Bush visit lucky number 13
by J. Caleb Mozzocco
On October 30, the day before Halloween, local Democrats and progressives received a visit from one of their biggest bogeymen—President George W. Bush. He was in town to scare up some donations to his re-election campaign at a $2,000-a-plate luncheon at the Hyatt Regency Hotel downtown and trumpet news that the economy might be becoming less sucky.
While the country’s chief executive was drumming up support from those wealthy enough to afford a $2,000 lunch, Democrats were trying to rally some support of their own at a demonstration at the Statehouse. Between the northern steps and the statue of Peace commemorating Ohio’s Civil War dead, several hundred people gathered, including large contingents from the Sierra Club and organized labor.
Many were clearly in the holiday spirit, with signs reading “Bushy the Job Slayer” in Buffy the Vampire Slayer typeface, and “I Suck America” next to a picture of Bush in Dracula drag. One woman came dressed as a witch, complete with a broom and “Sweep Bush Out of Office” placard. Howard Dean signs and acoustic guitar music rounded out the scene. (I’m afraid the anti-war scene will never appeal to mainstream America as long as it insists on the involvement of acoustic guitars.)
Ohio Senate Minority Leader Greg DiDonato, Senator Eric Fingerhut (who’s challenging George Voinovich for his U.S. Senate seat next year), State Reps Dan Stewart and Joyce Beatty and union leaders took turns at the mic stirring the crowd up, before recent Alive cover boy Ukulele Man played the crowd of 250 or so into a march on the Hyatt.
At the corner of Nationwide and High, a group of about 30 mostly college-aged pro-Bush supporters were gathered with signs reading “Bush Cheney in ’04” and “Sweet Bush O’ Mine.”
Matt Naugle, an OSU sophomore and publisher of the school’s conservative newspaper The Sentinel, said they were there as “an anti-protest protest” to show their support for the President.
Was he worried about being out-numbered 10-to-one as the anti-Bush crowd washed over the tiny pro-Bush contingent, shouting down their “Four more years!” chant with a “Four more wars!” chant of their own?
“Conservative activists all have jobs,” Naugle said. “The liberals are all here protesting because they don’t have any jobs.”
That’s a point many of them might agree with. Now I wonder who could possibly be to blame for the lack of jobs?
I was a teenage conservative!
Wait a minute—college kids waving Bush/Cheney signs? They can’t all be the scions of millionaires or work in the defense contracting or energy industries, can they? What gives?
Naugle, a 20-year-old sophomore political science and business major and member of the OSU College Republicans, was more than happy to explain that “college Republican” isn’t the oxymoron it sounds like.
He knows the popular stereotype of college kids is that they’re either too apathetic to care about politics, or are passionately interested only in things like legalizing pot. But he says that’s just because liberals are louder.
“I think that ultimately most college-age kids are conservative, but they are apolitical,” Naugle said. “They were raised in mostly traditional middle-class families and they have some moral background, but they’re more concerned about their homework, their lives, their girlfriends and their jobs and so forth. And rightly so. I think the public has the conception that the campus is liberal because [liberals] are the most vocal, because they might not have the jobs, or they do, but they spend all their free time on activism.”
Naugle honestly believes that Bush is “by far the best choice for leader of the free world,” and won’t be dissuaded. Not by the state of the economy throughout Bush’s watch (“I just really wish he was able to push through more tax cuts”). Not by the mess in Iraq, or its failure to match anything resembling the rosy picture the administration painted prior to the invasion (“It’s appalling to compare it to Vietnam or call it a quagmire…If they reported car accidents in the same way they reported deaths in Iraq, we’d be a bunch of bummed-out people”). And not by should-be scandals like the White House outing an undercover CIA agent to retaliate against her husband (“He’s cooperating fully and I believe he wants to find the leaker”).
But progressives needn’t worry too much about what the existence of 20-year-old conservative activists may presage for the future of the country. Naugle said he’s definitely in the minority at OSU, but that doesn’t make him any less right.
“I’m very outnumbered on campus, but once you start to agree with the majority, I think it’s time to question yourself,” Naugle said.