[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 27 (Thursday, March 4, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2178-S2180]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  REFLECTIONS FROM CAMPAIGN EXPERIENCE

  Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank my friend and colleague from Nevada.
  Mr. President, it is now more than a month since I ended my quest for 
the Democratic nomination for President. It was a thrilling, demanding, 
purposive journey across this great country. I am deeply grateful for 
the opportunity I had. I learned a lot. In fact, I would recommend 
anyone who has the opportunity try it at least once in a lifetime. But 
today I want to share with my colleagues a few serious reflections from 
my campaign experience about the current state of our politics and the 
way they may affect our work here in this election year on the great 
questions of our economy and our security, particularly in Iraq.
  It is now clear who the Presidential nominees of the major parties 
will be: President Bush and Senator Kerry. Therefore, it is time for 
members of both parties to start thinking and talking about how we want 
the national campaign to be conducted at this uniquely difficult and 
dangerous moment in American history.
  For the United States, this is a very good time, but it is also a 
very difficult time. We have the largest economy and the strongest 
military in the world. Our core values of freedom and opportunity are 
ascendent around the globe. In so many ways here at home we live better 
than any people ever have because of the truly amazing advances in 
medical science, telecommunications, information technology, and 
transportation. However, these advances and the globalization they have 
facilitated have also brought painful changes for millions of Americans 
in lost jobs, declining income, skyrocketing health care costs, and a 
fear of what the future may bring.

  On top of that, we face an unprecedented new challenge to our 
security and our freedom from fanatical Islamic terrorists who brutally 
attacked us and our homeland on September 11, 2001.
  These two new realities have made the American people more anxious 
about their future, as I met them during this last year, than I have 
ever seen them before. Our confidence and our optimism must be 
restored. How best to do that and who can best do that is ultimately 
what this year's Presidential campaign is all about. Ideally, the 
campaign will raise our hopes, not deepen our insecurities; it will 
unite us, not divide us; it will strengthen us, not weaken us; it will 
create an environment in which our Government, including this Congress, 
will produce relief for some of what ails America, hopefully this year. 
But I can't say I am optimistic that any of these ideals will be 
achieved because of the rigid and reflexive partisanship that has come 
to dominate so much of our politics.
  Warnings about factionalism are, of course, as old as our Republic, 
but they seem especially relevant and necessary today, when strategists 
from both major parties seem poised to seek electoral victory by 
inflaming their inner constituencies with ideological tinder and brutal 
personal attacks on the other party's candidates. That will only divide 
us more deeply and make it more difficult for us to overcome the 
enormous threats to our security and our prosperity.
  Our political parties and Presidential candidates must find ways to 
differ without being destructive, to debate

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without demonizing, to put our national interests ahead of special 
interests, to take the long view rather than the most politically 
expedient short view, to rise above partisan politics, to put America 
first.
  I know the conventional wisdom is that in an election year, the 
breakthrough in our politics and Government I am calling for is 
unlikely to occur. But I also know there have been many times in our 
history when the proximity of an election has induced exactly the kind 
of leadership and consensus building that produce progress in our 
democracy. Congress passed and previous Presidents signed the Federal 
Highway Aid Act in 1956, the Civil Rights Act in 1964, the Equal 
Employment Opportunity Act in 1972, and welfare reform in 1996. These 
were all landmark pieces of legislation that required and received 
bipartisan cooperation in an election year.
  Let us hope we can produce similar progress this year. Let us work 
together to lower the crushing price of health care, to develop and 
implement a plan to stop the bleeding of American manufacturing and 
service jobs, to restore fiscal responsibility to the Federal budget, 
to reduce the growing number of poor people in our country, to address 
the real threat of global warming, and to reassure the American people 
that we understand their anger at the contemporary culture which too 
often undercuts their traditional values of faith and family, of right 
and wrong. Let us hope we can work effectively toward those goals.
  There is one area of challenge that demands more than hope, where we 
simply cannot afford to allow campaign-year politics to take over until 
after election day. That is the current crisis in Iraq.
  We are at war. The lives of more than 100,000 American troops are on 
the line in Iraq. So, too, is the fulcrum of our present and future 
national security. Yes, there is violence and bloodshed, sadly, 
elsewhere in the world, but the impact Iraq will have on our future 
security and our prospects for victory in the wider war against 
terrorism is of the greatest magnitude. It has no equal in the world 
today. Our politics must catch up with that reality.

  I recognize the differences of opinion about why and how we went to 
war in Iraq. I know they run deep and they run wide. As for myself, I 
remain a strong supporter of the war that removed Saddam Hussein. Yes, 
I have criticized the administration for some of its policies, both 
before and immediately after the war. But I believe deeply we cannot 
allow arguments about past policy to stop us from finding common ground 
to face the present threats in Iraq. We cannot refight the last war in 
Iraq against Saddam with such ferocity that we falter in fighting the 
terrorist insurgents that threaten Iraq and us right now.
  The days between now and our election day in November will be 
critical days for Iraq, as sovereignty is returned to the Iraqi people 
and they prepare for what we hope will be their own historic election 
day in December. Unless the security situation in Iraq improves 
dramatically, that election day may not come. The fact is, as the 
newspapers and media have told us in the last 2 days, there is danger 
in Iraq. One hundred and eighty-five people were killed on Tuesday by 
suicide bombings. These are threats not just to the lives and security 
of the Iraqi people, but they present the staggering prospect of civil 
war in Iraq. Together with the Iraqi people and our coalition partners, 
we are going to need to make critical decisions and take strong, 
difficult, tough actions in the upcoming weeks and months to maintain 
security in that country.
  To do so, we here at home must transcend the partisan reflex rancor 
that has become the norm in American politics.
  The consequences of failure in Iraq are staggering. The fact that the 
battle has been joined in Iraq--the historic battle between security 
and terror, between freedom and tyranny.
  Iraq is a critical battleground now in our larger war against 
terrorism because the fact is that members of the same Jihadist 
movements that killed nearly 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001, are 
now fighting alongside Saddam loyalists, systematically targeting and 
murdering Americans and Iraqis for working so hard to build a secure, 
new civil society in that country.
  If we fail to stop these insurgents and lose the peace in Iraq, the 
Iraqi people will be condemned to chaos and relentless violence. The 
Middle East will be destabilized. The forces of worldwide terrorism 
will gain new confidence, energy, and resources to attack us.
  On the other hand, establishing a stable democratizing, modernizing 
Iraq would be a major victory in our battle with the terrorists and our 
struggle to bring hope to the majority of Muslims in the world, who 
clearly desire peace, not war. It will show them a better way to a 
better future than the hatred and death that the fanatics of al-Qaida 
and their ilk preach. It will bring about much greater stability and 
opportunity throughout the Middle East.
  In the weeks ahead, I intend to speak in more detail about how 
together we can accomplish these critical American goals. But for 
today, I want to concentrate on how best we can separate the challenges 
to us in Iraq from this Presidential campaign.
  There are significant differences of opinion, clearly, between the 
Presidential candidates, President Bush and Senator Kerry, about our 
past policies in Iraq. But I don't see significant differences between 
them about the need to successfully finish what we have started there. 
Both have asserted that we must not cut and run from Iraq. We cannot 
allow the politics of this campaign to obscure or block that agreement, 
that commitment to finish our mission.
  We must recapture the spirit of bipartisanship and national purpose 
we achieved following the September 11 attacks. It is that important. 
For Democrats, that doesn't mean that all debate about the war must 
stop. But I believe it does mean we must focus on how best to win the 
war we are engaged in now against terrorist insurgents. Only 
questioning how and why we got into the last war against Saddam is 
simply not enough. Doing only that is not acceptable anymore.
  For the President, his party, it means not politicizing the conduct 
of the war in any way. As Commander in Chief, the President has a 
special responsibility to focus on winning the war, even in this 
election year--perhaps most particularly at this time.
  In the months ahead, the President must make tough decisions 
necessary to bring security to Iraq and a better life to Iraqis, 
regardless of the political consequences at home because that is what 
will best serve America's values and security.
  The fact is, both parties and our leaders must reach out to each 
other--difficult as that is in an election year, but it is necessary at 
this moment--to find a common ground that will secure our common 
future.
  Mr. President, it is reassuring to look back across American history 
and find that at some of our most difficult times our predecessors in 
positions of power in the American Government have made sure that 
partisan politics ended at our Nation's borders.

  Following the Second World War, for example, leaders in Congress and 
the White House forged a bipartisan foreign policy to combat communism. 
It lasted half a century and brought us to victory in the cold war. 
During that time, the best of our elected officials no longer saw 
themselves just as Democrats or Republicans. They saw themselves as 
Americans fighting a common enemy.
  Our times demand from us that same spirit of surpassing 
bipartisanship in the war against terrorism, for obviously the 
terrorists do not distinguish among us based on our party affiliations. 
Each of us is their enemy because we are all Americans, so we Democrats 
and Republicans must, therefore, in this campaign year, see beyond the 
red States and the blue States to a larger cause that is as critical to 
the red, white, and blue as any America has ever fought for.
  It is the cause of defeating Jihadist terrorists who hate us and our 
free and tolerant ways of life more than they love life itself, and who 
would, if we allow them, plunge this modern world into a primitive 
global religious war. For the sake of our children's futures, for the 
sake of America's core values, for the sake of world peace, we cannot 
allow that to happen.
  I am a proud member of the Democratic Party and, as such, I will work 
for a Democratic victory in the elections this fall. I know my 
Republican

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colleagues in this Chamber will work just as hard for a Republican 
victory. But during this time of war, we each must make certain that 
our party loyalties do not prevail over our national responsibilities.
  As important as a partisan victory is to each of us, it cannot be 
more important than a victory over terrorism for all of us, a victory 
that will enable the American people to feel secure again at home, that 
will enable our soldiers to return from Iraq, that will enable the 
Iraqi people to enjoy the blessings of liberty, which it is America's 
historic mission to advance and defend.
  A final word. On November 2 of last year, PFC Anthony D'Agostino of 
Waterbury, CT, was killed in Iraq. A few weeks later, I received a note 
from Anthony's father, Steven. I read this paragraph from it:

       Please continue to support all our men and women in 
     uniform. Please support our Commander in Chief in his resolve 
     to obtain his objectives. Please keep America the true leader 
     of peace in the world. Tony was our only son, our only 
     legacy. Although this was a great loss to our family, we wish 
     you godspeed in making the world a safer place.

  The quiet, selfless strength and patriotism of the D'Agostino family 
have been echoed for me in other voices I have met throughout America 
during the last year. We must hear those voices through the sound and 
fury of the coming national campaign. We must assure them by our words 
and our deeds that we have our priorities right, that we will come 
together in this election year across party lines to protect their sons 
and daughters, to make certain that America will remain the true leader 
of peace and freedom in the world, and to achieve a better life for all 
of our people at home.
  I thank the Chair and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from 
Iowa is recognized, under the time controlled by the Democratic leader 
or his designee, 17 minutes.

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