Riding a Wave Of Good Feeling

A TIME poll shows Reagan well ahead at the first turn

Comforting thought for the Republicans gathered in Dallas this week: they have no great need to make their convention a gripping TV show. Unlike the Democrats who met in San Francisco last month, the Republicans need not seize the nation's attention for their ticket and message. Their task is the much easier one of riding along with a remarkably buoyant, upbeat mood in the nation—by some measures, the most euphoric in at least a decade—and doing nothing that might erode the comfortable lead that Ronald Reagan had built before the...