I don’t think I’m revealing a big secret when I say every political journalist in America is longing for a contested Republican convention in Cleveland. And a few, like me, are even fantasizing about Hillary Clinton falling short of the requisite delegates to win her party’s nomination, which would lead to glorious floor fights when the Democratic convention convenes in Philadelphia.

More likely, the Democratic gathering will be another engineered love fest with the Clinton forces bending over backward to assuage disappointed Bernie Sanders fans. The Republicans, though, could definitely end up in a battle that would provoke one faction or another to abandon the eventual nominee and split the party. That is the kind of story that political reporters, commentators and cartoonists wait their whole careers to cover.

For nearly 200 years of America’s history, conventions were scenes of high drama, low tactics, backroom intrigue and public contentiousness. Abraham Lincoln’s come-from-behind victory over William Seward at the Republican convention in 1860 was a triumph of sharp wheeling and dealing, and the choice provoked the Southern states into secession. In 1968, the Democrats met in Chicago with riots in the street and chaos on the convention floor. Even those of us with decades in the news business have never gotten the chance to cover a national political convention that went beyond the first ballot, let alone instigated civil war.