Show and Tell

The anxiety was high. The suburban living room was still. The press conference finally flickered on the television set, live from New York. If Geraldine Ferraro was going to humiliate herself, and doom the Democrats' chances, at least Walter Mondale would be able to witness the dreadful spectacle at home, in Minnesota, alone except for his wife Joan and a couple of aides.

Ferraro sat before a thicket of microphones, three dozen TV cameras and 200 insistent reporters in a hotel ballroom near Kennedy Airport, ready...