Sunday, June 29, 2008

The District Sleeps Alone Tonight

The past week in the District has seen a return to normalcy. No more big dinners with the President, no more run-ins with exciting former Presidential candidates/Viagra spokesmen. Work has slowed down as our next fundraiser is the Republican National Convention this September. Probably the most interesting story is that my boss told me and the other intern in our department to "find $11,000 by the end of the day" so that we could meet our budget goal for the month. My counterpart found a donor willing to give $15,000, and I found nothing!

Seeing as how things have slowed down a little bit, I've occupied myself by doing some phone banking. All of us interns are required to make calls and we've been divided into different teams calling for Senators who viewed as "vulnerable" this November. I'm making calls for Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota. We ask questions about issues, party identification, and support for Norm. My favorites are the Independents who tell me their party ID, but that they "didn't vote for Jesse Ventura." Interestingly, I was by myself in the call center going through a survey with a caller and we started talking about Jesse and how he might enter the Senate race. As this call was going on a group of men came down and overheard me talking about Norm Coleman and Jesse Ventura. One of the guys looked familiar to me and I realized that it was Norm Coleman himself! I finished up the call and got up and talked to the Senator for a few minutes. He was really excited about the survey and thankful for my help. Real friendly guy. Naturally, I seized the opportunity to get a picture with him.

I'm going to get Norm to sign this one.

The next day I was back making calls and overheard a man in one of our call suites saying "This is Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon..." I waited a few minutes for him to finish some calls before walking into his suite to introduce myself and add another Senator to my growing list of Senator run-ins. He was very thankful for the distraction and we started shooting the breeze. I mentioned that I had a friend from Lake Oswago (cough STEVEN LU cough), talked about how gorgeous it is. He asked me where I was from and I told him Michigan, to which he replied "I LOVE Bloomfield Hills!" and told me about golfing at Oakland Hills during the Ryder Cup in 2004. All I could do was smile and laugh with pride as he talked about my hometown. (For those who don't know, Oakland Hills Country Club is about three miles from my house and considered to be one of the best golf courses in the country. It's hosted a lot of big golf events, most recently the 2004 Ryder Cup, and it's hosting the PGA Championship this year.) So the Senator and I had a nice conversation about Michigan and potential McCain VPs. It was really cool. Definitely a fan of Gordon Smith. Sadly, not picture came out of this run-in, I felt bad for taking too much time from his calls.

So those are the interesting stories from this past week. This week is supposed to have a three day week. Funny story, our building's A/C broke and it was literally 800 degrees on our floor, so they sent us home after an hour-and-a-half today. Horray for a two-day week!

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Some other interesting things:

Some Senators celebrate the summer solstice each year by dressing in seersucker (for more details, read this article by the lovely Whitney Smith, UMich alum and my PSIP student coordinator this past year). This year's seersucker celebration took place the day I visited the Senate gallery. Those Senators love their seersucker. Making it more interesting is how staffers and interns also dress in seersucker. I saw one intern from Mississippi decked out in his blue seersucker suit with a nice bowtie to go along with it. Not gonna lie, he looked like a plantation owner. BUT, that doesn't diminish the fact that I think it's a cool tradition and that seersucker looks like an amazing fabric. Moral of the story: I need to get some seersucker for next year.

Video of the Week: Senator John Cornyn is the Junior Senator from Texas. He's a Republican and he's up for re-election this year. The "Friends of John Cornyn" group put together a video to introduce him at the Texas Republican Convention. This video is the most RIDICULOUS thing I've ever seen! My analysis of "Big Bad John" will follow. Enjoy.



Thankfully, this video wasn't produced by the NRSC. The DSCC posted it on its website and John Stewart parodied it. Anyways, the lyrics to this video are what make it so amazing. "Big John...yeah, Big BAD John," "He kept Texas in power, made lesser states squirm," "Your doing the Lord's work for Texas and we got your back!" "We'll outwork our foe, we'll tell souls in Texas you must get six mo'," and, my personal favorite "That place out yonder needs more men like you who shoot straight and talk straight and enjoy a good brew!" Oh man. Let's analyze some of these lyrics. They rhyme "foe" with "mo'"...interesting. I can see AP Language teachers loving that effort. Making lesser states squirm"...yeah, no. Finally, "shoot straight and talk straight and enjoy a good brew"...REALLY???? They had to put that in? They couldn't think of anything better...? Finally, WTF IS HE WEARING AT THE END! The leather jacket with the fringes dangling off...really?? They actually wear those in Texas? Anyways, I love watching this video. It's so ridiculous it's amazing. Thank God John Cornyn is fairly safe, and thank God the NRSC didn't make this.

Speaking of NRSC produced videos, here's a video we made for the President's Dinner. It's actually a good/legit video. They even got Fred Thompson to narrate! Enjoy!



This video makes me proud to be a Republican. I really like how they talk about Republican/conservative values, a discussion that has been missing for a long time, and it's refreshing to see it again. With the exception of the attack on Democrats in the middle, I think it's a real positive and encouraging video. Brings a tear to the eye.

Next, I'm going to take a step away from political discussion to talk about someone who I admire and who, in so many ways, helped me get to where I am today. My AP United States History and Global Issues teacher, Mrs. Karen Lessenberry, was recently awarded the Gilder-Lehrman Award as Michigan's Outstanding American History Teacher of the Year. This, in my opinion, is a very well deserved and very long overdue honor. Karen is a phenomenal teacher who has a passion for history and manages to instill that passion in her students. She took my loves for history, politics and current events and turned those into passions, part of why I'm majoring in history and political science today. She made me work. My abilities to analyze and discuss these things stem from her teaching and her constant prodding of me to think harder and analyze things better, not accepting lackluster efforts or thoughtless answers. She always made me support my answers and defend my conservative claims (we've had some interesting liberal/conservative debates and discussions during class and free time). I know I wouldn't be the type of student/person I am today without her help. For that, I take this moment to raise my imaginary glass to Mrs. Lessenberry for this well deserved honor and to thank her, for probably the 1776th time, for the impact she made on my life. For more of info on Karen and her awards, here's an article from the Groves Scriptor which features an interview with yours truly.

Last, but certainly not least, Mom made it into the Free Press this past weekend! Congrats to Mom for all your very well-earned success!

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Those are my thoughts for now. Hope you enjoyed. Leave a message.

6 comments:

Steven "rliu, rliv, slu, snuggly" Lu said...

It's Lake Oswego! not Lake Oswago. FOOL!

Anonymous said...

haha told you it was oswego!

that's so cool that your mom is featured in the detroit free press. i'm so glad you're having so much fun in DC. solidifying your passion for politics! take more pics johnny and don't forget to keep up with baseball :)

Anonymous said...

NO MENTION OF MY VISIT! SHAME!

Anonymous said...

johnny, ur gonna be baller rich from ur mother ;). i heard bouts is gonna be up in D/C in a few days. :)

Melissa said...

hey johnny! :) awesome blog. i'm having fun keeping up with your dc adventures, haha. :D cool that you've met so many people! check out my blog sometime too - i just moved over there after many years of xanga, haha.

lizzo said...

still love it, kiddo :D