Bush-league experiment runs amok

Late on a weekday night this summer, I was clicking through the channels in the common room of my apartment. My roommate was sitting next to me. Just back from his job as a Kerry intern, he had loosened his tie and held a vodka tonic. For about 10 seconds, he focused on Bill O'Reilly devouring some liberal lawyer defending civil liberties before turning to me.

''How can you watch that Fox News propaganda?" he asked.

This shocked me. Who cares if I watch O'Reilly? He's entertaining, and it's always good to see what the other side has to say.

I wondered: Was this an isolated incident? Or do other young college liberals around the Boston area react the same way? Being in school, I thought about experimenting. One night, walking out of Brother Jimmy's, a bar in Cambridge, I challenged another one of my friends to test out the streets of Cambridge. ''You should go run around Harvard Square and start shouting, 'I can't wait till Bush gets reelected in the fall.' "

He demurred. We agreed that move carried the threat of scalding by folks throwing their cups of fair-trade coffee at us.

A week later, we were at a party near Tufts. The idea of testing the partygoers came up again, and we felt a little bit safer this time. So I turned to my friend and said (loudly so people around us could hear): ''Ya know, I think you're right. I can't wait till Bush gets reelected in the fall."

People looked at us. They made faces. They turned their backs. Talk was sparse.

Toward the end of the night, I approached a girl with long blond hair and introduced myself. She looked at me, tilted her head, and said, ''Aren't you the one that said that you liked Bush?"

I replied: ''Yeah," in the most macho, yet aristocratic, voice I could muster. My thoughts wandered. Maybe she was a young conservative looking for an appropriate date. Although I might have to lie a little about my politics, could this be the beginning of some long-term love? Maybe on the weekends, we could escape back to her estate in Connecticut, hang around the country club.

Quickly it all came crashing down.

''Oh," she said.

She wanted to talk about Bush all right, but why four more years would lead to crippling tax cuts, wrong-headed environmental policy, and misguided international diplomacy.

I returned to the keg and had an epiphany (or maybe it was a Bud Light): If I didn't want to be single in Boston between now and the election, I needed to lean left -- or be left leaning alone.

Michael Schmidt can be reached at MSchmidt@globe.com