The election season that is fully upon us causes me a flood of memories.

I’ve consulted my notes of campaigns past and politicians – the great and the ignominious.

Here is what I have learned from some 40 years of watching men and women run for office.

1. The only quality that matters in a newly elected official is whether they have the capacity to learn and grow. None of them come fully equipped for the public task – from city councilors to president. I observed a veteran Oregon legislator who failed as a freshman congressman and another freshman without prior experience take off like a rocket. I’ve watched two separate groups of Clatsop County commissioners – liberal and conservative – badly overplay their hands.

Corollary: The quality that matters in long-serving public officials was best described by Earl Weaver: “It’s what you learn after you think you know it all that counts.”

2. It takes someone to beat someone. Money and organization matter in a campaign, but a good candidate is the rarest commodity.

3. All politics is local, as Tip O’Neill famously observed. Note to aspiring city councilors: city streets matter.

4. Timing is everything. Tom McCall – one of Oregon’s most eccentric politicians – arrived on the scene in the late ’60s and ’70s. In that era of cultural ferment, Oregonians accepted McCall’s outsized persona and his flamboyant vocabulary.

5. Emotional intelligence matters more than academic intelligence in politicians. Lyndon Johnson said that if you can’t walk into a room and know who’s for you and who’s against you within 10 seconds, you don’t belong in politics.

6. Gestures and courtesy matter. In one of the best novels about politics, Edwin O’Connor’s The Last Hurrah, Boston Mayor Frank Skeffington tells his nephew, a young reporter, that journalists mistakenly break up over matters of high principle. On the contrary, Skeffington says, politicians break over personal slights.

7. People prefer to vote for candidates and against ballot measures.

8. At the congressional level, politics is equal parts ego, greed and envy.

9. The real business of Congress is not law making or oversight of federal agencies. The real business is celebrity and fundraising.

Corollary: The congressional pension has made public “service” especially lucrative. When I first learned of the pension, during a 1982 interview with a Georgetown law professor who had researched the topic, he noted there was no actuarial study of what the pension would cost. “Those criminals,” he said.

10. Air conditioning and the commercial passenger jet changed our politics. It enabled Congress to stay in Washington too long in the summer. These factors and the advent of the year-round campaign industry produced our era of the never-ending campaign.

12. Politicians don’t abandon an untenable position until they are faced with oblivion.

13. To be in public life is to be misunderstood. “Fame is the sum of misunderstanding that gathers around a new name,” wrote Rainer Maria Rilke.

For every public official the day will come when they are misunderstood. That moment demands explanation and interpretation.

In dealing with the media and the public, email is an inadequate substitute for voice or personal contact. You have to take the voters from where they are at. You cannot learn that through email.

14. I have known four masters of political public relations. They and their bosses were Travis Cross (Gov. Mark Hatfield), Ron Schmidt (Gov. Tom McCall), Jack Robertson (Sen. Mark Hatfield), George Behan (Rep. Norm Dicks). Duff Wilson was a minor master, because of the difficulty of interpreting his boss, Rep. Mike Lowry.

Hint: The last two Oregon governors have succumbed to the illusion that email is sufficient.

The only quality that matters in a newly elected official is whether they have the capacity to learn and grow.