Buchanan & Press - Interview

SHOW: BUCHANAN & PRESS 14:00

SECTION: NEWS; INTERNATIONAL

HEADLINE: BUCHANAN & PRESS For January 28, 2003

BYLINE: Pat Buchanan; Bill Press; Alex Witt

GUESTS: Marc Racicot; James Inhofe; Dianne Feinstein; Terry McAuliffe; Lamar Alexander; Harry Reid; Dana Rohrabacher

HIGHLIGHT:
What will President Bush say in his State of the Union address tonight? Will he be able to sway the American public on war with Iraq and the economy?

BODY:
Right now, BUCHANAN & PRESS are coming to you from the rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building right up on Capitol Hill, right next to the Capitol itself.

And our guest is an individual, Lamar Alexander, United States senator from Tennessee, who I guess I first met when we both walked into Richard Nixon's White House January 20, 1969. He served as a White House aide over there with Richard Milhous Nixon.

Lamar, I have got to say, congratulations on your Senate seat and your big victory. And I hope you enjoy it.

SEN. LAMAR ALEXANDER ®, TENNESSEE: Well, thanks, Pat. Congratulations on your show.

BUCHANAN: Well, thank you.

Let me ask you, Senator, do you think we'll be at war by spring?

ALEXANDER: I have no idea. Unless Saddam Hussein changes his tune, the answer is yes.

Now, he could change his tune in a number of different ways. But I think the president is determined to keep up pressure. Iraq has not done what it said it would do. It leaves the president very little choice other than to move to disarm him one way or the other.

PRESS: Senator, you and I first met when you were running for president and I was covering that campaign. And you, as well as I, heard then candidate Bush say many times, we don't want to do any nation-building and we want to bring our troops home.

OK, today, we have troops still in Japan and Korea, still in Bosnia, still in Kosovo. We're nation-building in Afghanistan. And you know as well as I, if we go to Iraq, we'll going to be nation-building in Iraq. Is that what happens to campaign promises?

ALEXANDER: Well, in this case, the answer is yes.

That's what happened. The world changed and the president changed his attitude. His thrust was just what you said, that we want to do less nation-building. But we have an absolute obligation not to run out of Afghanistan. And I believe there's more uncertainty about what happens to Iraq after a successful military operation, if that's what happens, than in what happens in the military operation.

I don't know anyone who thinks we won't win the war. The question is, will post-Iraq produce a democratic country there or one that can lead and revitalize the Middle East?

PRESS: Well, I wanted to ask you about that, because we heard today there's a huge battle in Afghanistan, the biggest battle in months. This is 14 months after the Taliban fell. And still that country obviously is not—things aren't over up there, which means that, in Iraq, it's going to take a lot longer.

And do you think the administration has really been up front with the American people about how long an engagement and how many troops are going to have to stay in Iraq after this is over?

ALEXANDER: Well, I think the answer is yes to that.

I would like for there to be more discussion about that. I know the Foreign Relations Committee, on which I'm now a member, is holding hearings on that within the next couple of weeks. There are differences between Afghanistan and Iraq. Iraq has oil. It has lots of money. It has—at least the men in Iraq have had a chance to become well educated.

There's no reason why it can't be a successful democratic country. Afghanistan, on the other hand, has almost nothing. It's one of the poorest states in the world, with no structures to create a long-term government.

BUCHANAN: Senator, I'm sure you have seen the polls that I have seen, not the domestic ones, but the foreign ones that show the United States is disliked and detested in the Arab and Islamic world as it has never been before, 80 percent and 90 percent in places like Pakistan and Turkey, which was an ally. And in Europe, the hostility is tremendous. In Britain, only 20 percent want to go to war without the U.N. and without allies.

What has happened to the image of the United States that makes us so disliked when, right after 9/11, the entire world seemed to have tremendous sympathy for the United States?

ALEXANDER: Well, the world doesn't like war. Maybe the world doesn't like having such a strong single country.

But, Pat, I can remember—and you well can remember -- 20 years ago, when President Reagan deployed American missiles, nuclear-tipped, against the Soviets, I remember being in Amsterdam on a Sunday and hearing the ministers preach against Reagan and Begin and Hitler. And that was in the cities that the Germans overran.

So, this anti-Americanism sometimes springs up. We were visited by South Korean delegations of both parties yesterday to remind us that the South Koreans are pro-American and not to be too misled by what we are reading in the papers and hearing in the polls.

BUCHANAN: All right, let me turn to the domestic subject.

It looks like Congressman Bill Thomas, chairman of the Ways and Means, and Senator Grassley, who is the chairman, I guess, of Senate Finance, neither of them has much enthusiasm for this elimination of taxation on dividends. And you have John McCain and a few others in the Senate aren't for it. And, of course, the Democrats are almost united against it.

What kind of chance does the president's economic package have of getting through without being eviscerated?

ALEXANDER: Well, I think it will be changed. I'm not sure how.

I like the dividend tax proposal that the president proposed. I think it would be more straightforward just to do it within the corporation, rather than to let it be a deduction for seniors. I think that's a better long-term tax proposal for the economy.

I expect some changes. But, basically, the child care tax credit, that's a very good proposal. The expensing of equipment purchases by small businesses, that should help create jobs. The tax reductions, I think they make a lot of sense. So, I think it's a good job growth proposal for the long term. I'm not one of those who believes you can pass a tax bill in January and affect the economy in April.

PRESS: Former Secretary, former Governor, now Senator Lamar Alexander, thank you so much for joining us here on BUCHANAN & PRESS.

ALEXANDER: Thank you, Bill.

BUCHANAN: Candidate and former White House aide.

PRESS: That's right, former candidate.

ALEXANDER: Thank you, Pat.

(LAUGHTER)

PRESS: We want to have you back often.

ALEXANDER: I look forward to it.

PRESS: All right.

BUCHANAN: OK.