Additional reporting by Margaret Bauer, T.J. Plunk, and Rachel Streitfeld
Responses of doom and gloom emanated from Washington University and the surrounding community last night as the news of President Bush’s possible withdrawal from the upcoming debate broke.
“That’s a debacle,” said Danielle Christmas, a junior and member of Jobs with Justice. “That’s absolutely ridiculous because if he does that, it’s purely to serve his own advantages.”
Christmas went on to lament Bush’s lack of interest in taking advantage of every opportunity to debate.
“He clearly has no respect for the integrity of inquiry,” she said. “If he really believes in what he’s saying and he believes in the merit of what he believes, then there’s not a disadvantage to him engaging in a debate.”
She also expressed disappointment in the implications of this potential move.
“Personally, I think this is a tragedy,” said Christmas. “I think that if he’s able to do this and get away with this, it shows us again that our needs as individuals and our rights to learn exactly what’s going on is second to [Bush’s] personal interests.”
Junior David Ader, president of Student Union, acknowledges that it would be a waste of many people’s time and effort if the debate did not come to fruition.
“There are a lot of people who put in work on this,” he said. “The media, the campus, Don Strom, the state of Missouri-a lot of people would be disappointed. I hope it doesn’t come to this.”
One of the most likely candidates for disappointment would be Michael Moore, the independent film director tentatively scheduled to visit the campus sometime this fall prior to the election. Sophomore Mark Reddish, the comedy series coordinator for the Campus Programming Council, worked to bring Moore here around the same time as Bush. He is not pleased with this recent development.
“It would really tick me off if he didn’t come-the whole idea is having Moore come because Bush is coming,” he said.
Reddish gave one explanation for why he thought Bush might back out.
“I don’t have the greatest confidence in his impromptu speech-making abilities,” said Reddish. “He should have just made up some excuse about terrorism or something. He doesn’t want to come because he’ll be verbally lambasted or because he heard there won’t be any good frat parties that weekend.”
Junior Jackie Graves, president of the College Republicans, pointed out that Bush might actually be hurting himself by not showing up.
“I hope that he does agree to the debate,” she said. “Missouri is a swing state and it would be to his benefit to show up.”
Nicole Soussan, a junior and the president of College Democrats, suggested that there might be hope after all.
“College Democrats and College of Republicans plan on working together to make sure that in one month, both presidential candidates are here on campus,” said Soussan. “We are disappointed that the suggestion has been made that the University’s community would not get to partake in this opportunity and we hope that through our bipartisan, combined effort, the University and the entire nation will get to hear the candidates debate the issues on Friday, Oct. 8.”
Senior Peter Jones, Webmaster of the October 8th Coalition, a group planning to protest the debate, said he has alternative plans.
“The Libertarian candidate, Michael Badnarik, and Green Party candidate, David Cobb, have both committed to being in St. Louis on Oct. 8,” he said. “Our general plan was to continue in the event that the debate was cancelled.”
Some remain optimistic-Reddish, for one, had another suggestion about how to convince Bush to show up.
“We can just tell him that we can get him into the Michael Moore show for free,” he said.