21.   A state that accounts for one in every eight delegates to national political conventions will at last have a say in whom those conventions nominate.

22.   A vote in May, backers say, would allow the issue to be decided before the arguments become bogged down in the national political conventions.

23.   A second was his signing in August, just before the political conventions, of a Republican-style welfare reform bill.

24.   Against the backdrop of the omnipresent three-ring circus of this political convention, reality comes in brief flashes and snippets of conversations.

25.   But all that is too complicated for a sound bite at a political convention.

26.   But no one is clamoring for another political convention.

27.   But it also resembles a political convention, a chance to put Clinton and Gore in the best possible light as they take on a knotty political problem.

28.   But it is still too early to abandon the rich tradition represented by the American political convention.

29.   But remember, everybody at a political convention is for the same party.

30.   But such superficiality should be left to political conventions.