RIP, Tim Russert
I was on a break from our class on Winning the White House when I saw the terrible news that NBC’s Tim Russert had passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. It was shocking and so sad, of course. For very selfish reasons, I felt especially bad because Tim Russert was someone who we very much wanted to speak on campus and with our many political contacts in DC, we had reason to hope we could secure him as a speaker. Alas, now it will never be. What a loss to political journalism, as well as his family and friends - some of whom are Wake Foresters in DC. RIP.
It also reminded me of the sudden and unexpected passing of Skip - which I had heard about halfway around the world on vacation. Good men, taken too soon.
Our Winning the White House class ended on Saturday and hats off to both Katy Harriger, our excellent professor, and our lively and engaged classmates. One of them had the suggestion at breakfast on Saturday to do an anonymous vote on ‘if the election were held today, who would you vote for?’ 29 people voted, and it was an overwhelming win for Barack Obama: he got 19 votes, McCain 9, so it was a 66-31% split (we did have someone who voted for a write in, which is why the percentages don’t add up to 100%).
This was a surprising result for the class - and just looking at the demographics of the class as well as some of the comments people had made, it did not seem to be a generally Democratic group. What we should have asked too was ‘which political party are you a member of?” just to see if we in fact had a room full of Democrats (so the Obama win would not have been surprising) or if we had an equal mix of Republicans, Democrats, and independents. It made for a lively discussion, no doubt about it.
If you have not been following the Alumni Office’s lifelong learning class offerings, our staff member Patricia Boone is in charge of the program and is planning several classes through the 08-09 academic year: one on landmark trials of the 20th century, one on emotional intelligence, one on Happiness (see the WF Magazine article on it). More info will be available in the coming months, or you can email Pat for more information at boonepm@wfu.edu