Upon advancement to candidacy in the political science department at the University of California, Berkeley, I joined the staff of the Democratic National Committee as Research Director for the Commission on Presidential Nomination and Party Structure. What was to be a short-term job ended up as a three and a half year commitment to the Democratic Party as I became, seriatim, program director for the Midterm Conference, executive director of the commission which established state party compliance with the delegate selection rules, and executive director of the 1980 Platform Committee.

During my first month at the National Committee I had the pleasure of meeting one Mark Siegel, a political scientist with several years of involvement in national politics. One afternoon we were discussing the experiences of academic political scientists turned practitioners. Mark coined a term I have used frequently since then—“hackademic”—or someone who is partially an academic and partially a political hack.