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home > by publication type > transcripts > Campaign 2004: Foreign Policy in the Race for the Presidency
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| Speakers: | Jeff Greenfield, senior political analyst, CNN |
|---|---|
| Mark Halperin, political director, ABC News | |
| Moderator: | E.J. Dionne, senior fellow, The Brooking Institution |
February 24, 2004
Council on Foreign Relations
Council on Foreign Relations
Washington, D.C.
E.J.DIONNE: I'm the moderator tonight. I'm E.J. Dionne. And I want to introduce Jeff and Mark, and please— I was given a little card here, so I just want to read some of these notes. I ask everybody to please turn off your cell phone. Unlike most Council meetings, tonight's event will be on the record. All remarks may be reproduced and used against us— that's not on the little card.
I'm going to go through a few questions, and then I'm going to turn it over to the audience. And then there's an italicized one that says we will end promptly at 7:30 p.m. And I ask as a courtesy to our speakers that you not leave the meeting early. But someone already told me they had to leave early, and we'll give her an exception. So those are the rules. And, as I say, we will go to questions fairly quickly into the event.
I don't have to introduce these folks, but I will anyway. Jeff Greenfield is CNN's senior analyst. He contributes regularly to the network's programs, including "American Morning" and "NewsNight With Aaron Brown." Most recently he was the host of CNN's "Greenfield at Large"— I like this— a multi-forum program dedicated to the most relevant issues of the day. He's also a frequent contributor to "Inside Politics." They've listed a number of Jeff's excellent books, including his first novel, "The People's Choice," published in 1995, and named one of The New York Times Notable Books of the Year. It's been sold to the movies. But it didn't— somehow the Council on Foreign Relations did not list one of my favorite Jeff Greenfield books, which is a book called "A Populist Manifesto," which he wrote back in 1972 with Jack Newfield. So he is— I told him given the course of this campaign, he should put out a new edition. It sold very well back in 1972, and I actually own a copy.
Jeff is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, and graduated with honors from Yale Law School, and I understand there is at least one of Jeff's, two of Jeff's Yale Law School classmates in here. You cannot get away from Yale Law School.
JEFF GREENFIELD: And they better keep their mouths shut. [Laughter.]
DIONNE: Oh, they can't— if you got to Yale—
GREENFIELD: When I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible. [Laughter.]
DIONNE: Well, please speak up. Personal questions to the speakers are allowed. And, you know, in this little packet I had Mark Halperin's bio, but I don't have it. So I will just tell you what I think of Mark Halperin. [Laughter.] Mark Halperin— let's see if I get the title right. First of all, he's the political editor?
HALPERIN: Director.
DIONNE: --director for ABC News. Mark in a campaign was always everywhere. If you covered a campaign and thought you had this really cool little meeting that no one was covering in some little town in Iowa, Mark was there. If there were people having a secret conclave in a phone booth, Mark was there. And right now his note on the "ABC Note", which I'm sure many of you read, is the hottest— is really the hottest political gossip sheet, analysis sheet, tip sheet that you can get in Washington, D.C. He is very smart, and I happen to know he's also very smart about the people he hires in the ABC News political unit.
Jeff, I want to start out— we were talking before, this is partially prearranged. Mel Brooks had an old routine called "The Five-Minute University." And Jeff Greenfield, who is highly qualified for this— we met covering the McClellan campaign— Jeff is going to talk to you about how foreign policy has played in American elections from the beginning— from we'll say 1788 to the present— and he'll do it only a few minutes. Jeff. [Laughter.]
GREENFIELD: Okay. You belong on television. Let's take 200 years in a minute. I just think that there are two strains in American thought about the rest of the world that keep showing up. One of them is we really don't want much to do with the rest of the world. We were formed in opposition to Europe. We were deeply suspicious about all things European— big cities, corrupt nobility, religious wars. And so we really— and we got two oceans. So that attitude is sort of summarized by one of the founders of The Denver Post, who when asked, How come you didn't cover the outbreak of World War I?--said, quote, "A dog fight on Champa Street is more important to our readers than any international crisis." [Laughter.] And that's been kind of one theme.
The other is that America is a beacon to the world, and we have a responsibility to show the rest of the world what freedom and liberty is all about. In its, perhaps, most colorful form, it was said— I think by a congressman or senator— "We will lift Shanghai up, up, ever up, until it is just like Kansas City." [Laughter.] A real quote from some time ago. But, more seriously, it shows up in things like the relief effort after World War I that made a hero out of Herbert Hoover, and the rather remarkable post-World War II history in rebuilding Western Europe. And I think both those trends show up and recede, and show up and recede.
I think for 40 years, whether we liked it or not, we were part of the world. And I think as soon as the Cold War ended foreign policy seemed to recede mightily, so that we could elect an Arkansas governor over an incumbent president, and a Texas governor over an incumbent vice president. It has obviously returned with a horrific vengeance two and a half years ago, where it remains.
DIONNE: Thank you— which is a perfect transition for the question I wanted to ask Mark. [Columnist] George Will wrote of the first President Bush that "he wanted to be the best Cold War president America ever had, and then the Cold War ended on him, and he became speechless." [Laughter.] That's a George Will quote. The end of the Cold War was obviously very harmful to the Republican Party. If you look at both the '88 and '92 elections, George the elder Bush won overwhelmingly among voters who cared about foreign policy, but the numbers who really cared shrank a lot between '88 and '92. Has 9/11— have the events since 9/11— created a new sort of Cold War atmosphere in American politics, and what effect does that have now?
MARK HALPERIN: The shortest answer is the White House certainly hopes so, because it is clearly one of the president's great strengths. There was a famous Karl Rove [Bush political advisor] statement that has been much discussed and mischaracterized about whether the White House can run on the president's foreign policy record. He said to a Republican National Committee meeting in Austin [Texas] several years ago: We can go to the country and say we've done a good job on national security. It was blown up into something that was considered inappropriate. But the reality is it's a real issue. It's one of the qualifications of the presidency, one of the responsibilities of the presidency, that during the Cold War I believe the Republicans had as their biggest advantage in Electoral College politics. And I think it is still an incredible— it is again, rather, an incredible advantage for this party. If Bill Clinton or Al Gore had the record on Iraq, on national security, on 9/11 that this White House had, the Republican Party would be able to make a big issue of it in this upcoming election, there's no question in my mind, because the parties are not on equal footing for a variety of historical and cultural reasons on national security.
I think the question is: Is it an automatic advantage that George Bush has and will take into this election— it may not determine the outcome— but that he will have, or can the Democratic nominee, [Senator] John Edwards [of North Carolina] or [Senator] John Kerry [of Massachusetts], actually undo that advantage, despite 9/11, despite the president's bond with the American people on it? And I think it'll be hard to do. Bill Clinton was able to do it, because the Cold War had ended. And I think the conditions that exist do not permeate society as much as the Cold War did. There is no question in my mind about that. And if you live in Washington or New York, I think it's hard to understand how much less— how much differently and to some extent less— people in the rest of the country think about 9/11 and think about the responsibilities of the commander in chief. So it's not exactly the same as the Cold War, but it certainly is an advantage that the president continues to enjoy, and I'm skeptical that the Democrats can undermine.
DIONNE: Let me pick up on the point about Clinton, where Clinton in 1992 managed to go to the right of the first President Bush on China, on Bosnia— whether the right is the right word, or more militant, or more tougher. If you were— I'd like you both to run the foreign policy campaigns of first John Kerry and then George Bush: How do they play foreign policy in this election to their advantage?
GREENFIELD: You make an important and almost completely forgotten point that in '92, a fair number of what we now call neo-conservatives backed Clinton over Bush because they thought he was tougher on various foreign policy issues like human rights, like Bosnia, even Cuba. Josh Muravchik [resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute], [New York Times columnist] Bill Safire— I don't know if he's neo, but he's conservative— George Will, whom you mention. I think that what Mark described, the longstanding Republican advantage on foreign policy, goes all the way just right back to Vietnam. The last election that a Democrat won where national security and foreign policy was on the table was 1964, when Johnson convinced the country, with the help of some ill-chosen words, that [Republican presidential nominee] Barry Goldwater was dangerous. The only elections the Democrats have won since then were '76, which was Watergate-dominated, and '92 and '96, which were post-Cold War.
So if you ask what Kerry— if Kerry looked at that history, or the Kerry people, you might think that they would want to get busy sooner rather than later at looking at the foreign policy record of the president and describing it in a frame that says, "Look, I know there are bad guys out there that mean the United States ill, that mean to kill as many of us as possible, and the number one job of the president is to try to keep this country as safe as possible. And here is what the president has not done about that," you know, and turn not to the traditional Democratic establishment people, but to people like Richard Clarke, the former national security expert whose book is coming out soon and will not be a testimonial to Bush's leadership, to [former Commander in Chief of the Central Command] General [Anthony C.] Zinni, to Rand Beers, who walked out of the National Security [Council] and is working for Kerry. But my sense is that the Democratic candidate, the Kerry campaign, with the baggage it is carrying after Vietnam, may not think that it— may not know how to do that, may not want to do it, may be afraid to do it because of the Democratic Party base.
DIONNE: Anne Wexler, you've got to come in on that at some point. Mark, how do run Bush's campaign? And also pick up on Kerry as well.
HALPERIN: Well, I think all the things Jeff said about the substance and the symbolism are right. I think you have to do some bare minimal things in terms of television and imagery in this period, all the way through the convention and through the general [election] too if you are the Democrat, to seem credible. Bill Clinton did some very prominent photo ops with [former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] Admiral [William J.] Crowe [Jr.], with other strong national security figures, and chose some issues that allowed him to outflank President Bush, again, whether it's more muscular, whether it was on the right, but in ways that seemed to reflect a more aggressive American foreign policy.
John Kerry has got great videotape, a film of him personally that's— I don't think is going to be his problem. He has to deal with his biography. The Bush campaign will look at things he said during the Cold War, things he said around 9/11, things he said about the first Gulf War. He's got to be able to explain those in a way that does not make him seem weak. But he's also I think go to create push-back against what will be a Republican attempt to make him seem not credible on foreign policy, and not someone who understands the current American threat, threats to America, because they'll say he didn't understand previous ones.
I think the president's problem or challenge is simply to do what he started to do last night [in a speech to Republican governors], which is to say: "I wake up every morning concerned about this. I understand how to deal with it. I'm surrounded by good men and a few good women who understand this problem, and the other party cannot be trusted to do this, because they have no record of dealing with it," and as much as possible create the conditions that existed during the Cold War, where the commander-in-chief was the person who kept your children safe at night, and that if you did not pick the right person, you were putting your family at risk. And I don't think it will be very hard for them with the convention in New York and with daily threats, and with a president whose poll numbers are down, but whose bond with a majority of the American people still revolves to a great extent around his performance after 9/11, to achieve that.
DIONNE: Well, why has that eroded so much? In other words, that you clearly have this credibility problem. I mean, when Time magazine puts the president having a credibility gap on the cover, that's a kind of icon of a political problem. Has that eroded, or are we exaggerating this? Would his 43 percent against Kerry in one of the polls mean something?
GREENFIELD: Any— you know, I despair of ever making this point mean anything in terms of coverage, but if you live by the poll numbers week to week, you are going to be in a constant state of delusion. I think it's the dumbest way to look at a presidential campaign imaginable. And we're hooked on it. Somebody called polls "the crack cocaine of journalism." [Laughter.] I think that's— I wish I had said it. It wasn't my observation, but I completely embrace it. And why? Because we capture Saddam Hussein, and the poll numbers go up, and everybody feels safer. Then somebody blows something up in a market in Baghdad, and people say, “Oh, I guess that didn't end it. Maybe we have problems.”
David Kay [former top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq] comes out and says, you know, “We were almost all wrong about this,” and people say, “Well, wait a minute— didn't he tell us that was the reason he went to war?” And if in three months the seeds of democracy or the seeds of a stable government begin to bear fruit in Iraq, the poll numbers are going to go back up.
I happen to think this election, particularly in terms of the whole not just foreign policy, but particularly in that area, by which I mean the war, terror, is so out of the hands of the spinmeisters and the politicians that they could almost go home, because they're not going to be able to do anything about the public perception. Reality— shocking concept in this post-modern age— reality is going to shape a lot about what the public thinks about how safe it is.
HALPERIN: Reality is overrated. [Laughter.]
DIONNE: Please go on. But it also, in terms of the polls, because it does seem to me if you look at the administration's own response over the last several weeks, I think they— it reflects an administration concerned about the trajectory of the elections.
HALPERIN: Well, we're in a strange period now, because the White House looks with alarm at John Kerry's favorable/unfavorable ratings, derivative of a country getting to know him during a period when he's won almost every primary and caucus, and when the free media coverage he's gotten nationally and state by state has been exceptionally good. So their emphasis on attacking his national security record— and Senator Kerry would say attacking his credibility and his patriotism— is based on seeing this period as he is defined as critically important, because they don't want the country to lock in a positive impression of his national security credentials and his overall abilities, but they also don't want to continue to have bad days. So they are being particularly aggressive on this very point now of, is John Kerry a credible national security leader? I don't think they'll be able to keep it up every day, and of course I know it's not nice to say at the Council on Foreign Relations, but there will be other issues in the campaign— [laughter]--and at some point they will turn to his record on the economy, or what they say his record would be as president on the economy, and health care and other issues. But right now the issue of Iraq in particular has been such a dominant issue in the Democratic nomination fight that it's very easy for them to continue that dialogue, and it's very much in their interests to try to take him down on that issue.
GREENFIELD: If I may, there's a way in which this whole notion about foreign policy credentials ties in with what might seem to be completely unrelated, which is the whole notion of who John Kerry is and his cultural affinity with people like us, which is where the Bush campaign believes they have a huge advantage— people believe Bush understands people like us, and John Kerry—
HALPERIN: Seems French, as one Bush advisor told The New York Times. [Laughter.]
GREENFIELD: Exactly.
HALPERIN: Mais oui.
DIONNE: As a French-Canadian American, I take offense, but I won't go into that.
GREENFIELD: So the most powerful ad of this campaign I think goes to this, and it actually is on point, I hope. It's the add where one of the crewmen that John Kerry saved [during the Vietnam War], Del Sandusky, talks about John Kerry, and we see this actual home movie of John Kerry, the 20-something-year-old lanky guy in military fatigues carrying a semiautomatic weapon. I don't know who he got to take that picture, but it's as powerful as George Bush the First being pulled out of the sea on that aircraft carrier [in World War II].
HALPERIN: Wasn't [inaudible] in Vietnam at that time? [Laughter.]
GREENFIELD: I don't think so. And what Del Sandusky says is, "This is the guy who saved my life. He's a leader." Then we see John Kerry today saying, “When you've been in Vietnam, every day is extra, and that's why you have to fight for what you believe in.” And the ad ends with Del Sandusky, who looks like every Nascar fan you could imagine— he does not look French— he looks middle American— saying simply, "John Kerry is a good American." And the reason I mention this is because that ad ties John Kerry's Vietnam heroism with exactly the kind of point that they know the Bush campaign is going to come in on them: He doesn't really understand people like you. Also in this particular area it means he can't keep you safe, he doesn't understand your values, he doesn't understand how to make the tough decisions. And this ad, and I think many future ads, because it turns out John Kerry saved the lives of crewmen in every single battleground state. [Laughter.] It was a hell of a big boat. [Laughter.] But those ads are— that whole pitch is aimed at this exact issue: John Kerry does understand people like you, and he will keep America safe, because he kept people like you safe 35 years.
HALPERIN: Right. And the comeback Bush ad there's a scroll of a series of dates that say John Kerry spoke to the Council on Foreign Relations on February 3rd, 1982— [laughter]; February 19th, 1984. They'll keep reminding people that that was John Kerry for part of his life, but that he spent most of his life here in Washington as a senator from what E.J. likes to call Massachusetts.
DIONNE: I do like to call it Massachusetts. We won't go there either. This goes to the way you talked about the Kerry ad. Most Americans may not look at foreign policy— may not define it in a way that a lot of people in this room would define it. How do you see Americans defining foreign policy?
GREENFIELD: Who is threatening me from someplace else? I think that's what makes foreign policy relevant to people. Whether it's the Hitler or Stalin or the parade of terrorists or tin-pot dictators, or whether it's economic threat. In '88, when [Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. Representative] Dick Gephardt did his famous ad that won him the Iowa caucuses, threatening Korea I guess with a $48,000 Hyundai [Korean automobile], that was a foreign policy.
DIONNE: "It's your fight too," was the slogan.
GREENFIELD: But that was his foreign policy. If you guys are going to not let us send goods to your country, we're going to block your goods to our country. I think a lot of the issues that an estimable institution like this counts as serious issues have no resonance politically. And I include by the way things that ought to have resonance, that matter. I mean, you know, The New York Times did a whole series of editorials called "Harvesting Injustice," and a whole bunch of editorials about how our trade policies, ours and Europe's, keep the economies of Third World nations down and breed the conditions that may support terror. There's an— I mean, I don't do predictions, but I will bet you neither Bush, nor Kerry, nor if it's Edwards, Edwards, is going to mention one word about that stuff. That's not the kind of foreign policy debate we have in this country.
DIONNE: But, just to follow up, it's where— and then I want to go to Mark— it's where people see a threat from. Is that why the failure to find [Iraqi] weapons of mass destruction matters? In other words, at what point does Iraq become an issue because a lot of Americans say, Okay, I was prepared to go to war because I thought he was a threat to me, to us.
GREENFIELD: Right. The other threat is past tense. I mean, this country does not like wars that don't end either quickly, or the singular exception I can think of, World War II, for a good reason. The idea that this country rallies around its wartime leaders, you know, we threw out the incumbent party in the middle of Korea, we threw out the incumbent party in the Vietnam [War]. When things drag on, this is beyond foreign policy. This is the traditional American impatience factor. We don't want to get involved, but if we do, do it quickly and get out. That's the general impulse I think.
HALPERIN: I think the reason this stuff is so hard to talk about is everybody— almost everybody who is a practitioner of it or who studies it or who covers it was formed intellectually and psychologically by the Cold War, and we are not far enough away for us to truly understand all the differences. What we do know was that for eight years we had a president who was gifted— more gifted than any other politician in a lot of things— I think more gifted than anyone I've ever heard, of talking about foreign policy as it related to real people's real lives all across America, primarily as an economic issue, as [New York Times columnist]Tom Friedman has written about quite a bit. Changing foreign policy as being not defined by projections of military power around the world and dealing with the Cold War, but about trade, about America competing in the international marketplace.
Now, when George Bush came in there were some fascinating ideas that [Defense Secretary] Donald Rumsfeld had about how to reform the Pentagon, that they had about what a Republican administration in a Nixon-goes-to-China kind of way could do about AIDS, about how to work with our American allies in Asia— a lot of interesting ideas, all of which I think are taken over by 9/11 and the single-minded focus this White House has now on these issues.
Trade is to me the biggest foreign policy issue in the election— except for this issue of credibility on national security for the Democratic nominee. And trade is something that I don't think the president talks about particularly well. I don't think John Kerry talks about it particularly well either. How do you explain, as Bill Clinton did so well, the way to keep American jobs, manufacturing jobs, white-collar jobs, with benefits, with ability to have people look forward to going to work, being involved, working for organizations that are loyal to America and care about the future without becoming protectionist. And I think that is to me going to be the biggest foreign policy issue, and I think it's one of the things that's up in the air. I don't know which side will have an advantage on that.
GREENFIELD: Just to follow up, this is one area where I might— I don't know if I disagree, but I would amend this. What Bill Clinton was telling Americans was the world has changed, you have got to go get educated, you got to find new careers, you've got to be ready for the information age. The difference between 1992 and 2004 is that a lot of people in the information age now discover that, thanks to the information age, their jobs are moving 10,000 miles away. So I think that argument on the merits would be treated with a lot more skepticism than it would have been in 1992, when most people didn't know what the hell the Internet was.
DIONNE: Do you think— what is an effective way to talk about outsourcing? Again, if you were doing— you know, Jeff, in his varied and brilliant career has been a political consultant, a speech writer. I mean, if Kerry or Bush called you on the phone, said, What kind of speech would you write me, Greenfield?--what would you say?
GREENFIELD: It's the old line about the Roosevelt, you know, Franklin Roosevelt having said something in Pittsburgh that he shouldn't have said, and the advice was, Deny you were ever in Pittsburgh. [Laughter.] I don't think there's an easy answer to this, because I think what Clinton did in '92, when he— it's a scene that was actually replicated in "Primary Colors," where Clinton basically said to a lot of these blue-collar folks, “Your jobs are not coming back, period, if the world doesn't change. The honest answer is these jobs are not coming back. And all you can do is hope that there are enough— not all you can do— there will be enough new kinds of jobs in this country— which is probably true— that you'll have to be ahead of the next wave.”
But John Edwards is a guy who says the jobs are not coming back, we have to be honest. But I personally know what it means to see a 52-year-old mill worker whose job isn't coming back.
DIONNE: Very productive. [Laughter.]
GREENFIELD: Okay. You feel for him, you were born in a mill town, the jobs aren't coming back. And therefore, what? Now, there may be specific programmatic notions about what to do about the tax code, about not rewarding jobs that go overseas, about creating an investment fund to retrain yet again. But it's not the kind of morning in America optimism, because I don't think there's a very optimistic picture of this, unless you are a guy as good as Clinton in describing it in intellectually semi-rigorous and politically very effective terms.
DIONNE: Chuck Schumer, Senator Chuck Schumer [D-NY], likes to talk about a new paradigm, that something has fundamentally changed. And you know we were talking before about this Goldman Sachs study— '80s recession, it took six months to have job growth begin in a robust way; '90s recession, it took a year. This recession, it's two years and counting before you really get robust job growth. And this Time magazine cover story, which I thought was very good this week— you can't just say to people, “Well, if you get educated you'll move up,” because a lot of people in that story did exactly that, and still find their jobs getting off-shored. What do you say back— you know, if I am your audience as a candidate, and I'm saying, “Look, I hear your speech— I appreciate your empathy— but what are you going to do?” What do you say if you're a candidate?
HALPERIN: In your ad lib introduction of me, which was very nice, and I appreciate it, you spoke about my covering politics in the past tense, being out in the field. You said if you went out you saw Mark, which I agree with, because I mostly sit behind the desk now. But on occasion I do get to go out, and that's one of the great advantages and luxuries—
DIONNE: It shows how old I am. I didn't even realize I had used the past tense. So, yes, if you go out— let the record show—
HALPERIN: But it is easy to sit in New York and Washington and read the paper that Michigan has lost X percent of its manufacturing jobs in the last few years. But even to see it just once, to see a candidate talk to people who live in a town where the major employer has closed, as is true in many of the states, much to the president's political advisors on happiness, that will decide this election, you learn that this is a big problem in human terms— not just a macroeconomic problem to write about in a report.
And all the things Jeff said— programmatically tax change— are true. I think it will take a politician of either party— and again I don't think any of the three most likely people to be elected do this particularly well— it will take a great politician to talk about it, to come up with new ideas, because we are a great country and we have a lot of really smart people and a lot of entrepreneurial spirit. But I don't think anybody thinks we're currently on a path to create the jobs of the future. But there's an element that I think people can do now and I think John Edwards for all of his vaunted reputation for being optimistic doesn't do this, and Bill Clinton did: You need to give people a sense that Washington, however activist the government, however much industrial policy there is, Washington and the president have ideas about how to make it better, about how America can compete in the world. It's giving people a sense that their community is part of a national solution. And I don't think that's easy to do. It takes a gifted politician. But that is almost as important, and maybe more important in the programmatic sense. And it is part of being a leader. It's a big part of being president.
GREENFIELD: Now, take that point and apply it to the alleged topic tonight, which is foreign policy. How— I mean, I agree that trade may well be the most important foreign policy— but if you are both the Bush and the Kerry political operation, one of the things you are trying to figure out how to do is to give people a sense that you are— you have reason to be hopeful about what the future will bring. Clearly the kind of world we felt we were going to be living in in the last election has been quite literally shattered— crumbled into dust. So what do you do? I still think that— I believe the biggest weakest in this area of the Kerry campaign is that they know how to say Bush loused up, Bush screwed up— but if you ask people, well, what's the Kerry Doctrine? What is your sense of how you relate to a more dangerous world where there really are bad guys out there who want to hurt us and who have to be stopped?--you know, I don't think we've heard it. I think in a curious way people may be more hopeful about John Kerry in this area if he leveled with them, if he quoted Osama bin Laden to them. You know, there's a line from Osama that says the reason— the difference between Americans and us is they love life and we love death. You want to talk about negotiating? You want to talk about splitting the difference with somebody like that? I think that's the elephant in the room for everybody, but I still think the Democratic Party is so hooked into this, let's go to the United Nations, let's do something multilateral, let's figure out a way to talk about this that they just— they don't seem to be able to say in so many words what [Massachusetts U.S. Representative] Barney Frank, God bless him, said about John Kerry: Look, he killed communists. [Laughter.]
DIONNE: How many candidates can say that?
GREENFIELD: You know, that's not a big thing in the Democratic Party, but boy, I'll tell you as a subtext, which is what his ad is really all about, that's a pretty interesting starting place.
DIONNE: There's the line of the night. I want to turn to the audience. I want to just throw a question at each of you— one just to follow up. You said when we were talking before, "If I were back in my old line of work, I would be very shy of letting Kerry ever use the words 'United Nations.'" Elaborate.
GREENFIELD: Yes. Well, this is probably not welcomed news to the Council on Foreign Relations, but, you know, you do not have to be a charter member of the John Birch Society to have some skepticism about the United Nations as an institution. This is the institution that made Libya the head of its Human Rights Committee at one point. I mean, it does a lot of great things, and you've see the Bush administration— they've given Kerry a lot of cover, because they've turned to it and try to help make sense out of Iraq. But you know there's a certain kind of common-sense notion that maybe the United Nations isn't what it was when I was writing those 1955 essays in the sixth grade about, you know, the last best hope of Earth. And maybe a Democratic candidate who recognized some harsh realities about that would have some credibility when he talked about the other stuff he wanted to talk about.
DIONNE: And, Mark, we sort of have not even talked about the primaries. How important was catching Saddam [Hussein] to the outcome of the Democratic primaries? Could you tell us just a little before we go to questions about the role of foreign policy in the primaries?
HALPERIN: Howard Dean made something like 15 errors— to use what I rarely do, a sports metaphor— 13 unforced errors and two forced errors from December into the Iowa caucus that changed his image with a lot of people and hurt his chances of being the nominee. Saying America is no safer because Saddam Hussein has been caught probably was the biggest one. It was one of the first. It was the one that got a lot of attention, and it was one I think that alienated a lot of voters who were just starting to focus, who were looking for a winner, and saw that as something a credible commander-in-chief wouldn't say.
He had also obviously— seems to have allowed Senator Kerry, the candidate,--besides General [Wesley] Clark I should say, with the most obvious national security resume, Senator Kerry to emerge just as Howard Dean was leaving a vacuum. So I think it's hard to know which events in which sequence really made a difference, but I think that kicked off both the decline of Howard Dean's credibility and the rising importance that Democratic nominating voters in primaries and caucuses put on someone who was credible on national security, because Democrats have to anticipate the possibility of the year where President Bush has one national security victory after another, and they need to counteract that, or they won't have a chance to win.
DIONNE: Thank you. I want to sort of start— we're going to have a lot of Questions. I may— why don't we start in the front and move back right over here. And please use a mike, please state your name and affiliation. And it says here, it's a good idea, keep questions and comments concise, and to allow as many members of the audience as possible to speak. Thank you.
QUESTIONER: Judith Kipper, Council on Foreign Relations. This is almost as good as being with the boys on the bus. Maybe I went into the wrong career after giving up politics. It seems to me that this administration has done an extremely good job of reducing to the lowest common denominator American domestic foreign and defense policies. War on terrorism— it’s a policy by slogan. For domestic policy, it's homeland security. Nobody knows what that is. And it's a year old now. I guess the department is the second biggest department in government. And who know who works there, what they do? Obviously defense and foreign policy— if you say there might be something else— war on terrorism, war on terrorism. It's succeeded in scaring the American people, confusing them, and developing a lot of attitudes in America that are not healthy for us, like being anti the U.N., Jeff, and not understanding it's an important institution—
GREENFIELD: I knew that would set people off. That's why I wanted to say it.
QUESTIONER: And also kinds of stereotypes and prejudices against huge numbers of people around the world instead of understanding that there's a problem out there with extremists, and it doesn't matter what color, stripe, or religion— that extremism is our enemy and not other things. Is there a way for a Democratic candidate to break policy by slogan and have a national discussion in this country?
DIONNE: Excellent, thank you. Can you hold? Let's— Greg here. Oh, Garrett Mitchell. I'm sorry.
QUESTIONER: Thanks, Garrett Mitchell from the Mitchell Report. The question is hypothetical, and the base for the question is, in October of 2000, after the conclusion of the first debate on the NewsHour program, [TV journalist Jim] Lehrer went around the table and heard lengthy descriptions from three of the historians there. The fourth, Richard Norton Smith, I think captured it when he said of the debate— he said, "Gore proved he knew a lot. Bush proved he knew enough." And I'm wondering— you might want to be thinking about this— if we go ahead to October of 2004 and imagine a debate hypothetically between Bush and Kerry, what's the line, the equivalent line that Kerry might like to have delivered about him that Smith caught with that description of Bush four years ago?
DIONNE: Thank you. And right over here. And then we'll keep moving back.
GREENFIELD: Do we ever answer these, or do we just --
DIONNE: No, we're just going to collect them and then end the session. [Laughter.] No, I'm going to do three at a time.
GREENFIELD: It's everything I've thought about Washington— you just keep asking the questions. [Laughter.]
DIONNE: You answer it with a question, too.
QUESTIONER: Ron Baygents— Kuwait News Agency. I'll make mine shorter, except I'll give you three. What will be the impact of a major terrorist attack in this country this year on this campaign? What— how much will what happens in Iraq between now and November 2nd really matter on November 2nd? And, Mark, why is it that reality is overrated?
HALPERIN: Can I answer all three as [fictional television psychic]Karnak? [Laughter.] Ready? The first one is only if we drop the Electoral College and the electorate is made up of the board members of the Council on Foreign Relations. [Laughter.] The second one is, Kerry didn't slip up and speak any French in response to an answer or a question. And the first one is, there's no way to know— what was your second question?--there's no way to know who it will help or hurt if there is another terrorist strike. What was your second?
QUESTIONER: The second question was how important what happens in Iraq: between now and November 2nd—
HALPERIN: Very, very important, particularly as there are more wounded and casualties, and as National Guard and Reserves are overextended. And the third answer, the answer to your third question is, I was completely kidding. I'm really big on reality. [Laughter.]
DIONNE: Jeff, can you start with Judith Kipper's question, policy by slogan, lowest common denominator? This is like somebody who's talking through a translator, and it's a very long statement, and the person ends up translating it in three words. But that's my summary— could you sort of deal with that? And then also why don't you both play out— you can play roles if you want— what a Bush-Gore foreign policy debate will look like.
GREENFIELD: Bush-Kerry.
DIONNE: Bush-Kerry, I'm sorry. I think it's Kerry's re-election, so forgive me.
GREENFIELD: I thought one of the reasons why last night's speech by the president was so helpful was it really laid on the table in a microcosm precisely what their argument is going to be. And it also explained why Bush in his Tim Russert interview [on “Meet the Press” on February 8, 2004] was so talking about the wartime president and the decisions made behind the desk. This is their theme: I faced decisions that no president has faced since probably the Cuban missile crisis in terms of danger to us. I made the decision in the best interests of the United States. And if you look at John Kerry's record, you will see a person who simply does not understand the nature of the dangers that we face and what to do about them. You can call it a slogan. I have a feeling Kerry will do slogans. And to answer your question, the line that John Kerry wants out of the debate in my view is, he turned the tables on Bush and made the case that it was Bush who didn't understand how to keep America safe. And that would be his— that's the dream of the Kerry campaign. That's not a prediction, it's a dream.
And I completely agree with Mark. We have been talking about this on and off— not morbidly I hope— for months and months, and nobody knows about another terror attack. Do we rally around the president? Do we say the last two and a half years have been completely for naught? I wouldn't even begin.
HALPERIN: My more serious answer to Judith's question is that, look, you can say what you want about making a case for the president's record or saying the president's been a failed foreign policy president, national security president. Both cases can and will be made. There clearly is room for a Democrat to make a serious argument that gets— whether it's made in slogan on its own or not— there clearly is room intellectually to make that argument against the president. But it must be made in a deft way, and it must be made in a way that's accessible to normal Americans who don't much care about these issues, and whose relationship to homeland security is in the main that they have to take their shoes off at the airport. They're not really focused on it, with the deficit no longer, or at least not currently being seen as an issue. They're not necessarily feeling the pain of paying more for homeland security, and of course some people would like more to be spent on it. So I think there's room to make it, but I think it is a big challenge, and I think the White House's discipline and some might say ruthlessness on doing it this way is very tough to beat. They're very good politicians.
I think we're too far away from debate to know for sure what the dynamics will be or the environment will be that Senator Kerry would be able to judge— if he could do what Jeff said, he'd take that right now, no matter what the dynamics are, though I think that will be difficult. I think his challenge, in the first debate in particular, because the conventions will not be covered as much as they've been, and no matter how much he campaigns between now and the debates, the debates will always be as they always are: a time when a lot of Americans begin to focus. I think for him, it will be likability. It will be Senator Kerry ending the evening with Americans saying, "I'm happy to have that guy in my living room for four years," because that is his biggest challenge he faces in the whole election. And the debate side by side with a very likable person is going to be his best opportunity to make it. And if I remember correctly, the first debates tend to be the most watched, and that's when he'll have his biggest audience and his best chance to prove to people that he's like them and someone again they'd like in their living room for four years.
DIONNE: Just parenthetically on Jeff's point, I think that's why— what Jeff said about the debate for instance, why the 9/11 Commission is so important, because I think if the 9/11 Commission [National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States] reopens the entire issue, going all the way back before 9/11, and shifts the debate in that direction, it could sort of change the direction of discussion about Bush, and it's the opportunity Kerry would look for if he's capable of seizing it. But we don't know what the 9/11 commission is going to say.
This gentleman— Barbara, did you have your hand up? Why don't we take four very quickly here. I just want to include as many people as I can. Sir?
QUESTIONER: My name is Ruben Brigety with American University. Given that outsourcing and trade are such important issues, I was wondering if you might be able to explain why the president hasn't been able to come up with a more effective response other than something like 5.6 percent unemployment isn't such a bad number?
DIONNE: Excellent question.
QUESTIONER: Louise Branson from the editorial board at USA Today. Nation-building was a very dirty concept during the last presidential debates. Now we're somewhat engaged in it in Iraq. But is the concept of nation-building going to remain a dirty word? How is it do you think going to be addressed, and how is it going to play out?
DIONNE: As Richard Nixon didn't say we're all nation-builders now. Sir, and then Barbara Slavin.
QUESTIONER: [Inaudible] in the international community for the United States to reach out. My question is, what do you think about the idea of can President Bush turn this whole thing around and say why doesn't the international community reach out to the United States? [Laughter.]
DIONNE: If he's listening, he's cheering. That's an interesting question. And Barbara Slavin, thank you.
QUESTIONER: Hi, Barbara Slavin of USA Today. If you could write a security doctrine for Kerry, what would you say?
DIONNE: And it's television, so it's a minute. [Laughter.] So Barbara's question; why can't Bush turn around the issue of the world not coming to us— are we all nation-builders now, what's happened on that; and why can't Bush give any good answers on outsourcing?
GREENFIELD: Let me just look at the first two. I mean, you know, it's hard to give a good answer when things had been going in a way where the reality says a lot of people have lost jobs. That's not— this is where I think reality is not overrated. You know, it's tough. And the other thing is of course there have been other things on the president's mind, like the war on terror.
You know, one of the ironies about the foreign policy debate that I thought Tom Friedman captured a while ago was that in some sense this is an extremely liberal foreign policy, in the old post-World War II sense of the word. When I was learning about politics, the Cold War meant the United States allied itself with all kinds of really bad people, because they were anti-communists— Latin American dictators, [Spanish dictator Francisco] Franco, [Portuguese dictator Antonio] Salazar, [South Korean President] Syngman Rhee, [Chinese nationalist leader] Chiang Kai-shek— you can argue whether they were really bad or just sort of bad. But if they were anti-communists, that was enough. This administration is making a fundamentally different argument, and it is an argument that in the old days, somebody like Eleanor Roosevelt might have made, that freedom is critical to our— it is in our interest to build free nations— not anti-communist nations, free nations. You know, that was Reagan's famous line: Free nations do not make war on each other. And Bush has sort of embraced that.
So part of this goes also to your question— part of the effort I thought that the Bush administration was making when they were at their rhetorical best, as in Bush's speech over in Great Britain some months ago, was to say, "Look," to the free nations of the world, "this is your fight too," a la Dick Gephardt. You know, the way you're going to be safe is to keep trying to build nations that aren't run by really bad guys, that there's a link between people who do terrible things at home and their willingness to play footsie with bad guys abroad. I happen to think that is a strong argument, but it runs up against the fact that— to go back to the very first thing I said— that most Americans don't want to hear about how much we have to be involved in the messy business of nation-building. And that's the best I can do with it— that he runs up against— look, when the Cold War was over, one of the first things that happened was a big wing of the Republican Party went right back to neo-isolationism. The Dick Armeys [R-TX, former House majority leader] and Tom DeLays [R-TX, current House majority leader] of this world, you know, did want involvement in the world. It was I think to Bush's credit when he was running for president that he broke with them. [Audio break.]
DIONNE: [In progress]--better answer you had on outsourcing? [Laughter.]
HALPERIN: Well, because George Bush is significantly more conservative— I'll refer to a piece [New York Times executive editor] Bill Keller wrote in The New York Times magazine several months ago— longer than that. It was an excellent— understanding of President Bush as really conservative. Now, when he ran for president, he did not propose cutting a single program or eliminating a single department, much to my amazement, and until this recently submitted budget, he never proposed doing such a thing. However, despite that big fact, he is for a smaller government. He is not for industrial policy; he is not for a Commerce Department, a [Clinton Commerce Secretary] Ron Brown-style Commerce Department; he is not for using the federal government to create jobs. He's for getting out of the way of the entrepreneurial spirit, cutting taxes, capital gains, individual rates, taxes on small business as much as possible, and for some things that would be part of what we would consider Clinton-style industrial policy that might deal with this, particularly investments in education— but not as much as you would have to be to deal with these problems in a way that I think people would find reassuring.
A few months ago, when they went through a round of angst over this issue, they announced they were creating I think a new assistant secretary of Commerce position to deal with the loss of manufacturing jobs. I know I hear a lot about that out on the campaign trail from voters, how comforted they are that that assistant secretary will still be confirmed. [Laughter.] But it's just— it is not— although the president's critics use this as a way to satire his world view, when they say, What's the problem?--and the president says, I don't need to know the problem. The solution is more tax cuts— that is something they embrace. Most of the people I know who work for the president say that is a big solution to a lot of the problems we have. And their view is, if you cut taxes, the entrepreneurial spirit will create new ideas and new jobs, and those new jobs—
DIONNE: Will go to India. [Laughs.]
HALPERIN: --will replace the outsourced jobs. Well, they say they'll stay here. And that's the answer. And it may not be a politically popular answer, but that's a big part of the answer.
DIONNE: Somebody has to take a crack at the Kerry—
QUESTIONER: [Inaudible]
HALPERIN: Right. And you know every four years— the great thing about the laboratory of the nominating fight, and then the general election, is you get to hear how voters react to what the candidates are saying. And of course some of them are saying a combination of what they believe and what the polls tell them to say, and some of them are doing a different kind of combination. If you listen to the Democratic candidates who largely agree, even when the field was bigger, amongst Democratic voters it's pretty clear people like the U.N. People think it's bad that European countries don't like the United States. People think that American power should be used in places where our national security is threatened, but even beyond that where there are humanitarian crises. That's what those people think. The general election is going to be a challenge for both candidates to talk about what Americans think. George Bush now says nation-building: bad as a candidate, good as president, because we have to do it in Iraq.
I think, as I said before, Kerry has to deal with the symbolic aspects of it, and if he is smart enough and agile enough, he's got to say, I would make America safer than George Bush in these ways. But he starts— because there's a D in parentheses after his name— with just a huge disadvantage.
DIONNE: My short answer— I mean, I just want to take a crack. It seems to me the short answer is achieving what America wants in the world is easier with a lot of help and with friends than not, and that's tough-minded, and if you don't believe it, just look what Harry Truman did. That's my short answer to that.
HALPERIN: I expect bashing the French and the Germans in the general election in Ohio will help the president.
GREENFIELD: And look at the contrast. I was just thinking about this: In 1960, John Kennedy made a great to-do about a poll that showed American prestige in the world had declined. Now, this was at the peak of the Cold War battle for hearts and minds, but it was actually— this was a reasonably shrewd politician— felt that it was politically advantageous to say to Americans, “You want to vote for me because it's important that our prestige in the world increase, because we're in this battle with the Soviet Union.” I think Mark's right. I do not think that necessarily criticizing Bush because our prestige in the world has declined— while it may make a lot of points in certain select quarters— [laughter]--not—
DIONNE: That was a compliment.
GREENFIELD: Yes. It's not— it's just not going to cut a lot on the campaign trail.
DIONNE: One more quick round of questions— and if you could keep it brief, because we're about to go over. We've got two, three, four— it's like an auction here. Go ahead.
GREENFIELD: That's a good idea. Why don't you charge people to ask? [Laughter.]
QUESTIONER: James Forsyth, Foreign Policy magazine. Do you think Saudi Arabia gives the Democratic nominee, presumably John Kerry, the chance to outflank George Bush in the war on terrorism, [and] say, “Hey, why don't we get tough with these people? Where did the people who flew the planes into our trade center come from? Saudi Arabia.” And especially considering the Bush family link to the Saudis. This is a demagogue issue that allows him to be tougher than Bush.
DIONNE: I saw a lot of nodding heads up here. Right behind you there. Could you just pass back? Thank you.
QUESTIONER: Paula Stern, the Stern Group. In 1992, I was the senior trade advisor to Bill Clinton, the candidate. And my question is on trade. It is that I don't know— I would like to ask why there's a common notion that this administration believes in a small government when it comes to trade, when they have absolutely turned the clock back on farm supports— which is the biggest trade matter— and have doled out all kinds of government money that had not been available, and had initiated in an unprecedented way a steel case that had never been initiated before, and then went on. Why is that considered small government and non-interventionist, if you will? And that's of course a rhetorical question. [Laughter.]
And the other rhetorical question is: Why does the press talk about free traders versus protectionists, when the real issue, it seems to me, is what president in the White House would best equip Americans to compete? And what Bill Clinton talked about was retraining. But he didn't say retraining once. He said you're going to have to be [retrained] five or seven times for jobs. And it seems to me that we are framing some of these questions wrong, and I am just asking these rhetorical questions because you all have so much influence on framing the debate on trade. [Laughter.]
DIONNE: Thank you. I think those two questions were good answers to Barbara Slavin's question about Kerry. This gentleman over here. Yeah.
QUESTIONER: My name is Khaled Dawoud. I'm from Egypt's Al-Ahram newspaper, and I'm sure the panelists here have read all the polls that show that the U.S. popularity or favorability rating around the world has dwindled, I mean, like in Egypt, which is a close U.S. ally, it's around 6 percent; in Jordan, which is very, very close, it's 1 percent; and in Indonesia 15 percent. In Turkey, 15—
DIONNE: Like [Democratic presidential candidate] Dennis Kucinich levels? [Laughter] Think about that.
QUESTIONER: So I was just wondering whether this makes any difference in the campaign, or whether the Democrats, you know, I mean, can use it, because at the end of the day, if the rest of the world thinks unfavorably, this might affect the security of the United States, its possibility for trade. I mean, could this be a point used by the Democratic candidates in their campaign against Bush? Thank you.
DIONNE: Could I get a couple more in, just because we're going to have to shut down after this. Sir, back there. Thank you.
GREENFIELD: You think can we remember these questions by the time the—
HALPERIN: All I want to answer is the Saudi one, so. [Laughter.]
QUESTIONER: [Inaudible] I have the distinct pleasure of having been press secretary to two losing candidates this [Democratic primary election] cycle, [Florida Senator] Bob Graham and Wes Clark, who both made—
DIONNE: And he was good actually.
QUESTIONER: --who both made foreign policy a pretty major part of this campaign. This question is really more about the press. At what point will there be more investigative journalism on behalf of your estate into the Bush White House and things like— [former Treasury Secretary] Paul O'Neill's book didn't get a lot— or Paul O'Neill's statements in the [Ron] Suskind book [“The Price of Loyalty”]--didn’t get a lot of attention; the Richard Clarke book that's coming out, as well as the CIA leak and targets inside the vice president's office?
DIONNE: Okay, I have the Saudis— why not more investigative reporting on Bush? Why do we mis-describe the trade debate? And, lastly, doesn't the fact that our popularity is approaching zero in some countries, why doesn't that matter in the election? Is that a fair summary of these questions? Jeff? Or Mark— either one of you can start.
GREENFIELD: I think we already heard that the potential to turn the international position around to a national security argument is there. You want to get the bad guys, you got to have friends overseas to help us get the bad guys. And when Bush says— he likes to make fun of the Democrats by saying you guys, you know, maybe you think indictments and subpoenas are the answer. You would think a Democrat would be smart enough to say, “Well, you know what, if the September 11th hijackers were all hiding in Germany, you're not going to bomb Germany. You need the German intelligence and police people to find them.”
Why haven't they done it? Because they're— because it's easier to figure this out from the sidelines. When you're working 20-hour days, schlepping through Ohio and Georgia, you're looking at the short-term answer. I think the Saudi connection is a very significant possibility for the Democrats. But, again, you have to spell it out in such a way that people understand what it is.
DIONNE: And why don't you take on that press question, which is— and one way to rephrase it was: Do you think the press was softer on Bush after 9/11? Has it toughened up? Will it get tougher still? What's your—
GREENFIELD: The honest answer to that for me is, A, the press is always coming up short on what it should do, and that generally speaking people's view of what the press is and isn't covering has a remarkable one-to-one correlation to what they think of politics in general. I have never in my life heard anybody say, "I'm a Democrat, but you're too tough on Bush" or "I'm a Republican, but you should be tougher on Bush." Quite a startling fact of public life. So, you know, I think before November 2nd you are going to see a lot of coverage of both Bush and presumably John Kerry in the press.
HALPERIN: I'd like to answer the Saudi one, and then I'll answer any others you wish. How's that?
GREENFIELD: And I have one story to tell.
HALPERIN: Given how many people there are in the room, my rough sense is probably three of you are paid Saudi lobbyists, so just statistically— [laughter]--in a room of this size in Washington, it's probably the case. So—
DIONNE: And the rest of you won't acknowledge it. [Laughter.]
HALPERIN: Knowing that someone is probably sending in real-time everything I'm saying to [Saudi Ambassador to the United States] Prince Bandar [bin Sultan], I'll nonetheless proceed. [Laughter.] I'm amazed at how little this is talked about on the campaign trail. The Saudis were probably, after Israel, probably the most defended nation in Congress by members. I'd say probably 95 percent of members would have strongly defended them in disputes before September 11th. And now every member I've ever talked to is virulently anti-Saudi and thinks things should be tougher. And even if you take the administration at its word about why it's not been tougher, and don't go into Dick Cheney and oil and everything else, I think it's an incredible vulnerability. And I've been amazed. They talk about it some, and if you ask the candidates about it, you can get them going. But I've been amazed that they have not talked about it more in the nominating process, and I don't know whether the nominee will talk about it. But I think it's an incredible vulnerability.
DIONNE: Do you have any answer on the tough/soft press question?
HALPERIN: Yeah, I disagree with Jeff. I think that we are in a national crisis with fewer and fewer news organizations who devote any resources to serious investigative journalism. It's expensive; it's complicated; it's time-consuming. It doesn't necessarily make it into the paper or on TV. And if we do not have at least the same number, and hopefully more, seriously funded, seriously independent news organizations with the courage and the technical ability to take on all powerful organizations— labor unions, you know, the Council on Foreign Relations [laughter]...
[Transcript Ends.]
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