David Kestenbaum finds that the most unforgettable person in this county is a dead guy. A guy named Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Writer David Brock gives us the inside story of how we got to this point of bitterness. It is not a pretty story.

The first in a series of pieces in the coming months on This American Life: Non-journalists covering aspects of the Presidential campaign. First up: Chicago playwright David Isaacson presents a piece on Pat Buchanan.

David Foster Wallace reports on a turning point in past Presidential primaries: The moment when John McCain failed to respond well to an attack by George Bush...which arguably ended up costing him the election.

In the 1970s, Dave Kestenbaum's cousin Dan Weiss got promoted from stocker to gift shop manager at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC. It was a good job... except for the fact that the place was bleeding cash because of apparent embezzlement.

Jonathan Chait of The New Republic and David Horowitz of Slate magazine each tell the story of the Florida recount. There is astonishingly little overlap in their accounts.

Host Ira Glass with Dave Weigel, political reporter for Slate.com, about manufactured outrage in American politics, and how it's an effective way to bring in cash and mobilize your followers, as Christine O'Donnell and former Florida GOP Chairman Jim Greer have demonstrated.

A campaign diary from writer Michael Lewis from four years ago, about a politician you've heard a lot about: John McCain...and the story of a moment when the opposite of normal politics became normal politics.

We got a new President, but after the recount mess in Florida in the fall of 2001 and the Supreme Court decision that ended the election, some people were having a hard time moving on. Why? Why couldn't they just let it go? Host Ira Glass talks with people at the inauguration.

Host Ira Glass talks with Yale law professor Jack Balkin about what he calls the Bush Administration's "lawyering style," a tendency to fight as hard as it can, on all fronts, to get what it wants. Ira also plays tape from a news conference with New York Senator Charles Schumer, in which he takes the Justice Department to task for refusing to pay death benefits to the families of two auxiliary policemen who were killed in the line of duty, even though federal law grants those benefits.

The secret games delegates play to amuse themselves, differences between Republican and Democratic convention delegates, and more.

Jack Hitt has spent the last two years watching the Obama administration lose the news cycle and war of soundbites to Republicans day after day. Watching the Democrats run away from issues like health care reform and middle class tax cuts, Hitt wonders if there is some secret long-term master plan the Democrats are deploying, or if they're just incompetent.

Sarah Vowell visits four Presidential libraries on a fact-finding tour for...President Clinton. Not that he asked her.

Ira Glass tells the story of a little-known treaty dispute with far-reaching ramifications for our understanding of executive power. The dispute is between the President and one of his appointees...to the International Boundary Commission with Canada.