Young and Entitled, and Loving Obama

Late night at Hofstra.

By Kevin Williamson
Thursday, October 16, 2008

Hempstead, N.Y. — At the invitation of Campus Progress, the collegiate version of the left-wing Center for American Progress, National Review Online took a scoot out to Hofstra University to see how the Young and the Left were taking in the debates. You’d think the Center for American Progress would be laying low; if anybody felt iffy about representing an organization midwifed by gazillionaire financial criminal George Soros, convicted in France of insider trading, and by billionaire toxic-mortgage kingpins Herbert and Marion Sandler, who were lately labeled “People Who Should Be Shot” by Saturday Night Live, it wasn’t showing. But why should they worry in 2008? There’s blood in the political water, and it isn’t theirs

The debate itself wasn’t much to see, and we didn’t. The list of things that government does not do well is long and diverse, but give them this: They still run a pretty mean security cordon. There was no getting into Hofstra University without special credentials, so two of us low-on-the-totem-pole types scurried over to a nearby restaurant to watch the debate on television. It was an only-in-America scene: a native Arabic speaker trying out her Spanish on amused Salvadorans, listening to the debate over pupusas and tamales, National Review Online and al-Jazeera cheek-by-jowl and getting on much better than the two members of the self-proclaimed Greatest Deliberative Body in the World, who both seemed comprehensively sick of each other and of the campaign. (Or maybe they’re just trying to relate to us “real Americans.”)

After the debate, we joined the Campus Progress crew and sundry other Hofstra student groups in the main dining hall of the student center to get their impressions. As impressions go, they weren’t that impressive. There’s no great sport in getting young leftists to say dumb things, so we didn’t try. But even deploying such neutral questions as “What do you think of all this?” and “What do you think the government should really be doing right now?” we soon found ourselves receiving earnest sermons on the joys of life in Castro’s Cuba, “Peak Oil,” and all manner of leftish buffoonery.

It should be noted that the worst of this didn’t come from any official Campus Progress folks, but from the generality of the students gathered about them. Indeed, Campus Progress’s boss on the scene was something out of the underground laboratory of a mad political scientist, a young Obama-Palin hybrid: Erica Williams, CP’s director of policy and advocacy, is a tall, confident black woman who readily admitted to defraying some of her college costs with pageant winnings — along with real-life minimum-wage jobs. She has the look and manner of somebody pointed like a missile at a media-political career, and her ambitions include: having her own television program; 2. running for office. Unlike some of the loopier young ones orbiting the room, she didn’t talk crazy-talk about the worker’s paradise that is Castroland or the need for America to transform itself into a society of small-scale collective organic farmers for reasons of ecological necessity and “emotional benefits.” She talked voter turnout. Campus Progress is “nonpartisan.” But one gets the distinct impression that their nonpartisanship on the subject of voter turnout is rather like ACORN’s.

One thing the polished Miss Williams did buy into, something that seems to be gaining traction in the progressive hivemind, is the promise of “green jobs.” Senator Obama talked about green jobs and the promise of a new energy economy. I posited that government’s bipartisan management of ethanol, a single energy product, has been so clownish and corrupt as to bring into question goverment’s ability to manage an entire energy economy, one that will presumably have lots of products, many of them more complex than corn-gas, and most of which presumably do not yet exist. I ask if this gives Miss Williams pause. It gives her none. Her response, which is expected, is that if only we get the right people into office, government will be good at doing things that government has never been good at doing before. She really, really seems to believe this when she says it. Sen. Obama seems to believe it, too. I ask Miss Williams how the government should go about bringing us into the clear bright day of green jobs. She answers: training. I ask her if she means that the government should begin training people for jobs that do not exist. She answers in the affirmative. She smiles.

The belief that having the Right People in office means that we can repeal reality is, of course, superstition. But there is nothing of the messiah-seeker in Miss Williams. She doesn’t make one think: drooling devotee. She makes one think: community organizer.

Organizing for what? The answer to that can be found here at the “I’m Voting For ...” site put together by Campus Progress. On this site, youngsters deliver short video sermonettes on the issue that matters most to them in the upcoming election, e.g. “I’m Voting For ... a New Foreign Policy,” “I’m Voting For ... College Affordability.” The website catalogues the invincible sense of entitlement that characterizes progressive politics, particularly among the young. One poor dear moans, Michelle Obama fashion, that he is going to have to borrow money to pay for law school. Another speaks very sadly of her late mother’s health-insurance travails. At some point, it became obvious to these young people that the chief administrative officer of the federal government is ex officio responsible for loaning them grad-school money and overseeing their moms’ health-insurance plans. Jonah Goldberg didn’t call his book Liberal Fascism for nothing; they demand a totalitarian government because they suffer from totalitarian narcissism. Ask what your country can do for you? They’ve got a list worthy of Santa’s in-box.

As for the McCainiacs in attendance, one of their sparse number, Arsha Alexander, was pretty jazzed about all those “Joe the Plumber” bits, and told familiar tales of woe about professors using their lecterns for stump speeches. But she also said that she wouldn’t be all that disappointed if Sen. Obama were to be elected instead of her candidate. “It’s historical,” she explained. If that’s the depth of McCain’s support, he’s history.