BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 1
JOHN SHATTUCK: Thank you. Good evening and welcome to the John F. Kennedy Library. I’m John Shattuck, CEO of the Kennedy Library Foundation. And on behalf of our Board of Directors, many of whom are here tonight and Tom Putnam, the Acting Director of the Kennedy Library, we are just delighted to be able to host tonight’s very special Kennedy Library Forum.
Before introducing our guest of honor, who in a typical way I could say needs no introduction, but I’m going to give him one anyway, I’d like to thank the institutions that make these forums possible, starting with our lead sponsor, Bank of America. We’re also very grateful to Boston Capital and its President, our Board member Jack Manning, who is here with us tonight. Thank you Jack. Also, the Lowell Institute, the Corcoran Jennison Companies, and our media sponsors, The Boston Globe , NECN and WBUR, which broadcasts all Kennedy Library forums on Sunday evenings at eight.
Tonight is a banner night for the Kennedy Library. As a presidential library, we are proud to attract speakers who are making headlines. But the headlines this week about tonight’s speaker tell us that he may be poised, not just to make news, but to make history. Our Guest of Honor is on this week’s cover of Time Magazine . His name is on the lips of Democrats and Republicans across the nation. And his new book, The Audacity of Hope , published this month and now on sale in our book store, tells us about a brand new form of political leadership.
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It’s a great privilege to welcome Senator Barack Obama to the Kennedy Library.
[applause]
Senator, you are described by The New York Times as, and I quote, “That rare politician who can write, and write, and write movingly and genuinely about himself.” And your story is extraordinary. As this week’s cover article in Time tells us, and I quote, “Senator Obama’s father was from Kenya, and his mother from Kansas. The Senator has told the story in brilliant, painful detail in his first book, Dreams of My Father , which may be the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician,” and I end-quote.
A central theme of the book is that Barack Obama learned from an early age how important it was to bridge the many divides of the world in which he grew up, which is the same world as the one in which we all live today.
At Harvard Law School, he was the first African American to be elected President of the Harvard Law Review. He was chosen for that prestigious position, not only because he was near the top of his class, but also because he had a unique ability to win over conservative and liberal students alike.
As one of his classmates told Time Magazine this week, most of the class were liberals, but there was a growing conservative presence, and there were fights between right and left about almost every issue. Barack won the
BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 3 election because the conservatives thought he would take their arguments into account.
After graduating from law school, Senator Obama entered public service. He started as a community organizer and a civil rights attorney in Chicago, representing victims of employment and housing discrimination and teaching Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago.
In 1997, he was elected to the Illinois Senate, where for the next seven years, he played a leading role reaching across party lines on difficult issues to achieve results.
He forged coalitions of Democrats and Republicans to help working families, creating programs like the state earned income tax credit that provided over 100 million dollars in tax relief for lower and middle income families.
He pushed through a bipartisan expansion of early childhood education, and he worked with law enforcement officials to enact legislation requiring that all interrogations and confessions in cases involving the death penalty be videotaped.
On the national stage, he spoke out early against the war in Iraq, and he supported the war in Afghanistan. Here in Boston, he electrified the
BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 4
Democratic National Convention two years ago in a key note address that charted the common ground that unites all Americans.
“We worship an awesome God in the blue states,” he said, “and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the red states. We coach Little League in the blue states, and we’ve got gay friends in the red states. There is not a black America, and white America, and Latino America, and Asian America, there’s the United States of America.”
Elected in an Illinois landslide to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Senator Obama is now in a position to project his special brand of political leadership on the national level; leadership based on consensus building, not slashing and burning; leadership based on listening to opposing views and responding with fact and truth, not destruction distortion; a brand of leadership, I might add, in great demand but very short supply in our political life today.
Senator, again, it’s a great privilege to have you here.
[applause]
SENATOR BARACK OBAMA: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
SHATTUCK: To moderate this evening’s forum, we’re also privileged to have one of our nation’s leading commentators, Bob Herbert of The New
BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 5
York Times . Bob has been a star, as many of you know, at other Kennedy Library forums, and we’re pleased to welcome him back here tonight.
Bob joined the Times as an Op-ed columnist in 1993. And twice a week he helps us understand what’s important in politics and our national life. Bob Herbert began his career with the Newark Star Ledger , where he became a city editor. Before joining the Times , he was a national correspondent for NBC, a founding panelist on Sunday Edition, the weekly discussion program on WCBS, and the host of Hot Line, a weekly issues program on New York Public Television.
He’s won many awards for his reporting and commentary, including, recently, the American Society of Newspaper Editors Award for Distinguished Commentary. Please join me in welcoming Barack Obama and Bob Herbert to the stage of the Kennedy Library.
[applause]
BOB HERBERT: Senator, it’s an honor to have you here. I know we’re on a tight schedule, so we’re not going to waste a lot of time. Members of the audience will see people coming around with pencils, and we’re going to take some written questions. And if we have time, we’ll answer a few at the end of the interview.
BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 6
I noticed upstairs, I’m looking at the pictures of President Kennedy, and I recalled from your book that you were born, if I’m not mistaken, in the year Senator Kennedy was inaugurated. Is that right?
OBAMA: That is correct.
HERBERT: Wow. Are you getting enough attention lately?
[laughter]
OBAMA: Well, the first thing I have to say to everybody is I’m sorry I’m late. I had forgotten how wonderful Boston weather is this time of year, and we were delayed in a holding pattern over the skies for about half an hour, and an hour back in New York. But I appreciate everybody taking the time to-- and everybody’s patience.
HERBERT: Let’s start with the war in Iraq, which is going horribly, and which seems to be the big topic in the upcoming elections, and we’re very close to them. You were not in favor of the war, but you have not called for a precipitous withdrawal of U.S. troops. So what should the United States do in Iraq? And, if the Democrats take control of either or both Houses of Congress, what could the party do to move us toward a more acceptable solution?
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OBAMA: Well, as you mentioned, Bob, in fact we talked before I was elected, and at that point, I had made my position clear. I thought that the war was not based on reason and fact but rather on ideology. And unfortunately, most of my worst fears came to pass.
My view had been at the time, and continues to be, that once we were in, we had some obligations to try to stabilize the situation. And so, over the last year, as I’ve watched conditions to continue to deteriorate-- and I made a visit to Iraq in January-- my view was let us see if we can give this political process a chance and try to buck up the capacity of the Iraqi government to create some order.
It’s my view at this point, and I’ve been saying this now for several months, that there is no military solution possible in Iraq at this point, that what you have is a political problem that is going to have to be solved, to a large degree, by the Iraqis themselves.
And so, to my mind, it makes sense for us to now begin a phased withdrawal. Originally, I believed that withdrawal should have started by the end of this year. Now it’s unlikely that we can execute that that quickly.
But I think early next year, the President should sit down with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and say, “How do we do this in a way that causes the least threat to our troops and maintains some semblance of stability, whatever is left in Iraq, but sending a strong signal to the Iraqis that they are going to
BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 8 have to make a determination-- do they want to live as Iraqis in a unified national government? Are they Kurds, Shiites, Sunni first? And force them to make some political decisions about what’s going to happen.”
The second thing I think the President needs to do is to gather up all the regional powers, including Iran and Syria who, to some degree, are enjoying watching us flounder there, but will not enjoy millions of refugees if Iraq collapses completely, and to them say, “You have to take some ownership over the process as well, the international community, but particularly, the Arab states in the surrounding region.”
And I think if we send a signal that we are not interested in permanent bases, we are not going to attempt to police a civil war, that we can provide support for whatever plans emerge from those discussions. But we are not going to be able to impose our will in Iraq by ourselves, then we can make some progress.
Now keep in mind-- and I’ll finish up with this-- part of the reason I thought this was a bad idea was because, at this stage, I don’t think there are any good options. I think there are bad options and worse options. And there are risks in a phased withdrawal, because one can argue that, as bad as the situation is now, it could conceivably, in the short term, get worse.
The problem is the alternative, which is to continue on a course that we’re on at this point, where what we’re seeing, typically, is when U.S. casualties
BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 9 get high, the administration pulls back troops into the large consolidated basis. The situation deteriorates, we send them back in. And so this month, now, we’re seeing a huge spike in U.S. casualties. That kind of pattern is unsustainable. It’s not serving our national security interests, and I think the American people have made it, at this point, made it clear that that is not a burden that they wish to bear.
HERBERT: And is there a role for the Democratic Party, if you take one of the Houses of Congress, to move the administration or the country along?
OBAMA: Well, you know, I think the politics of this election are not only going to embolden the Democrats, somewhat belatedly, but I think are also going to cause a lot of soul-searching among those Republicans that remain in Congress. I’m confident at this point that the House is going to go Democratic. I think the Senate is going to be close.
[applause]
I know this is a non-partisan event, but feel free to applaud.
[laughter]
And as a consequence, the Democrats are going to be in a position, now, to, at the very least, hold hearings and provide the kind of oversight that we have not been able to initiate because committee chairmen have essentially
BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 10 refused. That, in and of itself, would put pressure on the administration to make a different set of decisions.
But I think, more fundamentally, the albatross around the Republican Party’s neck in this election is going to cause them to step back and say, “We’re going to have to figure out a new way of doing business.” And the commission that is co-chaired by James Baker and Lee Hamilton may provide, if not the administration, at least Republicans in Congress the cover to start rethinking what their position is going to be.
HERBERT: One more question on Iraq, but this also relates to our obligations as citizens. Not too long ago, I went to Tennessee to interview an American soldier who had been sent to the combat zone three times. He went to Afghanistan and then served two year-long tours in Iraq.
And he made the point that it’s a very small percentage of Americans who are bearing the burden and making the sacrifices for this war. Most of us are free to go about our daily business. You can go shopping, go to the mall, do whatever it is you need to do, and it’s only a tiny sliver of the population that’s enduring the suffering. That seems fundamentally unfair, and I’d like to know what your views are about that.
OBAMA: Well, I think it raises two points. The first and most immediate point is that, in fact, the burden of this war has been borne by a small segment of the population. And, to some degree, that’s the only reason that
BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 11 we went in there in the first place. Had there been a draft, we would not have launched this war, I think that’s fair to say.
In fact, one could argue that we wouldn’t even need a universal draft if there was a rule that all members of Congress’s children were eligible for the draft, there would not have been--
[applause] [laughter]
--We would not have gone in.
We can’t have that conversation in the midst of war. It’s too volatile for us to start thinking about how are we structuring our military, and what does an all-voluntary force mean relative to a universal service requirement. But I think it’s one that we should initiate in times where we can be more reflective and less passionate.
HERBERT: But isn’t it likely, at a time when we can be more reflective, meaning a time when we’re not at war, that we won’t have that conversation?
OBAMA: Well, I would like to start a conversation, and this brings me to, I guess, the larger point about what citizenship means, and what are our
BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 12 obligations to each other, and how do we create a stronger link between the decision-making in Washington and the daily experience of people’s lives?
And this is not just true in foreign policy, the same is true with respect to the economy. This week we saw the Dow go over 12,000 points. If you’re walking down Wall Street, the economy looks great. If you go to Decatur, Illinois or Galesburg, Illinois, or Peoria, Illinois, the economy looks very different. And the reason is because the top 1% is seeing their incomes rise about 500% over the last decades, and the average working stiff has seen their wages and salaries flat lined.
The top 1% is much more likely to participate politically than the other 99%, and so we had these distortions in terms of how decisions are made in Washington. I don’t have a magic solution to it, but part of the reason I wrote this book was to suggest that there have to be ways for us to re-engage the citizenry around the project of American renewal, both domestically and internationally.
And the first step in that, I think, is to restore some mechanisms for honest debate, because the problem with the Iraq war was the debate was dishonest. The problem with our foreign policy right now is that we have posed the problem as either we’re belligerent and the military is the only solution to any national security threats that we have; or, conversely, that we have this vague multilateralism, kum ba yah approach-- at least, that’s how it’s
BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 13 characterized in the press and in our politics. And what we have to do is to say those choices are inadequate.
And we have to return to the kind of serious policy discussions that characterize, for example, after World War II, when Acheson and Marshall and Truman sat down and said, “What are our options?” given a threat that, by all accounts, I think, historically, one would argue was far more dangerous than the threats that we face now from terrorism. I mean, we had nuclear bombs pointed at every major city in the United States.
And yet we were able to negotiate that, because there was not only among policy-makers a sense of seriousness and honesty about the nature of the threat, how we were going to approach it, and so forth, but also among the population, at least in the early years.
I write about it in the book that the Marshall Plan involved an enormous PR campaign to explain to people why it made sense for us to invest in Europe, and why it made sense for us to build the kinds of alliances that ultimately shaped NATO and allowed us to lock in Japan as a long-term ally in Asia.
That kind of a conversation, I think, is one that can’t just be left to the wise men in Washington but has to be something that the population as a whole is engaged in.
BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 14
HERBERT: Now the book-- and I have to say, it really is a terrific book. Usually, if I’m doing interviews--
OBAMA: He’s got to say that.
[laughter]
HERBERT: Now, usually, you kind of go out of your way not to look like you’re trying to promote the book, but this really is an excellent book. And you’ve titled it The Audacity of Hope . But, you know, we’re in a pretty tough environment right now. We’ve got this war that we just talked about, which is going badly.
You’ve mentioned the stock market. Well, the Dow is at record highs, but a lot of working people are feeling economically insecure, the poor have been literally left behind, and Americans are worried about things like terror and the spread of nuclear weapons. We’ve got tragic situations like Darfur.
A lot of people are really depressed. You seem very optimistic. You’ve titled your book The Audacity of Hope . Tell us why we should be hopeful. Make the case for hope right now.
OBAMA: Well, first of all, where I got the title from, some of you remember I actually used the line in the speech that I gave here in Boston.
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But I actually pilfered it from my pastor. I’m making this confession publicly.
[laughter]
He gave a sermon… My pastor’s name is Jeremiah Wright, he’s the pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ on the south side of Chicago. And he gave a sermon about 18 years ago. I was a young community organizer.
And the south side of Chicago-- this particular region is the far south side of Chicago-- had been devastated because steel plants had shut down. This was right when the rust belt was rolling through the Midwest. And there had been massive layoffs, and the communities had been devastated. People were out of work, there was a lot of racial conflict and racial turnover in the area, crime was on the increase, usual maladies facing inner-city schools.
And he delivers this sermon that had a very simple premise. He said, “You know, it’s actually sometimes easier to be cynical. It’s easier to feel hopeless. It doesn’t require much from each of us. What’s audacious, what requires risk, is to be hopeful, to believe that despite what we see around us, what is, there is this other thing that’s possible, what could be.”
And that idea stuck with me and, I think, characterized what not only I’ve ended up finding most valuable in my faith, but also, I think, described an aspect of the American character that’s pretty fundamental. I mean, there’s a
BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 16 reason why, in that speech, I talked about slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; or immigrants coming from distant shores, not really knowing what it was that they were going to find when they arrived in America, but believing somehow across that ocean, there’s something else.
And as rough as our history has been, somehow, we’ve continued to have that stubborn optimism that things can be better. And as a consequence of that, the trajectory of this nation, I think, has been in favor of justice and freedom and equity.
As bad as things are now, they were worse at many times in our history, certainly worse for people who looked like you and me, worse for the women in this audience, worse for poor people before there was any safety in that. And in each juncture, there were a bunch of people who decided, “You know what? It’s possible for us to come together and solve these problems.”
And so the basic theme of the book is that most of the challenges we face-- healthcare, education, the problems we face in terms of globalization, foreign policy, dilemmas as a consequence of rogue states and nuclear proliferation and terrorism-- none of these problems are easy. All of them, though, are amenable to good decision-making, common sense, practicality and improvement. And if we can focus our politics around what our common values are and our common ideals are, then it’s possible for us to make progress, although progress will always be imperfect.
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HERBERT: Now one of the things you stress in the book-- it’s a theme throughout-- is what you feel is the need to reach out to people who hold opposing views to your own, to try and understand what the other side is talking about, even if you don’t agree with it, to reach across the aisle, Democrats, Republicans, etc.
But that’s not what I want to ask you about right now. I want you to put your partisan hat on. And we’re very close to the election, and why is it-- looking from the perspective of the American people, your constituents-- why is it important, in your view, for Democrats to do well in the upcoming election?
OBAMA: Well, I actually do talk about this in the book. And, by the way, I confess in the book that although-- this book is not balanced. I’m a Democrat, so some people are going to read it, and they say, “Well, that’s not entirely fair, and he mischaracterizes this or that.”
You know, I strive to be fair, but I still have a perspective. And what I believe has happened over the last six, eight, ten years is that the Republican Party has become captive. Now keep in mind, I come from the Land of Lincoln, so I don’t think that any political party in our history has had a monopoly on wisdom or truth.
But over the last ten years, at least, what you’ve seen is the Republican Party has become captive to a narrow band of highly ideological absolutists, folks
BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 18 who see problems through preconceived notions about how the world should work, as opposed to how it actually does work.
And so, in the economy, we’ve had the victory of a radical laissez-faire that has resulted, essentially, in the working people you discussed earlier being entirely on their own. And each and every decision that’s made, whether it’s privatizing Social Security, or setting up private health savings accounts, or diminishing regulation, or essentially eliminating anti-trusts, or not enforcing civil rights laws, in each instance, the basic premise is, “You know what? Anything goes.” And folks will sort it out in some fashion, but the government does not have a role to play in the economy, and that’s defined in a very absolute way.
With respect to foreign policy, the view is, “We don’t need anybody else.” And any encroachment or restraints on our actions as a nation are absolutely unacceptable. Because we are the most powerful nation on earth, we should be able to dictate our will in very absolute terms.
In terms of how we think about culture and social issues, we’ve seen the rise of people who believe that if you do not subscribe to a particular interpretation of a particular religion, then you are suspect, and you are potentially immoral. And that I don’t think characterizes the majority of Republicans in the country. And I would argue that it doesn’t characterize the best of the Republican Party. But those are the folks who have been driving the agenda over the last ten years.
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And so there has always been a contrary set of ideas that, at least since FDR, have been at the core of the Democratic Party, and that says, “No, you are not on your own. Yes, we value individual initiative and self-reliance and the freedom of the market place. But we also affirm that we have some mutual obligations toward each other, that we have some fellow feelings, some sort of solidarity, some belief in community. And that has to express itself, not just in our churches or mosques or synagogues, not just in our families or our neighborhoods or our ethnic enclaves, it has to express itself through our government and through our notions of citizenship.
Now the Democrats haven’t always been true to that ideal, and oftentimes we deserve criticism for betraying that ideal. But that idea, I think, continues to be what holds together the Democratic Party. And so, at this stage, when we look at the fact that 46 million people don’t have health insurance, or we look at the fact that we don’t have an energy policy that would not only help our economy but also strengthen our national security and deal with our environment, or we look at an education system that continues to fail large numbers of children so that they have no way of accessing the global economy, then I think it’s clear that things have swung out of balance.
And the last point I’d make on this, that’s why the Democrats, I think, should win. The reason I think Democrats will win is because, as I’ve traveled around the country, what I’m struck by is a sense of soberness and
BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 20 seriousness among people right now. People want substantive responses to the challenges that we face.
And I know that this is a nonpartisan event, but I will go ahead and say, since you asked the question--
[laughter]
I think that the election here in Massachusetts for Governor is a prime example, where my good buddy, Deval Patrick, has presented an agenda. And the reason people are responding to that agenda and not responding to the usual negative ads that have just been, you know, plastered all over television screens in Massachusetts, is because people want to know what are you going to do about these problems-- and you’re seeing that all across the country. And that, I think, is a terrific turn of events.
Now it forces then Democrats to actually have an affirmative agenda. It’s not going to be sufficient simply to say, “We’re not Bush.” We can’t try to flip the script and simply say, “All right, as bad as they are, you should vote for us,” because that means the next election cycle, they’re going to take it out on Democrats.
HERBERT: Well the election’s close. Is that agenda in place?
BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 21
OBAMA: Well, I think the other side’s so bad right now that we’re going to get through the next three weeks. But the--
[applause]
But-- So I was referring to ’08--
[laughter]
HERBERT: We’ll get to that.
OBAMA: --Where I think if Democrats don’t show some leadership and affirmative set of solutions to some of these challenges, even if we can’t get all of those solutions passed, then I think we’ll be punished.
You know, people want serious answers to these problems. And if you’re going to talk about energy, for example… You know, the easiest thing in the world is to look at Exxon Mobile’s profits last quarter and say, these folks are making 36 billion dollars in one quarter, and the CEO’s making 500 million dollars, and gas prices are high, and we’re getting gouged. That may be sufficient, because it does describe the degree to which the powerful have made out like bandits over the last several years.
That may be sufficient to get us through this election, but, after the election, people then are going to say, “Okay smart guy, what are we going to do
BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 22 about energy?” And at that point, Democrats are going to have to say, “Okay, we’ve got to sift through the range of proposals that are out there, from, you know, your fellow columnist is Tom Friedman, who’s been pushing, you know, a higher gas tax; to, you know, what can we do to develop cellulosic ethanol in the way that Brazil has done; to expanding, you know, bio-diesel and other sources of alternative fuels; to reducing consumption by, you know, retrofitting buildings and industry.”
We’ve got to make a series of proposals that actually make sense. And I think if we do, then the American people are going to stand up and say keep going. And they will understand, and we can be honest with them, that there’s no panaceas. I mean, most of the challenges that we face, there’s no silver bullet.
I have a lot of town hall meetings in Illinois. And one of the favorite topics that I bring up is the issue of the federal budget, because typically, what will happen is, it will be a crowd. Sometimes we get town hall meetings with 2000 people, and I’ll get one person who’s saying, you know, “We need health care-- or mental health to be included in health care coverage.”
Another person will say, you know, “No Child Left Behind left the money behind. And we need more money for schools.” And somebody else will say, you know, “The bridge needs to be repaired,” and so forth and so on.
BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 23
And then at some point, somebody will say, you know, “Why are you supporting the death tax?” And then at that point, I will say, “Okay, look. A basic principle to the federal budget, there’s no free lunch. There’s no free lunch.
“You know, if you want to eliminate the estate tax, that will cost us one trillion dollars. It affects .5% of the population. If we completely eliminate it, it costs one trillion dollars. We’ve got three ways of dealing with it, that one trillion dollars. We can make it up by raising taxes on the other 99.5%, we can borrow a trillion dollars from China and South Korea and Mexico, or we can reduce services by a trillion dollars. Those are our choices.”
And I think when you describe those choices to the American people in an honest, straight-forward way, then I’m your representative. You tell me what is going to reflect our borrows, because we can’t… You know, there’s not a trillion dollars worth of waste in the federal budget.
Over 90% of the federal budget goes to Social Security and Medicare, Medicaid, defense, and payments on the national debt. And about 10% is left over for everything else. We’d have to eliminate everything else, and we would still have to make further cuts. Is that reflective of your values and your ideals?
BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 24
And most of the time, I don’t care whether it’s a Repub-- You know, I’ll have these town hall meetings in all Republican, red-state areas of Illinois, and people will say, “No, that’s not what we believe.”
HERBERT: The first time I met you, you were running for Senate. You were a State Senator in Illinois, and you were not well-known outside the state of Illinois. And you--
OBAMA: I wasn’t well-known inside the state.
[laughter]
Although, I guess, by the time we met, I’d won the primary, so some folks in the state knew me.
HERBERT: Well, on my ride over here in a cab in the rain this evening, a fellow pulled up here, and he said, “Oh, what’s going on at the forum?” And I said, “Senator Barack Obama will be speaking.” And he just said, “Oh, our next President,” just like that. [laughter] [applause]
OBAMA: You know, if the election took place among cab drivers--
[laughter]
BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 25
I think I would have it. About half of them are from Africa, first of all, so they all have funny names, and so, you know, I’d do well.
[laughter]
HERBERT: He’s ready to work for you. But, you know, I watched you on Oprah the other day. You’re on the cover of Time Magazine , you’re in New York Magazine , you were on Larry King last night; I checked into the hotel and turned on the television, and you’re on Larry King. You’re everywhere.
OBAMA: Yeah, it’s a bit much, isn’t it?
[laughter]
HERBERT: That’s for you to say.
OBAMA: That’s what my wife says, anyway. “I am fed up with reading about you.”
[laughter]
HERBERT: In any event, the wide-spread assumption is that at some point, you will run for President. So my question is, when you think about yourself and the Presidency, what is it that runs through your mind? What kind of thoughts do you have about that?
BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 26
OBAMA: Well all the attention is flattering. And as I’ve said before, if you go into public service, then you want to have influence. Otherwise you wouldn’t do it. I mean, I suppose there’s the motiva-- just pure vanity can force you into politics. I have found, and I think this is something…
You know, as you get older, you discover certain things about yourself that you don’t like so much. But every once in a while, you discover some things about yourself that you do like. And one of the things I’ve discovered that I’m pleased with is that I actually find the attention, and seeing my name in the papers, and the stuff that feeds your ego less satisfying as time goes on.
So the reason you go into politics or any form of public services is, hopefully, because you’re going to have influence, you’re going to create some sort of change out there. And obviously the President has the most influence, and so I think it would be disingenuous for me to say– or, for that matter, let me tell you, any of the other 99 Senators who are the United States Senate, or any Governor across the country– to say at some point they don’t think about what it would be like if you had that platform, that unique office.
What I then also think is that that office is so different from any other office on the planet, that you have to understand that if you seek that office, you have to be prepared to give your life to it– I said this on Charlie Rose last night–
BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 27
HERBERT: Charlie Rose ? I missed that one.
[laughter]
OBAMA: But in case there were folks who were watching, I didn’t want them to think that I didn’t– you know– I acknowledge I’m repeating myself here. But essentially the bargain that any President, I think, strikes with the American people is you give me this office, and in turn, my fears, doubts, insecurities, foibles, need for sleep, family life, vacations, leisure is gone. I am giving myself to you.
And the American people should have no patience for whatever is going through your head, because you’ve got a job to do. And so how I think about it is that you don’t make that decision unless you are prepared to make that sacrifice, that trade-off, that bargain.
And I think that what’s difficult and important for somebody like myself, who has a wonderful forbearing wife and two gorgeous young children, is that they end up having to make some of those sacrifices with you. And that’s a profound decision that you don’t make lightly. You know, I think those who make mistakes, I suspect, in the President’s office, make it because they haven’t fully thought through the dimensions of that choice.
HERBERT: Can you imagine yourself at some point making that kind of a commitment?
BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 28
OBAMA: Sure.
[applause]
OBAMA: I didn’t say I had, I just said I could imagine myself doing it.
HERBERT: Have you ruled out running in 2008?
[laughter]
OBAMA: At this point, and I’m not trying to be coy here, at this point, I really am focused on these next three weeks, because I’m too tired, and my mind is filled up with too many things. I mean, I literally finished this book, finished session, went on the roads trying to campaign for folks.
HERBERT: So you have not ruled it out?
OBAMA: The–
[laughter]
OBAMA: We’ll leave it there, you know. That was his comment, not mine.
[applause]
BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 29
HERBERT: All right, we’ll see what you guys have come up with. Interesting question. In the upcoming election and the 2008 election, how should we survive the stumbling blocks of wedge issues, such as gay marriage and abortion that so often have prevented the success of progressive candidates?
OBAMA: Well, point number one, those issues seem to have less traction in this election than they did in the election two years ago and the election two years before that, and I think that’s part of the seriousness that I talked about. It’s not that people don’t care about those issues any more, it’s just that there are other things that they seem to care more about in this cycle. And that, I think, is a healthy thing.
But I also think that it’s important for Democrats or progressives of any stripe to engage in a conversation, to be in the space where a lot of these issues percolate. And one of those places is the church or the synagogue or the mosque, in places of worship and in various religious venues.
I have an entire chapter devoted to faith, and the basic argument I make is that we who consider ourselves progressive, I think, for at least a generation, have felt uncomfortable talking about religion, in part for fear of appearing intolerant. And as a consequence, we’ve sort of emptied the space, and it’s been filled by the Pat Robertsons and the James Falwells. And they’re pervasive on Christian radio and Christian television, and they’re in church,
BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 30 and they’re producing pamphlets and books and so forth. And there’s no answer to their definition of what religion could be in our lives, and so my view is that we’ve got to get in there and have an argument. We’ve got to–
Let’s take, you know, the issue of gay marriage. You know, a lot of pastors, those who are literalists, who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, will cite, you know, a passage in Romans that says, “Homosexuality is an abomination”-- you know, it doesn’t say it that way, but it is in the Bible, there are a couple of passages there-- and just start going hog wild on it. And nobody’s there to say, “Well, is that obscure passage in Romans more important than Sermon on the Mount, or the entire story of how Jesus behaved towards all people?” And I think that’s an argument progressives can win, and I think that…
So just to finish up the point in terms of how we deal with these so-called wedge issues, we don’t deal with it on Election Day. We deal with it between elections. You know, if you go into rural Illinois– and this is true all throughout the South– there is a news station, and there are eight Christian radio stations, and maybe a country station. And if that’s all folks are hearing, that’s the only source of information for 24 months or 22 months. And then the last two months, we’re running some ads on CNN, we lose that argument. And so I think it’s important for us to engage.
Now we have to be true to certain principles in how we engage, so I believe in separation between church and state. And as I point out in the book,
BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 31 historically, that’s not to protect just the state, that’s to protect the church. And the biggest advocates of church and state separation weren’t just Jefferson and Madison, they were the Baptists, the forbearers of today’s evangelicals, because, you know, they were worried that the Congregationalists and, you know, essentially the Anglican Church, which was dominant, would impose their views. And they said, “No, no, no. We want to worship the way we want.”.
So we need to retain that principle, and we need to retain the notion that if we’re going to talk about faith, we shouldn’t say that people leave their faith at the door, that’s not possible. Martin Luther King didn’t every time he started marching on Washington suddenly say, “Okay, I’m not a preacher any more.”
But what you do have to insist on in a pluralistic democracy, if you want somebody to listen to you, is to translate whatever religiously-motivated ideals that you have into a language that is accessible to all people, some sort of universal language, a set of ethics or principles, moral ideas, that is subject to reason and subject to argument. And you can’t close the conversation up by simply saying, “God told me so.”
HERBERT: To what extent do you think that a new Democratic majority will have to occupy itself with repair work, with systematic reversal of a long list of policies of the recent Republican majority, without enough funds to work with?
BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 32
OBAMA: I think that we have to be very clear and honest with the American people about the constraints that we’re under right now. As I said, in terms of foreign policy, you know, just because the Democrats take over, Kim Jong Ill is still going to be in North Korea, and there’s no easy solution to that problem. Iran is developing nuclear weapons, there are no easy solutions to that problem. And Iraq is a mess.
Changes in tone from an administration could make an enormous difference. It’s hard for Congress to entirely force that tone. Domestically, our budget is shot. And even if we begin a phase-down of troops, we’re still looking at tens of billions of dollars going to Iraq over the next several years, even if we phase down our occupation there.
And so we’re not going to have a lot of pleasant choices over the next couple of years. I think the American people understand that, as long as we are leveling with them and not trying to over promise in terms of what can be accomplished.
HERBERT: And the final question, I think, for the evening, is give us a sense of what it’s like; You went to the Senate at the beginning of last year. Give us a sense of what it’s like to be a United States Senator. What was it that you encountered that was surprising when you got to Washington? What was it that was disappointing? And what might have been particularly rewarding?
BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 33
OBAMA: Well, I open up the book by talking about walking into the Senate Chamber, and I have the same feeling each time I walk in. Everybody has these little mahogany desks. They’re like third-grade desks– you can’t really work on them.
[laughter]
OBAMA: But they’re very pretty. And some of them date back to, you know, 1819. Daniel Webster’s desk is still in the floor of the Senate. And if you open up the drawer, the previous occupants of each desk have carved their names in their own hand, inside the desk, so it’s sort of an early form of graffiti. I don’t know who started it; It’s like, you know, “Webster was here.”
[laughter]
OBAMA: But so the tradition began. And so I pulled open my desk and, you know, I’ll see names like Taft and Simon and Wellstone and Kennedy– Robert. And you realize that you’re connected to this amazing history, that you’re part of this experiment that’s been going on for a couple of centuries, that in no way was guaranteed to succeed.
And, you know, you can imagine, sort of, the debates that were taking place around secession and abolition and through the wars, and then the
BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 34 filibustering of the civil rights movement, and decisions about war and peace. And to be part of that conversation– that’s a continuous conversation– from the days of the Founding Fathers is powerful. So that’s on the plus-side.
The disappointment is that most of the time, that chamber is empty except for one or two people who are talking. And I think a lot of folks here are probably aware of the fact that when you hear Senators speaking on the floor of the Senate, they are almost always speaking to an empty room, except to the C-Span camera. And they may be turning and pretending like they’re giving this great oration, but it’s all a play, an act.
The structure of the Senate… Everybody’s so busy, and there are committees, and the demands of the press, and fund-raising, and so forth. And the way the rules are structured are such where it’s almost never the case that all 100 Senators are on the floor listening to a debate.
And when I was in the state legislature in Illinois, every Senator had to be on the floor on every bill. And the sponsor would stand up and present it, and anybody could ask questions and force that sponsor to defend their views, and so you’d actually have a sense of deliberation. Now, nine out of ten times, you know, the votes were already determined, and they’d go along party lines often times.
BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 35
But one out of ten times, you’d see an actual debate take places, and democracy, as one envisions it, would occur. And that almost never happens in the floor of the Senate. What you have is passing press statements, essentially, that are never joined. And that, I think, is the disappointment.
And what was the last one?
HERBERT: Well, I’ll ask you about just one related item, and that has to do with fund-raising, which apparently is relentless. And I don’t think many Americans really understand how that works and what the implications of begging for money all the time are. So if you would just talk a little bit about fund-raising…
OBAMA: You pick up the phone, and you call people, and you beg them for money.
[laughter]
HERBERT: But you can’t do it–
OBAMA: But you can’t do it on the floor of the Senate.
HERBERT: So what happens?
BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 36
OBAMA: So people run off to the Democratic Senate Committee Office or the Republican Committee Office, which are close to the Senate, and they beg for money. And the consequences are–
HERBERT: And how frequently? How often?
OBAMA: Well, you know, it’s hard… Chuck Schumer’s doing it a lot right now, you know, because he’s the head of the DSCC. It’s hard to say. I don’t have a typical situation. One of the virtues of celebrity is my fund- raising capacity is higher, just because I get a lot of attention. And so, it’s not entirely fair, but I don’t have to go and just work the phones now, the way I had to do when I was an unknown candidate, for example. But folks, if they’re up, they spend a lot of time doing it. So that, obviously, distorts not… And I write about this in the book.
It’s rare… Obviously we’re seeing it in the press, where people just take, you know, bags of money and trade votes. I mean, that happens, but the corruption is more subtle. It has to do with the fact that special interests in Washington not only are making contributions, but they have the money to hire lobbyists, who are there all the time tracking every piece of legislation for months. And everything moves very slowly.
And that’s really where they exert the most influence, right? It’s the business interest that has a provision in some obscure provision in the tax code that will make them a billion dollars, and that they care deeply about, and
BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 37 nobody else cares that much about or really understands. And that can make an enormous difference.
I think one last thing you asked, and that was, what gives me the most satisfaction? And as I said, the thing that gives me the most satisfaction is when somehow I’ve delivered something useful to the people I represent. And, you know, it can be, you know, some veteran’s working through red tape at the VA, and we get suddenly a $60,000 check for back disability payments that he hasn’t gotten.
Or it can be a modest measure that I just passed that the President signed to create a website, so that everybody can search, like a Google search, what’s happening with their money, to create transparency. Sometimes you fail, but there’s still satisfaction.
One of the things I was most proud of this last session was the anti-terrorist detention bill that was going to be, you know, the administration’s closing argument, essentially, going into the fall election. And at the time that that started, the conventional wisdom was that you’d only get maybe eight, ten folks voting against it. And for me to be able to stand up and caucus two or three consecutive weeks and say, “How can we junk habeas corpus?”– the basic principle of our country, that if the government rounds you up, that you have the opportunity to answer the charges against you, and say, “Hey, you’ve got the wrong guy,” or “It didn’t happen this way.”
BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 38
And at the end of the vote, there were 35 votes against it, which may not sound like much, but for me indicated a sense that the debate was shifting a little bit. That provides me great satisfaction.
HERBERT: We are going to wrap it up. I’m going to ask everyone if they could remain in their seats for a little while, while the Senator goes off the stage, and then he’ll be back there signing some books.
I saw you suggest to Oprah that if you run for President, you might announce it on her television show. I don’t have a television show–
[laughter]
OBAMA: He’s going to announce it on his column.
HERBERT: A telephone call, a little bit of a heads up–
[laughter] [applause]
HERBERT: Thank you so much.
OBAMA: Thank you also.
[applause]
BARACK OBAMA FORUM 10.20.06 PAGE 39
OBAMA: Thank you.
HERBERT: Thank you very much.
OBAMA: Thank you.