

But a reporter’s job isn’t to make fun of an event. A reporter’s job is to research the topic, immerse himself in the culture and get to know the people involved.

Then he can make fun of it.

No matter whom we elect, I feel hopeful about our country. We’re 330 million people strong. We are a nation that was sharply divided over the Vietnam War. We’re a nation that was torn apart by civil war. For crying out loud, we’re a nation that invaded Canada… and lost!

Each time, we came back stronger. But “Let’s just chillax and figure this thing out” is probably not as captivating a slogan as “THE OTHER GUY IS GOING TO STEAL ALL YOUR MONEY!”

This was my first convention, and I was looking forward to the assignment. Teasing aside, your elected officials are articulate and smart and keep very busy schedules, but you don’t learn much about them in a few passing interviews. It was enlightening to meet some of their families, and I hope some of the real work I did helped you better understand what goes on behind the scenes at the conventions.

But a blog is not a time to rehash real work. As Bill Gates once said in a dream I had, “A blog is an opportunity to compare events to the time Arlington hosted the Super Bowl.”

This was a theme that actually came up several times during the trip:

1.) The weather was not Tampa’s friend: Just the threat of a hurricane prompted the GOP to cancel day one. I talked to several locals who worried the timing of the storm would hurt tourism because Tampa would be forever branded as a place constantly bombarded by tropical cyclones.

“Maybe that sounds like an overreaction,” the owner of a Cuban sandwich shop in Ybor City told me. “But when you just said you were from Dallas, I thought about that time it snowed during the Super Bowl and the snow fell off the stadium and hurt those people. Maybe it doesn’t snow there often, but that’s what I thought about because it snowed when everyone was watching.”

2.) There was a seating debacle: Some of the Texas delegates were a little miffed that the RNC seated them in the back of the Tampa Times Forum while American Samoa got the good real estate near the stage.

Some of the delegates were also miffed that the RNC had the gall to stick them at a beautiful resort that happened to be 25 miles from town.

“It’s not Tampa’s fault,” one delegate told me. “But I spent a lot of money and vacation time to come here. I was hoping to see more of the town.”

3.) Everybody’s desperate to get into the best parties: “I can get you a pass with a plus one into the AT&T party if you can get me a single into the google party,” I heard one PR person bargain with another.

One difference: Security at the conventions makes the Super Bowl seem like a lawless wasteland. If you thought it was a pain getting around north Texas last February, you should have seen the law enforcement presence and the perimeter fencesurrounding a substantial portion of downtown Tampa. The Texas delegate who wanted to see more of the town would have found a lot of small businesses that decided to close up shop for the week.

Onward and upward to the conventions in 2016, which I’m sure will be the most important election of our lifetime!