Correspondent brings prophesies to Flagler

By Lawrence Griffin | gargoyle@flagler.edu

White House correspondent for the Washington Examiner, Julie Mason, came to Flagler to talk about the recent midterm election, saying that the polls were right for once — the Republicans “won big” and took the House of Representatives with a majority.

Mason’s catchphrase is “If politicians can’t be honest, they should at least be entertaining.” She said at her Flagler College forum on November 4, “Politicians are such wacky characters. They’re always so interesting.”

Mason put it in laymen’s terms: “The Republicans and Democrats are just going to fight for two years. Maybe that’s for the best!”

According to Mason, neither the Republicans nor the Democrats “really understood” what the election meant, as neither really seem to be focused on the core issues that Americans care about-namely jobs. In the last election, the number of people worried about their next mortgage or car payment was 32 percent. Now, it is 53 percent.

Mason said people do not want Congress to be that active.

“With the divided government- with the Republicans in the House, Democrats in the senate and Obama running for President,” Mason said. “Maybe your government won’t make you as angry.”

To date, Mason has followed the Bush presidency and is currently following the Obama presidency. She compared them through their humor: “Bush was a riot,” she said. “You could never miss a Bush event because he was always saying something crazy. Obama…not so much. Not a lot of laughs around the Obama White House. He just reads off his teleprompter and goes home.”

Mason considers it a privilege and a pleasure to cover each presidency and loves doing her job.

“As a journalist, I experienced the presidency on such a rarified level….We see the president every day,” Mason said. “I wake up every morning thinking about Barack Obama…and I go to bed at night thinking about Barack Obama-like every day I’m writing about Obama, same thing with Bush. You internalize them, and it’s hard to judge what they’re doing.”