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| ONE ON ONE:GARY BAUER | |
 November 24, 1999 
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Reagan advisor Gary Bauer is running for the Republican Party's presidential nomination. Campaigning on a conservative, religious platform, Bauer believes America has fallen into a moral decline. Margaret Warner discusses with Bauer his message, campaign, and his bid for the White House.
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Welcome, Mr. Bauer. GARY BAUER, Republican Presidential Candidate: Hi, Margaret. How are you? MARGARET WARNER: Fine. When you announced for President in April, you said there is something wrong with America, and you decried what you called a virtue deficit. GARY BAUER: Right. MARGARET WARNER: Explain that. Is that what's driving this candidacy of yours?
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| Growing up in Sin City | |||||||||||
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MARGARET WARNER: Where did you get this, this notion or this idea that politics or political life could be used to advance moral or social issues like this? GARY BAUER: Well, I'm not sure I'd put it exactly that way. I guess the original idea where I got it is from our founding fathers. They said that only virtuous people could remain free, and the whole system of limited government they gave us was built on the idea that we would restrain ourselves and we would need a big government to do it. But my early involvement in politics and government was back in Newport, Kentucky, where I grew up in the 50s and 60s. It was a town controlled by organized crime. Everybody from the mayor to the police department were on the take. And I saw firsthand and those neighborhoods with the pressure of families, unsafe streets, schools that weren't working, unresponsive political leadership. MARGARET WARNER: It was called "Sin City," was it not, even by Time Magazine? GARY BAUER: That's right. It was an infamous place for its time.
GARY BAUER: Well, it's interesting, because there was open gambling in Newport, including very large casinos, at a time when the rest of America had concluded that gambling was a social ill. Newport doesn't have gambling today. Ironically, the rest of the country has bought into the casinos, but, no, I certainly think that my views on some of these issues were molded there, and I would also have to say, Margaret, that my views about what the Republican Party ought to be saying about government generally and economics were also molded there. My father was a janitor, part-time truck driver. His paycheck lasted till Thursday. The bills lasted till Friday. And I do believe - and one of the points in my campaign is that I think my party has got to be more the party of Main Street, and the average guy, rather than the big corporate sweets. MARGARET WARNER: But you got involved even - you were still a high school student. GARY BAUER: Yes. MARGARET WARNER: And trying to clean up your town. GARY BAUER: A group of businessmen and pastors got together in that area in northern Kentucky. They felt that enough was enough. There were just really horrible things happening in the town. And I was moved to be involved with that. I was seeing some of these problems firsthand in my own family. My own father was a alcoholic. I saw him and other men on the street get off work on Friday and not make it home with their paychecks because of the various problems in Newport. And so at a very early age, I did feel that calling to get involved in government and politics. |
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| A firm stance on pro-life issues | |||||||||||
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MARGARET WARNER: So was the most import thing? If you had to choose one thing that you think, as president, you could do to correct what's wrong with America, to use your phrase -- this virtue deficit, or this moral crisis?
MARGARET WARNER: Your first television ads are coming out on Friday and one of them is about abortion. GARY BAUER: Yes. It is. I know it's an issue that causes all kinds of emotional feelings, but I think we've only made this mistake twice. The first time was in the Dread Scott case when we said to black men and women, slaves, that they had no rights that the rest of us were bound to respect. And we look back on it now and we're astonished that the Supreme Court of the United States could have ever made such a decision. I think 26 years ago they did something comparable when they said that an unborn child really has no constitutional protection. And I think it's going to stick in our throat until we get it right, and I'm willing to debate it in this campaign, unlike a lot of other politicians who say it's a matter of changing hearts and minds but then they run for the tall grass. They never talk about it. How do they expect to change hearts and minds? MARGARET WARNER: But now your three leading Republican opponents, Governor Bush, Senator McCain, Steve Forbes, they all generally espouse these positions, they're all pro-life. What sets you apart? Why would voters choose you? GARY BAUER: Well, there are some big differences here. Governor Bush says he's pro-life, and then the next word is "but, "and then every word after that is an explanation about why he really won't do anything about it. He's not even willing to agree to appoint pro-life justices. That will be a criteria for me. I won't put any bigots on the court and I won't put anybody on the court that thinks our unborn children aren't part of the American family. Senator McCain has got a pro-life voting record but he said the other day that he thought it would be a problem if "Roe Versus Wade" was overturned. I think it would be one of the best days in America. And as far as Steve Forbes, I don't know-- a record ought to count for something. Steve's campaign just three years ago had a very different take on these sorts of issues, and it appears that now he's had some sort of road to Damascus experience, but I would hope that voters would look at a record. When you look at my record, whether it was keeping the platform of the Republican Party pro-life in 1996, whether it was fighting to get Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court, I was head of his... the national citizens' campaign to do that…or whether it's just going around the country and raising money for crisis pregnancy centers, I think I've got a credible record that other candidates don't have on that particular issue.
GARY BAUER: Well, I don't think there are that many voters that would make me President on one issue. But I do believe, on the overall point of this campaign, that America's got to get back to the idea that virtue ought to govern our freedom. Whether it's our foreign policy-- you know, there was a story just before we started talking on China-- look, is our foreign policy going to be driven by the desire of a bunch of big corporations to get the pot at the end of the rainbow in China, or is it going to be built on our most deeply held values found in the Declaration of Independence, where it says "all men are created equal, endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights." The Reagan foreign policy was built on human rights and our own national security. And the last ten years we've had a foreign policy built on money and trade. That's not worthy of the American people. So I think Americans are ready for a campaign that in each of these areas, dealing with the poor, racial reconciliation, welcoming our children in the world, having a foreign policy that we can be proud of, all those have a coherent theme of that moral idea that was there at the founding of America. |
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| Dismissing the polls. | |||||||||||
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MARGARET WARNER: I hate to bring up polls, but... GARY BAUER: That's okay. MARGARET WARNER: ...You've been in Iowa and New Hampshire a lot. GARY BAUER: Right. MARGARET WARNER: And the latest polls from there, in Iowa, the last two show you, one's at 6 (percent), one's at 9 percent and New Hampshire at 1 percent. Now, these voters have seen a lot of you and the other candidates. I'm not asking, gee, could you win from this but... GARY BAUER: Right. MARGARET WARNER: ...what does it, again, tell you about the strength of that message or the appeal of your message?
MARGARET WARNER: So what's the plausible scenario for you winning this nomination? GARY BAUER: Well, with each passing week, this field gets smaller. There were about 13 of us. Now there are six. In a national poll yesterday, I was basically tied for third place. I think the scenario here is that I have a chance to do well in the early states, Louisiana, Iowa and New Hampshire. I believe we will do well. And I then I think we get the national exposure that we need. It's been done like this many times in recent years, and I think we've got a chance to do it again. |
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| Advancing morals through politics | |||||||||||
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MARGARET WARNER: Let me go back to something we were talking about a little earlier, which is being in public life and trying to achieve these kinds of goals. GARY BAUER: Right.
GARY BAUER: Right. I'm not sure. You may be confusing Reverend Dobson from Michigan that wrote the book with Cal Thomas. MARGARET WARNER: That's Ed Dobson. No. GARY BAUER: Okay. It doesn't sound like a quote from Jim Dobson, but I don't think politics can ever be overrated in a free society. Look, a President puts Justices on the Supreme Court. The next President may appoint two or three. That will have an incredible impact on what kind of culture and society we have. America was built by people in church on Sunday, at work on Monday, and in the voting booth on Tuesday. And I think all the major issues we're facing, whether it's what's happening to our kids, our obligations to the poor, racial reconciliation, those are all at the end of the day very moral matters that we must have a moral debate about. And the way we do that in America is in the democratic process. We debate these things, we try to reach a consensus, and then we use government to governor ourselves with those values in mind. MARGARET WARNER: If you don't win the nomination, if you don't win the presidency, would you regard it nonetheless as a victory if you emerged as essentially the acknowledged leader of the social conservative movement? The economists' phrase for it was "the Jesse Jackson of the right." Would you regard that as a victory? GARY BAUER: Can I pick another phrase than the Jesse Jackson phrase? MARGARET WARNER: Pick your own.
MARGARET WARNER: All right, well, thanks Gary Bauer very much. GARY BAUER: Thank you. Have a good Thanksgiving. |
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MARGARET
WARNER: Gary Bauer is a lifelong Republican who served in Ronald Reagan's
administration but has never held elective office. Earlier this year
he took a leave of absence from being president of the Family Research
Council, a social conservative advocacy group that he founded more than
10 years ago. He's 53 years old, a graduate of Georgetown College in
Kentucky and Georgetown University Law School in Washington, DC. In
the Reagan administration he served as an undersecretary in the Department
of Education and later as director of the White House Office of Public
Policy. 
GARY
BAUER: Well, it's certainly a big factor in what I'm trying to do. Margaret,
the polling data shows that about 2/3 of the American people think that
the crisis facing the country is not economic, it's not military, or
that we've got important things to do in both of those areas, but it
really is a crisis of values. It's opening up the paper and seeing the
stories about school shootings. It's stories of newborn babies in trashcans,
a story out of Jasper, Texas, the black man being pulled to his death
behind a pickup truck. And these are serious problems that all relate
to values, and I think a Presidential campaign, if it's worth anything,
ought to be at least in part a discussion about those things.
MARGARET
WARNER: Gambling, prostitution.
GARY
BAUER: Right.. Well, I'm not sure it lends itself to one thing. I certainly
think that the presidency and the White House has a certain degree of
moral authority, or at least it used to. If the issue was civil rights,
for example, that was a moral appeal that presidents made from the Oval
Office. The issue about how we help the poor was ultimately an argument
about values, about our obligations to each other. And I think there
are a lot of issues today, the breakdown of the family, making our schools
safer, figuring out a way to teach our children, children with the greatest
economic benefits of anybody in the world, the key values that they
have to learn in order to be self-governing citizens. And so as President,
would I devote myself to those things. It's also a major plank in my
platform, obviously, to increase the definition of the American family
to include our unborn children. I think that's a deep moral issue that
government has made a big mistake on. It's taken a whole class of Americans
and said that they're not part of the American family. 
MARGARET
WARNER: Do you think enough voters, though, want, in their President
someone like yourself with this kind of focus, even if they admire it,
do you think there are enough voters that really want that as the central
focus of their President? 
GARY
BAUER: Oh, I don't think those polls tell me very much. I mean I'm still
being introduced to the American people. We're going to have a series
of debates, and I think with each one, my message is going to have the
opportunity to get more traction. The reason those polls don't matter,
Margaret, is all during these last seven months, there were all sorts
of people ahead of me in those polls, and they've dropped out because
they couldn't get any traction in the campaign. Dan Quayle, Senator
Bob Smith, good people, Elizabeth Dole, they just couldn't put together
the organization. We've got an incredible grass-roots organization,
we're actually going up in New Hampshire, we're near 10 percent in Iowa,
we've been winning straw polls. I just got the endorsement of the biggest
conservative group in California. And let me tell you something I'm
most proud of. My candidacy has the largest percentage of female supporters.
And I don't think it's because of my debonair good looks. I think it's
because of my emphasis on values and on issues related to family and
the sanctity of life, and I think it's going to resonate with people.
MARGARET
WARNER: There are, as you know, many members now of the social conservative
movement who themselves are questioning it, people like Cal Thomas,
the conservative commentator, the Reverend James Dobson, who has been
very close, in fact, to your former organization, said something...
he said he thought politics is highly overrated in terms of actually
helping people, and he said he thought that really he's decided that
the right kind of legislation follows a moral consensus. It can't go
the other way around. In other words, that politics isn't the way to
go. You've got to start and just do it from the ground up. 
GARY
BAUER: Look, I don't know what the future will hold. I want to make
it clear, though, that I didn't get in this to emerge as a spokesman
or to make a point. I could have bought a newspaper ad and made a point.
This is, as you know, Margaret, a very difficult thing to do. I'm on
the road all the time. I'm in this because I believe my party needs
to remember what Ronald Reagan taught us about how to be the governing
party of the United States. And that is to not walk around with our
finger up in the air trying to figure out which way the wind's blowing
but to put out for the American people a coherent program. And I'm doing
that on China, I've got a pro family flat tax, the right-to-life issue.
We think we're going to go all the way and get the nomination. 
