The Youngest Pundit
Luke Vargas has met nearly every leading presidential candidate while covering the 2008 campaign for his blog. Oh, yeah, and the 18-year-old just graduated from Buckingham Browne & Nichols last week.
How did you get interested in politics? Your parents?
Well, my dad watched Meet the Press, and he pays attention, but I wouldn't say my parents are big into campaigns. I convinced my parents to vote for Cellucci and Romney in the past, but otherwise they're tried-and-true Democrats.
How did you get so into the presidential race?
It was February 2007, and I'd read on a blog that Mike Huckabee was going to be in New Hampshire. My dad drove me up there after school on Friday to see Huckabee speak at a restaurant. Afterward, he went around the room, and I talked to him for? like 10 minutes.
How many campaign events have you been to since?
Between New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Iowa, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, more than 50, and I've taken over 13,000 photos.
Impressive. How did you get credentials?
I made my own. I talked to a guy with C-Span and he said, "Make yourself one of these," so I went to Kinko's and did.
Isn't this an expensive habit?
I use my dad's car. He mostly pays for the gas. I stayed at friends' houses in New Hampshire. The biggest cost was a three-day trip to the Iowa caucuses in January. I asked for that for Christmas. I'm lucky to have a dad who'll drive me around central Iowa in the freezing cold.
Tell me about your blog, lukevargas.com. It's a good read.
I'm someone whose access to the campaigns is as great as the national media's, but I can create a story very much different than what you read in the papers.
How so?
It's personal journalism. I'm not concerned with the substance of the speech, but about what the people in the back of the room are thinking. I'm not just going to follow the message that the candidates' press departments are trying to get the media to write about.
On your blog, you call yourself cynical, but that doesn't come across.
I think civility is important. I'm not a neutral observer - I'm a Clinton supporter - and I worried at one point that I was only writing anti-Obama things. I took a few days off and came back wanting to be more fair.
What kind of traffic do you get on your site?
I've had about 5,300 people visit. The hard part about blogging is getting people to stay with you.
That's where a big picture of, say, Pam Anderson might work.
(Laughs.)
The name of your blog - Vargas for President 2040 - implies you may run for president. For real?
It started as a tongue-in-cheek title. I'm in the same position now as John McCain, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton were when they were 18: I'm just beginning to form my political beliefs. I'm not even in college yet.
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