Week Four: Senator John McCain

Today, at an intern luncheon for the  Dept. of Veterans Affairs, I was given a tip about a Congressional Leadership Forum on Capitol Hill taking place this afternoon. The forum titled “Iran, Israel and U.S. Middle East Policy” featured Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) as keynote speakers. Before a full house this afternoon, an event rumored to have 1,000-plus RSVPs, John McCain was first to take to the podium. A move, which I’m sure the hosting organization, The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), did not anticipate to be a bad one considering that as soon as the senator cleared the floor so did 75 percent of the crowd. This left Sen. Menendez with an embarrassingly empty room. The event was open to all interns regardless of the organization the intern was with, although many I spoke to or overheard were interning with politicians.
I was really vamped up, taking notes, getting ready to drop a killer news story down on here, but as soon as one of AIPAC’s interns hit the podium to introduce Sen. McCain, we were told “everything you hear tonight is off-the-record.” I wonder if quoting that broke a rule? hmmm…
Either way, I can’t say anything about what was said other than there was a lot of clapping by McCain fanatics, and a lot of anti-Obama talk from the crowd while waiting to get into the event venue, The Caucus Room of the Russell Senate Office Building.
It would have worked out better for both speakers if Sen. Menendez had gone first, his points were less partisan than McCain’s and he too has a lot of governmental experience worth listening to, but all the posers who went only to see McCain left before they could get a different take on Israel and Iran.
They may have put a gag order on me, but I’m still allowed to post photos….enjoy!

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ)

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As far as how the internship and the summer’s going, it’s going well. I’ve been working on two scripts at once and waiting on a final okay on the one for next week’s broadcast so I can work on the teleprompter copy for it. Today I was assigned to catalogue EVERY videotape and disk copy of EVERY broadcast since 1997 in the file room. This is a big project, because I also have to go through and watch each vid and catalogue the cast as well.
I missed 4th of July in D.C., but I took to the countryside in Pennsylvania, which couldn’t have been anymore all-American! Haha. I hit up a friend-of-a-friend’s cookout, (well I guess the couple are my friends now considering I spent Thanksgiving with them last year when I was interning in D.C.). Either way the food was awesome! And I really dislike crowds and tourists, so I would’ve been relatively miserable at the National Mall for a 20 minute fireworks display.
I have two phone interviews tomorrow for possible jobs when my internship’s over. I’m crossing my fingers that at least one’s a good fit. I NEED this.
Also tomorrow, I’m going to sit in and watch  a VA news broadcast. I won’t be on-air, my supervisor will and maybe I’ll get motivated and lose enough stage fright to ask to help co-anchor the next installation. In next week’s broadcast my voice will be featured!! Haha. That’s a step closer to actually being on-air i suppose.  
An update on the broadcast I helped with from St. Louis–Still not online for the general public, but I will post as soon as it is.