Return to the event page for How Would Each Candidate Govern?
View the transcript for the George W. Bush session

October 22, 2004

Unedited transcript prepared from a tape recording

10:00 a.m.		Registration
10:15		Panelists:	Tom Downey, Downey McGrath Group
			Nina Easton, Boston Globe
			Thomas E. Mann, Brookings Institution
			Norman J. Ornstein, AEI
	Moderator:			John C. Fortier, AEI
11:45		Adjournment

Proceedings:
MODERATOR:  --holding a panel hosted by AEI and the Brookings Institutions looking at how John Kerry would govern as President, if elected, in the next ten days.

We are, this is part of a series that we have, we've been running in 2004. And actually the roots of this go back to 2000.  We've had a session both at Republican and the Democratic Convention, one at the first debate in Miami.  And then also a session yesterday on George W. Bush, how he might govern in a second term.  This project is generously funded by the Knight Foundation.  And the aim of it really is to get citizens, but also journalists, to look at some very important questions which are not given quite enough coverage day-to-day.

We hear a lot about the ups and downs of where the candidates are every day, the polls.  We hear a lot about the issue positions of the candidates, but we don't probably think enough about where these men came from, what their public service record is, and what that might tell us about the future, the future administration, the way they would try to lead, the challenges, obstacles they face, the opportunities they have.  And this panel is, we hope, the tip of the iceberg to begin thinking about these questions.  And we hope that citizens consider them and journalists go out and continue to do some of the work that they've done in this regard.

Just one more note about the history of this.  We actually began in 2000 with some sessions on George W. Bush and on Al Gore and even some on McCain and Bradley, looking at what their Presidencies might look like.  We started early then.  And all of these you can find transcripts of on the AEI website at AEI.org.

We have today a panel of distinguished experts, people who have served in public life and journalism and here in the think tank and policy world.  Let me start here on my right with Tom Downey.  Tom Downey is the Chairman of Donnie McGrath.  He was, has represented the Second District of New York from 1975 to 1993.  Where he served in particular on the House Ways and Means Committee, the House Armed Services Committee.  And he is someone who has been close to the Washington scene.  I think also serving with Al Gore as one of his debate prep people.  So maybe we can hear a little bit about the thoughts of maybe Kerry going into the debates with George W. Bush. 

Nina Easton is Deputy Chief, Deputy Washington Bureau Chief of the Boston Globe, is the co-author of a book which I have right here that I recommend to you, John F. Kerry.  It's the complete biography by the Boston Globe reporters who know him best.  It's--Nina contributed to it, as well as Michael Prentice and Brian Mooney.  Really it's the best of the Globe's reporting on Kerry over the years compiled into a biography which takes many of these questions about his public service record and governing record very seriously.  And I recommend it to you all.

Nina has also authored a couple of other books, The Gang of Five, Leaders at the Center of the Conservative Ascendancy, Reagan's Ruling Class.  And has previously worked for the Los Angeles Times.

Norman Orenstein--no.

Tom Mann is, they're somewhat interchangeable some people say, but not really.  Tom Mann is the Avril Harriman, Chair and Senior Fellow in Governance at the Brookings Institute, is a former Director of Governmental Studies at Brookings, and was formerly the Executive Director of the American Political Science Association.  He is an author of books including Vital Statistics on Congress, A Question of Balance, the President, the Congress, and Foreign Policy.  And is our partner at Brookings in this project and many others that AEI and Brookings have done together over the years.

Norman Orenstein is a resident AEI scholar.  He is Senior Counselor to the Continuity in Government Commission, another AEI/Brookings project.  He is a regular columnist for "Roll Call," writes for "USA Today," and, again, the author of books, some of them with Tom Mann, Vital Statistics on Congress, Lessons and Legacies, Farewell Addresses From the United States Senate, as well as The Permanent Campaign and its Future.

What I'm going to do today is start by asking some questions of the panel.  We'll have some back and forth.  And we will leave time for some questions for the audience. 

I guess I'd like to begin, we in our earlier sessions we've gotten at some of the earlier days of John Kerry's political career, especially his time in Massachusetts and running for the Senate.  But I hope today we can especially look at some questions about his time in the Senate and what that tells us about a future Kerry Presidency.

So maybe I'll start with Nina and ask, talk about John Kerry generally in the Senate.  What do we know about him as a senator, and how might that translate into a leadership style in the Presidency.

MS. EASTON:  Can you hear me?  I think one of the really interesting things about this campaign is it's not just an ideological campaign.  It really is a choice between two different men with two very, very different governing styles.  And I've come up with two labels, the believer, for George Bush, and the thinker, for John Kerry with both the pluses and minuses that both of those labels entail. 

So with George Bush you have a believer, somebody who offers a lot of--his supporters with clarity of vision, boldness, willingness to make a clear, sharp decision, willingness to delegate.  Now, his detractors would say, well, he's stubborn and doesn't look at enough sources of information and doesn't reach out and doesn't bring in opposing viewpoints.  So that would be kind of a George Bush overview.

John Kerry, as the thinker, would be somebody his supporters would point out, he does look to a lot of different sources of information.  He has a restless probing mind.  He likes to look at five different sides of one issue and sometimes we hear about all five different sides of that issue.  He's not necessarily always clear.  And his detractors would say that that makes him kind of muddled and not clear about what he believes.  And I think that we've seen that very, very much played out on the campaign trail.

Going about the Senate, I don't know if you want me to talk about the Prosecutor's Office too briefly or--

MODERATOR:  Sure. 

MS. EASTON:  I'll just briefly.  There's only two, well, three ways to kind of look at his governing style looking at the past.  His role in running a Prosecutor's Office in Middlesex County in Massachusetts, his time in the Senate, and, of course, his time running the campaign.  In the Prosecutor's Office, he was credited with coming in and taking a very high bound, old-fashioned inefficient operation and turning it around, turning it into a very modern, efficient DA's office.  He set up units to prosecute, special new units which were innovative at the time, to prosecute white collar and organized crime.  He set up programs to counsel rape and other victims of crime.  And he was credited with really being a good manager. 

At the same time, he was also a divisive figure.  People considered him--half the office supported him.  Half the office thought he was, had very sharp elbows and was kind of, had his eye out for the top job from day one because he was the number two guy there.  Had his eye out for the top job, which was held by at the time an ailing, you know, head DA.  And people saw that as bad form.  Now, of course, John Kerry as President would be the top dog.  So we wouldn't, you know, the question of whether he's overly ambitious in any setting he's put in is less of an issue.

In the Senate he is, it's important to understand that John Kerry is less a law maker.  He really is more, made his mark as a prosecutor, as an investigator.  He made his mark with the Iran Contra Affair, with the BCCI scandal, and most importantly with investigating the question of whether MIAs were still being held in Indochina, which at the time was a very riveting, emotional, difficult question.  He went into that and was very much credited with coming to--doing the hard work and coming to the conclusion that, indeed, there were no American GIs being held there.

As a Senator in his office he is, we talked to--for the book, we talked to aids who worked with him all those years.  He has got this style of when he's making a decision, kind of a socratic style.  He likes to bring people into the process.  He likes to play devil's advocate.  He likes to keep his staff guessing.  There were times when he would walk onto the Senate Floor and his staff didn't necessarily know how he was going to vote or they were surprised with how he voted.  He kind of, he liked to keep his cards close to his vest at the end of the day, didn't always share where he was necessarily going.  Although the staff pretty much felt they knew where he was going.  But he did like that kind of restless probing process to get to a decision.

Now, the downside of that, there is a fairly, I thought, kind of harsh quote, not harsh, but actually damaging quote in the press in which aids during the campaign say that he's always believing the last person or sometimes believes the last person he talks to.  In fact, I quote an aid saying, "Always try to be the last person that John Kerry talks to, because that's who he ends up listening to at the end of the day."  So that would be the downside of that kind of decision-making style.

And just the other thing I was going to say is that some of his decision-making style that we saw in the Senate, we also saw in the campaign.  He was incredibly secretive about the John Edwards selection.  No matter how hard all of our reporters tried to find out who that was going to be, he was very good at keeping that under wraps till the very last minute.  And then conversely, we also see this question of he's talking to a lot of different people, a lot of different aids.  A large number of people do advise John Kerry to the point where his aids said, you know, we've got to take his cell phone away from him.  You know, he can't make a decision.  He keeps, he keeps talking to too many people.  Certainly I think that's changed in the last few weeks of the campaign.  It's gotten far more disciplined.  And I think we'll know more after the campaign when reporters can really get in and see what's happening inside what's going on now and why the campaign is sharper, more focused, and John Kerry is a much stronger candidate.

MODERATOR:  Maybe I can follow that up with asking Tom Downey, Tom, you spent Congress with John Kerry and certainly know him after time in Congress.  Can you point to some times of his in the Senate that you had worked with him and seen him up close.  And from what animated him in particular in the Senate that you can tell us?

MR. DOWNEY:  First of all, let me just say that John Kerry will be great for America and he will make our country safe at home and respected abroad.  Should there be any doubt in this room about that, I want to dispel it immediately.

I don't disagree very much with what Nina has said.  What I found in John when I dealt with him as a Member of the House and we actually, those of us in the House were in the majority for a lot of the time that the Democrats in the Senate were in the minority.  So we treated them as best we could, knowing that while they had power, they didn't rule the roost as we did.  I always found John personally to be enormously polite, well-informed, and particularly collegial to deal with. But most of the issues that we dealt with on Ways and Means, he wasn't on the Senate Finance Committee at the time.  So we didn't have a lot to do with one another.  But we were reasonably personally friendly.

I want to make two different points if I could.  One is that my sense is that when you try to determine what a President is going to be before he's President, you're often wrong by a lot.  And that the one thing that can be said about the Presidency is that it changes people dramatically.  And while John has the reputation of being deliberative and socratic in the process of making decisions, the Presidency really doesn't allow you to be terribly deliberative or socratic.  As Al told me, Al Gore when he became Vice-President, I said, well tell me how it's different in the White House than it is in the Senate?  And he said, well, in the White House--in the Senate you have one major issue maybe a week, maybe every two that requires the staff to be together and to sit around and you can discuss it thoughtfully.  In the Presidency it's like drinking from a fire hose.  The decisions come at you one an hour, the process of deliberation is not as complete nor can it be as full as it is when you have the luxury of the time as a legislator.

So what I would ask you to do is to take a look at John Kerry, the candidate and the people around John Kerry, the candidate now and draw some very positive conclusions from the way in which he's conducted himself during the three debates.  Well, you know, it takes him forever to say hello.  It's difficult for him to have a cogent, quick thought.  Well, we saw none of that in the three debates.  And my sense is that the people around John Kerry now, the people who have helped in the campaign, some of whom are now operating more silently in the process of setting up an interregnum are going to have a very big role in his Presidency.  And what I think you'll see from him is somebody who will have to hit the ground running.  That he understands that this very brutal and long campaign toughens you in a way for the Presidency that we might not necessarily think appropriate, but probably is a good training ground for the difficult job of governing in the 21st Century.

So I would say that you're going to see a fairly changed individual in the White House, surrounded by both diverse and experienced people.  And one in which a Presidency in which foreign policy per force and Iraq in particular will take an enormous amount of time and energy.  My further guess is, and I don't say this because he was my candidate for President, John Edwards, I think you'll see also a relationship with Edwards which will also be interesting and novel where Edwards will play something of an important prominent role on domestic issues.  Because if both issues are going to be tackled right away, dealing with Iraq and dealing with health care, it's going to require a level of collaboration and activity with the Vice-President that we've seen, actually we've seen it in the last two Presidencies where the Vice-President has played a role.  And I think you'll see more than that.

MODERATOR:  Let me turn to Norm.  I'll throw out a question.  You can certainly follow-up on that.  But let me throw out a question and get to that as well.

Looking at John Kerry in the Senate, where do we place him within the Democratic Party?  Of course, there have been some stories out that by one rating he came out as the most liberal Senator that's probably due to some missing of some votes because of the campaign.  But where do we place him, contrary evidence--some ratings show him this way.  Some, some crosscutting issues on things like deficit reduction, affirmative action, NAFTA, he's gone the other way.  And try to put him in a comparison to Bill Clinton who has moved, moved certainly the Democratic Party toward the middle.  Where can you say that John Kerry is, given his Senate career?

MR. ORENSTEIN:  Well, of course, I've been trying to get my arms around the twin notions that he's a flip flopper and doesn't stand for anything and that he is the most rigid liberal Senator in the body.  And I think that it is an exaggeration to say that he is either the most liberal or even one of the most liberal members of the Senate.  He's very much within the mainstream of the Democratic Party in the Senate, which is certainly not smack in the center of the country.  It's left of center.  But Kerry's positions on a lot of different things would not fit your cookie cutter image of a liberal.  And that's true of deficit reduction.  It's been true of some foreign policy issues.  I think the toughest thing for him to be able to justify on that score was his vote against the first Gulf War.  I'm actually surprised they haven't made more of that.

But in other ways he has not fit the standard pattern.  And it really is the case that that one year that National Journal had put him at the top of that list had far more to do with the votes he was missing as a candidate than anything else.  He is not his colleague Ted Kennedy's equal in most respects here.

A couple more points, John really, to some of the things that both Nina and Tom said.  When Nina was saying the complaint his staff made was that you wanted to be the last one to talk to him because you never knew who would come in afterwards and change his mind.  And then Tom said, you're changed by the White House.  It reminded me of something.  I went back a month ago when the conventional wisdom after the Republican Convention and into September was that the Kerry Campaign was going down fast.  That Bush had devastated him.  And that there was total disarray in the camp. 

And I just went back and looked at September 1980 and the clips that surrounded Ronald Reagan at that time.  In September of 1980 Reagan was down by as many as nine points to Jimmy Carter.  And there was a quote from the "Christian Science Monitor" that particularly just stuck out.  It was an anonymous quote from a close Reagan aid saying, we're in total disarray here.  And the real problem is the candidate.  If you're not the last one in to see him, somebody else will come in and change his mind.  Now, that's not how we think of Ronald Reagan.  But it did reflect in some ways a campaign of a challenger facing an incumbent, even an embattled incumbent who is able to keep a challenger pinned down and on the defensive.  It also did reflect to some degree Reagan's managerial style.  You know, after all, it was Ronald Reagan who was plenty decisive in policy areas, in many of them at least, who had Jim Baker and Don Reagan come in and say they wanted to switch jobs the Treasury Secretary and Chief of Staff.  And he basically said, well, if that's what you fellows want to do, sure.  So it tells us, I think, that we can't extrapolate too much from here from where we'll go.   On the Senate, itself, there are so many different styles of Senators.  John Kerry is not a natural legislator.  He is not somebody, despite his depth and the fact that he likes to explore all sides of an issue, he does not like to sit there and negotiate over details of legislation.  And that was not his forte.  When he said he'd sponsored 56 bills, and we now know that most of them were very narrow things, it's very clear he wasn't somebody who went out and wanted to put his mark by working through the details of legislation.  His mark was much more in the investigative area.  And I think it's a reflection, as you go through back through his past, and this superb book does it very well, you look at him as the captain of the boat and you look at him as the head of the prosecutorial office, and you look at him on the investigative side, he is much more comfortable exercising executive judgments, running something, than he is dealing with 100 people. 

That may serve him well.  I think Jack Kennedy was also very much along those lines.  He was not a good legislator.  He used to drive Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson crazy on that score.  It's, it can serve him well as a chief executive.  But there are warning signs ahead when it comes to dealing with Congress.  Because he hasn't done that all that well, with the exception of his work on the POW MIA issue, where he actually dealt superbly with a range of disparate personalities, from Bob Smith of New Hampshire, a very volatile person, especially on this issue, to John McCain and Chuck Hagel, and some of them starting out feeling very negatively towards him.  And then building those bonds.  But as a general matter, he's, he's not particularly networking kind of guy in the Senate.

John Edwards, by contrast, has been much more of a natural legislator, working on details of things like the Patient's Bill of Rights, and has a much better style of dealing with people.  And I suspect in a Kerry Presidency, that he would, in fact, as Tom said, spend a lot of his time as the Administration's emissary on Capitol Hill where he has warmer relations and working on some of those details in some of the same ways that actually Dick Cheney has done with the Republicans in Congress in the Bush Administration.

MODERATOR:  Eventually I will move to the 800 pound gorilla in the room, Iraq and foreign policy, but I want to stay a little bit more on the Senate and domestic policy.  Maybe I can turn to Tom Mann.

What sort of challenges is Kerry going to face working with the Senate, working with the Congress in general?  Can you give us a sense of who he's close to, who his friends are, maybe Nina can jump in on this, what the odds are of him being able to work across the aisle on certain issues, especially if we're likely to have at least part of the Congress in Republican hands.  Are there issues that he can bring up that are going to garner some support that he can work with?  And finally, just along these lines, how would he start?  What's the--what would you recommend how he start?  What are the top two or three things that he could bring up in a legislative package early on, not necessarily the first 100 days, that's probably unfair, but the first six months before Congress goes out in August?  Where should he begin?

MR. MANN:  John, I think that's an excellent question.  There's a natural tendency to focus on the personal characteristics of the occupant of the White House, their leadership style, their temperament, certainly their ideology, the qualities they've demonstrated in working with others.  And, yet, when you really look realistically the world John Kerry would see if he were to be elected President, the focus would be on his policy inheritance from George Bush and his predecessors on the partisan composition of the Congress, most importantly, and then on new events and developments that would inevitably arise in the course of his Presidency.

I fully accept the portrayal of Kerry in a personal sense, he's more executive oriented than legislatively oriented.  And that's probably a good thing.  It isn't clear members of Congress make good Presidents or would naturally make good Presidents.  Kerry is not on the left of his party, but he's left of the median Senate who ends up being Tom Daschle.  We went through this exercise.  Edwards is to the right of the median center.  But they're both in the mainstream of the Democratic Party.  Kerry is, has more of an appetite for neutral policy analysis, as Clinton did, in contrast with Bush.  He believes in a big table.  He listens to a lot of people.  He changes his mind and brings in new teams of people.  He's somewhat opportunistic.  All of these things are true, but the day of inauguration, the hours afterward, he faces a situation where Republicans likely control the House, absent a landslide victory for Kerry.  He has a shot at having the narrowest of Democratic majorities in the House, especially with a little help from Kentucky in the closing days of the campaign.  But it's, it's--I'm sorry in the Senate. But it could, it could be that he would face an entirely Republican controlled Congress.

Think about what he would like to accomplish domestically.  His major proposals have to do with, with cutting back on the tax cuts for the top two percent of households, making permanent the other 98 percent household cuts.  And, and implementing a series of changes affecting health care coverage and costs.  To accomplish that almost certainly requires a reconciliation bill.  How does he get a budget resolution authorizing reconciliation out of a House of Representatives run by Danny Hastert and Tom DeLay?

And one could imagine if he has a narrow majority in the Senate beginning in the Senate and then trying to build pressure.  But it seems clear from the outset that Kerry would have to begin to build relationships with those Republicans who have become increasingly restive over the deteriorating fiscal situation as well as over the conduct of the war in Iraq.  It's not easy to do.  The House is an intensely polarized institution.  For a Republican-backed venture to vote against the leadership on a rule, which is what it would take to craft your own budget resolution and authorize reconciliation is, is seen as party disloyalty of the worst kind.

And, yet, I don't see realistically how Kerry could negotiate with Hastert and DeLay on the matters, on those issues that matter a lot to him.  So it seems to me it's a tricky business.  What he'd have to try to do is put together packages of issues that naturally attract some Republicans.  In my own mind it points to Kerry beginning on the foreign policy arena most directly.  I could imagine an early trip during the transition to Europe, meeting with Blair, most importantly.  And then to try to move that to France and Germany and the rest of Europe.  Begin to try to make some headway on that front.  Looking for opportunities achievable policy steps on the domestic side that he could actually begin to move through Congress, maybe holding off a little bit on the most ambitious domestic agenda, trying to enhance his reputation from some early foreign policy successes and some more modest domestic initiatives, setting a tone of bipartisanship and beginning to put the onus on Republicans to work with him.

MODERATOR:  Let me just follow up with a similar question to Tom Downey.  Again, do you see something legislatively in Congress that he can point to reasonably.  When, when Tom spoke I started thinking back to past transitions.  And the only one I can think of that has something like the character you've described is Nixon's transition where he does a lot of foreign travel, doesn't have a big legislative program.  I think we expect a new President to have something to go through Congress.  Are there a couple of things, maybe homeland security matters that he talks about a lot, that are not related to rolling back the tax cut, or maybe that's, that's doable in your mind.

What kinds of things would you put on the table for a Kerry legislative package early on?

MR. DOWNEY:  This is actually a conversation I had with him in August about the timing of this thing.

MODERATOR:  Please do tell.

MR. DOWNEY:  I don't think that would be fair.  But I think that it doesn't, it's not that distant from what Tom's excellent analysis gave you as a backdrop.  The minute he walks off the stage January 20th, he will undo the Mexico City language, which is what we do every four years of Democrats and Republicans having to do with international family planning.  And I think that during the interim period, I think that there are likely to be some foreign travel and trying to sort through some meetings with our allies about what is expected of them now that they will have a more willing listener in the White House.

And Tom also said it is very determinate about the partisan nature of this.  Since I believe we're going to run the table and have narrow Democratic House and Senate majority, what I would urge President Kerry to do would be to package both the tax cuts and some modest, more compromised versions of health care in one package and try an get it done soon.  Because, if you recall, in 1993 even with a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate, the one major accomplishment of the Clinton White House passed by one vote and nobody knew whether that was possible.  So in order to get what you want done legislatively on health care, which is his priority, it seems to me that it has to be packaged together and has to be done early.  And it probably requires both Houses to be in Democratic hands. 

If that's not the case, let's take Tom's scenario that you have the House still narrow majorities and you have a modest majority in the Senate, then it seems to me that maybe you approach it a little bit differently.  Try to build on your foreign policy successes and some other domestic modest successes.  Build up some confidence with some moderate Republicans.  And try to beat, as Ronald Reagan did on his budget and his tax package in 1981 in the House, you know, we controlled, the Democrats controlled the House, but Ronald Reagan controlled the Floor for his budget and his tax packages.  And it would require a little bit of manoeuvering before you would do that.

Failing that, then I would say to him--and I'll be very brief--you try your best with a Republican House and a Republican Senate, and if they turn you down and they appear to be obstructers, then you spend two years doing whatever you can on foreign policy, being fair minded toward the Republicans, attempting to meet them halfway.  And then you run against them in 2006.  And say, at least give me a legislature that I can work with.

MR.          :  Let me just talk about--let me talk about three analogies here that I think may be the ones to bring out that both Toms have mentioned.  1981 Ronald Reagan did have a Democratic House he had to deal with.  But, of course, Reagan had some in in a landslide bringing with him 12 seats in the Senate and the first Republican Senate in a quarter century, and a gain of 33 seats in the House.  Democrats were on the defensive.  And Democrats at that point had a very sizeable number of conservatives.  So that Reagan could go immediately and negotiate with a Charlie Stenholm and a Kent Hance then a Democrat and come out with a bill that was actually called, a tax bill called Codible/Hance [ph.], with the Democrat being the one who got more of the negotiations done.

There is, I suppose, a tiny chance that we could see everything come together in the final week where Kerry wins big and brings with him at least a Democratic Senate and enough gains in the House that the Republicans are on the defensive.  But if he makes gains in the House, it will probably be from among the moderate Republicans, the handful who are left, leaving him with nobody to negotiate with.  And Bill Thomas is not Dan Rostenkowski, willing to, as Danny Rostenkowski did, even negotiate a major tax reform later on with a Republican President.  So I don't think that analogy is at all likely to hold.

There is the '93 analogy that Tom Downey mentioned that Kerry does have narrow majorities in both houses, they'll be smaller majorities by far than Clinton had.  Of course, what Clinton faced when he came in was a Republican Party that said not a single vote, period.  And it took him months to get his one priority at the time, the economic package, through without a single Republican vote in either House.  Now, it's possible that he could end up with that narrow majority.  He will face a Republican Party at least in the House that will say, not a single vote.  But he will not have the ability, as Clinton had, to get anything onto the floor.  I just have a hard time imagining Bill Thomas letting a tax bill that repeals those tax cuts getting out of the Ways and Committee at all.   So the closest analogy probably is Clinton in '95/'96.  Now, there he faced a new large Republican majority, Republicans taking over the House for the first time in 40 years.  And full of themselves, jamming through the contract, most of the things, and then going to a confrontation.  Clinton was on the defensive for several months.  Then we had the confrontation over the budget, the shut down of government.  The President prevailed.  The Speaker was left on the ropes.  And from that point on we had what became known as triangulation.  Where you had Republican cowed enough by a President able to use the political process that he could negotiate somewhere near the middle.

I don't think that John Kerry can get anything from this Congress unless and until there is some kind of a confrontation where republicans are siding with the President, probably a lot of vetoes.  We're going to go from a President who didn't veto one bill in four years to a President who will veto almost anything that comes across his desk.  We get to some kind of a shut down or an absolute break down where he can use the voting pulpit and force them to actually begin to interact with him.  Then it becomes a question of whether Kerry has the wiles and the public presence and the political timing that Bill Clinton had to be able to make that happen.  That may be the closest analogy, though.

MS. EASTON:  I just wanted to ask about.  When we think of domestic issues, we're talking--we are focusing here on tax cuts and health care.  But another domestic issue is homeland security, which is a major issue in John Kerry's mind.  And the other issue is deficit control.  You know, wouldn't there be some, even if you had a Republican House, some way to make movement on those fronts?

MR.          :  He could get, I think, a sizeable increase in funding for homeland security and he could get a redirection of those resources.  That I'm sure is likely to happen.  But deficit reduction is not a possibility and neither is a major health care plan to deal with the uninsured unless you find revenue somewhere.  And remember, there's one other thing that will go through both Houses of Congress in his first year, and that's an adjustment of the alternative minimum tax, which will be another tax cut of $500 or $750 billion that will put us even deeper in that hole. 

So we're going to have a problem.  And unless we get an economic crisis that precipitates some kind of summit where everybody is kind of forced to come to the table, it will be a problem.

The Senate will be different.  I think he's got room to manoeuver in the Senate.  You've got six or eight Republicans at least who will be willing to work with him.  But I have real trouble finding those votes in the House.  And, again, it's a conundrum.  If he gains seats in the House, the people who are on the rocks, the Republicans, are people like Rob Simmons and Chris Shays, the ones he could work with.  You've got many of the other Republicans that he might have been able to work with, like Jack Quinn, who are retiring.  And we're going to be left, I think, with a group of Republicans who are all going to follow the lead of Hastert, DeLay, and Thomas.

MODERATOR:  Let me move us a little more in the foreign policy realm.  I've got a question for Nina, a very general question.  What motivates John Kerry on foreign policy?  Let me point to some contradictory views that people have put out there.

On the one side you can point to some  dovish aspects, his work in the anti-war movement, the nuclear freeze movement, against the Contras, his opposition to the first Iraq War.  On the other hand, you can point to his military service, his support of President Clinton in Bosnia and in Kosovo, and his vote for the authorization to force the second Iraq War.  What at the core is John Kerry in foreign policy?  How much of a--what are his beliefs about the use of force in particular but more generally in the foreign policy arena?

MS. EASTON:  Well, I would sum it up with one word, Vietnam.  I think Vietnam has shaped his views about military intervention for decades.  Going back to the, you mentioned the Central America in the 1980s, John Kerry was certain that that was going to become another Vietnam.  And that shaped his opposition to the Reagan Administration.  The Persian Gulf War in 1991 John Kerry stood on the Senate Floor and over and over and over again related this upcoming war to Vietnam.  He was certain, he was--what he was concerned about, and he mentioned Saddam Hussein in those remarks.  He spent most of the time talking about the prospect of another generation of GIs coming home as paraplegics, mentally wounded, in body bags, and so on.  It very much shaped his fears, his thinking on that war.  And I believe, I mean, he did, he did support intervention in Bosnia, in Kosovo in the nineties.

In this war, in the Iraq War in the resolution, all of our reporting suggests that I don't think he would have voted in favor of the resolution if not for the Presidential Election.  That he had advisors telling him--well, he had some advisors telling him you're not going to get the, you're not going to win the primary if you vote in favor of the resolution.  But he had a core of advisors saying, you're not going to win the general, you cannot run against George Bush if you oppose this resolution.  It's too dangerous politically.

And I think what we've seen over the course of the campaign is his discomfort with that vote played out over and over and over again.  He's finally found the language on it, finally found sort of a comfort level on a way to address it.  We certainly saw that in the debate.  But I think his, his--I think that was an uncomfortable vote for him.  Yes, he would have gone into Afghanistan. But I don't think he would have gone into Iraq.

MR.          :  [Inaudible], do you want a poke?

MR.          :  Well, I think that Tom put his finger up before by saying that, you know, you're confronted with the realities that exist.  And the mess in Iraq doesn't allow you a great deal of room to manoeuver.  And there the conundrum is you have to be involved with it on a--in an intimate and daily way and at the same time you need to make sure the people understand that this is George Bush's war, George Bush's mistake.  So that even though you have to clean it up, and there are a number of steps.

[Bell sounding.]

MR.          :  There's Kerry actually.

MR.          :  Put him on.

MR.          :  The--for instance, you want to show the world that you're different than George Bush.  Maybe that begins with allowing the Red Cross to actually visit prisoners living within the Geneva Conventions, telling the Department of Defense that we're going to treat even enemy combatants with humanity, not like this Administration has done.  So I think that there are a number of important international steps that you need to take to say to the world we are different than the people who preceded us.

At the same time you really do have to lean on Chirac, Shroeder, and others, and say you--I know you haven't played a role, but you and NATO have to do more in terms of police, in terms of troops, training for the Iraqis.  And I think, I'm convinced that new leadership will make a difference internationally in that regard.  But there aren't a lot of options, frankly, in Iraq.  And they do require probably more troops and just as much money in the next couple of years.  I would hope that early in the Kerry Administration we would have a 9-11 type commission to investigate Abu Ghraib and what's happened in Guantanamo so that we would have a full airing of some of the mistakes that have been made.  I wouldn't do that initially because I don't want people to think that we're going to put George Bush on the dock for war crimes.  But I do hope that we would have a very focused effort to show the world that we're different in this regard and still manage to deal with the realities on the ground.

MS. EASTON:  Can I just respond quickly and ask a question at the same time?  What if cleaning up George Bush's mess, as you put it, requires more troops in Iraq and more American troops and John Kerry, we suddenly have an ironic situation of anti-war demonstrators outside the Kerry White House?  How does a John Kerry, and going back to his decision-making style, deal with that?

MR.          :  Yeah.  With great difficulty.  Because I can imagine Norm's point about the House of Representatives suddenly deciding this was a big mistake and we don't think that you should have the money.  I mean, I, you know it is difficult to think through--I want to come back and answer your question.  I want to respond to one thing that Norm said.  You cannot as President, given the realities of an obstructorous house, not challenge them on occasion to do the things, the big and bold things you have to do.  You have to try to do that.  And notwithstanding the fact that the outcome the fact that the outcome maybe is as Norm has suggested, you still have to go there.

I think that you have to, I think that Kerry will listen very carefully to his very close friend in the Senate, Joe Biden.  Who if he is not the Secretary of State, and the reason he's not going to be the Secretary of State, maybe he's the 51st Senator.  So you're not going to be able to pull him out of the Senate to go off and do this.  But I expect somebody like Biden will play a very big role in advising.  And Kerry likes and listens and trusts him.  And if you listen to Biden carefully, you will hear that there is a role here that requires initially more troops and more activity to make sure that we get this right.

Now, I'm not a foreign policy advisor of this campaign.  So don't take too many notes here.  But that is a reality that I think he has to face.  And he has to face it right away.

MR.          :  Tom Mann, let me just put another question you can answer to follow up on that.  You have made a point of the question of the issue of policy inheritance, that whether or not John Kerry was for this vote or not, we're in Iraq.  We're there.  What's Kerry going to do?  Is there an initial push and sense that they'll to be tough in Iraq and show that he is not pulling out?  What are the limitations?  What are the atmospherics that go forward for John Kerry in relation to Iraq?

MR. MANN:  It's an important question.  I mean, Tom was absolutely right in pointing out the overriding element in the foreign policy arena is the mess in Iraq and how to cope with it and how to deal with it.  Kerry has worked hard to prevent the election from being framed as a choice between alternative policies regarding the future of Iraq and has kept the focus, as best he can, on the President's failures of judgment and leadership and implementation.  But if he becomes President, he inherits this and is going to have to deal with it.

The military is stretched very thin.  There is a lot of restlessness in the ranks of the reserves and the national guards.  The tours are long.  They are repeating.  I, I actually think he will be working hard to find an earlier rather than a later genuine transition to Iraqi authorities and a movement out.  I, frankly, I believe whoever is elected President will see that the grand ambitions of transforming the Middle East via Iraq were utopian in nature.  And each will be seeking a way of reducing our commitment without leaving behind a certain disaster.  I think that's the beginning point.

The broader point, though, is John Kerry is deeply interested in foreign policy.  That sw clear from his time in the Senate.  He is a classic post World War II liberal internationalist.  He believed in alliances, in multi-lateral institutions.  And he is deeply distressed by the decline in our standing around the world following the decision to go to war in Iraq.  And I think many of his early initiatives would be dedicated toward trying to get the world to think differently of the U.S.  You would see a whole host of certain diplomatic initiatives.  And then he would try to frame a different strategy, a package of policies abroad and at home to deal with terrorism.  That would be the other central organizing device.

My view is he would come to see Iraq as a need to satisfy, not to maximize or optimize, but to do the best you can, given a reasonable commitment, but not a huge continuing commitment of U.S. forces and dollars and put his attention on these two other high priority items.

MR.          :  Let me just add a couple of things.  Again, we go back to an analogy.  When Ronald Reagan took office on his inauguration day he had a huge present that came to him through the negotiations that had occurred in the transition in the Carter Administration.  He got the hostages returned as he took over.  Now, if John Kerry wins the Presidency, what will happen between November 3rd--

[Being Tape Side B.]

MR.          :  --awful lot to do with whether he gets a present or a mud pie handed to him on January the 20th.  We're going to have possibly elections in Iraq.  We now know from surveys done, I think it's a gallop survey of likely voters probably in Iraq, whatever it may be, that the Allawi forces are not doing real well with the Iraqi people and the Clerics are doing much better.  Imagine if John Kerry takes office and the first thing that he finds is that Mr. Sadhr and a coalition government basically says, okay, get out and get out now.  We could end up with a total disaster.  Imagine if over the course of the three months between November and January 20th that the Administration decides to really get tough, to go into Fallujah and other places, doing an awful lot of collateral damage to take out the terrorists.  It might be good for Kerry.  He might face a smaller force, especially of foreign terrorists.  Maybe we could get Mr. al-Zarqawi, but on the other hand it might create an enormous backlash if we take out mosques and other holy sites.  That could leave him with a mess.

Whether the outgoing administration cooperates with Kerry during this time to try and move their policies when George Bush is still the President towards something that would be in sync with what he wants to do, is another set of issues.  And we don't know at this point, after a very tough campaign, whether there will be even a coming together in the foreign policy arena.  So just keep in mind that what Kerry gets handed to him on January 20th will have a lot to do with where he can go.  And keep in mind, as well, that he will have to go and beg, in effect, allies to show him something right after he takes over if he wants to get any momentum abroad to show that his approach, which is I've got a different tone and attitude here, and that's going to bring other people in.  If, instead, on January 21st or 22nd Mr. Shroeder, Mr. Chirac, and others basically say, well, it's nice that you're there.  We'll be happy to have you come visit.  Don't expect anything from us, then he's going to have a very rough row to hoe.

MR.          :  Just a [inaudible], and I guess Tom or anyone who wants to jump in on the question of multi-laterals in general he's made that a focus of his campaign.  Where--Tom mentioned there might be opportunities.  Where are the opportunities?  I don't think we're going to see French troops in Iraq.  But there are other things that he will do that will smooth things along the way?  Where is he going to be able to realistically engage our allies more given the circumstances in the world as we'll see it in January?

MR.          :  I think you're likely to see the movement in other arenas that have to do with potential humanitarian intervention to try to speed up the rescue effort and to move to restart some negotiations on global warming, to look at some other treaties that have been tabled.  And to bring them back.  To even, even pursue some initiatives in the international economic front combined with some highly visible symbolic meetings with, with allies and others to try to begin to set a different tone.

One footnote on Norm's scenario.  President Bush was asked either in the debates or in a press conference if a duly elected Iraqi government asked the United States to leave, what would he do?  And he said, well, we would leave.  Indeed, if the elections in January are won not by Allawi and his allies but by Clerics and others, and they ask the United States to leave, rather than being a problem, it, it might be, you know, a gift for a new Kerry Administration.  Obviously negotiating the terms of that withdrawal, but in effect it would be a sign Iraqis were at this stage determined to manage their own future without us.  Mind you, I think it has the potential of civil war and all kinds of difficulties, but that, this, you know, the objective, the broader objective was his, would have been his predecessors, not his.  He had a more limited and realistic view on the reasons for intervention.  And if, though, that circumstance arose, my guess is he would respond in the same way President Bush has.

MR.          :  Well, the one thing we could do to solve both his domestic and international problems would be to send the Republicans from the House to Iraq.

MR.          :  Let me move to one last set of questions.  And then we'll ask for some audience questions.

This is on the questions of personnel.  It's always a big speculation game to think of who might be in the Kerry Administration.  The first I guess big picture, are there messages that Kerry might try to send with his personnel appointments, with people he puts in the cabinet?  Might he reach out to some Republicans, of course, create speculation?  Maybe his friend, John McCain would join the cabinet.  And then some of the specific names.  We've talked with Tom Downey earlier.  And sometimes putting a name out there is the kiss of death for the nomination.  So we won't nominate Representative Downey for anything here.  But maybe we could have some thoughts about who might be in the Kerry Administration.  Or especially the tenor of the type of appointments that he would make.

MS. EASTON:  Tom mentioned he wouldn't, he wouldn't want--Biden wouldn't leave to upset the balance in the Senate?  Wouldn't it be smart to take out a Lugar or a McCain out of the Senate while creating a bipartisan Administration while tipping the balance at the same time?

MR.          :  I think that you could predict a couple of things about it.  It will be a cabinet that will have at least one Republican, if not two.  It will have a mix of African-Americans and Hispanics.  It will have at least one openly gay person in one of the posts.  And my further guess is it will be comprised of mostly names you would recognize and maybe one or two that we all recognize, but might be surprises.  This is, you know, depends--we don't know whether or not we're going to have a cabinet style government. Cabinet is interesting, but it's a lot more interesting to know who is going to be the White House Chief of Staff, Deputy Chief of Staff, who is going to be the NSC director.  Those policy posts I think we have a real short list there of people.  I would expect that June Johnson will play a very big role in this Presidency, Tom Donlin, one of his former deputies will play a very big role.  I would imagine that Randy Beers will play one.  And certainly Richard Holbrook will have a very prominent place in this.

As for defense, that would be a good place, as would homeland security, to put a Republican to prove that these are issues that you want to deal with in as bipartisan a manner as is possible.

MR.          :  He'd keep Rumsfeld on I'd suppose?

MR.          :  That and the rising of the sun in the east are a few certainties.  Rumsfeld will not be in a Kerry Administration.

MR.          :  One, first one cautionary note that John had mentioned in a panel we did a little while ago.  If the Senate ends up 50/50 and John Kerry gets elected, it will not for its initial phase through the entire nomination and confirmation process be a democratic Senate where John Edwards would break the tie.  Because the Kerry seat would be vacant until the special election.  So he would have to go through a Republican Senate confirmation process, under that scenario, which is not a, a small probability if he wins.  He clearly will want to pick Republicans.   And some of this will be a game involving the Senate.  We're looking at what may be the most hotly competitive gubernatorial contest in Indiana with a Democratic Governor facing the former head of the Office of Management and Budget, Mitch Daniels.  If the Democrat wins, then the incentive to pick Dick Lugar as Secretary of State is higher because then you'd get a Senate seat.  It might also be a small deterrent to Lugar from going.  Although I think he would weigh his own interest in the post and ability to shape matters.

A piece in the Washington Post today mentioned Rich Armitage as a potential Secretary of Defense.  I think that might be true in either Administration.  And would be a brilliant move.  Somebody well regarded almost everywhere.  And as Kerry wanted to pursue military reform, along the same lines, by the way, that Rumsfeld has.  There would be much less resistance to it in the Republican Senate and House or certainly in a Republican House if you had Armitage there.  Although he's got other very close friends from his days in the Senate like Gary Hart, who also will have to be considered for that and Bob Kerry, as well.   

But I think it's worth simply noting that having members of the other party in the cabinet is a very nice thing to do.  It can make a difference in a particular policy area in some ways.  It's not going to suddenly cause people who were hostile to you to turn around and say, oh, I'm just so happy.   Bill Cohen in the position of Secretary of Defense made some difference for Clinton. And, indeed, when Clinton took some actions against terrorist and in Bosnia and in Kosovo that had some Republicans in the House saying he was doing it only for political purposes.  When Bill Cohen stood up and said that's not true.  It really helped.  But it didn't change the basic attitudes.  So no matter how many Republicans he picks or who they are, the basic problems he's going to have confronting a Congress that will not be very happy with him remain.

And by the way, I think it means we're likely to see that some of those aggressive approaches to expand Executive power that Vice-President Cheney has to the limit and the courts have viewed very favorably will be turned around and used by President Kerry.  Wherever he can, he'll do an Executive Order to get around the Congress.  He'll have a lot of recess appointments.  And the Republicans who have encouraged President Bush to do those things will be very unhappy with the Executive fiat.

MR.          :  Anyone else on personnel?

Okay.  Why don't we open it up to the audience?  We have a mike here.  And so please identify yourself.  I'm going to start over here.

MR. BRUSER:  Larry Bruser [ph.] with Mitsui, USA.  Question on what kind of domestic legislative agenda Kerry could expect to get through a Republican Congress.  You talked about it, but I think the only specific thing was mentioned was increase spending for homeland security.  Any other domestic legislation that he wants that would be achievable in a Republican Congress?

MR.          :  Well, the expect--let me deal with one area, the environment.  Expect the environmental cop to get back on the beat.  Expect, as Tom mentioned, a much, you know, to get the United States back into the global conversation about global warming would be one thing.  Expect that mercury to be termed a nero toxin and appropriately regulated.  And the efforts to undermine the Clean Air Act to disappear.  So there are--Norm mentioned there are opportunities here for your cabinet in certain agencies to do some things regulatorily that would be very difficult for even a Republican Congress to undo.

And, you know, we've, I thought, had a fairly--to the extent that these panels are every--a very thorough discussion about the up sides and the down sides of attempting to do what Kerry's most important and high profile political--domestic political matter, which is namely expanding the opportunity to health care to try and reduce its cost, to do a medicaid swap with the states.  It's possible that some of the governors would be very interested in having medicaid for--$5 billion in additional medicaid.  The question is, could they prevail on their House counterparts to let something like this go forward?  But I would still expect in terms of a very early domestic priority to try and do what he has said he would want to do, which is remove the top two--the tax breaks to the folks earning over $200,000 and apply that money to health care.  That will be a very early effort. 

I also think we'll see a, a move made immediately on stem cells.  You know, just as we saw when the Bush Administration came in, the partial birth abortion issue came forward and moved very quickly.  He can probably get movement on stem cells and probably do some things by Executive action as well.  And that would be a significant victory for him.  He may also be able to get some movement at the margins on health policy.  We have now Hillary Clinton and Bill Frist have joined together with health reform that includes in particular a vast expansion of using information technology in the health arena.  That can make a difference.  It's not the same as insuring some of the 44 million who are uninsured.  But you may be able to find bipartisan cooperation in some of these smaller areas and maybe he could build that into something a little bit more.  But on the big things, it's not going.

MR.          :  I would add a couple things.  One, I would generalize beyond the stem cell to scientific research more generally.  One of the issues that's emerged in the campaign is that there has been a politicization of science.  And so I think you would see some moves, part of them would be appropriations.  Part of them would be the reconstitution of advisory commissions.  But there might be room for legislative authorization that goes directly to ensuring the U.S. is at the cutting edge of scientific research. 

Second is education.  And there I could imagine a combination of some additional increases in expenditures for No Child Left Behind, some modification which could require some legislative tweaking of some of implementation aspects of the law, but also trying to move ahead on Kerry's agenda with respect to subsidizing college tuitions with tax credits.  That would be a piece of the action that is quite popular in the country and wouldn't be hugely expensive.  And he could probably build support in the Congress for it.

MODERATOR:  Let me throw one other wild card.  We don't know for sure whether we're going to get intelligence reform done before the election.  We might get it done in a lame duck Congress.  But if it were to slip till the beginning of a Kerry Presidency, I think that would be a gift to him, something that he could really run with.  That doesn't have a clear ideological leaning and could push Republicans on.

Let me open up to another question.  We'll go right here in the front.

MR. BACHFISCH:  Michael Bachfisch [ph.] [inaudible], how does Mr. Kerry want to manage to bring the allies back on track in Iraq?  Several panelists said that he wants to start a new tone to show the international community the U.S. is back on the multi-lateral track.  Is that enough?  Or does he offer a spectacular bait in order to lure the allies?  Mr. Mann, you mentioned maybe some initiative regarding global warming.  Could that mean that the U.S. finally signs the Kyoto Protocol, which was a controversial point?  Or is there another thing in the loop?  And maybe Mr. Downey has the latest news over the voice mail or his cell phone?

MR.          :  Tom, when will we see German troops in Iraq?

MR.          :  It does not involve the U.S. signing onto the Kyoto Protocol.  That is just not in the, in the cards.

The question, rather, is the U.S. re-entering some global discussions on this and on other matters of interest and consequence to our allies.  Listen, I think the chances of bringing in new troops from Europe are close to nil.  That's not what we're, what we're talking about here.  It's conceivable, you know, over a longer period of time, but the further effort to build NATO forces and peacekeeping forces, but none of this will happen in real time in Iraq to make a significant difference.  I just think that's being, that's being realistic.  That doesn't mean the mood can't change in European capitals with Kerry taking some initiatives.  But the idea of transferring military responsibilities from U.S. troops to German or French troops or NATO troops is just not a realistic possibility.

MR.          :  I agree with that, Tom.  But I think that it's not unbelievable if Kerry has a summit soon into his Presidency in Europe where the issue of Iraq is front and center, where it's part of a global initiative on terrorism that you don't precook something with the Germans where they don't, where they may accept responsibility for training a large portion of the Iraqi officer corps in German or doing something in France.  And that this gets laid out ahead of time and then this gets rolled out when President Kerry goes for the first time in February to the European Summit on Worldwide Terror, or whatever gets worked out.

And I am assuming that Europeans who are going to be pleased that Kerry is President are also going to recognize that given the range of what they can do in their domestic politics that there are certain things that they can do that would, in fact, be acceptable to their own populations in terms of dealing more favorably with the United States with a new President.

MR. MITCHELL:  Gary Mitchell from the Mitchell Report.  I want to ask a question about the warm bucket of spit.  We've had a dozen years of highly visible, highly active Vice-Presidents, people uniquely qualified to serve.  Edwards certainly doesn't come in with that credential.  What's anybody's guess on what Kerry might do with Edwards as Vice-President?

MS. EASTON:  I think we touched on it earlier.  Edwards' strength is probably working with Congress.  And I think that would be an excellent role for him.

MR.          :  It's not going to be, I think, the same kind of relationship that we saw either with Clinton and Gore where Clinton really consciously tried to make him a partner in the process.  Not quite an equal partner, but a senior partner.  Or between Bush and Cheney where Cheney has been the most influential figure now out front, but mostly behind the scenes in a very discrete way.  And with a staff, a Vice-Presidential staff almost entirely integrated into the Presidential staff.  Here, Edwards will definitely be a junior partner.  But he'll try and make him a partner.  And there may be some tensions, I could imagine, between the Edwards staff and the Kerry staff because of Edwards' youth and obvious ambition.  But also because while they'll [inaudible] along just fine together, they're not really close friends to start with.  So I think it's going to be different from what we saw before we had the Clinton/Gore experience, but not quite the same as what we've had.

MS. EASTON:  Just one observation on the campaign trail.  Edwards has been very much kept in the background until the debate which he performed quite admirably during his debate with Dick Cheney.  And so now he's out much more front and center in the campaign.  But it was an interesting decision by the campaign this summer to keep him more, more in the background.  They said he was working on swing states and getting out the vote and so on.  But it was really interesting that he didn't have a high profile.

MR.          :  I don't disagree completely with this, but when Al became Vice-President he had specific areas of jurisdiction that were his interest and concerns, the environment, telecommunications policy.  And he dealt with them government reform, exactly.  And, in fact, his own people were in charge of these things.  And the President gave him great latitude, President Clinton did, to perform these functions.

I would expect that Senator Edwards will ask for some areas of involvement.  And that, you know, he's talked about the two Americas.  So maybe health and poverty matters will be important to him.  And I think that given the fact that the President is going to have his hands full with international policy, I see Edwards playing a very public and active role politically across the country in helping Democrats.  This is a scotch campaign, and equally good fundraiser.  And so if you can suddenly start deploying him to help Democrats in the House and the Senate, that helps you.  And I think that that would be a role that he would relish and do well.

MS. EASTON:  But Al Gore invented the internet, what has John Edwards done for us?

MR.          :  He'll think of something.

Listen, I really believe we will never go back to the old system where VPs were pushed to the side.  Norm is right in that regard.  It would be--Dan Quail was not pushed to the side.  And you could argue he was someone who might have been.  He had some significant--

MR.          :  Education reforms--

MR.          :  --responsibility.  I, actually in addition to the political, public role Tom talked about, I think it would be clever of a Kerry Administration to deploy Edwards in a kind of Nixon to China way on certain issues.  And I have in mind a different kind of tort reform and medical liability reform.  This is an issue that mobilizes those against trial lawyers and creates a sense of in the public too that this is largely responsible for health care inflation.  I think that's properly challenged.  But, in fact, both Kerry and Edwards support some aspects of this reform.  And to take the lead on it with Kerry--with Edwards in charge would, might be quite effective.

MR.          :  Okay.  We've got a question over here.  Just wait for the mike and identify yourself.

MR.          :  [Inaudible] with the Korean Embassy.  I do remember that during the Presidential debates the issues in the arena of foreign policy mostly discussed were Iraq and North Korean.  But this morning we really do not hear anything regarding the North Korean nuclear issue.  What kind of room or spare efforts do you think the Kerry Administration might be able to have in the early periods of the Administration because he might be preoccupied with Iraq?

MR.          :  I mean, I believe you should take Kerry at his word.  Which is that it was a mistake in his view to break off direct discussions between North Korea and the United States.  That Administration pulled the rug out from under Colin Powell at the outset.  That it took too long to restart any talks.  That the six party talks are, should be seen as a cover for genuine negotiations that are occurring.  The Chinese would be happy about it, the Japanese would be happy, I suspect, the South Koreans would be happy about that.  So I would expect a rapid resumption of direct discussions between U.S. and North Korea.  And I would not be surprised to see a special envoy to Bill Perry, someone who is well-versed in the region and the issues to begin soon after the beginning of the Administration.

MS. EASTON:  I would just add to that.  The other member of the [inaudible].  We didn't talk about the other member of the axis of evil, Iran.  And I think this is going to be very much first, first and foremost, but very high on the plate of the Kerry Administration, a country that has a nuclear weapons program that is distressing both sides of the aisle.  And I think that's something that he's going to have to deal with very early on in his Administration.

MR.          :  One where it will really test his new approach in dealing with allies.  Because practically speaking, the only real option that we have is to try to ratchet up the pressure on Iran through meaningful sanctions and public obloquy.  Which has not easily been forthcoming from many of the European allies.  In fact, there was at least at one point at which I believe the German Foreign Minister noted pointedly that Iraq was a very substantial trading partner of Germany.  So we're talking major economic relations--

MR.          :  Iran.

MR.          :  Iran.  We're talking major economic relations.  Overcoming the natural reluctance to have meaningful sanctions is not going to be easy.  But it ought to be easier for them to do that than to send troops to Iraq.  So this will be a real test for him.

MR.          :  Right here.

MR. FORESIGHT:  James Foresight [ph.] Foreign Policy Magazine.  How do you think John Kerry will deal with those foreign leaders like Blair, Quarzumi [ph.] and Howard who have been so close with Bush.  And Bush is almost using them as kind of props in his own election campaign.  I mean, for example, in Britain, certainly, Blair would be in political trouble if Bush lost.  How would Kerry try and deal with that?

MR.          :  I actually disagree with your assessment of the impact of a Bush loss on Blair.  In fact, if Bush is re-elected, all of the Bush haters in Britain would have all the more reason to be angry at Tony Blair.

My guess is that Kerry would move quickly to, with an early trip during the transition to London to meet with Tony Blair and to both underscore the special relationship, but to say that should be an anchor for a broader, a broader coalition with trips then onto Paris and Berlin, and so on.  I think you would, you would--I mean, it's not rocket science here.  It just makes so much sense for Kerry, if he becomes President, to embrace those leaders who have been part of the coalition in Iraq and not in any way to punish them.  The fact is, he's got--he will have Iraq on his hands.  He's got to deal with it.  He needs, he needs their help.  But he also realizes that certainly in the case of Quarzumi and Blair, they would like nothing more than a genuine multi-lateralist approach from the U.S. to foreign policy.  And they would welcome that overture.

MODERATOR:  We have time for one or two more questions.  But before other questions, let me thank some people who made this possible so that you don't all leave and not hear their names.  Brian O'Keefe, Chris Trendler, Matt Wile and Marissa Armanino, but also most importantly Kim Spears, right here, without whose help these events yesterday and today would certainly not have been possible.  So thank you very much.

Let me again, a couple more questions.  We'll go here.  And then I'll come back here.

MR. SIDEN:  I'm Matt Siden [ph.], affiliated with the Navy.  I'd like to ask you what do you think the relationship will be between President Kerry and the U.S. military?

MS. EASTON:  Well, I can only speak historically that he's--he has been a divisive figure among Vietnam vets.  There's no doubt about that.  And I do think that this, his opponents within the veteran community have only just begun to fight.  I think we'll see a kind of a hate industry built up not unlike that during the Clinton Administration.  So I think that will make it difficult for him.

This President doesn't have a great relationship with a lot of commanders in the military either, though.  So, and particularly Rumsfeld has had a very difficult road at various periods with top commanders.  Tom, you seem to have--

MR.          :  No.  No.  No.  I agree.  I mean, I think that this Administration has, civilian administration in the Department of Defense has badly let down both the soldiers and the high command.  And I think you'll see Kerry pay a lot more attention to the fine planning and work that goes on there.  In his life that there is, he's been a divisive figure with Vietnam veterans.  But he comes to this a little differently than Bill Clinton.  Bill Clinton had avoided service.  And so there was a natural tendency for President Clinton to be extraordinarily deferential.  Kerry didn't avoid service.  He was a hero in the war.  He has proven himself as an individual.  And he has a golden opportunity here to deal with the military and say, you know, a lot of the things that they said about Iraq were right.  They just were ignored.  I'm not going to ignore their good advice.  So I expect that this will be a pretty good relationship.

MS. EASTON:  There's also, there's this film "Stolen Honors" which the Sinclair Broadcasting Network has done.  They originally were going to force their stations to show to air and then now are just going to show excerpts.  And I actually just watched it yesterday.  That's going to be, you know, it could be quite damaging to Kerry and his image among Vietnam veterans.  It's a, I think it's a lot, potentially a lot more damaging than the swift boat vets stuff.  Because it focuses on his anti-war activities as opposed to his war record.

MR.          :  We need--every Democratic President has a rocky relationship at the beginning with the military.  It's more Republican.  There's a level of suspicion.  It was even there for Carter who, after all, had been a naval commander and had a long record as well.  So you've got to overcome that.  I think Kerry actually has some other positives going for him.  He has a number of highly visible leaders from the military like McPeak [ph.], and a number of others, who he can bring forward and actually in some cases bring back and put in very significant positions of command.  That have people with a lot of following in the military itself who will be his advocates there. 

And the Vietnam vets are a significant part of the officer corps, it's true.  But they're not really the core of the military now.  And I have a feeling that if at least he can show some kind of a plan to move us past where we've been in Iraq, that there will be some people saying, well, you know, maybe we can live with this. But it's also a reason why the Abu Ghraib stuff he's got to go very carefully with.  Certainly you need to send a signal to the rest of the world that we're the good guys.  But you do not want early on to do something aggressively that looks like it will take down some prominent figures in the military and tar a lot of others.

MR.          :  I agree with that.  But don't you believe that given the lessons of 9-11, the thoroughness with which the commission did its work and the universal acclaim of its recommendations that something like a 9-11 Commission to take a look at these activities is essential for a couple of reasons.  One, it's the right thing to do.  And secondly, from a political perspective, it does remind people when they do their report a year later, that no matter where you are in Iraq, that these problems were created by George Bush, not by John Kerry.

MR.          :  If I were John Kerry, I would put Lindsey Graham in charge of a commission to look into Abu Ghraib.  And then you've really got your bases covered.  And you've got somebody who is--actually did prosecutions in the military.  Believes in it strongly, but also was appalled by some of the things that were done.

MODERATOR:  Last question.  We had one over here.

MS. MUSHINI:  I'm Keri Mushini [ph.] from the Embassy of Sweden.  I wanted to ask to go back to [inaudible] and ask on Kerry's relation to the UN and whether he will be prone to go back and use UN to a greater extent or if he is going to continue the trend that Bush has shown that using alliances that he builds up on his own.  That could go also for NATO actually.  Thank you.

MR.          :  Kerry is naturally more sympathetic to the UN, but he understands the problems that exists there.  We still have an ongoing investigation of corruption in the Iraqi oil program.  The institution itself has a difficult time coming up with the resources, peace keeping election, running, administering, and monitoring to play a critical role.  There's a lot of ferment about UN reform, changing the nature of the membership on the security council, but also potentially altering certain decision-making rules.  So it's an area he will, he will pay attention to.  His inclination will always be initially to look for the broadest possible support for any actions taken abroad.  If it's, if in the end he finds it impossible to move these multi-lateral organizations and the action seems merited by the challenge that he faces, then he too will resort to a coalition of convenience or of possibility and opportunity.  But he will have a very different attitude toward the starting point.

MR.          :  He'll get along well with the incoming Secretary General Bill Clinton.

MODERATOR:  To close, let me say we--for those of you here in the audience and out in the television audience, we hope that you will take these questions about Bush and Kerry how they might govern very seriously.  An important elections is coming up.  We also hope that the journalists around the country will continue to do some of the work on these issues to better inform the public about the types of challenges we have ahead and the types of men we have running and how they might face them.

Thank you.  And our session is closed.

Return to the event page for How Would Each Candidate Govern?
View the transcript for the George W. Bush session