Reply #11: You misquoted Dean, DrFunkenstein. I'm boldfacing the parts you removed. [View All]

[w4rma]

http://www.jfklibrary.org/forum_dean.html
HOWARD DEAN: For me to answer that question doesn't make any sense. I have no idea what the intelligence from the field shows. If it were up to me, we wouldn't be there now, because we would have gone to the United Nations and continued the inspections, and continued to disarm Iraq, which we were. So for me to make a choice about-- That's a complete Hobson's choice. I didn't get us into this. Unfortunately, I'm not President now, and I can't get us out of this. But I do think that at least as we voice our opinions-- and I think we should continue to voice our opinions about the war-- that we ought to be supportive, and differentiate ourselves into supporting the troops and saying, "We don't support the policy," at least if somebody supports the war. But I can't really legitimately and knowledgeable discuss the strategic implications of whether to withdraw right this minute or not. There are all kinds of complications that have to do with the safety of our troops, where we are, America's prestige in the world. That's a very complicated subject, and I just don't think it makes any sense for me to wade into that, particularly when I have no idea what the intelligence reports are.

JOE KLEIN: I know politicians hate hypotheticals, but this is a hypothetical. If you were President of the United States at this moment, you oppose this war. There are hundreds of thousands of people in the streets all over the world saying that we should stop the fighting now and withdraw. What do you say to them?

HOWARD DEAN: I say I'm not the President of the United States. I didn't get us into this. And I'm not answering your hypothetical question. But it was a good try.

JOE KLEIN: So you're not going to go out and march in the streets anytime soon.

HOWARD DEAN: No. Only because I'm marching in the streets of Iowa and New Hampshire and California so often. I am going to continue to speak out, though, Joe. I think one of the things that is great about this country-- and we have to remember this-- is that the difference between the United States of America and Iraq is that it is not unpatriotic to speak your mind, even if it means disagreeing with the President of the United States.

JOE KLEIN: Which brings me to the other part of the question. I noticed that in your formulation, you supported the troops, but you didn't say anything about the President of the United States. There was a fair amount of dismay among Democrats during the Kosovo campaign when that great patriotic America, Tom Delay, would support the troops, but refused to support the President of the United States. Are you supporting the actions of the President of the United States now, as well as the troops?

HOWARD DEAN: No, because to support the actions of the President would be supporting his policy. To support the office of the presidency, of course. But I don't support this President's policy, and I've made that very clear.

JOE KLEIN: So you're supporting the troops, but not the President's policy. And you're not-- Okay, I'll let it go.

HOWARD DEAN: Now you see what I deal with every single day on the campaign trail. No wonder {simultaneous voices}

JOE KLEIN: Wait a second. Here you are. You're running for President of the United States. We are at one of the greatest moments of crisis during both of our lifetimes. We're about the same age. And I think that the public has some right to know how you would act in this sort of situation.

HOWARD DEAN: This is great. This is really good. This is live media, and good cinema verité. What you're trying to do--

JOE KLEIN: I'm not embedded here.

HOWARD DEAN: Well, that's what we should have done in the first place. What you're trying to do is basically get me to give an answer to a hypothetical question that I really can't give you, because I don't know what the intelligence reports are. I've made it clear what my position on the policy is. I think the public knows what my position on the policy is. To put me in the position of answering a hypothetical question about what I would do if I were the President of the United States. It's an easy answer. I'm sure I could get a ton of cheers from everybody in this room if I said, "Just get them out right now." But the truth is, I became governor because the governor died of a heart attack at 63 years old, totally unexpectedly. I was doing a physical in my office. I got a phone call saying I was the next governor of the state of Vermont, on five minutes notice.

So, what I learned through that experience is, sometimes you are president the next day. And when you are president the next day, or governor the next day, you have got to have some consistency. And I'm very careful about how I answer hypothetical questions because of that experience.

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<At least you kept this quote intact. Here is some context.>
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HOWARD DEAN: John Norquist in Milwaukee I would not call a liberal. But I mean, we can get into that later.

JOE KLEIN: But you would dispute the fact that most of the parents and local community groups in Cleveland, and in Milwaukee and other cities-- You'd say that they are right-wing conservatives?

HOWARD DEAN: No, no, I wouldn't say that, and I didn't say that. What I said is, it's on the agenda of conservative Republicans. It is true that there is a lot of parental support in Milwaukee for the voucher program, because people think that the inner city schools are a disaster. Here's what the downside is. The downside is that at the end of the day, schools resegregate themselves, as they are doing in Milwaukee, by race, by religion, by income, and in the end, the people left in the public school system are the kids who need special ed, the one group of people that none of these private Christian academies will take. I don't think that's a great prescription for the most diverse notion on the face of the earth.

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<You kept this quote intact also.>

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HOWARD DEAN: Let me be blunt about this, as I usually am. I don't approve of the President going to war in Iraq without the United Nations. But the United Nations is not blameless in this. The United Nations really had not enforced the previous resolutions in terms of disarming Iraq. And the United Nations does have a mandate to use military force in Iraq, as the United Nations, because Iraq is a threat to countries in its own region, because it likely possesses horrible weapons, including not nuclear weapons, so it's not a threat to the United States, but chemical weapons, which makes it a threat to all the countries around it, including some which they've used them on. So the way I would now try to reconstitute our relationship with the United Nations is simply to begin the dialogue, and say, "Look, we're interested in being part of the United Nations again, but it's very important to us that when we make a resolution that we enforce that resolution, and that we learn from this very difficult experience that we've had in Iraq that there are two parties here." The United States must really become a member of the world community. But the United Nations really does have to be serious about enforcement.

I think it's important, frankly, that the United Nations go back and be really serious about the resolutions regarding Israel and Palestine. That actually works well for both people. Israel deserves an absolutely secure existence, and the Palestinians clearly are going to have a state. I think most people agree with that, both on the Israeli and the Palestinian side. But that means that they have to be serious about that. They just can't talk about that. They have to do something about it.

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JOE KLEIN: You're for the balanced budget amendment? If so, how would you do a balanced budget in these circumstances?

HOWARD DEAN: You couldn't. You'd have to have a glide path (?) of the balanced budget amendment, for a balanced budget. Actually, Vermont is the only state in the country that doesn't have a balanced budget amendment, or balanced budget language. And yet, we probably have the best balancing of our budget in the last 12 years of any state, because we use most of the extra money to pay off debt, and to put into a rainy-day fund.

Now, I don't really like the idea of a balanced budget as public policy. But I'm so desperate, because every time there's a Republican president, he runs us into enormous debt. So I think the Democrats ought to support a balanced budget amendment.
http://www.jfklibrary.org/forum_dean.html