E-mail a friendDennis Prager
airdate November 2, 2004
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk show host. He's also a lecturer and columnist whose writings have appeared in major national and international publications. Prager taught Russian and Jewish history at Brooklyn College and was appointed by President Reagan to the U.S. Delegation to the Vienna Review Conference on the Helsinki Accords. The Los Angeles Times has called him "an amazingly gifted man and moralist."
Dennis Prager
Tavis: Tonight, we look back at the campaign of 2004 to dissect what each campaign did right, what they did wrong, and what some of the key moments were leading up to this election, and for that matter, I suspect, we'll talk about what political and social issues we'll continue to debate even after today in this place called America.
I'm pleased to be joined again by Antonio Gonzalez, president of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project; Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, law professor at both UCLA and Columbia, and a contributor to my NPR show--as is Antonio, for that matter; Dennis Prager, the host of his own syndicated radio show, speaking of radio shows, based here in L.A.; and last, but certainly not least, Arianna Huffington, syndicated columnist and author of 'Fanatics and Fools.' Glad to have you back. Nice to see you again. You look rested.
Let me throw some things out that happened in this campaign, some key moments, and you can tell me what was right about the moment, what was wrong about the moment, what was good about the moment, what was bad about the moment, because there were clearly moments. Remember the phrase 'Mission accomplished?' Arianna, was that a good moment? A bad moment? Was he right to say that? Wrong to say that?
Arianna Huffington: Well, he was obviously incredibly wrong to say that, because ironically, the minute he said that, we began to see that not only wasn't the mission accomplished in Iraq, but the real fighting began after that moment. I mean, we lost more soldiers, more marines, after the president pronounced, 'Mission accomplished' than before. On top of it, remember we had all that back and forth with the White House saying this was not their idea when we discovered, in fact, the White House had prepared the banner that said 'Mission accomplished.'
Tavis: Dennis, when you win or when you lose, if you're smart, you look back and assess what you did right, what you did wrong. Certainly, folk who will want to run 4 years from now will look at what you did right or wrong. When history looks back at that statement, 'Mission accomplished,' what are they gonna say?
Dennis Prager: I don't know if history will look back, frankly, at that. I don't know how significant it will play in history. It is an effective rhetorical tool. I acknowledge that. I could--if you want to know a generalized assessment of what I think might have been a mistake, I'll speak from the side that I've supported, the president's reelection. I thought that there was one point that should have been made over and over which was almost never made by the Republicans, and I don't know why. Maybe there was a good reason. But Senator Kerry frequently says--it's his basic appeal in foreign policy--we have to have the support of the United Nations and our allies, and then we can go to war. Well, we had the support of the United Nations and our allies in the first Gulf
War to remove Saddam from Kuwait, and he voted against that. And I think if that would have been drummed home over and over to the American people, it would have utterly undermined the credibility of his statement that he really cares about the U.N. and France.
Tavis: When we look back on these debates, Kimberle, President Bush wanted to start with foreign policy. He thought that was his strong point. Most believed that John Kerry cleaned his clock in the first debate. For that matter, won. The other debates that they had, when history looks back on these debates, what's gonna be said about the impact that they had, or didn't have, as it were, on the outcome?
Kimberle Williams Crenshaw: Yeah. I think when history looks back, what one frame might be, that Kerry tried to present himself as a good manager, a better manager of both the war, the economy, social issues, more or less playing to those who were undecided or those in the middle. The question will be whether he made a mistake in not really trying to fire up the base more. Is good management a real tool to get out the base? Clearly, President Bush played to his base, both in the debate and in the rest of the campaign. I think the question will be, was it a matter of really going to the moral source of what your appeal is that won this election, or whether it was focusing on management issues for those who were undecided and taking for granted, for the most part, those who you think are gonna vote Democrat.
Tavis: One of the things I'm not gonna miss hearing, Antonio--two things I'm not gonna miss hearing: Swift boat and 527s. I'm sick of hearing Swift boat and 527s, but they clearly had an impact in this campaign. What are we gonna be saying years from now about the advent, about the involvement of these 527s, and what might, in the coming days or years, be done about these so-called 527s?
Antonio Gonzalez: Well, the 527s, lamentably, showed the failure of the McCain-Feingold legislation to take 'soft money' out of big party, big partisan politics. More soft money was spent than in any presidential election. About a billion-five was raised and spent by both campaigns and all the auxiliary organizations. And you have to think, just as a person of either party of good conscience and looking at the health of American democracy, that immediate legislation has to move forward to abolish 527s, as well, and get back on the road to campaign reform where you don't have, essentially, the super-wealthy in America having their own political party and affecting the outcome of campaigns. It's just not good for democracy. This time, the Democrats benefited. Before, the Republicans had benefited. It's not a good thing.
Tavis: It wasn't just a--you want to say something about that?
Huffington: Yeah, I just want to say the other thing that we never want to hear again for a very long time is 'undecided voter.' You know, first of all, it's, like, if you were paying attention and you are still undecided after 4 years, there's something wrong with you.
Tavis: Antonio calls them persuadables.
Gonzalez: That's an additional category, persuadables.
Huffington: But then, beyond that, and Dennis and I actually agree on that, I'm just really concerned about the dominance of polling and polling results and focus groups and such in our electoral process. It dominated the coverage of this election. Every show started--except yours, Tavis, thank you very much--with the announcement of the horse race in the latest polls. The poll, very dramatically, you had swings in polls, which would have meant that millions of people changed their minds, which clearly did not happen. And yet they were treated with a kind of reverence that ancient Romans gave to chicken entrails.
Prager: It puts the media back in the spotlight becauseo 'Look at us.' Not look at the candidates. 'Look at us. We're the pollsters.' It's not healthy. I couldn't agree more.
As you said, we do--I just need to say though on the 527s, if this is a classic conservative/ liberal divide, the liberal says--and both in good faith, by the way, I'm not one to impugn motives--but the liberal says, as Antonio did eloquently, 'Well, we need more legislation to curb 527s.' See, I believe we should have no legislation on money given. I wanted to run for the U.S. Senate from California, but I don't have any money. The reason--it is utterly thanks to liberal notions of campaign finance reform that the majority of senators are multi-millionaires, some hundred millionaires, because they can spend $100 million on their campaign. I have no money. So I have to ask you for 2,000, and you for 2,000, and you for 2,000, all thanks to this cockamamie campaign finance reform, which is anti-democratic.
Tavis: But, Dennis, it is true that more often than not--the numbers are pretty clear about this--it's the Republicans who have much deeper pockets. Indeed in this election--
Prager: That's not true. No. No.
Tavis: George Bush miserably outspent John Kerry in this race.
Prager: No. No. Kerry--it is not true. Kerry spent--
Gonzalez: Because of 527s.
Tavis: All of it's because of the 527s is my point.
Prager: George Soros alone can trounce the whole--how much?
Gonzalez: 23 million.
Prager: $23 million from one man from the Democratic agenda.
Huffington: No, actually, in this race, money was not an issue. The Republican advantage of money was not there in this race.
Prager: That's right.
Tavis: I think George Bush, Arianna, respectfully, I think George Bush being up $30, $35 million with a week or two to go is significant, what you can use the last few days.
Huffington: I think that I would like to agree with both Antonio and Dennis and say what we need is public financing of campaigns.
Gonzalez: I agree with that.
Huffington: And I know you do, Antonio. But just regulating the 527s isn't going to solve the problem. Something else will emerge.
Tavis: Let me jump in and move this so we can cover some more issues here. Dennis, let me start with you on this. It wasn't just the 527s that had an impact on what happened inside of the ring. A lot of other people had an impact this time around. 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' Michael Moore. All of the books from the left and the right. I looked one day at The New York Times best-seller list. Like, 10 of the top 15 books were all political books, from both the left and the right. Talk to me about the outside influence of documentaries and books, et cetera, on what happened in the arena this time around.
Prager: Look, from my selfish perspective, it's great. I write, I have a radio talk show. This is awesome.
Huffington: You just need a polling company.
Prager: That's right. That's what I lack.
Tavis: Start a polling firm, you're OK. Yeah.
Prager: That's a vibrant democracy, that people are writing on both sides. I thought 'Fahrenheit 9/11' was, and I rarely use this, it was trash. Not because I didn't agree with it, but because I thought it was dishonest. But the idea that non-politicians will now help persuade people on how to vote is intrinsically a very good thing. I have no problem.
Huffington: The great phenomenon of this election was the power of the Internet, and the power of grass roots organizing with MoveOn, with act--
Tavis: Howard Dean back in the day raisin' all that money.
Huffington: Exactly. We saw, first of all, that small contributors, when they come together, can have a huge impact that overwhelms big contributors. And we saw the power of organizing through the Internet like never before, and that can be used again after this election to actually drive policy.
Gonzalez: That may be one of the demarcation points with this campaign and previous campaigns, is the return of the ground operations to center stage. You know, for 20 years, maybe 30 years, the political professionals have poo-po...d grass roots ground-organizing, talking about media as the way to go. But in this election you have a tremendous increase in voter participation, tremendous increase in intensity of interest across the spectrum. I think a lot of that has to do with the investment, not only of the parties, but of other groups, civic groups, in turning out what's called occasional voters and new voters for the presidential race.
Crenshaw: The cost was polarization. I mean, that's the reality of the situation. A lot of it was reaction to 2000, a lot of it was reaction to the sense that there was an attempt to repress the vote, and that, in turn, I think, perhaps backfired. It might be a good thing at the end of the day, but we have to consider the fact that one of the things that brought people out was a fear that they weren't going to be able to vote.
Tavis: Let me throw a few issues out here in the time that we have left, because I suspect, even after today, these issues--and I want us to hit-and-quit right fast here--are not going to go away. These are the issues that we are going to be continuing to debate in the days and weeks and months and years to come, and I wonder where our body politic goes around these issues. Let me just throw them out right quick. Dennis, we'll start with you. The issue of gay marriage. It ain't goin' away.
Prager: It's not going away, and obviously this was an election that will determine what happens to it because the Supreme Court can nullify all of the constitutional changes that every state seems to be enacting. Virtually every single state is amending its constitution to say that marriage is man and woman, one man and one woman. The only way that can be undone is by a Supreme Court saying that that violates the federal constitution. And that would be a tragedy, not because I happen to believe that we should have one man, one woman, but because the more that the Supreme Court decides, as opposed to legislatures and elections, the more alienated the American people will be from the Supreme Court and from our institutions.
Tavis: I can only get two responses to each of these to cover so many of them, so Kimberle, you go to this one.
Crenshaw: Well, so by that measure, the American public should be deeply alienated by this Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has turned over lots of legislation, from legislation supporting children in gun-free school zones, legislation supporting violence against women, anti-discrimination. The point is that no one side of this debate has the upper hand when it comes to judicial activism, and that was unfortunately an issue that did not come up in this debate nearly as much as it should've.
Tavis: Let me take that then and move on right quick then. Speaking of judicial activism, the issue of what this Supreme Court is going to look like, not to mention Mr. Rehnquist's bout with thyroid cancer. And he's 80 now. The youngest member of the Court, Clarence Thomas, is 56. There are four members on the Court who are over the age of 65. Professor Crenshaw, the issue of the Supreme Court.
Crenshaw: There is absolutely going to be an opportunity to completely change the tenor of constitutional law for the rest of our lifetimes. Unfortunately, most people don't focus on that. If they are voting for an issue, they're voting for president. A president's gonna be around for four years to shape policy, but he can appoint justices who will have the final word. We know that from the election last time. And that final word will last over decades. The problem is, as George Stephanopoulos said a few days ago, it's a bank shot. It's hard to get people to see you elect a president who appoints a court. It was a major failing, I think, not to discuss it.
Tavis: Arianna, stem cell research, another issue that's not going away any time soon.
Huffington: And it is actually a great issue in this campaign because it showed the degree of fanaticism on George Bush's side when basically he disregarded science, he disregarded the healing powers of science for the sake of assuaging a minority, you know, a very galvanized minority in his own party. And that kind of dismissal of science, both when it came to stem cell research and when it came to global warming, showed something very disturbing about the Bush-Cheney team.
Tavis: I know Dennis disagreed with you on this issue, but for the moment, though, tell me how much more polarized, how much more--there's never been a demarcation on this, but it seems to me to have gotten worse--how much more we're going to see the mixing of science and politics, or in your mind with this president, um, politicians ignoring science?
Huffington: Well, what is interesting about the stem cell issue is that it cuts across party lines. I mean, you had Ron Reagan and Nancy Reagan and a lot of Republicans, especially those who have family members suffering from one of the diseases that could be cured through the use of stem cells. We see that this is an issue that can actually, ironically, bring us together, for those of us, at least, who believe that science has the place to play in a modern democracy.
Tavis: We raised this issue last night a little bit, Antonio, and I said I wanted to come back to it tonight, the issue of the polarization of our politics. That issue again not going away as I see it at least any time soon where with every election, certainly now two in a row, half the American public is P.O.'d because their guy didn't win. But I don't see it getting any better. I'm not suggesting that Americans were ever united on all these political issues. We've had a 2-party system for a long time, but am I the only one who thinks that the polarization of our politics is gonna get worse in the coming years and not better?
Gonzalez: I think we're in for a period of intense competition between--
Tavis: Intense is a nice word. It's ugly, Antonio, it's ugly.
Gonzalez: That's your characterization, not mine. I mean, you know, that's just the way it is.
Tavis: Mine and Dennis' dad from last night--remember this now--he said Bush was the most hated guy he's ever seen, but go ahead.
Gonzalez: We're gonna undergo a period of transition in America. There's dramatic demographic change underneath all of this with people of color growing at, you know, fast rates, and there's an aging white majority that's gonna, you know, ultimately exit its role as the hegemonic group in American society. There's a lot of issues that are gonna, you know, flow from that.
That being said, this next administration, I think the challenge is going to be to govern more from the center than the previous one did, and that has been a contributing factor to the polarization that we've seen over the last four years. And some of it is gonna be based--not a small part of it is gonna be based around the 500-pound purple elephant in the room which is that war in Iraq, which ultimately, it's gotta be--an adequate exit strategy has gotta be found.
Tavis: But, Arianna, they said four years ago that if President Bush were smart, he would have governed from the center. He said he wanted to do that--be a uniter, not a divider--but once one gets in, left or right, your party base pushes you one way or the other, and you get away from that commitment to be the president of all Americans.
Huffington: Well, actually, Tavis, I would like to challenge this left/right division. I don't think it's accurate. I don't think it's left/right, I think it's right/wrong. I don't think that there's anything right about companies with tax shelters overseas not paying their fair share of taxes not thinking there's anything left in opposing that. A lot of the issues we're facing should not be looked at in terms of left/right, and that's partly our fault. Those of us on the progressive side should stop using this way to define where we are because the way to get the mainstream on our side is to show that common sense--
Tavis: But, Dennis, isn't that the problem that nowadays? I mean, there used to be in this country a sense of what was right and what was wrong. One of the reasons why you can't get-- I was in a conversation the other day about why we don't have a values education curriculum in our schools, because even now with parents, you can't necessarily get a clear answer on what parents think is right and wrong to be taught to be to their kids in school. Let's set that aside for the moment, but isn't that the problem? Arianna said--it sounds greato'It's not left/right, it's wrong/right.' But what's wrong and what's right anymore these days?
Prager: Well, first of all, it is right/wrong, but I believe it's right/left, and I think that the left is usually wrong.
Huffington: European tax shelters--
Prager: Oh, that is such a trivial matter in American life.
Huffington: It's not right. $70 billion a year is--
Prager: See, even what we think is huge is even different. I think it's huge that the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that children cannot say in a school, 'God bless my teachers.' To me, that is huger than tax shelters. The left is preoccupied with economics, the right is preoccupied with values and character, so it is a left/right battle and one may prevail, one may not. I do believe we're in the midst of a civil war in this country. I thank God every day it's not violent, but it is a civil war.
Tavis: Speaking of war, Dennis, what about the notion--this so-called Bush doctrine of pre-emptive strike? We are gonna have to deal with this whole notion of whether or not that gets us as a country where we want to go, engaging the world with this notion now of pre-emptive strike. We think you're gonna hit us, we hit you first.
Prager: We went into Korea without being attacked. We went into Vietnam without being attacked. We went into Kosovo without being attacked. We protect Taiwan and we may use troops there. This country fights for good things. We didn't go into Korea for oil. We didn't go into Iraq for oil. It may have been a mistake. It is possible. History will judge that, but it wasn't done for Halliburton. And that's the thing that bothers me about the left, not that they think the war was a mistake. That's an honorable position. It's dishonorable to say it was done for big business.
Tavis: No matter why it was done, though, Dennis, I guess what I'm getting at, trying to get at, is whether or not a policy of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, that gets us where we need to be, trying to live in a global world. Especially if we never find what we said we were going to get.
Prager: Global world. Somebody called me today and said, you know, 'global village.' I said there isn't a global village. It's a global jungle. The United States is the best adversary of the monsters of the jungle. There is no global village. That is a leftist hallucination.
Tavis: But, Dennis, everybody else in the jungle hates us.
Prager: I don't care!
Tavis: You don't care about this? We got to live in this world, Dennis.
Prager: I'd rather we lived--I'd rather we lived, but the strongest country doing good will have people hate it.
Huffington: But you know what? It is very important here to look at the fact that we were misled into this war, and that's really the key thing. The level of trust towards our government is greatly diminished because we were told that there was an imminent threat, a grave, a gathering threat. I'm using words this president and members of his administration used, and there was no imminent threat. So that is really the heart of the problem. We went to war to protect ourselves, when in fact, we made ourselves less safe.
Crenshaw: I see a more fundamental problem now. Not so much what the world thinks of us, which is important, but we really are at a point where we are stretching our ability to do both the global policing that we say we want to do and basically maintain quality of life of our citizens. I come from Canton, Ohio. It's probably the battleground state.
Tavis: NFL Hall of Fame, Canton, Ohio.
Crenshaw: NFL Hall of Fame. There, Ohioans lost 20% of the industrial jobs that were lost during the administration, so these folks are actually fighting precisely this battle. Are they going to make a decision that's based on this idea about what's our role in the world or more bread and butter issues? When they're talking about losing jobs, is it enough to say No Child Left Behind was a big accomplishment of our administration? When they're talking about the minimum wage being 50% of what it used to be, is it going to be realistic to say, 'Hey, we're fighting for democracy in the rest of the world?'
Tavis: This election is over, I think. I am certain, though, that the conversations in America about these issues are far from over. But I want to thank for being a part of our conversation for two consecutive nights Antonio Gonzalez, Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, Dennis Prager, Arianna Huffington. Thank you both for giving up two hours--two evenings of your time. I appreciate it and all the best to you.
All: Thank you.
Tavis: Can I say God bless America?
Crenshaw: Yes, you can!
Tavis: God bless America. That's our show for tonight.
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