[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 55 (Thursday, April 25, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4185-S4187]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   ADDRESS BY SENATOR JOHN McCAIN AT THE DOW JONES AND COMPANY DINNER

  Mr. NICKLES. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to insert into 
the Record the remarks delivered by the distinguished Senator from 
Arizona [Mr. McCain] to Dow Jones and Company on April 23, 1996.
  In his remarks, Senator McCain addresses a very important issue: what 
are the obligations of a candidate for the presidency in how he 
criticizes his opponent--a sitting President--when the President is 
abroad representing the United States? As he points out, the Clinton 
administration is insisting on a double standard. During the 1992 
campaign, when then-Governor Bill Clinton was challenging President 
Bush, candidate Clinton had no hesitation in taking President Bush to 
task even on foreign policy and national security topics while 
President Bush was outside of the United States meeting with world 
leaders. On the other hand, now, in 1996, when Bill Clinton is the 
incumbent, he is criticizing his challenger, the Republican leader, for 
his recent comments on the Clinton domestic record--specifically on the 
issue of Federal judges. As Senator McCain details the matter, there is 
simply no precedent for the White House's distorted and self-serving 
assertions. I hope all of my colleagues will take a look at these 
remarks, as well as members of the media who are interested in setting 
the record straight.
  There being no objection, the remarks were ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                     Address by Senator John McCain

       Thank you. I welcome this opportunity to have as a captive 
     audience people whose attention I spend a fair amount of time 
     trying to get. Al Hunt told me that I could speak on any 
     subject I wished to, and never one to waste such 
     opportunities, I want to spend some time this evening 
     analyzing in detail the pathology of karnal bunt, the fungal 
     disease afflicting wheat crops in Arizona. . . . Or perhaps I 
     should save that analysis for a speech to the New York Times.
       I will instead ask your indulgence while I talk a little 
     bit about the press and the presidential race. As I will 
     include a few constructive criticisms in my remarks, I want 
     to assure everyone here that I exempt you all from any of the 
     criticisms that follow. Each and everyone of you has my 
     lasting love and respect.
       I would like to begin by quoting a presidential candidate.
       ``What's the President going to Japan for? He's going to 
     see the landlord.''
       Here's another quote:
       ``[The President] has slowed progress toward a healthier 
     and more prosperous planet. . . . He has abdicated national 
     and international leadership on the environment at the very 
     moment the world was most amenable to following the lead of a 
     decisive United States.''
       And one more:
       ``[The President should not give trade preferences] to 
     China while they are locking their people up.''
       Now, let me offer a quote of more recent vintage by that 
     same individual.
       ``I like the old-fashioned position that used to prevail 
     that people didn't attack the president when he was on a 
     foreign mission for the good of the country. It has been 
     abandoned with regularity in the last three and a half years. 
     But I don't think that makes it any worse a rule.''
       President Clinton is, of course, the author of all four 
     quotations. The first three--those he made as a candidate for 
     President--were delivered while former President Bush was on 
     foreign missions ``for the good of the country,'' in Japan 
     and Brazil.
       The last quote was taken from the President's Moscow press 
     conference last Saturday when he responded to Senator Dole's 
     criticism of his judicial appointments. As you can see, he 
     used the occasion to denounce a practice he regularly 
     employed as a candidate.
       What made this particular example of presidential hypocrisy 
     so galling, was that Senator Dole has scrupulously avoided 
     criticizing the President's foreign policy while the

[[Page S4186]]

     President was overseas. I know that for a fact because I have 
     been involved in Dole campaign decisions about when and when 
     not to draw comparisons between the President's foreign 
     policies and prospective Dole Administration foreign 
     policies. It was Senator Dole himself who insisted that the 
     campaign make no criticisms of the President's foreign 
     policies while the President was abroad. In fact, Senator 
     Dole specifically declined the opportunity to criticize the 
     President's China policy on Face the Nation Sunday, showing 
     extraordinary restraint given that policy's abundant defects.
       What President Clinton suggested in his Moscow press 
     conference was that he should be immune from criticism of his 
     domestic policies while abroad. The President's protestation 
     notwithstanding, that has never been a political custom in 
     the United States. Were it to be, I suspect the President 
     would open his reelection headquarters and establish 
     temporary residence in a foreign capital where he could 
     blissfully ignore the scrutiny that comes with campaigning 
     for the presidency.
       Indeed, I limited the examples of candidate Clinton's 
     criticisms of President Bush only to those which referred to 
     President Bush's foreign policies; criticisms which did 
     violate--egregiously so--a venerable and worthy American 
     political custom. In fact, in researching those quotes we 
     discovered pages and pages of domestic policy criticism which 
     candidate Clinton leveled at President Bush's while the 
     President was traveling overseas. But as those did not 
     violate the custom in question, only the new custom which 
     President Clinton invented in Moscow, I left them out of my 
     remarks.
       When it comes to campaigning, President Clinton always 
     shows surprising audacity. He quite cheerfully discards one 
     identity for its opposite, and often appropriates with 
     astonishing ease the arguments of his critics, always laying 
     claim to first authorship. As a Dole supporter, I have an 
     obligation to point out such incidents of presidential 
     hypocrisy. But so, I submit, does the press.
       Almost every news account of Senator Dole's speech on the 
     President's judicial nominees observed that Senator Dole had 
     voted for most of those nominees. But nary a report of 
     President Clinton's virtuous appeal for a respite from 
     partisanship examined the legitimacy of the custom he 
     professed to uphold, or included a reference to the 
     President's own violations of that custom.
       The President is a formidable candidate. He'll be hard to 
     beat even in a fair contest. He'll be impossible to beat if 
     Senator Dole must adhere to standards which the President is 
     free to ignore. After all, it should hardly come as a 
     surprise to any journalist that the President has, on 
     occasion, shown a tendency toward a little self-righteous 
     posturing when he has little cause to do so. Indeed, I have 
     often observed that the more accurate the arguments against 
     him, the more self-righteous the President becomes.
       Of all the people to accuse of excessive partisanship in 
     foreign policy debates, Bob Dole is the least deserving of 
     such criticism. I would refer the President to the debate 
     over his decision to deploy 20,000 American troops to Bosnia. 
     Without Bob Dole's leadership the President would not have 
     received any expression of Congressional support for the 
     deployment. Bob did not even agree with the decision to 
     deploy. But he worked to support that deployment even while 
     his primary opponents were gaining considerable political 
     advantage by opposing his support for the President.
       Senator Dole gave his support because he had as much 
     concern for the President's credibility abroad as the 
     President had. I would even contend that on many occasions 
     Bob Dole has shown greater concern for presidential 
     credibility than has the President. Which brings me to my 
     next point.
       I have lately noticed that in comparisons of the foreign 
     policy views of President Clinton and Senator Dole, some in 
     the media--more often broadcast media than print--have 
     resorted to facile, formulaic analysis as a substitute for 
     insightful political commentary. Some reporters have 
     increasingly asserted that there isn't much difference 
     between the candidates' foreign policy views, only, perhaps, 
     in their styles as foreign policy leaders. They further 
     assert that these stylistic differences have narrowed as 
     President Clinton has lately recovered from his earlier 
     ineptitude on the world stage. Thus, they mistakenly 
     conclude, foreign policy should not play a significant role 
     in the presidential debate this year.
       I am sure you will not be surprised to learn that I 
     strongly dispute both the premises and conclusion of that 
     argument. It overlooks not only major policy differences 
     between Senator Dole and the President--Ballistic Missile 
     Defense, Bosnia, Iran, Korea and NATO expansion come 
     immediately to mind--but it devalues the importance of 
     leadership style to the conduct of foreign policy. Both the 
     conceptual and operational flaws of the incumbent 
     Administration's statecraft and the alternatives which 
     Senator Dole's election offers should be and will be an 
     important focus of this campaign.
       As we all know, a presidential election is primarily a 
     referendum on the incumbent's record. A challenger draws 
     distinctions between himself and the incumbent by first 
     examining the performance of the incumbent, and criticizing 
     the flaws in that performance as a means of identifying what 
     the challenger would do differently.
       As a campaigner, even as an incumbent campaigner, the 
     President is remarkably adroit at staying on offense. As one 
     politician to another, I respect the President's political 
     abilities. He really does not need any assistance from the 
     press in this regard.
       To combat the curt dismissal of ``stylistic differences'' 
     between the candidates we could supply a shorthand response: 
     ``style is substance.'' But we serve voters better by 
     elaborating what those differences say about each candidates' 
     leadership capacity. Those differences are important. They 
     should be an important focus of campaign debates.
       In a comparison of foreign policy views, to minimize 
     distinctions between candidates as merely ``stylistic'' is to 
     reject important principles of American diplomacy. Let me 
     elaborate a few of the principles which I think have been 
     casualties of the President's ``style'' of foreign policy 
     leadership.
       First, words have consequences: The President must make no 
     promise he is unprepared to keep and no threat he is 
     unwilling to enforce. The casual relationship between 
     presidential rhetoric and presidential action in the Clinton 
     Administration has damaged the President's credibility abroad 
     and harmed many of the most important relationships we have 
     in this world.
       Second, diplomacy must be led from the Oval Office for it 
     is the President who gives strategic coherence to American 
     diplomacy. The President must prioritize our interests and 
     oblige policymakers to integrate policies to serve those 
     priorities. When the President is passive, government will 
     not be organized cohesively to conduct foreign policy; second 
     and third level officials are elevated to leading policy 
     roles; and single issue advocates will fragment U.S. 
     diplomacy.
       Absent such cohesiveness, Clinton Administration officials 
     have poorly prioritized U.S. interests, often placing 
     peripheral interests before vital ones. They have pursued 
     case-by-case policies that often collided with one another 
     and conducted relations with some countries in ways that 
     disrupted our relations with others. Diminished presidential 
     leadership in foreign policy has also resulted in the 
     franchising of foreign policy to retired public officials 
     whose goals may or may not be compatible with the 
     Administration's.
       Third, there is no substitute for American leadership in 
     defense of American interests. The Administration's 
     reluctance to give primacy in our post Cold War diplomacy to 
     American leadership or even, at times, to American interests 
     has violated proven rules of American leadership. Among those 
     are: protect our security interests as the precondition for 
     advancing our values; force has a role in, but is not a 
     substitute for diplomacy; build coalitions to protect mutual 
     security interests, don't neglect security interests to build 
     coalitions; and don't slight your friends to accommodate your 
     adversaries.
       The direct consequences of the Administration's failure to 
     observe these rules, have been its misguided efforts to cloak 
     the national interest in ``assertive multilateralism''; its 
     poor record of building coalitions despite its virtuous 
     regard for multilateralism; and its paralyzing confusion 
     about when and how to use force.
       Fouth, foreign policy should serve the ends of domestic 
     policy, and just as importantly, domestic policy should serve 
     the ends of foreign policy. The President has often 
     misconstrued that relationship, often using foreign policy as 
     an international variant of pork barrel politics to serve his 
     own political ends. This in part explains the 
     Administration's interventions in Haiti and Northern Ireland, 
     and its mania for managed trade solutions to our trade 
     imbalance with Japan. It explains, in part, their gross 
     mishandling of our relationship with China.
       However, the most damaging effect of this flaw is that it 
     has damaged the President's ability to persuade the American 
     public that our vital interests require America to remain 
     engaged internationally. This failure has led to a 
     demonstrative increase in isolationist sentiments in both 
     political parties.
       We need not look far in the past to measure the 
     consequences of the President's style of foreign policy 
     leadership. The purpose of the President's recent state visit 
     to Japan, and his brief visit to Korea were, in fact, damage 
     control expeditions intended to repair the harm which the 
     President's leadership style had done to our relationships 
     with our allies.
       The President's heavy handed threats of economic sanctions 
     to coerce Japan's acceptance of numerical quotas for American 
     exports risked divesting our relationship of its vitally 
     important security components. Thus, when we required Japan's 
     help in mustering a credible threat of economic sanctions 
     against North Korea the Japanese demurred. And when the 
     despicable rape of an Okinowan girl by three American marines 
     increased opposition among the Japanese public to our 
     military bases there, Japanese leaders were noticeably slow 
     to defend our presence. Hence, the need for the President to 
     go to Japan to reaffirm the importance of our security 
     relationship.
       The President's visit to Korea was intended to reaffirm 
     American resistance to North Korea's attempts to drive a 
     wedge between us and our South Korean allies. South Korea has 
     cause to worry about the effect North Korea's recent 
     provocations in the DMZ might have on alliance solidarity 
     considering the wedge we allowed North Korea to drive between 
     the U.S. and South Korea during our earlier negotiations with 
     Pyongyang over their nuclear program.
       Our relationship with one country that wasn't on the 
     President's itinerary, but

[[Page S4187]]

     should have been--China--has also suffered as a result of the 
     strategic incoherence of Administration statecraft. Both the 
     President's passivity in foreign policy and his poor record 
     of linking rhetoric with deeds have badly damaged our ability 
     to manage China's emergence as a superpower--the central 
     security problem of the next century.
       Administration diplomacy for China has been fragmented as 
     officials from the Commerce Department, USTR, Defense and 
     various bureaus of the State Department pursued different, 
     and often conflicting agendas in China. (Chicken export 
     lobbyist lately gained brief control over our Russia policy, 
     but that's the subject of another speech.) Moreover, the 
     wounds the President inflicted on his own credibility as he 
     mishandled the MFN question and the visit of President Lee--
     first assuring the Chinese that Lee wouldn't come, and then 
     reversing his decision without informing Beijing--have 
     seriously crippled the Administration's ability to have a 
     constructive dialogue with the Chinese on the host of issues 
     involved in our relationship.
       Lastly, I want to make brief reference to another topical 
     foreign policy mistake which reveals the leadership flaws of 
     the incumbent administration: the recent disclosure that the 
     administration acquiesced in, and possibly facilitated 
     Iranian arms shipments to Bosnia, Currently the media and 
     Congress are focusing on whether that action was illegal. 
     Such focus may overlook the policy's more important security 
     implications.
       President Clinton campaigned for office by denouncing the 
     arms embargo against Bosnia. As president, his expressed 
     intent to keep his campaign promise encountered stiff 
     resistance from Russia and our European allies. Rather than 
     exert maximum leadership to persuade others to join in 
     lifting the embargo or conceding that his earlier position 
     had been mistaken, the President chose to allow Iran to arm 
     the Bosnian Government. Consequently, the President helped 
     create an Iranian presence in Bosnia that threatens the 
     security of our troops stationed there, and which has 
     destroyed the Administration's efforts to enlist our allies 
     in efforts to isolate Iran internationally.
       The legality of such a policy may be suspect. But what is 
     beyond dispute is the stupidity of a policy that risks our 
     larger security interests for the sake of avoiding a 
     difficult diplomatic problem.
       Thus ends my lecture on the criticality of ``stylistic 
     differences'' in choosing a president. I fear I have abused 
     your hospitality by making what could be construed as a 
     partisan speech. But my purpose was not to take cheap shots 
     at the Administration for the benefit of the Dole campaign. I 
     think both Senator Dole and I have proven our regard for 
     bipartisanship in the conduct of American foreign policy. 
     That does not mean, however, that we should refrain from 
     criticizing the President's foreign policy when we find it to 
     be in error.
       It would be a terrible disservice to the voters for either 
     campaign to devalue the importance of foreign policy 
     differences in this election--both conceptual and operational 
     differences. The quality of the next President's leadership 
     abroad will have at least as great an impact on the American 
     people as will the resolution of the current debate on 
     raising the minimum wage. And I end with a plea to all 
     journalists to accord appropriate attention to all the issues 
     in the voters' choice this November.
       Now, I am happy to respond to your questions on this or any 
     other subject which interests you.

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