Greenville High School teenager, Paul Reitz, spent the first four months of 2010 as a congressional page in Washington, D.C. He says he can barely wait to go back to the nation’s capitol.
“The city’s hustle-bustle puts some people off, but I loved it!” Reitz said to the other dozen teens gathered for their club meeting in mid-July.
Although Democratic in political persuasion, Reitz was appointed by John Boehner to serve the Republican party of the House of Representatives.
“That worked out okay. Our country was built on a diversity of ideas. I knew I needed to listen to others and even be able to defend opposing ideas, for me to really understand my own position,” said Reitz.
Paul Reitz is the first congressional page from the city of Greenville in 30 years, although there have been other students from Darke County also appointed as pages in D.C. Two of the page’s most frequent duties, besides morning school classes, were carrying proposed bills for co-sponsors’ signatures on the floor and managing citizen requests for flags to be flown over the White House.
“I was like a middleman, taking orders to fulfill the needs of the congress people of our party.” Expressing pride in being present for the passing of both versions of the Jobs Bill, Reitz noted that he agreed with the first version, but not the second. “In addition,” he said, “I actually held in my hands three bills dealing with terrorist activities.”
During the State of the Union address by President Obama, Reitz said, “I was blessed to be able to stand about ten feet away from him.”
During his tenure as page, Reitz also shook hands with the President of Mexico and the committee chairs of Foreign Affairs of both houses of Congress.
He explained that few congress people paid much attention to the pages, but John Lewis, a compatriot of Martin Luther King, Jr., visited and debated with the pages often. Reitz laughed, saying that Lewis liked to visit the pages while they answered phones and handled other duties in the “cloak room” or the brain center of the party “where some congress people come to smoke.”
Reitz said he was surprised to learn that politics on the floor was very much like a business and not as personally vindictive as it seems.
“Speakers at the podium will blast their opponents, sometimes with vicious attacks, but then after the speech, they make evening plans with their opponents.” Reitz believes that politicians cannot be trusted and that those who come to the House as professional politicians, “are those that know best how to screw the next guy over.”
“The dazzle and speed, the full schedules, the very driven attitudes” and behaviors of people in D.C. attracted Reitz to make plans to return there for college this fall, if possible.
“My future plans were not exactly changed by my experience in D.C. but my time there has narrowed and strengthen my purpose.”
Reitz wants to study some form of public policy regarding infrastructure. Reitz especially enjoyed a classroom project that required public policy be written surrounding energy solutions for the Midwest U.S. His study group extensively researched wind power possibilities for all energy needs of the eleven Midwest states dubbed “tornado alley.” Reitz believes there are strong possibilities for Ohio to realize total energy power from wind turbines.
A typical day for a page in D.C., according to Reitz, started at 6 a.m. preparing for school by 7 a.m. Some days his classroom studies were only an hour or so, depending upon the work that awaited him and the other sixty-seven pages from all over the United States. Usually, however, classes lasted until 11:30 a.m.
Reitz especially enjoyed the camaraderie he built with the other page appointees as they went to school together, worked the House floor, debated politics, and socialized late into the night. He said he usually got four hours of sleep each night and he learned to love Star Bucks coffee.
Reitz offered two recommendations to the students present at the Youth in Politics Club:
Visit Washington, D.C. and learn where the U.S. government was formed and how the history of government has developed. Reitz loved repeating visits to various monuments, especially the Jefferson, the Lincoln, WWI and II memorials; the Korean and Viet Nam monuments; the National Archives, the Supreme Court Building and the White House.
“Take tours wherever you can.” Reitz also commented that the National Mall is a vibrant place where there are continuous opportunities to see groups that gather with various causes: marching, protesting, debating, and educating.
Second, Reitz urged the students to explore the beliefs of those who oppose their own ideas. He noted that he chose four books, including The Communist Manifesto, with controversial or opposing ideas from his own. He is currently reviewing them all and, he believes he is now better able to articulate his own stand.
Reitz promoted on-going public debate to engage diverse ideas but said, “Unfortunately, talk show media has polarized Americans toward radical and extreme attitudes.”
Reitz leaned in to the students sitting around the table, “Immerse yourselves in the ideology of those who do not agree with your own; then, you will learn the validity of your own arguments.”
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