College of Liberal Arts & Sciences

College of Liberal Arts & Sciences

• Interning at the White House

  An unexpected internship gives Ben Cameron an up-close and personal look at the nation's leaders.

  
  
• "Honestly I'm not sure how I got this internship. Most of the other interns there had a connection with the White House in some way."
  
  Ben Cameron, a December 2006 political science graduate of Iowa State, is one of those rare individuals who got ahead in Washington without any connections. Cameron served as a White House intern from January to May 2006.
  
  "I had absolutely no connections," Cameron said. "I filled out the application and was frankly surprised when I was selected."
  
  The political science graduate may not have had any connections within the White House but he did have experience on his side. During the 2004 Presidential election, Cameron says he worked many hours on the Bush/Cheney Campaign.
  
  That hard work paid off when he filled out his application.
  
  "I knew I wanted to do some kind of internship in Washington," he said. "I was just looking at the possibilities when I came across the link (for this internship) and I decided to give it a try."
  
  The application contained four questions each applicant had to answer including what aspects they would bring to the White House.
  
  "Maybe it was something that I wrote that stood out to them and caught someone's attention," he said.
  
  During his five-month internship, Cameron worked in the Office of Presidential Correspondence. He would handle mail, e-mail and FAXes that came into the office.
  
  A majority of his work dealt with e-mail.
  
  "I would read the e-mails and then have to help decide what type of response the office would give," he said. "The correspondence we would receive dealt with a wide variety of issues.
  
  "At night I would watch FOX News or CNN to see what issues people would be reacting to the next day. Getting to see how people reacted to issues and how the White House would respond was very interesting."
  
  Although Cameron can't divulge the content of any of the correspondences he read, he said the e-mails and letters from families of servicemen and women serving in Iraq were the most memorable to him.
  
  "To see how proud these families were of their loved ones made it all seem real to me," he said.
  Cameron's internship wasn't all e-mails, letters and FAXes. As a White House intern he got special privileges including attending special events at the White House.
  
  He attended two state arrivals for the heads of state of China and Australia. Along with other interns he assisted with the annual White House Easter Egg Roll.
  And he went on tours in the West Wing, seeing the Cabinet Room, the Roosevelt Room and the Oval Office.
  
  The Iowa State intern also got to meet President Bush.
  "There are days when Marine One (Presidential helicopter) lands and the President greets some of those who are there to watch," Cameron said. "One day I was there when he landed and I got to shake his hand and get a photo taken."
  
  That photo is now framed and is in an honored place in Cameron's apartment.
  
  But it's not the only memory he'll take from his experiences at the White House.
  
  "My first day I was very nervous not knowing what to expect," Cameron remembered. "But when I walked into the office and saw the seal of the President of the United States and the photos of the President and Vice President I realized where I was working.
  
  "That was a pretty incredible feeling."

• Ben Cameron
  
  On Politics
  Fall 2007

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