How did Reagan win? And why were the polls so slow to indicate that he would?

A fast-moving four-cornered conversation between two conservatives and two liberals on the substance and strategy of the campaigns. Mr. Kondracke: "Nobody was enthusiastic about anybody...." Mr. Buckley: "I was enthusiastic." MK: "Well, of course you were." WFB: "You can say, 'You were the only enthusiastic person.' " MK: "I wasn't enthusiastic about anybody, and I know very few people who were enthusiastic about anybody. Of course, I tend to know more Democrats than you do." ... Mr. Bartley: "Or to look at it another way,... here was an electorate that was ready to turn Carter out--turn out the incumbent--and he ran against that with the most logical kind of campaign, which is to portray your opponent as a menace to civilization, and made a certain amount of progress with that kind of campaign; but then it came apart at the time of the debates and people went back to what they were going to do anyway."