Why were you inspired to work with Obama?
I started in 2007 as a volunteer, and the reason was that I had friends who were overseas in Iraq. I had a few buddies who had been discharged because of "don't ask, don't tell." I had friends that couldn't afford college. I had one buddy in particular who had to decide whether he was going to get eyeglasses to see the board or buy textbooks for that semester at community college. He didn't have health insurance and he didn't have financial aid, so he couldn't get both.
I thought, this is just kind of insane. We're the richest, most powerful country in the world, but a lot of my friends were really struggling. I had never been involved in politics before, and I thought well, let me just give this a shot. I like this Obama guy; he's not taking any of the federal lobbyists' money that prevents stuff from getting done once people are elected, so let's see what happens. That's what made me initially get involved in this campaign. Now it's four years later and we've got healthcare reform and my friends are home from Iraq and college is more affordable. That's why I was inspired to keep helping him out in this election.
Speaking of all the things that Obama has done, what other kind of progress have you seen since Obama took office?
Well there's a lot. Obviously the first thing that he wanted to do was stabilize the economy, so the fact that he was able to really bring us back from the brink of the second Great Depression is no small feat. Even manufacturing in Ohio, for example, [was improved] — he created more than 44,000 manufacturing jobs in the state just since March of 2010. We've had 29 months of possible job growth, but that's still not enough. The President is the first person to say that we need to do more. He's got such a great record and it's one that we need to continue to build on.
I always talk about the economy and how it ties into education, especially because we're reaching out to young people. The president invested 3.4 billion dollars in what's called STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) Education. The reason for that has to do with a meeting that he had when he was first inaugurated with folks at Apple. He asked them, "what do I have to do to get you guys to produce iPods and iPads in the United States? Is it environmental laws? Labor laws? What is it?" Apparently the guys at Apple said, "No sir, it's actually that we don't have enough mid-level engineers who need to be onsite in our manufacturing plants. That's why we can't manufacture stuff in the United States." So that's when Obama started investing all of this money in science, technology, and engineering education, so that in 10 or 20 years, a tremendous amount of manufacturing [jobs] will be coming back. But it's also why he's working on things like comprehensive immigration reform, so that we can [attract those kinds of workers]. We're already attracting all of these physicists that get their Ph.Ds here and then we kick them out and they go to India or China and compete against us. By fixing both of those things — immigration and educational funding — we're going to be bringing back a lot more manufacturing and innovation jobs to the country. So it's things like that that we don't often get to talk about.
You know whenever you turn on the TV it seems like there are always people yelling at each other, and it makes fantastic television, but it doesn't really talk about the really practical, great things that The President's been doing.
We've seen a lot of stuff about the Tea Party movement and the fading Occupy movement on TV. What kind of footprints do you think those issues made on the campaign?
I don't know if it's made a footprint on the campaign per se. I'm an independent politically — I've voted for Republicans and Democrats both — and it's funny, I actually just finished reading Governor Nikki Haley's book ["Can't Is Not An Option: My American Story]. She's a Tea Party governor of South Carolina. It was a great book — really interesting. She recently applauded the president, I think for getting rid of some of the hurdles that she was facing in her state, and you know, the president was able to get it done. I think that's because he's the first person to say, "we need to roll back a lot of this government waste." I think that, you know, a lot of the people in the Tea Party have been identifying this wasteful government. When the president is going through the budget and says, "How do I lower the deficit? How do I lower the debt?" which is a big priority for him, he's starting these federal programs with a scalpel. For example, there's a program that parts of which are working, we don't want to get rid of the entire thing, we want to restructure it so that it's smarter. A great one of doing that was the student loan reform. Getting rid of the 60 billion dollars that was just going to big banks, which was basically free money for banks instead of being able to go into the pockets of young people so that they can be more educated and contribute to their community.
I actually do think there's a lot of commonality there in terms of fiscal responsibility, in terms of states' rights, that the president has been supportive of. And there are things that folks will disagree on, that they'll always disagree on. I always hope that everybody can have a rational conversation about our similarities and our differences.
What do you think are the top three reasons that young voters should vote for Obama?
Number one is jobs and the economy. Things are improving. There are a lot more manufacturing and innovation jobs coming back to the country and there is also a lot more capital, so loans are available for young people that want to start their own businesses. And there are plenty of young folks that have been doing so, like spa.gov, who have access to all of these resources to start their own businesses, which is really cool.
Number two is access to education. The president doubled the Pell Grant. He added the American Opportunity Tax Credit, which is $10,000 over the course of 40 years to [assist in getting]a higher education or [to attend] technical school or trade school.
Third, I would say is making sure that we're taking care of our troops. That's everything from making sure that veterans have the benefits they deserve when they come home to repealing 'don't ask, don't tell' which discharges so many of our brave men and women, to bringing our troops home from Iraq and getting rid of Osama Bin Landin.
Those were in no order of preference, by the way.
There's been a crackdown on the medical marijuana dispensaries in states like California and Michigan, which is close to home for us. Do you think that Obama is keeping his word on protecting states' rights in terms of medical marijuana dispensaries?
You know it's funny that you mention it [laughs]. That's an issue that I know little about. I get asked that sometimes because of the movies that I've made, but in real life I know very little about that issue. But I would be curious to learn more about it, and I probably should learn more about it. It's funny because it only comes up in in the context of press interviews so whenever we do youth events, we're always asked about jobs and education and healthcare and things like that. I could understand why it's an interesting question. If you want, I can find out what the policy is and get back to you if it's a question that you need. I'd be happy to do that.
I don't know that it's a question that we need.
Well let me know as you're writing your piece and I can learn more about it [laughs].
Are there any questions that you always want to be asked during an interview that you never get an opportunity to answer?
You know, actually, thank you for asking that. Very few people ask that. I think that the one thing that I would love to get across is that the president's campaign is always trying to reach out to as many people as possible and there's a lot of conversation about 'how do you vote? 'What's somebody's right to vote?' So there's this website that they set up called gottavote.org that I always like to talk about. It's run by the Obama campaign but it's non-partisan, so no matter who you're voting for or where you are in the country, if you have questions about where to vote and how to find out, you just go to gottavote.org, punch in all of your information and it tells you. It takes you through exactly what you need to do. So that's a resource that is available to our Republican friends, our Democratic friends, and everyone in the middle. It's yours to take advantage of it.
