If there is a lesson to be learned from my experience, it is that it is never too late to start writing books. I began my first book, "Almost President: The Men Who Lost the Race But Changed the Nation," when I was fifty-one, and it was published by Lyons Press the month before my fifty-fifth birthday."Almost President" has done well (thank you, Readers!), and so Lyons Press is publishing my second book, "Kennedy and Reagan: Why Their Legacies Endure," on November 5, 2013.While writing books is new to me, writing is not. I was a long-time journalist, including as a bureau chief for United Press International in Cheyenne, Wyoming, during the 1980s. At that time, Wyoming had one of the earliest caucuses of the presidential election season, so many, many presidential candidates came by. While a few of those I interviewed -- George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton -- became president, most did not. Perhaps that explains my initial interest in losing presidential candidates.Perhaps it was also this constant exposure to politicians -- a contagion may have been involved -- that led me to leave journalism and try politics. I have been a senior policy or communications advisor to Wyoming U.S. Senator Malcolm Wallop, Wyoming Governor Mike Sullivan, California Governor Gray Davis, and Portland, Oregon, Mayor Vera Katz.Eventually, I decided to take the plunge myself and ran for Congress in 1998 -- in Wyoming, as a Democrat, in one of the reddest of all states, and in a year when the Democratic president was impeached for lying in a civil deposition about having an affair with an intern.While the result may seem foreordained, it still hurt. Running for elective office is one of the most personal things you can do. It is your very person whom voters weigh. After its over, if you've lost, you wonder what it was all about. Almost President, then, began as my personal journey to discovery of what role losers play in a democracy, and attitudes about losing generally in a culture that values winning above everything.I suppose after writing about losing candidates, it made some sense to turn my attention to two of the greatest winners in American political history: John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. I learned these men had many similarities in both their life histories and policies. I think you will find much in "Kennedy and Reagan: Why Their Legacies Endure" that will surprise you -- and hopefully comfort you. For if Kennedy, the icon of liberals, and Reagan, the icon of conservatives, were not so far apart, perhaps our nation is not quite as politically polarized as we currently believe.