Scrappy?
I split off with Josh for our individual interview. Josh resembles a very young dan rather, tall, strapping even, although with his glasses on he also looks a little like Steven Colbert. He seems to say everything a couple ticks slower than he needs to, which kind of forces you to pay attention.
“So, what kind of experience have you had before with political campaigns?”
This time I was prepared for that question. “None in particular, but I’ve been looking for ways to get involved for months now.”
I told him about the meet-up I went to in Durham. “People showed up, the place was packed, and they were totally ready to work, but…nothin’ doing. It made me think, though, that if all these people could have just shown up there with hardly any organizing – I mean, we didn’t even know who had made the meetup posting! – then there was something big there. The internet isn’t just useful for money and email, and that’s how they’re talking about it still in the media, but there’s something else there – it’s a much bigger story. You have this incredible energy mounting up and, for the first time ever, there’s a way to harness it, just tap right in and create something with it.”
Josh nodded, and I kept going.
“There’s opportunities for education, communication, organization…it all just needs structure, a mission. I’ve heard all these rumors about ACT doing things like sending people door to door with palm pilots, to show people little movies and record questions about them. I’m sure that MoveOn’s campaign is going to be just as aggressive and innovative as that.”
I also mentioned the other political event I’d been to recently. “Once I got to New York, I figured there would be all sorts of ways to get involved…but it’s so big, you know, and I don’t really know that many people. Nothing really came up. But this one night, someone who went to my school was having a party for Democrats in her home. No, I mean her mother’s home. We’re talking Central Park West, you know, looking out over all of it – ridiculous view. And I got there and I see a bunch of people I recognize from college in the crowd, and everyone else is really rich. They were passing around a signup sheet, and people were just signing checks over – people I went to school with, you know, writing three hundred dollar checks. They can probably afford that by now, but I was, you know, just there for the free food and booze at that point. Once the sheet had gone around a couple times, the assistant undersecretary to the Kerry New York office or some shit like that stood up and thanked us for our support, and said, ‘We’ll probably call you in a few months, and organize a date to go register some voters in Pennsylvania.’ And I’m thinking, ‘a date?’ Give a few hundred dollars and then go to Philly for a day? There’s got to be something more than that, you know?”
Laurie, the regional director, had come over to us and pulled up a chair. “Oh there’s plenty more than that,” she said, “and it’s right here.”
She smiled big and I liked her immediately.
I told them about this book that I’d been reading recently, on assignment from my editor at mediabistro.
“Boys on the Bus. It’s about the 1972 presidential campaign, written by this guy Timothy Crouse. He follows the reporters, and writes about the press coverage of the whole campaign. It’s really interesting,” I kept going on, happy to be going off on books, my comfort zone, as opposed to actual political campaigns. “And this election was really shaped by the press coverage, cause you had Nixon like barely using press conferences and controlling all the reporters’ access, evading the charges growing about Watergate…and the book just goes on about the reporters and how they did their jobs. It’s cool, cause you kind of learn the whole story of the election just by reading about these reporters.”
They were impressed. Maybe. I couldn’t tell.
“Do you have any questions about the job?” she asked me.
“Uh, not really,” I said. “Sounds great.”
“Well, the thing we need to know from you is,” she said, “whether you are geographically flexible.”
“Like, can I move somewhere…” she made a gesture that said ‘anywhere.’ “Anywhere. Sure.”
“That’s good,” she said. “The people that we’ve got here all make a lot go with very little. It’s very scrappy.”
“Scrappy it is,” Josh said, smiling.
Laurie said it was nice to meet me, and hurried off to the next group. Josh asked me where I was from, all that. He told me that he had been a journalist in Portland but had decided that the election was too important to keep on as if nothing was different, so he was going to do this—“and, if this doesn’t work…” he shrugged, not smiling any more, “I’ll probably leave the country.”
* * *
After our interview, they had us get into different groups, and everyone took a few minutes to compose a speaking sample and a writing sample. “We want to see what kind of style you bring to public speaking,” someone said.
I sat down and looked around for a few minutes before writing anything. Everyone in this office was so young, there couldn’t have been anyone over thirty; most in their mid-twenties. There was nobody big running this show, calling shots and handing down orders, as far as I could see. There were only these people, and they were here – as Josh warned me – “basically whenever we’re not sleeping.”
I’d been in groups like this before, I recognized the group dynamic, the feeling of being together in this separate little island world. Just like all these dorky kind of things that I did in high school – debate camp, Jewish youth group, summer camp…even then, though, there were always adults there. Always someone heading it up, with the people below taking their play seriously. Here there it was just the ‘kids,’ and it was very serious business.
* * *
As instructed, I wrote a minute long speech, and I won’t go through the pains of trying to reconstruct it here. (although I might take this opportunity to note that all of the dialogue up until now has been just that – reconstructed from nothing…) but it was about personal responsibility, the place of the individual in society and against the forces of history, and I think it had some bits about how ‘people have probably told you that this change can’t happen, that it could never be, but this is a chance to be the change you want to see in the world.’ It was that bad, yeah, but hell I meant it. I tried not to think that mine was so superior to the other candidates in my group.
(It totally was.)
* * *
_____
* * *
Later I would ask Laurie about that first interview. She laughed, and said that yeah, they knew they were going to hire me within hours. But she said not to let that get to me. Apparently, she doubted my capacity for scrappy.
"I thought you seemed like a pussy,” she said, grinning big. “Like, 'ohhh I'm a writer,' that's great, kid, but let’s get your ass out from behind a desk and we'll see what you can do.'
“So, what kind of experience have you had before with political campaigns?”
This time I was prepared for that question. “None in particular, but I’ve been looking for ways to get involved for months now.”
I told him about the meet-up I went to in Durham. “People showed up, the place was packed, and they were totally ready to work, but…nothin’ doing. It made me think, though, that if all these people could have just shown up there with hardly any organizing – I mean, we didn’t even know who had made the meetup posting! – then there was something big there. The internet isn’t just useful for money and email, and that’s how they’re talking about it still in the media, but there’s something else there – it’s a much bigger story. You have this incredible energy mounting up and, for the first time ever, there’s a way to harness it, just tap right in and create something with it.”
Josh nodded, and I kept going.
“There’s opportunities for education, communication, organization…it all just needs structure, a mission. I’ve heard all these rumors about ACT doing things like sending people door to door with palm pilots, to show people little movies and record questions about them. I’m sure that MoveOn’s campaign is going to be just as aggressive and innovative as that.”
I also mentioned the other political event I’d been to recently. “Once I got to New York, I figured there would be all sorts of ways to get involved…but it’s so big, you know, and I don’t really know that many people. Nothing really came up. But this one night, someone who went to my school was having a party for Democrats in her home. No, I mean her mother’s home. We’re talking Central Park West, you know, looking out over all of it – ridiculous view. And I got there and I see a bunch of people I recognize from college in the crowd, and everyone else is really rich. They were passing around a signup sheet, and people were just signing checks over – people I went to school with, you know, writing three hundred dollar checks. They can probably afford that by now, but I was, you know, just there for the free food and booze at that point. Once the sheet had gone around a couple times, the assistant undersecretary to the Kerry New York office or some shit like that stood up and thanked us for our support, and said, ‘We’ll probably call you in a few months, and organize a date to go register some voters in Pennsylvania.’ And I’m thinking, ‘a date?’ Give a few hundred dollars and then go to Philly for a day? There’s got to be something more than that, you know?”
Laurie, the regional director, had come over to us and pulled up a chair. “Oh there’s plenty more than that,” she said, “and it’s right here.”
She smiled big and I liked her immediately.
I told them about this book that I’d been reading recently, on assignment from my editor at mediabistro.
“Boys on the Bus. It’s about the 1972 presidential campaign, written by this guy Timothy Crouse. He follows the reporters, and writes about the press coverage of the whole campaign. It’s really interesting,” I kept going on, happy to be going off on books, my comfort zone, as opposed to actual political campaigns. “And this election was really shaped by the press coverage, cause you had Nixon like barely using press conferences and controlling all the reporters’ access, evading the charges growing about Watergate…and the book just goes on about the reporters and how they did their jobs. It’s cool, cause you kind of learn the whole story of the election just by reading about these reporters.”
They were impressed. Maybe. I couldn’t tell.
“Do you have any questions about the job?” she asked me.
“Uh, not really,” I said. “Sounds great.”
“Well, the thing we need to know from you is,” she said, “whether you are geographically flexible.”
“Like, can I move somewhere…” she made a gesture that said ‘anywhere.’ “Anywhere. Sure.”
“That’s good,” she said. “The people that we’ve got here all make a lot go with very little. It’s very scrappy.”
“Scrappy it is,” Josh said, smiling.
Laurie said it was nice to meet me, and hurried off to the next group. Josh asked me where I was from, all that. He told me that he had been a journalist in Portland but had decided that the election was too important to keep on as if nothing was different, so he was going to do this—“and, if this doesn’t work…” he shrugged, not smiling any more, “I’ll probably leave the country.”
* * *
After our interview, they had us get into different groups, and everyone took a few minutes to compose a speaking sample and a writing sample. “We want to see what kind of style you bring to public speaking,” someone said.
I sat down and looked around for a few minutes before writing anything. Everyone in this office was so young, there couldn’t have been anyone over thirty; most in their mid-twenties. There was nobody big running this show, calling shots and handing down orders, as far as I could see. There were only these people, and they were here – as Josh warned me – “basically whenever we’re not sleeping.”
I’d been in groups like this before, I recognized the group dynamic, the feeling of being together in this separate little island world. Just like all these dorky kind of things that I did in high school – debate camp, Jewish youth group, summer camp…even then, though, there were always adults there. Always someone heading it up, with the people below taking their play seriously. Here there it was just the ‘kids,’ and it was very serious business.
* * *
As instructed, I wrote a minute long speech, and I won’t go through the pains of trying to reconstruct it here. (although I might take this opportunity to note that all of the dialogue up until now has been just that – reconstructed from nothing…) but it was about personal responsibility, the place of the individual in society and against the forces of history, and I think it had some bits about how ‘people have probably told you that this change can’t happen, that it could never be, but this is a chance to be the change you want to see in the world.’ It was that bad, yeah, but hell I meant it. I tried not to think that mine was so superior to the other candidates in my group.
(It totally was.)
* * *
_____
* * *
Later I would ask Laurie about that first interview. She laughed, and said that yeah, they knew they were going to hire me within hours. But she said not to let that get to me. Apparently, she doubted my capacity for scrappy.
"I thought you seemed like a pussy,” she said, grinning big. “Like, 'ohhh I'm a writer,' that's great, kid, but let’s get your ass out from behind a desk and we'll see what you can do.'
posted by Greg Bloom at 4/25/2005 03:30:00 AM
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