E-mail a friendSen. Chris Dodd
airdate June 18, 2007
Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd is serving his 6th term in the Senate and is a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. He chairs the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee and has authored several significant bills, including the Help America Vote Act and a law requiring Internet service provider assistance to help parents screen Web content. He also formed the Senate's first children's caucus. Before serving three terms in the House, Dodd practiced law and was a Peace Corp volunteer.
Senator Chris Dodd discusses why he's running for president. (2:34)
Sen. Chris Dodd
Tavis: On June 28th, as you may know, I'm pleased - Senator Chris Dodd and his fellow Democratic presidential hopefuls will join me on the campus of Howard University in Washington for the first “All-American Presidential Forum” right here in prime time on PBS. The five-term U.S. senator from Connecticut is the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and a member of the influential Foreign Affairs Committee.
Among his many accomplishments in the Senate, his successful seven-year campaign to pass the Family and Medical Leave Act. Senator Dodd, nice to have you on the program.
Sen. Chris Dodd: Tavis, nice to be with you. Thanks for having me.
Tavis: Good to see you.
Dodd: Good to see you.
Tavis: I want to come back to that Family Medical Leave Act in a moment. Let me start, though, given that you're on the Foreign Relations Committee, the Middle East - Lord, what do we do right about now?
Dodd: Well thank you for asking me at the head of the show. I was doing a national TV show a couple of years ago and the host said, "We have 30 seconds left, Senator. The Middle East." (Laughter) So I'm very grateful to you for staring the show with it, anyway.
Tavis: Yeah, okay, fair enough.
Dodd: We may get through it before the end of it. Well, listen, recent events - this all begins from neglect, in my view. You go back six years - and I say this respectfully, but I recall very, very vividly at the end of the Clinton administration, the transition was occurring, George Bush had been elected. In fact, I was sitting with President Clinton and Colin Powell, and I remember President Clinton more or less saying the following words: "We hope you'll carry on."
The Camp David that Clinton had tried had not worked, came very close. And - but urged him not to necessarily do exactly what he'd done, but to carry this on, to keep it going. And I'll never forget that shortly after January 20, 2001, the president inaugurated, the decision was made (unintelligible) the quote in the paper, to put the Middle East on the back burner.
Well, you can never do that. That's where it all begins, in my view. It was a result of that that the Intifada started. Then the decision to have all these immediate elections in the area that created even more of a difficulty, given the fact that Fatah and the Palestinian Authority was going to gain some ground there clearly because - Hamas, rather, would, because Fatah was not delivering services and the like.
So when you neglected the region, I think the Bush decision to neglect the region really had a major, major factor. The United States and Republican and Democrat administrations has always understood the important role we play in being the honest broker here. And today, obviously, what you've got is you've got the Palestinian Authority - you had almost a coup occur, really. And as a result you've got this great division and the bloodshed occurring.
Amnesty International, human rights organizations have been denouncing Hamas for what's gone on in the last several days over there - last week or so now. So my hope is, and under a Dodd administration, we'd be back reengaged. I'd be asking a senior well-known individual to be there on the ground.
I don't think the United States can neglect the area, and you have to sit down and even talk with people you don't like. The idea we're not talking to the Syrians, we're not talking to the Iranians because we disagree with them, treating diplomacy as if it were a gift to your opponents or a sign of weakness is a major, major shortcoming.
The art of statecraft has been abandoned by this administration. We've neglected Latin America. We've not done as much as we should in places all over the world, the Middle East being one of the major examples of that.
Tavis: Since we're in that area of the world, you, like everybody else, practically, in the Senate, voted for what President Bush wanted when the Iraq war -
Dodd: That's correct.
Tavis: - first came up. How do you navigate that conversation on the campaign trail now?
Dodd: Well, I'm old enough to know that I make mistakes. And I'm not - I don't like to admit them, but when you have them, I think the honest thing to do is to admit them. Two things people in public never like to say: "I made a mistake" and "I don't know." Two answers to questions - don't do them too often, but they're legitimate answers to things. (Laughter)
And clearly - listen, I'm angry because I was relying on information where I think the books were cooked, the numbers were fabricated, the information was false. I relied on that. I regret having done that. We should have probed even deeper, in my view, and I didn't do it. So I admit making a mistake, and that's an important question and a relevant question.
I think the more important question, Tavis, is what do we do from here in this situation? And there, I've been an advocate for some time of beginning redeployment early. I'd start it now, and I'd complete it by the end of March. I've offered that idea going back to the first part of this year. I say that only because I don't think the Iraqis are going to come together politically or religiously in the absence of the clear understanding that our military presence there is coming to an end.
And I think if they know that, there's a slight possibility they may decide to be a nation-state and work together. Now, I wouldn't just end it there. I think you've got to use, again, your tools that are available to you - diplomacy, economic power, political power, again, to deal with people in the region. Not necessarily people you agree with or like, but again a major power in the world cannot neglect this area, it's important to us. And have a robust diplomatic effort here.
That's something we've hardly engaged in at all. When I went to Syria last year for the first time, the administration literally begged me not to go, not to sit down and talk with Assad. And I finally went this year and met with him and talked with him - excuse me, in December of last year. And there discovered that he had sort of the same interests we did in Iraq.
That is a stable, pluralistic Arab Muslim society. He did not want an Iranian, Shia-dominated, fundamentalist state on his border. I was stunned that the administration waited so long before they even had a conversation with Syria about that.
Tavis: Let me ask you a two-part question about your running for the White House, beyond those contemporary issues. You've got 27 years in the Senate under your belt. You are the quintessential example - you want to see what a safe seat means, look up safe seat in the dictionary and you see a picture of Chris Dodd. You have as safe a seat as there is in the -
Dodd: I work at it. (Laughs)
Tavis: Well, and you've earned it. But you've got a safe seat in the Senate after 27 years, number one - why run for president with that? And how does it make you feel when you look at these young rock stars, as the media likes to call them - you got Obama, you got Clinton, you got Edwards. The three of them combined don't have the number of years in the Senate that you have, and yet they're the frontrunners in this race.
Dodd: Well if I - almost any other race I can think of in years past that I'd stood up and said, "Look, I have 26 years in the Senate," that would have been a disqualifier, automatically. I think you come through six years of on-the-job training with George Bush, I think people realize experience does matter. Experience about how to bring people together.
When I wrote the Family and Medical Leave Act, the childcare legislation, started the Children's Caucus, dealt with Head Start, all of these issues over the years, I did so with conservative Republicans. I found them out; got them to work with me because I realized one party's not going to decide all these issues. You've got to have the ability to bring people together and get it done. I'm also a first-time father. I have a five-year-old and a two-year-old. I'm a late bloomer.
Tavis: You're a late father, yeah.
Dodd: I'm a late bloomer (unintelligible). I say there may be snow on the mountaintop, but that's it. (Laughter) And my daughter Grace was born less than 48 hours after 9/11, in Arlington, Virginia. From the hospital where she was born, you could see the Pentagon smoldering. And I asked myself the same question parents have asked for eons: "What sort of a world, what sort of my country is my child going to grow up in?"
And someday, she's going to ask her father, "What did you do at the outset of the 21st century to get this right?" And you're right, I like my work in the Senate, you can do a lot of good things. If you really want to change things, though, there's one office where change occurs, and that's the Oval Office of the White House. And I decided that this time around, I'd jump in and get involved. I didn't dream about doing this when I was five and 10. It's not been a lifetime ambition for me, which is one of the disadvantages, to some degree. Haven't been working at this for a long time over the years. And as far as the other candidates go, they're good people.
First, I work with them, I've known them, and I've gotten to know them over the last several years, and we each bring strengths, I think, to this. And they have their own strengths; I have mine, which I described to you - the experience, the background of bringing people together. A sense of hope and confidence and experience, the combination, in many, many ways.
And again, I think we've got to win this race. I think it's critically important we change direction. I'm very worried about what we're doing at home. I'm very worried about where we stand in the world of moral authority.
I was a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1960s in Latin America. I speak Spanish fluently; I have a strong interest in that part of the world. And it was stunning to me to watch an American president have to hide out when he went down there, back earlier this spring. Couldn't be seen in public in Latin America.
That has got to change if the United States is going to play a constructive role in the world in helping us get back on track.
Tavis: Clearly, one does not have to be a father or be a parent to work on championing legislation like the Family and Medical Leave Act. You did that before you were a father. But what have you learned or what are you learning from being a father later in life, consistent with your public policy values?
Dodd: Well, it's a lot of hard work. You might be well-educated and a lot of other things, but being a parent requires a whole different skill set. And it's one thing to talk about intellectually, but I'm brought up short every day by that five-year-old and two-year-old (laughter) who remind me very quickly about my shortcomings.
Tavis: “This ain't the U.S. Senate, Daddy.”
Dodd: That's right. I'm not a senator when I walk in that door.
Tavis: Exactly.
Dodd: And knowing what opportunities could happen for them. I sat there the other day, Travis, I go to a little public pre-school on Capitol Hill, and I was sitting there, as I do from time to time, and watching. And I began to fantasize; I wonder where she might do her junior year abroad in college? And I started thinking about places, and I wasn't thinking about Baghdad or Riyadh.
I was thinking about Paris or London, maybe, or Madrid. And every time I thought of a place I said, “No, I don't think she can go there, it's too dangerous, in a sense.” So I want them to have the same opportunities and hopes.
I'm very fearful that you and I are going to be a part of a generation that may leave the first generation of Americans with a lot less opportunity than every other generation has received.
Albeit not great, but there's always been some sense of movement forward. And I'm very worried that's not going to happen. And they're going to ask both you and I, not just me, what did you do on your watch to get this right? And I'm reminded every day that we've got an obligation to give them at least a chance to maximize their potential and opportunities.
Tavis: Our time is running short here. Tell me what the most critical piece of legislation is - or not legislation, issue. The most critical issue you're working on right now in the Banking Committee for everyday Americans.
Dodd: Well, credit cards and subprime lending. Care both about them deeply. I'm a fan of credit cards, I like them, but the average person has over $9,000 in revolving debt. We almost have a negative savings rate. These fees and charges that have been posed by the credit card industry have been devastating to me in wiping people out.
Access to capital - 10 million households in this country have never been to a bank, a thrift, or a savings and loan institution. They rely on check cashing operations, payday operations, money, wiring operations here. Wealth creation and people having some equity interest in their homes, in their neighborhoods - that's the best antidote, ultimately.
A good job is the best social program anyone ever created, and giving people a chance to improve their lot economically, to be able to own something - that's the way you clean up a neighborhood, make a difference in a community, if people have a sense of that.
And I'm very worried about these predators that are going out there and taking advantage of people, and I'm determined to straighten that back out and, once again, make that opportunity of wealth creation in places where people have not had that opportunity and advantage is a major goal of mine as my new chairmanship of the Banking Committee.
Tavis: His name is Chris Dodd, of course. Longtime senator from the state of Connecticut will be one of the eight Democrats joining us, again, on June 28th in prime time right here on PBS for the first of two All-American presidential debates. The Republicans will join us, of course, in September - September 27th on the campus of Morgan State. We will see Senator Dodd and his colleagues to discuss more in-depth issues that matter to all Americans. We will see you there.
Dodd: Thank you, Tavis.
Tavis: Glad to have you here in L.A.
Dodd: Nice to be with you.
Tavis: Nice to have you here, Senator Dodd.
Back to June 18, 2007