Happy Valley News Hour

Clifford Henshaw-Hawley, a politically active Amherst resident, dreams of someday meeting one of the 28% of Americans who still support President Bush. In the event that such a meeting should ever occur, Mr. Clifford plans to deliver a “blistering” critique of the administration’s policies that he has spent the last six and a half years meticulously composing in his head. “You don’t meet many Republicans around here,” Mr. Henshaw-Hawley complained, sitting on the grass of the Amherst Common. “The most conservative person I know voted for Dennis Kucinich in the last election.” He has tried posting on right wing blogs, but that just hasn’t given him the opportunity for face-to-face denouncement he so avidly craves. “It’s got to be in person,” he says. “I want to see the look in their eyes when all of their rationalizations and delusions about this disastrous regime fall away.” He does have a few possibilities. “I’m pretty sure my mechanic might be a Republican since he has an NRA sticker on his car, but I didn’t want to agitate him while he was working on the Saab, which can be a terribly temperamental vehicle.” Another time in an airport lounge in Indianapolis, he heard a man at a nearby table make a comment that could have construed as mildly supportive of the current president, but Mr. Henshaw-Hawley didn’t confront him because he was late for his flight. Still, he goes on hoping, just as he goes on revising his critique. “I’m adding in Gonzalez,” he says, “And I promise you that some day, some where, some as-yet-unnamed-and-unmet right winger is going to be on the receiving end of a real humdinger.”