The first day is always the longest. (I hope this statement is true)

Today was Day One of the official program, and turned into quite a long one. First thing in the morning was the presentation of the academic program component of the Washington Center seminar, a step-up from the administrative orientation/babysitting session last night.

The acamic program was presented by Thomas Cronin and Michael Genovese, two of the leading scholars in presidential politics in the world. Having seen and/or read several books by these two in political science classes back at school, I was actually quite excited to hear about the academic program from them. Both were excellent public speakers with a good sense of humor. ("I hear there are, in fact, some republican students here, so I'll be sure to talk s l o w l y" -Michael Genovese) They framed the academic program and goals, along with engaging us in some philosophy on paradoxes in the American presidency (For example how an optimal president would be someone you could have a beer with comfortably, but at the same time be smart enough to fix all the problems of the nation and you personally) and also some fairly interesting "what-if" questions eg what if Kerry doesn't invite Obama to keynote in 04, what if John Edwards had dropped out in December, what if the nation had held a national primary in 08, etc. Cronin suggested the answer of the final what if about the national primary would have occured we would be looking at a Hillary vs. Guliani New York showdown for the general election. Hilary, I believe, definitely would have won the democratic primary if there was a national primary, but I think Romney may have had a pretty good shot at Guliani in a national primary. Either way, however, both parties would have different candidates, which is interesting to think about.

Most academics believe the primary system needs to be changed, but instead of a national primary, merely shifting which states get to go first in primary season every election could work, and allow the media to have it's perpetual primary election coverage for six months in a row. Just throwing out ideas.

After the academic orientation was the group picture, which was pretty crowded and awkward and will not be one of the first 47 things or so I remember about this trip in a few years. (At least I hope)

After lunch were meetings with our small academic group. My small group consists of students living in Massachusetts (though one goes to the University of New Hampshire). We seemed to have a solid group dynamic personality-wise, but the academic work seems slightly daunting. After this I have to read a lot than write in an "academic journal" which will no doubt be bundles of fun.

After the small academic group session I was able to get to downtown Denver to explore with some other program participants. The first thing I noticed was it's cleanliness, the sidewalks and buildings sparkled compared to cities on the east coast. If your ever disoriented Denver, you figure out where you are by finding the Rock Mountains, which are west of the city, then finding your way from there. We found a good restaurant for dinner (got a bison burger, it tasted suspiciously like a hamburger) and investigated the pepsi center. At the pepsi center we were informed tours were closed to the building because this event called the DNC was going on in Denver next week, and secret service had informed the security gaurd to inform us that we can take pictures of the building, but not of the specific "doors" and "airvents" in case "terrorists" get ahold of them. This was A, unintelligent, since the security gaurd had now told thirty complete strangers that if terrorists wanted to get in they would want to focus on the doors and airvents, and B, un-necessary, I mean, the number of people walking to a stadium in Denver to take pictures of it's air vents I would hypothesize would be a relatively minute number. Crazy secret service.

Anyways, after our adventures through downtown led us to return at a relatively late hour, and thus I'm pretty exhausted, but tomorrow I should take better notes from the speaker(s) and hopefully have slightly more exciting things to say about them. And stuff.