Alan Griffith said he wants to see "a principled leader" in the White House for the next four years and knows which presidential candidate that is.
That's why Griffith, vice president of the AU College Republicans, is doing everything he can to get out the vote for President George W. Bush on campus and beyond.
Griffith organizes weekly trips involving about 20 students to the Bush-Cheney campaign headquarters in Rosslyn, Va. every Monday. He also coordinates trips to the Alexandria, Va. headquarters of Lisa Marie Cheney's campaign to represent Virginia's 8th District in the House of Representatives.
He will head to Philadelphia with the College Republicans every weekend from now until the election on a get-out-the-vote project that is a combined effort among AU, Georgetown and George Washington universities.
Griffith said that it's also important to focus campaigning efforts at AU.
"We're trying to get out all the votes we can for President Bush on campus," he said, adding that he knows Republicans are greatly outnumbered by Democrats at AU.
The Eagle had the chance to ask him what he thinks of this and other topics surrounding Bush's campaign.
Eagle: How do you feel about the fact the conservatives are outnumbered on campus?
Griffith: I think it actually makes a lot of liberals complacent here. It means that they don't do their research and they don't know what they're talking about, whereas when you're a conservative here you have to know what you're talking about because it gets questioned every day.
Eagle: What advantages do you think the College Republicans have over the College Democrats?
Griffith: I think we're more organized and that's because we basically have to be. Typically the opposition, the smaller group, has to be more organized.
If you look at the clubs on campus, on the left you have a couple dozen of them and on the right you have the College Republicans and arguably a couple others. We're more organized. We tend to stick together. It's just a rule of politics as much as anything that opposition unites, and we have opposition here.
Eagle: What do you think Bush's chances are this year?
Griffith: I think they're looking really good right now. The polls are moving in his direction. I think they've run a very good campaign.
Eagle: How was the Republican National Convention?
Griffith: That was run very well. It was very well planned; it got the message out. Even a lot of Democrats and impartial people will say that, so that's not just me being biased, which I am.
Eagle: Favorite speech?
Griffith: I thought [former New York City Mayor Rudolph] Giuliani's speech was excellent. His and [California Gov.] Arnold Schwarzenegger's were probably the two best, next to the president's. His obviously had a bigger audience - he had a good, positive and optimistic speech that laid out specific plans for what he's going to do in the next four years.
Eagle: How is attending the convention different than watching it on TV?
Griffith: It's interesting being there because you're not limited by the camera angle. There were a couple of times that they had protesters in there and I doubt that you could see them on TV, but I could see them both happening.
Another thing is that we were sitting right next to the CNN booth and during the speech the commentators were talking and the whole crowd was like, "Shh!" It was pretty funny.
I went down on the floor after the convention was over and rubbed some elbows with people, stole some signs, picked up some confetti. They had confetti that had Bush and Cheney and their wives' pictures on it, so I got a lot of that. That was pretty interesting.
Eagle: On what issues do you think Bush is strongest?
Griffith: The war on terrorism, homeland security and taxes obviously, because what's Kerry talking about? Raising taxes, and that doesn't play well. I think he's strongest in relation to Kerry on the war on terror and leadership qualities.
Kerry comes across as wishy-washy and not being able to take a coherent message, whereas Bush says, 'This is what I believe in whether you like it or not,' and I think people tend to like that a little more than, you know, 'I'm going to lick my finger and hold it to the wind and see what happens.'
Eagle: Do you think people trust Bush more than Kerry on national security issues?
Griffith: I think they do. They see in him a consistent leader. The foreign policy Kerry's going to get involved in if he gets elected is going to be ridiculous because he's already said, 'Tony Blair, you don't matter,' and 'Prime Minister Allawi in Iraq, you don't matter.' He's making fun of all these people who he's going to have to work with, and that's a really, really bad thing.
Basically the only people he cares about are the French and the Germans who aren't going to give him anything anyway. They're not going to send any troops to Iraq. If he gets elected, which I don't think he's going to, he would be in a pretty bad predicament as far as international relations are concerned.
To read The Eagle's coverage of a student campaigning for John Kerry, see "John Kerry volunteer predicts victory in 2004" in the Sept. 27 edition at www.TheEagleOnline.com.
