Given on September 12, 2005. Transcribed by Reg

I'd love to hear from you all. We've got a couple of students with microphones, and if you like to ask a question or offer a comment, please...(instructions for questions).

Young woman: I agree with you about talking to other countries, and I think that's a great idea, but how do we go about talking to other countries when, granted I'm not very political, but it seems to me our own country is becoming increasingly polarized in our beliefs among ourselves. If we can't have a united idea in our country to any extent whatsoever and we're always fighting each other on ideals, then how are we supposed to take other countries and effect their ideals when we can't even have a united front with ourselves?

General Clark: Well, I sure understand and sympathize with the question, and I think polarization is a problem in America, but we'll never be a country that entirely agrees. I think what we have to have is political leaders who seek to win their mandate by bringing people together rather than by ripping the country apart. And right now there are some who've perfected the art of winning by moving to the extreme. What I hope others will do is seek to win their political mandate by moving to the center. In a democracy, disagreement is part of it, and it's just that you have to be respectful of others you disagree with. You have to respect their motives. You have to respect their heritage. You have to respect their parents. You have to respect them as human beings, and I hear too much on talk radio that's disrespectful. I don't think a lot of fancy labeling is what politics should be about. It should be about the discussion of the issues and an examination of qualifications of the candidate. So, I can't say that we've got to have unity. I'd say that we've got to have political leaders who bring that community(?).
Now there's no reason we can't talk to other nations. We've done that for a long time. We learned that you can talk people even if you disagree with them. It's the talking that opens the avenue for a common (inaudible). So, I think it's two related but distinct issues : establishing inside America a new climate of trust and respect that goes across the political spectrum, and number two - reaching out to others. Because you cannot build a fence around this country. Our best security is through engagement abroad and by law(?). So, we've got to have people - men and women in office - who understand that and can do it. Thank you.
(applause)

There's one fly that's buzzing around this podium. (laughter) It must have come in from Arkansas or something. (more laughter) I've never seen any flies like this in New Jersey. (more laughter)

Young man: It's nice to meet you. Um. What are your opinions on President Bush's economic and foreign policies?
(much laughter)

General Clark: On the foreign policy, I don't think he's got real good strategy. (more laughter) On the economic policy, what he's done is he's tilted in favor of wealthier Americans. If you look at the economic statistics you find that actually, except for two or three years at the end of the Clinton Administration, ordinary Americans' real income- people in the sort of middle fifth of the American income distribution - their real income hasn't gone up since the 1970's. Even though they're working harder, more women are in the workforce, income hasn't gone up. In fact, the minimum wage hasn't kept pace with inflation. But if you look at the amount of wealth controlled by the top 1% of the income, you'll find it's more than doubled over those thirty years. This is part of a strategy of- it's part of an historic change in ideas. It's... The ideas of the Democratic Party about income distribution and the economy really, they really started with Theodore Roosevelt, and he was are first Democratic president, even though he belonged to the other party) crowd chuckles), and you know he busted up the trusts. He believed in the environment, and after Roosevelt we ended up with the progressive income tax, the direct election of senators, women got to vote, social security came in, and Lyndon Johnson brought Medicare in. It was great for the Democratic vision. The Republican vision is different. The Republican vision is that the less government the better, that if you just let everyone alone and let them go their own way that somehow everything's going to work out for alright for everybody and that people will more or less get what they deserve. I was looking recently at the movie "Wall Street." I don't know how many of you remember it, but one of the main characters in there is a man named Gordon Gecko, who's portrayed by Michael Douglas, and in it he gives what I believe is the Republican Party creed. He says, "GREED IS GOOD!" And he goes on to explain, "GREED CLARIFIES! GREED STRENGTHENS! Greed is what's made all the progress possible in mankind." And in the Democratic Party what we believe is that people should be free to do what they want but that you also have to have some help from the government to keep the playing field level to make sure everybody has an equal opportunity. So, what I see in President Bush's economic policy is he's tilted too far in favor of promoting people with a lot of money at the expense of ordinary Americans. I'll give you an example. I was on an airplane coming out of Little Rock and a woman right next to me- she's a young woman, attractively dressed, and, um, we were in one of these little tiny jets, so it was pretty hard not to say hello. (crowd chuckles) And she said she's to Tulsa to sell medical equipment and she was maybe in her late 20's, and so we began to talk about things. And so, it was just after the Bush tax cuts had been passed and I asked her if she understood- I said, "Did you get a tax cut?" She said, "Oh yes, I sure did." I said, "Can you (inaudible) tell me how much it was?" She said, "I think I got, you know, 30 or 40 dollars a month." I said, "Well, do you understand that some people got tens of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars out of this tax cut?" She says, "Well no, I didn't really think about that." I said, "Do you understand what that means?" She said, "Well, we were taught in school that you have to give money wealthy people, because they're the ones that make jobs for the rest of us." (crown chuckles) And I said, "Well, who taught you that?" (laughter) She said, "Well, our economics professor did at Southern(?) State University." And I mean, it is a set of ideas called trickle-down economics. And, but you know I'm out there for this every day in the economy. And so I go out there to see my friends in Aspen and their house prices have quadrupled in four years. Along the North Carolina coast, and Cape Cod, on the Pacific coast, and all resort areas where people want to live house prices are way up. Some people say it's the lower interest rate, but that accounts for places across the country. I'm talking about desirable locations. What that money does is that money gets spent on high priced real estate, running up the prices. It gets put in savings accounts, and it gets used in investments abroad and luxury trips and so forth. If you want to create jobs in this country, you gotta get ordinary people enough money to meet their basic needs. That's the way America got to be a great economy and that's what we've got to do if we're going to keep it a great economy. So, I disagree with President Bush...
(applause)

Man: I basically agree with what you've said, however I still have a problem with the Democratic Party. I believe that the Democratic Party has lost from the Mississippi to the Colorado, and the question that really needs to be answered - apart from just saying what the matter with the current administration's policies, which I think are horrendous - is what does the Democratic Party have to do to regain middle America?

(Someone whispers, "Nominate Wes Clark.")

General Clark: Well, it's a great question. And two years ago, before I was a Democrat I could have ducked that question. (laughter) I guess now I have to answer it, because I'm now trying to help the Democratic Party regain middle America. I'll tell you what we can do. Number one is we have to understand how to articulate our own values. We haven't done a very good job of that. I tried to say earlier, let me just practice it again. We believe in- we believe in treating every individual with dignity and respect. We believe in equal opportunity. We believe human potential is unlimited, and it's the purpose of government to provide the conditions in which people can realize that potential. We believe in a strong America, but an America that uses force ONLY as a last resort. So, those are some of the things we believe as Democrats. But if you look at politics, politics is really about labeling. It's about branding image, celebrity and brand image. So, we have a brand image as Democrats. You know what it is. It been given to us by- you can see it on O'Reilly almost every night, or Hannity and Colmes, (laughter) but it's there in every election. What it says is the Democrats believe in big government. They believe in higher taxes. They believe in taking away your guns. They believe in immorality and big support for Hollywood. That's what, in the public mind, Democrats are. That's the brand image. We've got to change that. Look, Democrats are the party of family. We believe in family values. We believe in family values like education, work, health care, and retirement security, because if you don't have those values out therein this society and you don't live those values, you can't have families We're---
(applause)
We're a party of faith. We're a party where people are- most Democrats believe in God, and most of those who don't, most of them have some spiritual dimension to the, whether it be meditation or believe in a supreme being that they don't, you know, personify or whatever. I've asked at a Democratic gathering. And you know, I've got kind of a checkered religious history myself. My father was Jewish. My mother was Methodist. When my father died we moved back to Arkansas, and my mother told me to pick a church. I picked a Baptist Church. I was brought up a Baptist, and then I married a Catholic. (laughter) Now we go to Second Presbyterian Church in Little Rock. (laughter) Just about every religion I've ever studied or been associated with has one (inaudible) in common : that if you given more privileges, more advantages in life that you have an obligation to help those who are less privileged and less advantaged. Now there's only one political party in America that stands for that and acts on that and that's the Democratic Party. So the Republicans would have you believe that all of morality is about sex. It's about gay marriage or it's about abortion, that immorality equals licentious sexual conduct, and morality equals good sexual conduct. So, how can you believe that if you look at the principles of the Republican Party and you think about other elements of morality and fairness. I mean, what Jesus said was- he didn't say that thou shalt not have gay sex. (laughter) Jesus said love thy neighbor as thyself. And it's---
(applause)
My friend down in Tennessee, Congressman Lincoln Davis - he was one of my first supporters- I went down there to see him in November when I was running a couple of years ago. I got in the cab of his pickup truck, and we drove out to this little meeting. He said, "You know, I'm having a lot of trouble down here in this district," he said, "because I'm a Democrat here and of course there's strong opposition from these Republicans," he said, he said, "and I'm just not going to be out-gunned, out-Godded, or out-gayed." (laughter) He said, "Some of my people think of me and they say, 'Congressman,' they said, they say, 'Y'all gotta stop this talk about all this gay marriage.' They said, 'You're going to ruin our marriages with that kind of talk.' " He said," I turned to them and I said, 'Boys, the only thing that's going to ruin your marriage is running around with somebody else's wife.' "
(laughter and applause)
That's the (inaudible) of straight talk that I think the Democrats have to give out across America. And we ought to tell it like it is, and if we do we'll take- we'll take this country back, because we have the values and the commitment and the compassion to lead this country.
That's a political speech, (laughter), but you asked me.
(laughter and applause)

Young women: (She's very difficult to understand, because she's crying. She talks about growing up in fear and hopelessness in Bosnia and looking to the US for leadership and hope. Now she's come to the US and we've lost that leadership. Our leaders are just sitting there while people are suffering.)

General Clark: Well I think that leaders are shaped by their experiences, and I think that when you have a leader of a country who doesn't have much experience in foreign policy he brings a set of attributes , but he doesn't bring the human dimension to it. I can just tell you about my own experience. I went to Bosnia the first time in 1994, and I met Mladic, and I met Izetbegovic, and I met Sladic(?), and I met the Croatian leadership later that year. And I began to understand what was happening in the country in human terms. And I then thought about my own experience growing up in Arkansas, and the potential divides in America, and I thought if these people in the Balkans who look so much alike, who speak the same language, have so much in common, and live within the borders of a single state can fight each other that way that how terrible if that spirit got loose on the world. And so we worked very hard to bring peace to the Balkans. We saw it in terms that were universalistic, not just for that (inaudible) country, because Richard Holbrooke and I and other people on our delegation, we viewed it through our own experiences. I think the current administration doesn't see it that way. When I first got out of the military, I thought to myself, 'Well I can work in politics. I want to run both sides. So, I'll call Condi Rice. I don't know her.' So, I said, "I'd like to come over and visit with you." This is the summer of 2001(?), the year she was elected in there. And so she said, "Don't worry, I'll come over and see you." So she came in and met me, and we began to talk. And she left me with three general ideas. She said, "Number 1," she said, "YOU ALL," pointing at me and the Clinton Administration, i guess, "HAVE SCREWED UP RELATIONS WITH RUSSIA!" She said, "PUTIN CAN BE OUR FRIEND, and we're going to work with him!" I said, "I think Putin is, you know, strong KGB background. I think he's trouble. (laughter) And then she says, "WE'RE GOING TO RE-DEPLOY US FORCES! WE DON'T BELIEVE IN PEACEKEEPING! AND WE'RE GOING TO PUT OUR FORCES WHERE THEY HAVE TO FIGHT! LET THE OTHER NATIONS DO PEACEKEEPING!" Now we're involved in the most difficult, complex, peacekeeping, nation building exercise in history. And she said, "We don't have any business in the Balkans." She sad, "That's a European problem, and we shouldn't be over there." So, I realized that there was no home for me (laughter) in that administration, because those are three things I don't believe in. And the truth is that we still have problems in the Balkans, because this administration hasn't been actively engaged in helping broker the kinds of solutions we need, both in Kosova and in the areas associated with the breakup the former Yugoslavia. The truth is that the administration took us to a war we didn't have to fight without doing the planning that they needed to do for the nation building that inevitably had to come afterwards. And the truth is that our base in world affairs is Europe. It's the Europeans. They're the one group in the world that most share our values, and cultural history, and if we stay with Europe we command almost half the world's gross domestic product, three out of five permanent seats on the UN Security Council. We can- we can shape the outcome of human history. And if we go at odds with Europe we will be taken apart, and our values and interests will be in great jeopardy. So, I think it's a matter of experience, and this administration - again I'm sounding partisan, I don't mean to - but this administration came to office without a lot of fresh, practical experience, and they're learning the hard way at what I believe is the expense of this country. If you look at the second term of this administration, I think they're trying to do a better job of reaching out to the Europeans. They certainly want to do a good job nation building now. (laughter) And I don't think they're looking for any more places for our soldiers to fight, but I could be wrong. (laughter)

This is the last question.

Young man: General Clark, you denounced Bush's creation of the Patriot Act, and it's recently come up for renewal. I've seen in an interview that you said it suspended Habeas Corpus, (inaudible) reconsideration and review. What specific elements of the Patriot Act are a priority, and what needs to be changed and how?

General Clark: Um first of all, the whole search and seizure provisions of the Patriot Act, to my mind, have gone overboard. I don't see any reason why we can't go through a normal judicial warrant process for both wire-tapping and communications intercept and searches. I don't think they have to be no-knock searches. Look, drug abuse and terrorism are two entirely different things. The reason we have protections on our civil liberties is because the Founding Fathers knew that the greatest threat to freedom is the zeal in the excess of governmental powers, excessive zeal and excessive powers. They, after all, were trying to provide liberty and the escape from what they view as a tyranny of George III and England. That's the reason they established a government with Separation of Powers. So, what the Patriot Act has done is it has restricted the oversight of the courts on the actions of the Executive Branch, and because of the domination of Congress by one party, it has inhibited legislative review. When John Ashcroft took over after the Patriot Act.....
(tape ends)