Last Week of the D.C. Internship
katherinemiller August 7th, 2008
Today was my last day at the RNC, following a pretty fun week. Monday, I delivered the “Obama Energy Plan” tire gauges to national press outlets like the Washington Bureau of the New York Times, on what was an extremely awesome weather day.
The next morning, we toured the Pentagon, which was just not going to be interesting no matter what (all the cool stuff is far behind closed doors), but I had never been before. Later that afternoon, my friend Mike and I went to the counter-protest to MoveOn.org’s counter-protest to the House Republicans’…er…overall protest. Yeah, the District of Columbia’s slightly crazy these days. I didn’t deign to hold any posters (a lady does not picket — I’m kidding, ladies love to picket), but here’s Mike with a borrowed poster out in front of the Grant Memorial:
The next day (Wednesday), though, I had the privilege of being on the House floor for about an hour and a half, watching the Guerrilla Congress in action. Regardless of how one feels about the politics of the situation, or energy policy in general, the entire movement over the past week has been awfully unique. And, unlike the instant gratification of the cable news - internet era, the entire movement (while heavily aided by online efforts and the Twitter text-messaging revolution) has been behind closed doors in a lot of ways, without C-Span, without microphones, without cameras in the House chamber. I posted a fairly detailed description of my experience, but had a serious moment of doubt when I was unsure whether that was fair game, because I’ve seen so few reports of what’s actually going on within the House.
To cap off an already pretty great day, Mike and I then had dinner with a good friend of ours who graduated last year from Vanderbilt, and we had a super sweet media geek discussion over Chinese food. Tomorrow, I’m off to the Orlando area for my cousin’s wedding, then down to Southwest Florida for a week at the beach. Then, it’ll be a quick few days at home before I’m on I-81 going to Nashville for my junior year. Just for the hell of it, here’s the parting look I had this evening when leaving the RNC (straight ahead are the three House office buildings):
Definitely a good summer (and it’s not even over yet, ha!).
So, about those tire gauges: Do you think that was a smart talking point? Here in rural Minnesota, people are pretty smart — we understand that Obama’s entire energy plan is about much more than tire pressure, despite the McCain campaign’s wishes to reduce it so such an absurd degree — but more importantly, we’re pragmatists. My dad’s always leaving tire gauges in my car and telling me that if I drive the speed limit, I’ll get better gas mileage. Maybe it’s the climate or the moral example of our Depression-era farmer forefathers, but practical concerns are a good thing here. We’re also interested in big-idea energy policies. But I, for one, am turned off by the GOP over this silly argument against a pragmatic way of saving fuel. And I’m guessing I’m not alone.
Hey Paul,
Pardon the delay in response, I’ve been at a wedding this weekend. In short, I think it was sort of funny, light-hearted jab at the overall energy plan. No one’s disagreeing that car maintenance doesn’t conserve energy — at least I’m not, anyway. In terms of press, it wasn’t too bad either, the tire gauges got the GOP into the news cycle for the day, and served as a talking point for the larger energy discussion.
Really, though, I just carried them around in little envelopes, so I was pretty uninvolved in this. I didn’t even get to keep one. -KMM