Are you smarter than a fifth-grader? The question itself sounds a little insulting for an adult. But you’d be surprised just how much more fifth-graders know than many grown-ups. This is the premise of a television show by that name that has been duplicated in several countries and in many languages. Watching it, you realize that it’s not so much that the kids are smarter than the adults, but that adults forget the lessons they learned in grammar school.

A couple of weeks ago, when my daughter’s school held elections for the student council, I thought about how some of our politicians could learn from the way her fifth-grade class handled the campaign process.

My daughter ran for vice president. She spent a couple of weeks thinking about what she would say in her campaign speech. “I need a funny person to help me,” she told me. I offered to help, but she said I was not funny. I put in my two cents anyway. I told her to think about the needs of her schoolmates and address them in her speech. I suggested that she talk about how loyal she has been to the school and make some promises about what she would do to improve the quality of school life.

“You don’t understand, Mom. The kids at my school vote for the funniest person,” she insisted. The toughest part of her campaign wasn’t writing a funny speech or coming up with a slogan for her campaign poster. It was the fact that she was running against her best friend. Ouch!

It’s not easy, she learned, having an adversary with whom you have so many things in common, someone who shares your goals and ideals. Possibly the most difficult part of my daughter’s campaign dilemma was that both her and her friend’s birthdays were in the same week, and they had decided to have their parties together. The actual election was on my daughter’s birthday, and the party would be the following day.

The day before the election, she finally had her speech down pat. She didn’t need a funny person to help her; she wrote it all by herself. She talked about how responsible and organized she is, and how proud it would make her to represent the school she sees as her second home. And she promised to come up with fun and creative ideas for their leisurely days.

I suggested she might want to close her speech by saying that it was her birthday, and a vote for her would be a great birthday present. “That is not a good reason to vote for someone, Mom,” she shot back. It was a joke, I told her.

On election day, one after the other, the candidates went up to the podium to deliver their speeches. Some were truly funny; others were not. When my daughter’s turn came around, she stood up there and delivered that speech with her usual confidence and wit. Talk about a proud parent. Her charm and sense of humor came straight across, as did her kind heart and sensible mind. She ran a well-thought-out, honest campaign.

In every election, there’s a winner and a loser, and this time it was not my daughter’s turn to win. But by no means was she the loser. She’s not going to be vice president of the student council next year. Maybe she’ll give it another shot in the future. But for that weekend, both she and her best friend – and former opponent – welcomed the entire fifth-grade class to their party and made sure everyone had a great time before they prepare for the academic challenges the sixth grade will bring.

That is exactly the kind of scenario we should be looking at come the end of August, when Democrats hold their party’s convention in Denver: Old adversaries coming together, showing a united front and preparing for an even bigger challenge in November. All they need to do is look back at the lessons they learned in grammar school to show that they are smarter than a fifth-grader.