This is one in a series of op-eds celebrating The Hill’s 30th anniversary.

My abiding memory of working at The Hill came nearly 17 years ago. Amid the most fascinating presidential campaign of my life — still to this date — two colleagues and I were outside our hotel on a frigid Iowa afternoon ahead of that state’s 2008 caucuses.

We were recording a video analyzing the latest developments in the campaign. As I recall, former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto had just been assassinated, throwing a wrench not just into that tense area of the world, but also into American domestic politics.

We could barely speak, it was so cold. I liked to think I could handle it, having left my home state of Minnesota just three years prior, but it was brutal — and a struggle. The subject matter was hardly in any of our wheelhouses, least of all mine. Yet there we were,........

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