Democratic Presidential Debate

BILL BRADLEY (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, first, let me thank the "Los Angeles Times" and CNN for hosting this debate. I'm very pleased to be in this building again. I've been in this building many times with the editorial board on California water, on international trade issues, on diversity issues. I am very pleased to be here and have a chance to debate Al one more time in this setting.

Let me say to you, I think that we have a country where there is freedom of religion, and I think that there should be freedom of religion. I think that the far right has gone too far time after time after time on social issues, and has tried to dominate this country with their particular viewpoint. I think it's important to resist that. I've always resisted that. As a United States senator, I've never voted in ways that they wanted. And I would be very emphatic in saying that religion should not be a part of politics.

BRADLEY: I think that if you look at what the two Republican candidates have done, they have gone to South Carolina, and Governor Bush has gone to Bob Jones University, the university that practices racial discrimination, and he's gone there to give a speech on the new conservatism. Based on going there and sending that symbolic message, I believe that the new conservatism, from his standpoint, is not a lot different than the old conservatism.

BRADLEY: Other than war and peace, I think that the appointment that the president makes to the Supreme Court is the most lasting contribution that a president ever makes, and therefore, I believe it is imperative that the president search to find people of real integrity, people of intellectual integrity, people who have unquestioned ability, people who have a kind of historical perspective, somebody that's able to see a context in the times in which they live, but not someone whose lopped into an original interpretation of the Constitution as if 1787 is the year 2000, but someone who sees the law as something that moves to adjust to the times and can do so in a way that furthers the deepest values of our country that I believe are embodied in the Declaration of Independence. And therefore, I think that is the most important thing a president can do.

BRADLEY: I'll have to be honest with the people who asked me this question. I must be honest with the American people. If I were going to select someone for the Supreme Court, I don't think that I could select that person if I thought there was one doubt in my mind that the person would turn the clock back on civil rights. The court, throughout our history, has played a very negative role from time to time in moving our civil rights forward. Another case is a very positive role.

BRADLEY: So I'd have to have that answered for myself before I made the appointment.

BRADLEY: I think the government should play a role, but a small role. It's an emerging technology. The Internet is growing in directions that we don't know. Fifteen years ago, the only people that ever heard of the Internet is the Defense Department.

And now look at where it is today.

I think that the most important role for government to play is making a major investment in education, but specifically in technology. I think trying to set a standard for encryption is very important, because the most important thing that could prevent the growth of the Internet is if people felt their privacy could be invaded, if people felt their privacy could be invaded in terms of financial records, in terms of health records, and therefore I think some standard for encryption is a very important part of a policy that you would follow.

BRADLEY: Well, I was waiting during the campaign of maybe being able to make that joke, but since you made it first about the Internet, inventing the Internet, I am glad you did it and not me.

Let me say that I think that another thing that's very important is finding some way that people who don't have access to the Internet can get access to the Internet. And I think wiring schools is important. But I also would look at something that would maybe give them more direct assistance, something we might call "info stamps" that would be terribly important. And also taxing the Internet...

BRADLEY: ... not now.

BRADLEY: When I was in my Senate campaigns, my wife Ernestine would go out and visit some place and I would come two weeks later, and then we would have a call inevitably from the host saying if you're going to send someone back, send her. And that is because of who she is.

My wife is an immigrant. She would be the first immigrant first lady. If she—if I was successful. She's a college professor, a professor of comparative literature. She just finished a book called "The Language of Silence" about how Western literature did or did not come to terms with the Holocaust. She's a breast cancer survivor. She's a dynamic human being. She's a conscientious mother.

And in terms of defining the role she would have in a presidency that I would head, I don't know what it would be. She's just finding it now. My guess is, one of the things she would do is try to shine the light on people in this country who are doing good things but are not recognized. This country is so rich, and has so much capacity that is untapped, I think she would want to be a catalyst for that.

BRADLEY: Oh, well, I can talk a lot more than 30 seconds about my wife. I am glad you gave me that opportunity.

(LAUGHTER)

BRADLEY: The thing about her is that she is real. There's nobody who has ever met her that doesn't see energy burst forth and honesty burst forth. I can guarantee you, you need an honest wife in this profession because she's the one who is going to tell you, you're terrible and a lot of people don't. She's told me that a few times in this campaign, I must say.

BRADLEY: Well, I can't quite tell what the question means. If 1991 we did fight the Persian Gulf War, we did win. And now gas prices are very high, highest they have been. And I think the reason they're high now is because we, more or less, asked OPEC to raise oil prices in hopes of helping Russia be able to sell its oil on the international market, make more foreign exchange, and be able to develop its economy.

I think that now in California and across this country oil prices are skyrocketing, and we need action. Frankly, we needed action about six months ago. We needed to release the oil from the strategic petroleum reserve, something I built from 10 million barrels -- 10 days of supply to 57 days of supply.

But more importantly, we need to go to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, those countries that we defended in the Gulf War, and we need to tell them to increase their oil production. We needed to tell them to increase their oil production six months ago in order to prevent the price increases that we're now experiencing.

BRADLEY: The first part of the question might deal with the Persian Gulf, which of course is a place of insecure sources of oil.

There's Iraq, there's Iran, there's Saudi Arabia, each of which has its own vulnerabilities. And so I believe that we have to try to continue to keep the pressure on Saddam Hussein. We have to seek to better the relationship with Iran. We have to keep a solid relationship with Saudi Arabia. And it's important that we also keep a strong relationship..,

BRADLEY: ... with Turkey, so that we have encircled diplomatically Saddam Hussein.

BRADLEY: I don't support the Knight initiative. Like Al, I don't support gay marriage, but I do support domestic partnership legislation that would provide to gays and lesbians all the legal and financial rights that accrue to a state of marriage. But this is an issue that is bigger than just this initiative and this year, because we're going to have our work cut out for us in a general election, and I started that work last March.

I was down in Austin, Texas, and there was an anti-hate crime bill pending before the Texas state legislature. There was a hate- crime bill in the wake of the James Byrd murder and the Matthew Shepard murder, and it said that there will be additional penalties for hate crimes based on race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability. The governor of Texas let it be known he did not want to see that bill come forward. I called a press conference, I told the governor's press corps that if I am the nominee of the Democratic Party and he's the nominee of the Republican Party and he has failed to support this legislation that I would make it an issue in the presidential campaign...

BRADLEY: ... and I will.

BRADLEY: I think that another thing that's important, sure, gays and lesbians in the military openly, yes, adding the sexual orientation to the Civil Rights Act of '64. But what's also important is for us to convey to people that gays and lesbians are no different than the rest of us. They just have a different attitude, like a different color of hair. It's no different. And we have to respect them, and we have to accord them the dignity that every person in this world deserves.

BRADLEY: Well, you mentioned voting rights. The first thing I would do is make the Voting Rights Act permanent. I wouldn't let it expire every period of time. Racial profiling is a deep and serious issue. It challenges all of us. It's not simply a police issue. It's also how we view African-Americans and Latinos. It's whether we can see deeper than skin color and eye shape and ethnicity to the individual.

The Amadou Diallo case is a case in point. As you know, West African was surrounded by police in New York, they fired 41 shots, 19 hit him. He fell, died, and that was a tragedy. But what it said to me was that the real tragedy was how deeply racial profiling had seeped into the mind of those who were in the police department so that a wallet in the hands of a white man would be viewed as a wallet, but a wallet in the hands of a black man would look like a gun. I looked at this, and I say we have to challenge ourselves.

BRADLEY: There are things the national government can do, but we need to challenge ourselves to not deny any longer the indignities that African-Americans and Latinos experience every day in our country.

BRADLEY: Well, what I would do in addition to the challenge that I offered to everyone is that I would issue an executive order ending racial profiling in federal agencies. I would pass a law to make sure that every police department had to keep track of who they arrested and what the race of the person they arrested was. I would then use the Justice Department to intervene, to intervene aggressively if there was a pattern there, if there was sufficient evidence there. I believe that this is the civil rights issue of our time. It is no longer blocking people from schools. It is no longer trying to eat in a restaurant. It is having the justice system in this country finally provide equal justice for all.

BRADLEY: Yes. I went to the House of Justice in Harlem last summer for a community meeting that Reverend Sharpton invited me to attend. The last time a primary candidate for president had a large public meeting in Harlem was Robert Kennedy in 1968. I went in order to hear the concerns firsthand of the 600 people that came to share them with me. That was a legitimate thing to do. I don't agree with everything Reverend Sharpton has said or done, but I think that he has grown. We have to allow people the right to grow. We have to allow people the right to evolve. And in the process, he has, in many cases, kept the lid on otherwise dangerous situations that were beginning to develop.

BRADLEY: And I look at that and say, that's not someone who would be characterized solely by the language that you used.

BRADLEY: The real question here is, how did the voiceless get a voice? How is progress made in very difficult areas of race, and poverty and discrimination? It sometimes takes someone that rubs a part of the population the wrong way in order to get the attention focused on the issue at hand. I view his activities in that light. As I said, there are things that he's done, things that he said...

BRADLEY: That I condemn, but that's where I think you have to see him, in that tradition of civil rights in this country.

BRADLEY: I think that the most important thing we can do on this issue is try to keep some perspective on it and try to think long term. It's difficult for Americans to think long term. It's easy for Chinese to think long term.

The basic fact is we're the two exceptionalist cultures in the world, which mean we each think we're the center of the universe, so we're going to bump into each other.

But on Taiwan and China, it's a very specific problem. We should tell the Taiwanese that if they take steps toward independence, that we would reconsider the Taiwan Relations Act. We should tell the Chinese that if they move by force to overtake Taiwan, that we have responsibility under that act to take appropriate actions, the ambiguity that Al talks about. I think that if we can keep that going, then we will wait to see how things evolve.

The white paper that you referred to said some things that were threatening, overtake Taiwan, also said some encouraging things to deal with Taiwan directly as a partner. So I agree it was an attempt possibly to affect the outcome of the election in Taiwan.

BRADLEY: Because one of the candidates is pro-mainland and one of them is not.

BRADLEY: There's another dimension to our relationship with China beyond Taiwan and the mainland, and the military dimension. It's the economic dimension. I think that the agreement that was negotiated should be ratified. I think that people should see this. I'd rather have China inside the world trading system, subject to multilateral rules, than I would have China outside the system, making bilateral deals and playing one country off against another.

Frankly, I don't know whether communist leadership agreed to it, because it's going to end up with thousands of Internet companies and hundreds of thousands of people in China creating problems, because political activity will result.

BRADLEY: Well, first of all, how long is it going to take? How many lives will have to be taken by gunfire? How many families will have to be marred for life because of the lost loved one?

I was in El Serino (ph) Middle School in East L.A. here not so long ago, and in one meeting heard the story of the 7-year-old a parent tell the story of a 7-year-old who was caught in the crossfire, killed. Another parent told the story of a young man walking through a high school hallway, killed. And the students at El Serino Middle School decided they would raise money to try to buy guns back, and they asked me if I would contact Mayor Riordan and ask him to meet with them.

Mayor Riordan, will you meet with them?

BRADLEY: Thank you very much. I have kept my word. I have kept my word.

What we need to have here is we need very tough gun legislation, registration and licensing of all guns, gun dealers out of residential neighborhoods, trigger locks, background checks, and banning Saturday night specials.

BRADLEY: But above all, what we need is a leader who is committed to this every day he is in office. Otherwise, you'll never beat the NRA. And I am there to beat the NRA

BRADLEY: We make a mistake when we take an incident like the first grader or like the kids outside Pittsburgh that were killed, the five who were killed today, and we look at that one individual case and we failed to realize a much broader case.

Columbine, everybody was struck by Columbine. Why? Because we saw our own kids, they looked like our kids, we thought.

But 13 kids are killed every day in America with a gun, and 800,000 kids took a gun to school last year. Now, that is not going to change unless there's concerted leadership...

BRADLEY: ... from the national government that is willing to marshal public opinion to overcome the vested interests, the special interests...

BRADLEY: ... in Washington that's embodied in the NRA.

BRADLEY: I think the thing—the mistake that I learned the most from was really a mistake to believe that you never fail. In other words, coming to terms with failure. And it took me awhile to do that.

I remember when I was a rookie in the NBA. I was thought to be the white hope. I was going to save the Knicks. I knew I wasn't the white hope. I knew I wouldn't save the Knicks. It got pretty rough. The fans thought I was. People spit on me.

People threw coins at me. People stopped me in the street.

It caused me to ask myself, really, well, you have to come to terms with this. That meant I worked harder in order to achieve things. It also meant I began to see that life is not all good, not all bad, that individuals are not all good or all bad. But we have each in both of us, and that's what makes us human.

BRADLEY: I think another mistake for me that I learned from was the mistake of not speaking out when you feel something deeply. For a chunk of my life, I sometimes held back. And then I realized that life is short. My wife got breast cancer. I realized life was short, you might not live another day. So speak from your heart what you believe.

That's how I run this campaign. I believe the new politics is a politics of belief and conviction, of honestly telling people the truth, and thinking you can lead by appealing to their idealism. All that came from that mistake.

BRADLEY: The first thing I would do is, A, pay respect; B, raise benefits and pay. And I think we can do that with a steady State/Defense budget, if we make tough decisions on base closings, tough decisions on unnecessary weapons systems, and negotiate with the Russians in order to get a much lower level of nuclear weapons. And then make—take that savings and make investments in pay and benefits.

I had the same experience. I ran into a young woman not so long ago. She said she was in the Marines four years. I asked her why she didn't re-up. She said she didn't re-up because she wanted to have a family and she didn't want to go on food stamps.

If there's anything that's important in the military of the future it's the talent of our military personnel. We will make investments in research and development, stay on the cutting edge in terms of technology, but you need the talent in order to operate that technology effectively. And that's why they have to get more pay, and better benefits and better training.

BRADLEY: I think it's important to have clarity of mission, too, so that those who are in the military know what they're fighting for. The Cold War was clear. Now it's a little less clear. I think clarity of mission is important and beyond that, I think presidents or generals have to recognize that they might be the point, but in order—at the point of the pyramid, but in order for things to work, you have to have support of talented people all the way down the pyramid, acknowledging that contribution of the enlisted personnel...

BRADLEY: ... the sergeants, I believe, is critical.

BRADLEY: I think that the most important thing is to make sure that they won't lose their health care, because a national government is standing behind them and making sure that they get health care. That's the proposal that I have made, would provide access to affordable, quality health care for all Americans. Disabled Americans would now be able to earn money and would not lose their coverage.

I think that the most important thing is to also recognize the disabled as not being a kind of special population. For example, my father was disabled, had calcite arthritis of the lower spine. I never saw him tie his shoes or throw a ball or drive a car. We never thought of my father—my mother and I, even though my mother dressed him every day and I fixed his suspenders, we never thought of him as different. We thought of him as that's just who he was. And we have to have policy that takes that feeling and makes it a reality, so the disabled can contribute to our society as much as my father did to that small town in Missouri.

BRADLEY: I'll say to you that for this to happen again will take leadership at the very top, leadership that's willing to take a big issue and push it, not a small issue, not something step by step, but something that is comprehensive and that will deal with the problem, and at this time given our tremendous economic prosperity, this is the time when we can do big things again if we have leadership that says that's what we will do. I am running for president because I want to offer...

BRADLEY: ... that kind of leadership on big things just like health care for all Americans.

BRADLEY: I think there's no more important issue in our country. It's one of the main reasons I made this race. It's one of the issues that I think is most important.

Most people in this country think democracy is like a broken thermostat, you turn the dial and nothing happens, and money is at core of that problem, and so I believe you need to have fundamental campaign finance reform, which means no soft money, public financing of elections, both general elections, partial financing of primary elections and free television time for people who are in campaigns in the last six weeks of that campaign.

I believe that the rich have a right to buy as many houses or vacations or cars as they want, but they don't have a right to buy our democracy. And this will take, again, leadership that is unencumbered and ready to challenge. We need a cold mountain stream to run through Washington...

BRADLEY: ... carry away the special interests and empower the people once again to make decisions.

BRADLEY: I believe that, as I said, this is the most important issue that we can deal with in this country today. That's why I made the run for president, in part, because I think that I was the only candidate who could make this happen, unencumbered, ready to make this as a big fight. And I believe that John McCain and I—we don't agree on this. He only wants no soft money.

I also—I want public financing of elections, so I want bigger reform. But I also offer reform plus out there for all of those...

BRADLEY: ... who are wondering about who they're going to vote for, reform plus pro-choice, good on environment, major investments in health and in education, which John McCain doesn't want.

BRADLEY: Yes, I do think that we need to open our doors to more immigrants. I think raising the number for H1B visas, which are the highly talented individuals that the vice president is talking about, is important.

But I also think something else is important. In 1986, we passed an immigration law. The immigration law provided for amnesty, provided for an amnesty for those who were here before 1982. Unfortunately, a lot of the people who were here before 1982 didn't get to the place they were supposed to go to file for that amnesty. I believe we should have late amnesty for those who had not gotten to it in time, because their hardworking people, they're in America today, they're the backbone of the country, in many respects.

So yes, H1B visas, but also late amnesty for those people who were here in the country before 1982.

BRADLEY: Well, as I said earlier, my wife is an immigrant. She'd be first immigrant first lady. I know what it is to be caught in between one place and another place. I've lived it for all of our marriage. It's an incredible experience. I also know that those who come here have to feel a part of this place.

I was down in Santa Cruz not so long ago with the group called Barrios Sadidos (ph), great group, talked to the young woman, who was a junior in college, and I asked her see was Latino...

BRADLEY: ... and I said, what do you hope for? And she said what I hope for is that someday in America I can be treated like everybody else. That is also a part of immigration policy, making people welcome.

BRADLEY: The most important thing that you can do is to cut off the flow of money from lobbyists, from special interests groups, to elected officials and to parties. It's pretty difficult for somebody to say that they've bought me for a thousand dollars, but if they've made a $500,000 dollar contribution to a party in my name, it's a more difficult thing to disprove.

So back to the question. I believe that fundamental campaign finance reform is absolutely critical. It is the one way that would disconnect the way this whole system in Washington works. Secret deals, special interests money, that's the connection. And you have to break it by making sure that you take money out of politics. That will only happen when people give someone who runs for president a mandate to do that, because otherwise, the culture will not change in Washington. And it is the culture in Washington that...

BRADLEY: ... has to change, and the people are the only in place in America that have the chance to make that happen.

BRADLEY: Last winter in Claremont, New Hampshire, John McCain and I shook hands. It was the exact place that President Clinton and Newt Gingrich shook hands, promised the American people campaign finance reform. The only difference is we made a commit to each other that we could each fulfill. We wouldn't have to point to the Congress, and say, they didn't want to do it. And the commitment we made, was that if we were nominees of our party, that we would not accept soft money. I believe that that is important...

BRADLEY: ... to consider as we're looking at this presidential election.

BRADLEY: I'm not sure any particular fix of timing is going to resolve the major problem in our Democracy today. Sure, these primaries are a bit idiosyncratic. Who knows what's the rationale for when they occur other than whoever controlled the DNC or the RNC were able to shape it the way they want their candidate to have the primaries. Maybe it would make more sense to have four regional primaries once a month and have a focus on issues.

But I think it's a deeper question. I don't think that's going to necessarily give you better democracy. When I left the Senate, I said I thought politics was broken. By that I meant, way too much money in politics, the media was too superficial, and not enough politicians led from their core convictions. I got into this race to try to deal with that, to push campaign finance reform, to try to be direct with the media and truthful with the media, and to try to speak from my core convictions because we need a new politics in this country, not a politics of a thousand attacks and a thousand promises, but a politics of belief, and conviction...

BRADLEY: ... and direct comment to he American people.

BRADLEY: I think the most important thing that politicians can do is to respect the people, to not play scare tactics with the people, to not use innuendo with the people, to not tell half-truths with the people, but to level with them. And if a leader levels with the people, then that engenders trust, and trust is the absolute ingredient that's needed in tough times between a leader.

BRADLEY: ... and the people.

BRADLEY: Well, I'm not prepared, Jeff, to buy the premise of your question. Because to date, the delegate count is 41 to 27.

Only 250,000 people have voted in this presidential election for delegates. On next Tuesday, 8 ½ million people will vote, and about a third of the delegates will be selected. That is the day that we will have a national primary, and that is the day that I think that you have to take off. And so I'm looking at the next Tuesday as the take-off day for me.

I also know that in this race that I am in it to change the political process. I am in it because of an open commitment to idealism, to get beyond the interest group politics of Washington, where you try to stuff groups with money, but instead appeal to individuals as Americans, and as human beings.

BRADLEY: That is what I will continue do through the duration.

BRADLEY: Another thing about this kind of campaign, national campaign, is quite frankly those people you meet along the road that enrich your life and leave indelible imprints.

I was out in Spokane, Washington, for example, last week at the United Steel Workers picket line at the Kaiser plant. They had been out 18 months. I talked to a man, lines on his face, calluses on his hands.

And I asked him: Is it tough?

He said: Yes, it is tough.

I said: When is it tough?

He said: Holidays.

I said: What do you mean?

He says: For the last two Christmases, I haven't bought a Christmas tree for my family because I couldn't do it.

BRADLEY: What I'm saying is that, when you run for president, your public record is important. It defines who you are. It defines what fights you have made. And that is precisely what I was saying when I pointed out those aspects.

I think, no question, 84 percent right-to-life voting record in Congress. In terms of the NRA, he has evolved, I'm glad he has evolved. In the course of this campaign, his campaign said on three separate—gave three answers on Medicaid abortions in a 48-hour period. He said there was no—he never voted against Roe v. Wade.

But indeed, I think that there is a counter to that in the course of this campaign. To me, the question is not—is what kind of president you are going to be. And I believe that if you are consistent on matters of principle that that is relevant to consideration in a campaign.

BRADLEY: Let me give you an example where I think the record will be a problem in this campaign. In his congressional career, Al voted five times, to support the tax-exempt status for schools that practice racial discrimination, such as Bob Jones.

Republicans are down at Bob Jones Universities preaching the old conservatism. And I guarantee you, we should be attacking them for that. But when we attack them, if you attack them for that, then they are going to come right back and point to those votes, and it is going to be...

BRADLEY: ... a very difficult case to make.

BRADLEY: No, I don't think that was a concession to the inevitable. I think take-off time is Tuesday. And, I would like to take the remainder of my time to come back to the last question because I don't think it is unimportant.

I mean, we know what happened in America. There was desegregation of educational institutions. Then white southerners began to take their students to private academies that had tax-exempt status. Jimmy Carter came in as president of the United States. He said, this is—We are finished with this. And he got his IRS to go after them. The IRS went after them. They disallowed the deduction, and then those individuals went to the Congress to try get the Congress to overrule the IRS decision to disallow tax-exempt status. That is what this was all about.

And the people who said this was quotas was really Bob Dornan. In California, you know who Bob Dornan is, that was the author of one of the amendments.

BRADLEY: Well, you know, the point is you might have voted for the underlying bill, but this was an amendment, and the amendment actually gave and protected the tax-exempt status of these segregated academies, that is why the Black Caucus uniformly opposed it. They knew what was going on, they understood what this meant in America, and if you can say that you have learned and evolved on abortion, on guns, I think it is important that you be able to face up to this vote and say how you have changed and why.

BRADLEY: I have been on the road in America for 30 years. There has been one continuum to all that travel and that's me going out and asking people to tell me their stories, many of which I have shared with you tonight. And, accumulation of all those stories has given me a sense of who are the American people are, and basically, I think we are good people. I think there is goodness in most of us, and yet as Dr. Martin Luther King said, trying to explain why the civil rights revolution didn't occur sooner, he said it was because of the silence of good people.

What my campaign is about is asking good people to come forward and join us, so that our voices can be heard, so that we will create a world of new possibilities, where we can get fundamental reform of our political process, where everyone will have health insurance, where our schools will be responsive, where poverty will be reduced...

BRADLEY: ... and where we will be able to live as brothers and sisters in a great democracy.

Content and programming copyright 2000 Cable News Network Transcribed under license by Federal Document Clearing House, Inc. Formatting copyright 2000 Federal Document Clearing House, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to Cable News Network. This transcript may not be copied or resold in any media. CNN. Transcript # 00030109V54.