FIRlnGLlne WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR.

Transcription

1 The copyright laws of the United States (Title 17, U.S. Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. If a user makes a request for, or later uses a photocopy or reproduction (including handwritten copies) for purposes in excess of fair use, that user may be liable for copyright infringement. Users are advised to obtain permission from the copyright owner before any re-use of this material. Use of this material is for private, non-commercial, and educational purposes; additional reprints and further distribution is prohibited. Copies are not for resale. All other rights reserved. For further information, contact Director, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford University, Stanford, CA Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. 0 FIRlnGLlne HOST: GUEST: SUBJECT: WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR. GARY BAUER "GARY BAUER FOR PRESIDENT" FIRING LINE is produced and directed by WARREN STEIBEL. This is a transcript of FIRING LINE program #2911/1217 taped at HBO Studios in New York City, September 10, 1999, and telecast later on public television stations. Copyright 1999 FIRING LINE Transcripts and videocassenes are available through Producers Incorporated for Television, 2700 Cypress StreeL Columbia, SC 2920s 803n

2 MR. BUCKLEY: We have a presidential candidate here today to tell us why we should send him to the White House. His likelihood of getting there is somewhere between impossible and inconceivable. [laughter} But then by statistical arithmetic, that's true of most candidates for that office, and certainly true of the candidates now running for the Republican nomination. Their reasons for going on are 1) They want their views to be heard; and 2) Whoever outlawed miracles? Not even the Supreme Court, Gary Bauer would acknowledge, restraint on activist courts being high on his agenda. Indeed, on the matter of candor on the issues, Gary Bauer is perhaps unequaled. His positions are spelled out in seven pages on abortion, agriculture, the armed forces, China, drugs, education, faithbased solutions, gambling, judicial activism, marriage and the family, national defense, pornography, privacy, property rights, reliable standards of right and wrong, religious liberty, the Second Amendment, taxes, and veterans. Mr. Bauer is from Kentucky, graduated from Georgetown and its law school, went to the John F. Kennedy School at Harvard, served in the Reagan administration as deputy undersecretary for education and as presidential adviser. He is the author of two books and, of course, president of the Family Research Council. It isn't possible to examine in any particular his position on all these issues, so let's go to him for a general perspective. Let me begin by asking this question: To the extent your candidacy is viewed as Christian-oriented, does it invite some voters to think of themselves as excluded? MR. BAUER: Well, first of all, Bill, I don't think my candidacy should be thought of as Christian oriented. My whole life has been devoted to public policy. There have been Christian candidates that define themselves that way, Pat Robertson being the most notable example. But all my life I've worked on public policy. I had eight years in government with Ronald Reagan as undersecretary of education and as Reagan's domestic policy adviser at the White House. So I don't think voters should feel excluded at all. I think what they are looking at is a Reagan conservative who also feels strongly about his Christian faith. But America was built by people in church on Sunday, at work on Monday and in the voting booth on Tuesday. I'm not sure-- MR. BUCKLEY: Well, you know, of course, that I agree with you, but my point is there is a lot of nervousness out there among people who think of themselves as potential victims--for instance, on the matter of, say, school prayer. MR. BAUER: Right. MR. BUCKLEY: Most school prayer, if license to recite school prayer were reissued, would be Christianoriented, because most people are Christians. Now the fear of that, born out of historical experiences of victimization, is with some people a real fear. What I'm asking is, do you run into that fear? MR. BAUER: I run into it from people who, by and large, I believe the Republican Party will never get to vote for any likely Republican presidential candidate. That is people with such a secular mindset and such an unusual view of the American founding that any Republican, even a compassionate conservative from Austin, Texas, would be unlikely to get their vote if they've got an Al Gore or a Bill Bradley to vote for. I think the other interesting thing here is that I think these are great issues for our party, and actually I think they are less controversial than some of the economic agenda of the party. If I get a vote in the United States Congress on school prayer, the vote will be overwhelmingly on my side. We just had a vote on the posting of the Ten Commandments. Dozens and dozens of Democrats felt that they had to vote for that. But if you have a vote in the Congress on a Medicare proposal or Social Security proposal, which are supposed to be the issues that we've got such resonance with the American people on, we barely win those votes or often lose them. So I actually think the party will never be the governing party of the United States unless it finds its voice on these social issues and values issues. MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, but that isn't the question I asked. The question I asked is-- 1

3 . - ~ --~.... MR. BAUER: But I had my answer all prepared, Bill. {laughter} MR. BUCKLEY: We know, for instance, that in 1962 in New York the representatives of Jews and of Protestants and of Catholics came together on the formulation of an agreeable prayer. It was knocked out by the Supreme Court. I think it was a mistake, but what is- There are two things interesting about it. One is that there wasn't a kind of draconian reaction to it that said to the Supreme Court, No, no, you can't do that. MR. BAUER: Yes. MR. BUCKLEY: Those quarrels are being fought out on the Ten Commandments and so on and so forth. But all I am saying is, Is it or is it not the case that there are non-christian constituencies who are alarmed by a position like your own, which wants the reintroduction of school prayer? MR. BAUER: There are, and there are significant liberal constituencies that are alarmed about almost anything you and I and nearly any Republican nominee believe. I just can't spend a lot of time worrying about it. MR. BUCKLEY: No. MR. BAUER: You know, I think the way we win this debate though and the way that we ease people's minds is to bring it into the larger context of the American founding. You may know since this is your area of the country that in New Jersey recently a state legislator introduced a bill that would require the school day in New Jersey to begin with the reading of the most important sentence in the Declaration of Independence: "All men are created equal, endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." What a wonderful idea. Particularly a wonderful thing for a conservative legislator to introduce. It was voted down. State legislators in New Jersey said they couldn't vote for it because it "sounded too much like a prayer." Now you and I watched those students in Tienanmen Square in China waving copies of our Declaration of Independence before they were shot 10 years ago, and yet students in New Jersey can't hear the words before the school day because of this bizarre concept of the separation of church and state. MR. BUCKLEY: You're making a very important point, which is that this seems to be a distillation of the public position on that issue, and I find that wrong and alarming. But the fact is, it's out there. MR. BAUER: I think it's a distillation of elite view in America. I think if the people of New Jersey or New York or Connecticut or any liberal state had a chance to vote on the idea of beginning the school day with the reading of that sentence, the vote would be overwhelming on the position of yes. But if it's elites, whether it's government officials, bureaucrats, professors at leading universities, they inevitably will be alarmed by it. MR. BUCKLEY: But how is the Bauer for President movement going to o'er leap the press elite and the intellectuals to sound out a plebiscite of that character? MR. BAUER: Well, what we're doing now is just talking to any group of two or more people who will sit still long enough to hear me out. We did that in Iowa. Here I am, a candidate that's never run before for any office. I'm running against nine other people, most of whom have run before. They all have a lot of names and resources. I end up beating everybody except the three most famous names in the Republican Party--the son of a former president, the son of a tycoon, and the wife of a former Cabinet member--the wife of a former presidential candidate. Here I am, the son of a janitor, and we showed very well in Iowa in that vote. I think we're going to have a lot of surprises. As I get my message out, people see that I'm not a threatening person, and that I've got ideas that are very close to the broad mainstream in America, I think we're going to do very well. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, I think that the vote in Iowa was a great personal tribute to you. I'm not sure it was a great tribute to your ideas, because the ideas on the issues we just touched on really don't differ very 2

4 substantially, as I understand it, from those of, say, Dan Quayle or Lamar Alexander. So it may be disillusioning to say they have discovered the truth. They may have discovered Gary Bauer, but not necessarily the truth-- MR. BAUER: I should-- MR. BUCKLEY: --because you don't single handedly have it. MR. BAUER: I should take this as a compliment and just move on, that you think it's a personal triumph, but I actually think there is a difference in this sense, that I not only believe this, as many of those other individuals do-- MR. BUCKLEY: And Pat Buchanan, yes. MR. BAUER: -but I talk about it. I mean, I don't believe that and only talk about it if somebody asks me. I think it's what at least a major part of the presidential campaign ought to be about. That is the whole issue of why was America founded, what made us unique, why is it that no tyrant in the world rests easy for fear that his people may read the words of the Declaration. And how is it in 1999 that so many of our children, even in the finest schools, have no idea of what that sentence means and why it makes them unique as Americans, that we live in a place founded on such an idea. MR. BUCKLEY: It's a major dereliction, right? MR. BAUER: It is. MR. BUCKLEY: But isn't it a dereliction acknowledged as such by, say, Pat Buchanan and Steve Forbes? What makes it distinctively an issue that attaches to your candidacy? MR. BAUER: I think the difference is that a Pat Buchanan, who's a friend of mine, is much more likely, when thinking about a major speech or a major campaign theme, to talk about economic nationalism and to deliver a message that's going to be pretty hard on the ears of a lot of people because of its tone and so forth. I think when Steve gets up in the morning he is thinking about economics. He's an economic man. I think he's got some interesting ideas; some of them I differ with him on. MR. BUCKLEY: What do you think about when you wake up in the morning? MR. BAUER: I think about this. I think about these sorts of issues and how we can get a campaign that is actually worthy of the attention of the American people. You know, we'll have politicians in Washington in these campaigns screaming at each other in debates over what ends up being a half--you know, a point $500 million difference in a $100 trillion budget or whatever. And very important things about the nature of liberty, the balancing of liberty and virtue, what is it we ought to be teaching children in a free and democratic society. Those things get short shrift. And along with my economic ideas and my foreign policy ideas, I think if we want Americans to get involved again, we 've got to convince them that politics is actually about something important. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, is it your opinion that to the extent you have succeeded, it is because you have personified those particular issues in the sense that the others have not? They are associated with flat tax or whatever, but you're not? MR. BAUER: I think part of it is for a number of years, in government and out, I have been broadly associated with these themes. I think the other thing is that while--1 mean, there is probably a personal part of this--a lot of people will have an idea of who they think I am, and then they actually get to hear me, and I end up benefiting from low expectations. [laughter] You know, when they find out that I'm not meanspirited, that I try to be Reaganesque in how I approach these things. Now Ronald Reagan never wandered from his conservative views, but he didn't stick his finger in your eye either. He said it in a way that brought people to him. You could imagine having him over for dinner and not needing to ask the kids 3

5 to leave the room. And sometimes I think our message is delivered in a way that makes it very hard for people to make common cause with us. MR. BUCKLEY: What you say in a way frightens me, for this reason. MR. BAUER: [laughing} Gosh. I don't want to scare you, Bill. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, the only time I ran for political office was for mayor of New York in And about two weeks before the end, I had lunch with Barry Goldwater and he volunteered to endorse me. And my campaign manager, who was my brother Jim, was terribly enthusiastic about it. But I thought about it, and I said, That's kind of dangerous, because Barry Goldwater, when he ran for president, which was a year earlier, had gotten 700,000 votes. So at least people figured that New York was heftily, if a minority, in favor of Goldwater positions. Since I didn't anticipate getting anything like that kind of vote, I thought, Well, I don't want to discredit the idea by my patronage of it. So if you say that the American people will be exposed almost to you uniquely as favoring a validation of American ideals, then to the extent that you don't make out, it makes me worry about the country. MR. BAUER: Well, that's one conclusion I guess you could reach. But I think we all know that your introduction is in a very real way correct. I'm an underdog candidate. MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, sure. MR. BAUER: There's no question about that. I'm the son of a janitor, so I don't have personal wealth to rely on. In fact, when I read that Governor Bush had raised a lot of money by calling his dad's list, I called home and got my dad's list from my mom [laughter] and after a number of calls, I was in hock for another $1500 because he left some outstanding debts before he passed away. [laughter} So it's going to have to be on something other than money and star quality. But we're doing really well. We're going to go to New Hampshire this weekend, and a number of state legislators that have endorsed other candidates are going to switch to me. Michigan, this week a new poll's out that has me now in a solid third place, only behind Bush and Dole, and I haven't stepped foot in Michigan in the campaign yet. So I think it's going to be a campaign of surprises, and as you said, miracles do happen in politics, and I think the message is resonating. MR. BUCKLEY: But the poor-boy auspices that you have twice referred to in this program, are they, in your judgment, elements that should constantly be brought to the attention of the voters, or are you suggesting that people who have those other advantages are, in a sense, contaminated? MR. BAUER: No, I am looking at how American politics plays itself out, and I am watching Governor Bush and Steve Forbes constantly remind us of both the money they've raised and the money that they've inherited, and they have used that. Their operatives and they themselves have used that as an argument about why, in the case of Bush, he says I'm the only candidate that can win, about himself. And in the case of Steve Forbes, his operatives will say to people, I'm the only "conservative" that can take Bush on. Well, if they see their money as an advantage worth constantly talking about, not having money, I will use my relatively modest beginnings as a potential advantage to connect with people that sometimes are uncomfortable voting for Republican conservatives. Bill, I know you remember, I heard Ronald Reagan speak for the first time in I was sitting in my blue-collar neighborhood in Newport, Kentucky. He was giving a speech-- MR. BUCKLEY: The big speech? MR. BAUER: That's right. The speech. And I knew, hearing him, that he would be president. I turned to my dad, and I said, "Dad, that's the guy that's going to be president someday. And I'm going to work for him in the White House." And my father said, "Gary, you 're nuts." Well, my father and my mother and everybody on the block were Democrats but they all ended up voting for Ronald Reagan for the first time for a Republican. And my dad, by the way, was able to visit me in my West wing office--let's see, that would be 19 years later--and we reflected back on that day. But I think the reason they voted for Reagan 4

6 is that he really was perceived as a man of Main Street, a man of the middle class. And I think it's an advantage for our party to get more of an orientation in that direction rather than to be thought of as the party of-- MR. BUCKLEY: Gary, I think you have a philosophical problem here, because-- MR. BAUER: Do you? MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, I do, because 54 percent of the American people voted for Goldwater in that election. MR. BAUER: I'm sorry? MR. BUCKLEY: I say 54 percent of the people voted for Goldwater--for Reagan in that election. MR. BAUER: Oh, okay. I was afraid I had missed the Goldwater presidency. [laughter] MR. BUCKLEY: I would remind you. But if manifestly the American people would crowd to vote for such a person with such an appeal that you noticed 16 years earlier, why didn't everybody vote for him? MR. BAUER: Well, as you know, there are two voting blocks in America today, even with all the lessening of party loyalty. There is about 40 percent of the public that will reliably stick with a Republican candidate. MR. BUCKLEY: Democratic candidate? MR. BAUER: Well, both actually. I think it's about 40-40, and elections are fought out for that other 20 percent. And I believe we are more likely to get them if we try to touch their hearts and can identify with the average things that people deal with. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, why are 40 percent stuck with a party which, in your judgment and mine, retails false attempted solutions to major problems? MR. BAUER: Are you talking about the Democrats or our party? [laughter] MR. BUCKLEY: Is it a matter of incorrigible ignorance? MR. BAUER: Well, a lot of people, of course, aren't sticking with anybody. A lot of people are just dropping out. And that is, I think, a deep threat to the republic. A lot of people are concluding that neither of these parties are really serious about what they talk about. On the plane here this morning I was rereading some columns about how it looks like our friends in Congress are getting ready to fold again in the face of a lame-duck president who is willing to battle them on the budget and on the debt. And so it's hard to know why, quite frankly, more people haven't dropped out. Because if you just look at the political performance of the last years, it's not much to excite anybody about politics. MR. BUCKLEY: But why would-- Even with Reagan, we have had, have we not, an ever-diminishing number of people as a percentage voting. So even though in your judgment and mine, he twice said appealing and correct things, he didn't transform the body politick into activist voters, did he? MR. BAUER: Well, he got-- There was an uptick in voter turnout in his second race, which I think was a comment on what people had decided about him. And then second of all, when we took the Congress back for the first time since the end of World War II, an extra eight or nine million voters showed up that nobody expected. So to me, the lesson of that is that when we have an unambiguous conservative message, when we know what we want and when we 've got the confidence to say it to the American people--something that we did not do in the last two presidential races--voters do come back into the system and we end up winning. I think when we do what Bush did in his second term--you know, in his first term he ran as Ronald Reagan, in his second term he ran as George Bush. And in the last election 5

7 with Bob Dole, I don't know about your audience, but I ran out of shoes to throw at the television set during those debates. I had spent time with my friend Jack Kemp and we had gone over the issues. It's not that the American people heard the liberal world view and then heard our world view and rejected it. They heard a liberal world view and then they heard confusion. And with that choice, at least they would go with some certainty with the devil they knew. I think we missed one opportunity after another in those debates to elevate the issues that can make us the governing party, and I fear we're going to miss them again this time. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, how much are you hampered by your lack of money, although you've raised a rather remarkably robust sum, but if you had the resources of Steve Forbes, would this be immediately transparent in your ratings? MR. BAUER: I think it would. Steve has spent $47 million beginning with his first presidential effort up until now. I've spent about five. In most national polls- MR. BUCKLEY: But this is-- MR. BAUER: --1 am one point behind him. MR. BUCKLEY: -apples and oranges, because how much of that $47 million did he spend in the first race? MR. BAUER: Well, most of it, but of course it really isn't apples and oranges, because what that money bought him was nationwide name recognition. I am known right now by about 25 percent of the American people. He is known literally by 99 percent of the American people, and I am one point behind him when people have to choose a name. So I still get to be introduced to millions of Americans that have already been introduced to Steve and have decided that he's not the guy they want in the White House. So I think if I had more resources we would be in better shape. And you 're right, we have had 92,000 people give us an average of $55 apiece. And they will, we believe, continue to donate to us so that we can go all the way to the convention in Philadelphia. MR. BUCKLEY: Ninety-two thousand means nothing to me. That is a lot or not so much or medium? MR. BAUER: That is-- The only other candidate in the race that would have a comparable list of donors would be Governor Bush, and there would be one other difference, that his average donation would have an extra zero next to the 55. Not a minor manner, I realize, but I think with each passing day the election will become less about money and it will become more about ideas and issues because people like yourself will help see to it that there are debates. And I want to, to bring up an old subject that you and I have debated, I want to turn to Governor Bush and ask him why is it that he agrees with Al Gore on giving China Most Favored Nation status. Most Republicans disagree at this point at the grassroots level. MR. BUCKLEY: But that's simply a matter of strategic reckoning. I don't think that's overwhelmed by a moral question. MR. BAUER: It's not, no, it's not a moral question, but in Ames, Iowa, when we got these 25,000 Republicans together and they all listened to our speeches, the reaction of the audience was predictable in most cases. That is, when you would say an applause line, the people with Bauer shirts on would applaud me with enthusiasm and others would give polite applause but remain in their seats, and likewise with each of the candidates. But when I said in my speech that in my first week in office I would repeal Most Favored Nation status, call Beijing and say, Now let's begin serious negotiations about the nature of this relationship, 25,000 people jumped to their feet. It didn't matter if they had Forbes tee shirts on, Bush tee shirts on. I think at the grassroots level of the Republican Party there is a Reagan-like attitude on this question. MR. BUCKLEY: Don 't you think that is just because they want to hear something unpleasant said about China, which, by the way, I do and I do a lot of. 6

8 MR; BAUER: Then I'm your man. [laughter] MR. BUCKLEY: But I don't think that really translates into endorsement of a particular policy. MR. BAUER: Well, it depends on whether I am able to elevate that as a major issue in the campaign. Let me mention another one to you, the judicial issue. I have said on the record that I will have two criteria for judges. They can't be bigots, obviously. I'm running for the nomination of the party of Abraham Lincoln. And second of all, they have to believe that all of our children should be welcomed into the world and protected by the law. Governor Bush was asked about this- MR. BUCKLEY: We have 10 seconds. MR. BAUER: Okay. He said he has no criteria, that it would be unethical to ask a judge what he believed. That's why we got people like David Souter being put on the court by Republican presidents. That would not happen if I am in the White House. MR. BUCKLEY: Thank you Gary Bauer- MR. BAUER: Thank you. MR. BUCKLEY: -candidate for president; thank you, ladies and gentlemen. {applause} 7