After two weeks and countless interviews with politicians, my time at the conventions is wrapping up

You’ve read about my commute in Philadelphia, but, and this may come as a surprise, I’ve actually spent some time at the Democratic National Convention.

Much like last week, the past few days have been full of non-partisan good times.

For instance, is it weird that the first time I saw Paul Simon live in concert was at a political convention? He’s on his last tour, and as an Edward R. Murrow Award winning journalist, I was obligated to ask some delegates what they thought. The consensus was that it was good to see him, but they were disappointed that he had trouble hitting some high notes. At one point, and I swear this is true, at one point, I asked some Texas delegates if his performance made them want to declare their votes for Garfunkel.

Feel free to use that one, gang.

I also kept hearing the phrase “I’m with her.” And every time, I thought of Bland from Arrested Development.

Last night, Morgan Freeman was the narrator of the video that played just before Hillary Clinton came on stage. The video seemed strangely familiar; I found myself waiting for Freeman to say he’s so excited, he can barely sit still or hold a thought in his head.

I did appreciate the end of the video. It sounded quite Morgan Freeman-ly. At the end, he would talk about the values that were passed down from generation to generation to generation … [long Morgan Freeman pause] … to generation.

I’m going to start pausing more for dramatic effect.

Wait, let me try that again. I’m going to start pausing more … [looking thoughtfully into the distance] … for dramatic effect.

After two weeks with both parties, I think I could write political speeches, regardless of political affiliation. It’s the same principle no matter what position you’re taking.

In addition to a long pause, you also need to hit the last word of each sentence. When you emphasize the last word, you get a cheer.

Wait, let me try that again: When you emphasize the last word, you get … [looking thoughtfully in the distance] … a CHEER.

I’ll just stand here smiling at different parts of the crowd and gesturing with the shrunken thumb until you’re done hollering your support.

One issue, though: the balloons that dropped from the rafters at each convention had been sitting up there for days. When I first walked into each venue the Sunday before the conventions started, I noticed them up there.

I don’t know how I expected the balloons to get up there, but leaving the balloons for so long seems like a risk. I imagine a speech running long and then a bunch of deflated balloons waft down on the crowd in a depressing fashion.

But given that the conventions started in the middle of the afternoon and people stared milling around in the morning, it probably would have been logistically difficult to get a bunch of balloons up there the day of the speech. Imagine delegates start showing up and see the Bush family or Obama and Paul Simon sitting on the floor blowing a bunch of balloons.