Leading the way to the White House
EPICENTER OF POLITICS | By combining the degrees he earned at the University, Brian DeBose, AS ’98, ’99, has a unique vantage point in today’s political environment that he used while covering the 2008 presidential election as a reporter for a daily Washington, D.C., newspaper and also as a guest commentator on several political talk shows.
But in 1994, when DeBose packed his bags and set out for college, he was headed to become an engineer. “Everyone I knew was making big money working in engineering at the time, so I figured I’d try that,” he says. After he arrived and began scheduling his first classes, he decided to enroll in a political science course. It was a decision that set him on a different course.
“I’ve always been a student of history,” says DeBose, who grew up in the nation’s capital. With the encouragement of one of his professors, he quickly learned that politics was truly his passion: “I fell in love with it and found I was good at it.”
As a member of the football team, DeBose was on a five-year plan at UD, and he took advantage of the extra year of education. He graduated first with degrees in both political science and Black American studies and then earned another degree in his final year—English, with a concentration in business technical writing.
He went on to report for the Washington Afro-American Newspaper and for Jet and Black Enterprise magazines on issues affecting the black community. In 2001, he took a job as a national news reporter for The Washington Times, covering Senate, congressional and presidential campaigns.
Now an editorial writer for The Washington Times and a regular contributor to political television programs on CSPAN and CNN, DeBose covered this year’s presidential campaign in detail. He says he was particularly interested to observe the dynamics that race played in the primary battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
He watched firsthand how the Obama camp aggressively sought out black superdelegates for their support, and he says he was one of the only print journalists to predict that Obama’s win in the Iowa caucus would be a monumental step in securing the nomination. “When you can get a lock on the most dedicated voting block, the African-American vote, you can concentrate on securing the other voters,” he says. “Clinton could not go continue to go after the black voters while going after others she [also] needed.”
DeBose says he found Obama’s pick of fellow Sen. Joe Biden, also a UD graduate, an interesting one for the election. “He’s from a no-tax, pro-business state, yet he’s socially liberal on issues such as gay marriage and abortion,” he notes. Politics aside, he says his familiarity with Delaware gave him an edge in covering the vice presidential candidate and more easily understanding the context of some of Biden’s statements.
Plus, DeBose says, having Biden on the ticket allowed him bragging rights. “Now when I go on the political talk shows, I get to say how people have to respect the Blue Hens,” he says.
Article by Laura Overturf Stetser, AS ’99
