My Streak is Preserved

I've never met or been close a winning presidential candidate
I covered a Bill Bradley press event in 1999, and an Edwards rally at Ohio State in 2004. I shook hands with Bradley.

Then Al Gore trounced him in the early primaries.

He lost twice and ruined his career by shacking up with a documentary filmmaker while his wife dies from cancer.

Three days before the 2000 election, I shook hands with John McCain and threw a few softballs about veterans at him. For the few minutes we shared the same air, he was very nice man who used the old politician trick of immediately repeating your name back to you. Unfortunately, he and Lindsay Graham (then Congressman, now Senator from South Carolina) were at that Whitehall VFW to push Pat Tiberi's candidacy for the U.S. House. Pat won easily, somewhat aided by an appearance by the party's aisle-crossing. pork-hating diva.

You know the rest of McCain's story.

When it comes to politician fortunes, I'm a regular Typhoid Mary. Rarely did our political endorsements serve as anything but a kiss of death. We didn't endorse one county commissioner until 2006, when a Democratic tidal wave swept him out of office. In some council and school board races, we managed to whiff on every candidate we endorsed.

Now that I'm out of that racket, I don't know how the touch will work.

However, I'll do my best to score a handshake from both Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin sometime before January 2012.