Courtney Blackett

“Because if anybody took high school civics class, they’d know what the vice president can do and what the vice president can’t do,” were the words of Marcus Johnson, a political science student at Oakland University, now dominating the screens of millions worldwide.

Spoken after the Oct. 2 vice presidential debate, Johnson’s statement took off as a response to JD Vance’s words on Kamala Harris. “If Kamala Harris has such great plans for how to address middle-class problems, then she ought to do them now, not when asking for a promotion but in the job the American people gave her three and a half years ago,” Vance said. 

The post from Maddow Blog on X turned into a 2.1 million views clip with 13,000 reposts and 51,000 likes overnight. A quick search on Google now moves a jazz musician to a sidebar and an NFL player into a second header to make room for the internet’s favorite civics instructor: Marcus Johnson. 

Oakland County was already on the map for the November election due to the “hundred thousand vote swing from former President Trump in 2016 to President Biden in 2020,” Jacob Soboroff, NBC News national correspondent, said. Coupled with Michigan having the best youth voting turnout in 2022, Oakland University keeps gaining relevance — now making headlines with its own campus celebrity.

Three appearances on MSNBC later, The Oakland Post sat down a day after with Johnson to explore how his civics lesson came to be.

“This all started last night after the debate watch party when some folks told me that apparently people on Reddit were saying, ‘Oh, we loved Marcus,’” Johnson said. “I wake up this morning to a bunch of texts from my best friend with all these different articles people are posting and all these extra different tweets.”

“It was a very big contrast from the presidential debate in that there was more focus on policy rather than one person going at the other and acting like a supercilious fool,” Johnson said. “It was actually a conversation about what each side believes.”

Johnson pointed out Vance’s political non-answers and Walz’s nervousness on stage as his personal takeaways from each candidate. At the debate watch party, he made a point that neither of the candidates touched on what they would do on their first day in office if they were to win. 

“At the end of the day, we are selecting this person to potentially serve as president should something happen,” Johnson said. “So that’s what I see as to why it’s necessary to hear from them, but also acknowledging that once they get the job, we shouldn’t expect them to be the main policymakers when that’s not what they do.”

It was thanks to his mom and grandma that Johnson developed this interest in political science and government matters. He explains that at a young age, he was encouraged to see himself in positions of leadership and as a participant in the democratic process.

“My grandma, she was the political person in our family, and whenever she wanted to do political crap but didn’t want to go alone, I was the one she dragged with her to do it,” Johnson said. “One day she told me to sign up for some phone banking for Governor Whitmer’s primary campaign at the time. I desperately did not want to do it, but she made me a deal that if I did it, she would make me tacos. I got my tacos, and the governor won the election.”

He then moved on to explain his academic career in political science, how he entered the Oakland Community College Early College Program and graduated from high school with two associate degrees, continuing his career at OU. 

“I would obviously give credit to the wonderful political science department here at OU,” Johnson said. “I’ll give them a lot of credit for a lot of the understanding I’ve developed recently about the Constitution, how the government functions now, how it was meant to function.”

Confessing to be a “big fan of deep-dive rabbit holes,” he mentioned that mobile news apps, long calls with friends who are politically involved and fact-checking websites like Media Bias/Fact Check, build his working knowledge of civics. 

With 50,000 new followers and counting on X, voice messages from national news outlets and the support of OU students, faculty and administration, Johnson expresses his continued focus on schoolwork in face of increasing popularity. 

“I’ve been going with business as usual today,” Johnson said. “I recognize that everybody has something they want to say, and everybody wants to hear some from me, but I also have responsibilities that I cannot neglect while the rest of the world is trying to get to know me. So, once I handle that I’m free for whatever anybody else wants.”