"Let's tell the truth," said Walter Mondale as he accepted the Democratic Party's 1984 presidential nomination. "It must be done, it must be done. Mr Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won't tell you. I just did." That comment looms large in popular memory as the cause of Mondale's crushing defeat that November. Of 50 states, he carried only one, his home state of Minnesota, polling only 40.6% of votes nationwide to Ronald Reagan's 58.8%.