A Grand Young Party, for Them

NEW ORLEANS — Live and on two massive video screens, Education Secretary William J. Bennett was quoting from Plato, John Jay and “one of my favorite authors,” Flannery O’Connor.

Down the hall, several hundred young people in shorts and T-shirts were splayed out on a concrete floor, painting giant placards that proclaimed their political allegiances.

Nearby, an even larger group of teen-agers and young adults awaited instructions on how to escort guests at Monday’s huge farewell tribute to First Lady Nancy Reagan.

“We wanted some intellectual involvement, some interaction,” explained Richard Rossi, a volunteer with the 1988 Republican National Convention Youth Forum that convened here this week along with the larger convention.

‘Cause of Freedom’

A veritable geriatric at the age of 33, Rossi lowered his voice so that Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel, soon to be rewarded with a standing ovation from his audience of about 1,000 people in their teens and early 20s, could be heard extolling “the cause of freedom.”

“This is their opportunity to talk back to the biggest names in the party,” Rossi said. By the end of the three-day youth gathering, Rossi added, delegates to this “kiddie convention” will have met with such Republican officials as Secretary of State George Shultz, former Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, Office of Management and Budget director Jim Miller, and Alexander Haig Jr., former secretary of state in the Reagan Administration and chief of staff during the Nixon years.

Modeled loosely after the Nixon Youth Corps of the 1960s and early 1970s, the Youth Forum took its first tentative steps at the 1984 presidential convention in Dallas.

But barely 1,000 young people took part in that initial effort, fewer than half of the 2,300 16- to 23-year-olds who converged to attend their own miniature convention in New Orleans. Many who attended said they had heard of the forum through publicity directed at high school and college students.

“It shows that the Republicans are the party of the future, that they’re not only catering to old people,” said Marvin Brown, 22, of Gretna, La. A political science student at the University of New Orleans, Brown said his mother, a registered Democrat, considers him “a mutation” because of his conservative leanings.

More Young Ones

“I know more young Republicans than I do old Republicans,” Brown said.

This convention’s strengthened appeal to young people was funded by $8,000 in donations from AT&T; and from Arnaud’s, a well-known New Orleans restaurant.

The GOP platform committee also picked up part of the tab, Rossi said.

But most of the young people--clean-scrubbed and with not a single spiked hairdo or multipierced ear among them--footed their own $200 bill to attend the youth forum.

“I know I paid for this myself,” said Nannette Banks, a 23-year-old graduate of UC Berkeley who is pursuing a master’s degree at Duke University.

Wary of CIA Ties

Banks said that she is “not as strong a Reaganite” as many of her fellow youth forum delegates. In fact she confided that largely because of her “suspicions” about Bush and the CIA, she will probably end up voting for Democratic nominee Michael S. Dukakis.

Of the colorful plastic “Bush ‘88” whistle hanging on a chain around her neck, Banks said with a laugh, “They gave them to us.”

Assessing the lessons of the Reagan Administration, Banks said: “Ronald Reagan has made a strong economy, but I don’t think his economic view can be the sole reason for the change. I think Americans started changing their behavior just as much as Reagan changed policies.”

But Marc Castleman, a 17-year-old senior at University High School in Los Angeles, was less restrained in his praise of the President he has virtually grown up with.

Economy and Glasnost

“The economy when Ronald Reagan came in was just a mess,” Castleman said. “I like the better relations we have now with the Soviet Union, you know, glasnost and them pulling out of Afghanistan. I like the economy. I like the INF treaty.”

At the Youth Forum, Castleman said it was easy to find people his age who were eager to debate issues such as abortion, foreign relations and America’s nuclear weapons policy.

At home in Los Angeles, he said, “it’s kind of hard to find a lot of people who are into politics. People are less interested in politics than they are in baseball, or last night’s party.”

Castleman, wearing a “Sonny Bono for Mayor” T-shirt, smiled.

“I’m in the minority with my interest in politics,” he said. “But I still enjoy a good party.”

Hostage Rescue Attempt

In the view of 22-year-old Leanne Brown of Springfield, Pa., a critical event in the political consciousness of many of these young people occurred in 1980, with the unsuccessful attempt to rescue the American hostages in Iran. That failed effort, she suggested, was as significant for her age group as was the assassination of President John F. Kennedy for voters a generation older.

“Here is our country and we are supposed to be this strong superpower and we were weak,” said Brown, a political science student at the University of Delaware. “You didn’t have a proud image of your country.”

Charles M. Boesel, 24, the assistant youth director for the Republican National Convention Youth Program, said the philosophical discussions he had overheard during the conference had surprised him.

“I really didn’t know what to expect,” Boesel said. “But I’ve never seen a more dedicated group of young people, or a group of young people more interested in issues.”

Reaching ‘Baby Believers’

Boesel conceded that the forum offered an important opportunity to educate these “baby believers” in the tenets of the conservative cause. But he stopped short of attaching the word indoctrination to the youth-oriented effort.

Rather, Boesel said, “we just want to get them involved. We want them to know that what happens in a convention goes beyond just picking a presidential candidate, and that they can be involved.”

Not that the Youth Forum was without its competitors for the attention of young people in New Orleans this week.

At a meeting late Monday afternoon, a coalition of “major youth organizations” calling itself the Oliver North Youth Corps announced its support for the former National Security Council adviser who figured prominently in the Iran-Contra scandal.

Require Moral Discussions

And Steve Densley, an 18-year-old Republican National Convention delegate from Utah, spent much of the week urging an amendment to the party platform that would require American families to hold weekly meetings to discuss moral issues such as illicit drug use and avoiding sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS.

But the mere existence of the Youth Forum was indicative of the extent to which Ronald Reagan has “roused the youth,” said Heidi Hutson, 20.

“We are a strong part of the Republican Party,” said Hutson, a student at Wheaton College in Illinois.

Stretched out on the floor, laboring over a red, white and blue “Bush ‘88” poster, Shelly Cancienne, a 16-year-old high school senior from Marrero, La., confided that “to tell you the truth, I was a Democrat before I came here.”

Confessing that “I really didn’t care about anything political until this year” when she heard about this Youth Forum at her high school, Cancienne said it was not the ideology that had lured her to the Grand Old Party, “it was more the spirit.”

However, Cancienne said she probably would not rush home to announce her conversion to her lifelong Democratic parents.

“I mean, I don’t think I’m going to be into talking about Bush around my Mom,” Cancienne said.