Guy Benson, the Message Machine

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Let the Mighty Eagle Soar

At 7:30 on the morning of the inauguration, I met up with Guy and six of his friends from Northwestern at a Metro stop near the Mall in Washington, D.C. Guy had organized this victory trip so he and his fellow conservatives could watch their president being sworn in and celebrate without having to worry about ticking off their liberal counterparts. On election night, Guy told me, they kept the celebrating to a minimum “because we know that had the reverse been true we would have been equally devastated.”

They were a fresh-faced, enthusiastic group: Kyle, the earnest freshman; Lee, the Libertarian; Dave, a sophomore engineering major; Cary, prelaw; Ryan, a broadcast journalism major who describes himself as a “nonmilitaristic reactionary”; and Brittany, who, at the first souvenir stand we saw, purchased a button with a photo of Bush in his flight suit. “I’ve got to support my commander in chief!” she said.

After purchasing some more Bush flair, we set off to negotiate the Byzantine lines of police barriers and security outposts. By 9 a.m. we were standing in the damp cold beside the Department of Labor, a concrete office building that borders the Mall, waiting to get through a security checkpoint to watch the swearing-in. There were at least 500 people packed in, half of them Republicans and the other half protesters. Even here, 700 miles from Evanston, Guy and his friends couldn’t get away from liberals. “Are we sure this is the right line?” Guy asked with a pained expression.

Protesters chanted, “Who is a terrorist? Bush is a terrorist!” while Republicans yelled back, “Who is the president? Bush is the president!” “You can tell the conservatives by the people who are dressed sort of nicely. It’s a generalization, I know,” Guy said, eyeing my button-down shirt, long overcoat, and leather gloves. “You’re an exception.”

The group passed the time pointing out particularly goofy signs: a picture of a pig with the word war scrawled across, or one that read u r not president! Guy asked, “Is that sign directed to the 260 million Americans who are actually not the president?

“This,” he pronounced, “really solidifies the loony left image.”

Four years ago I was in D.C. protesting the inauguration, but now I found myself sharing Guy’s annoyance. It struck me that protesting the inauguration is a little like a Yankees fan getting in his car and driving the four hours to Boston to protest the post-World Series parade.

Two hours later we finally cleared security and Guy was literally jumping up and down with excitement. As we trotted toward the Reflecting Pool behind the Capitol to watch the ceremony on a giant screen, a singer belted out a cover of “Let the Eagle Soar,” the treacly patriotic hymn written by John Ashcroft. Guy ate it up. “This is the pomp and circumstance surrounding government that I love,” he said. “I have goose bumps.”

Bush delivered his speech to much applause and whooing from Guy and his friends, and when he completed the oath, Guy initiated a round of awkward high fives. The ceremony concluded with a lengthy, meandering prayer, and for the duration the group kept their heads bowed.

After the ceremony, we filed back up to the steps of the Labor Department to await the motorcade. Guy took a call from Dan D’uva and they discussed personnel moves at Fox News. “Carl Cameron got moved to the White House beat,” said Guy. “I’m so happy for him. Bret Baier really deserves a better beat than the Pentagon. He’s one of my favorites.”

Later we struck up a conversation with a woman who was producing a documentary on the First Amendment for PBS. Upon learning that Guy’s group was there to support the president, she said, pointedly, “So I guess you’ll be enlisting after you graduate?” I winced and turned away; Guy politely asked the woman about her movie.

The conversation that followed seemed perfectly respectful, but the tension was undeniable. So it seemed like nothing less than a thrown gauntlet when the producer asked, with feigned nonchalance, if Guy would like to say something for the camera. Sure, he said. Everyone in the group looked at one another: this should be good.

For a liberal, what came next was tough to watch. The producer seemed to think she was firing aces at Guy, but the questions were little more than soft lobs: “There are some people here today who disagree with the president. What do you think about that?” Over and over, Guy calmly and efficiently fired back a string of talking points: “If we were living in some kind of totalitarian state [the protests] wouldn’t be allowed. You’d be silenced or arrested if you said some of the things that I’ve heard said today, and that’s, I think, part of what makes this country great.”

After the interview the producer called me over. Looking exasperated, she said, “This kid would piss himself if he went to Iraq.”

As we took our leave, Guy wished the producer good luck with her project and then, in an impressive show of indifference, asked if she knew when the program might be airing. By now I’d spent enough time with Guy to know he was secretly pretty psyched about the possibility of being on television, even if it was public television.

Thirty, twenty, even ten years ago, a passionate young partisan like Guy would most likely be majoring in political science and angling for a job on Capitol Hill. But media is where it’s at for today’s conservatives. “Politics involves a lot of compromise,” says Guy. “So let’s say I were to run for Congress and during the primary I was asked about my positions on the death penalty or gun control, which differ from the party. I’d be faced with the choice of being honest and disqualifying myself from contention, or fudging the answer and compromising my principles. I’m not conservative enough on some issues to survive a primary and too conservative on other issues to win a general election.” He paused. “Not that I’ve thought about this a lot.”

“Plus,” he added, “I feel like opinion shapers are rarely politicians.”

The Network America Trusts

One of the nights I hung out in Guy’s dorm, after we’d watched Northwestern’s men’s basketball team drop a tough loss to Michigan, Guy showed me a tape he’d sent to Medill as part of his application. It was from the end of his first summer as a Fox intern. One night the TelePrompTer woman had gotten the cameraman, the makeup artist, and a few crew members to stick around after work, so Guy could go through the bottom-of-the-hour two-minute news update from the studio desk in full makeup.

On the tape, Guy’s in a suit, his cheeks a little too rouged, his lips a little hesitant as he begins to cycle through the headlines. But he hits his stride about halfway through as he reads a story about someone stealing money out of a church collection box. He’s got the delivery down, the self-assurance, and that professional-broadcaster voice. If you squinted, you’d swear he was a real news anchor. He wraps up by saying Brit Hume is up next on the “network America trusts for fair and balanced news.” At “fair and balanced” he can’t help cracking a smile, and for a moment he looks, again, exactly like a 17-year-old boy.

Christopher Hayes is a contributing editor at In These Times, a bi-weekly political magazine, and Chicago editor of the soon-to-be-launched Just Cause Magazine. His covers politics for the Chicago Reader, The Nation, New Republic Online, Alternet, The American Prospect Online and others. He is not a member of the wealthy liberal elite.