August 15, 2004

STEVE MALZBERG, HOST: All right folks. Welcome. Steve Malzberg, 770 WABC, as we embark on a three hour journey together--possibly the best lineup of all time in the history of the Sunday edition of the Steve Malzberg Show. You're going to want to hear every guest that we have to offer today, and we start right out of the box with the Republican Senatorial candidate for the U.S. Senate from the state of Illinois, Mr. Alan Keyes--I should say, Ambassador Alan Keyes. Welcome back to WABC, sir.

ALAN KEYES: Always glad to be here. Thank you.

MALZBERG: Well, first of all, before we go into your situation, I'm sure you've heard the news about [New Jersey] Governor McGreevey and his resignation and the circumstances surrounding it. What was your take? I don't know if you sat there and watched it, or if you read about it afterward, but it was a jaw-dropper, to put it mildly.

KEYES: Well, I think so. And it's got to raise some questions, since we are confronted with some serious issues of substance that involve the whole issue of homosexuality--like gay marriage--that are, I think, very critical, and you do have to wonder what exists in our political structure, in the way of folks who actually are taking certain stands because they're sort of covering up in their private lives various things that would be contradictory of the opposite position. I mean, it really gives you pause for thought when someone can, in that manner, so successfully carry off a double life.

MALZBERG: Yeah, and of course, to me, you know, it's less a matter of what kind of affairs he was having, but the fact that he put on the payroll in the post of, you know, security director against terrorism this guy that he was allegedly having an affair with, according to him--although the guy now says he was having no affair with the governor, he was just harassed by the governor. But the guy was put in charge with absolutely no experience in terrorism!

KEYES: Yes.

MALZBERG: Anyway, but let's talk about you, sir. You know what? I mean, Alan Keyes against Barack Obama--it is, to me, just a kind of a dream match up. You are so diametrically opposed on every issue. But the first thing they hit you with--and I don't know if you're appearing on [This Week with George] Stephanopolous later today, but I just saw the intro to the Senatorial race story, and it had, naturally, what you said about Hillary Clinton entering the New York race when she ran, calling her, you know, a carpetbagger and all that, and denouncing what she did. So that's what they're going to use to hound you, and they've already used to hound you. How do you square your entering the race in Illinois with what you said about Hillary entering the race in New York?

KEYES: In the first instance, I think they've raised the question. I wouldn't say they've hounded me--they've just asked a question, and it's a natural question. And I think I have the right answer. I would not have taken this step, except I could reconcile it with my principles--and I think that's the main point. What Hillary did, she did from personal ambition, carefully planned and plotted out, to make a state the instrument of her personal ambition.

What I'm doing, I'm doing because the people of the State of Illinois have called me in to defend principles--and the most important principles, in fact, of our national life, the principles of the Declaration--against somebody who would waltz into the Senate, seemingly unopposed, air of inevitability, and yet he rejects those principles, and takes positions that are diametrically opposed to the statesmanship of Lincoln that Illinois and its heritage represent for its people.

I'm a strong defender of state sovereignty. Still am. I think what Hillary did violates the premises and principles of respect for state sovereignty. What I am doing is to defend the principles of national union, the other element of federalism in our society, and so I'm acting in a way that's perfectly consistent with both my views and my long held beliefs.

MALZBERG: Alan, do you think it matters much, or that a big deal should be made about the fact that this is the first time you had the two major parties putting forth African-American candidates in an election for the U.S. Senate?

KEYES: I think it has significance. I also think, though--and this is going to be clear later in the day, because I go into it extensively in the Stephanopoulos interview, or a little bit more, anyway--that we have to be careful, because Barack Obama and I are of the same race, but we are not of the same heritage. And there is a distinction. Race is something physical. Heritage is something that may have an element that is physical or biological, but that also includes other elements of history and experience--the kinds of things that have helped to shape the mind and heart of an individual and that are not determined by physics and biology. And we are of different heritages. I'm of a slave heritage, and he is not. I have wrestled all my life with the reality of the injustices done to my ancestors, and it has been deeply important to me. It's influenced fundamental choices that I have made in life, things I take seriously, things I am still, to this day, preoccupied with, like the question of justice and liberty.

So, I think it makes a tremendous difference, and if we just look at it with racial blinders on, we will miss the fact that these are two people of the same race, but they are not two people of the same heritage.

MALZBERG: Do you believe--well, you know, I always hark back to the day that you announced for the Republican nomination for the presidency of the United States and the press coverage that it got, and I compare that to the press coverage that Jesse Jackson got, not only the first time he ran, but the second time he ran, and I, on my own, called up various news organizations here in New York City and at the network level, just as a caller, as an interested caller, and said, "Why did you not broadcast the fact that Alan Keyes held a press conference today? He said he's announcing for the presidency, the Republican nomination, the first African American to do so," and one reaction was, "Who's Alan Keyes?" another one was, "Well, it's a national story, so we won't run it on the local news." I said, "But you ran Jesse Jackson all those years ago, and if he would again run today, you'd run Jesse Jackson again."

So, to me, being African American, just as you hit on, you may have the same skin color, but to most of the mainstream liberal media, you might as well, with all do respect, be a white guy conservative.

KEYES: Well, I don't know. I have long since given up the chore of trying to understand the choices and approaches that are taken by the media, and I just try to deal with the circumstances as they arise. I think we're in a race now that certainly is attracting the attention of people all over the country, both for its historic nature, but also because it is true we're going to see a real confrontation between the basic philosophy of to very different individuals. I believe in liberty, I believe in the Declaration--he does not. He believes in socialism, essentially. He's a hard-line, academic Marxist in most of the positions that he's taken. I think that the world and experience have proven that people who take that point of view are simply wrong. Long since has that kind of understanding been overtaken by history--and Illinois needs a representative that will speak from the heart of the commitment to self-government, to free enterprise that people in Illinois really believe in.

MALZBERG: We're talking to Alan Keyes, who's running for the Senate in the state of Illinois against Barack Obama. Do you think that you can, quote unquote, "energize" the conservative base in the state of Illinois, and not only turn out the vote to win your election, but to also help make a difference in the presidential race, as well?

KEYES: Well, I would say, based on my experience so far, and what everybody is seeing in the state, I already have energized the conservative base in Illinois. People are awake, they're moving, they've realized that we have a tremendous opportunity here to strike a blow in our electoral politics for things that I've fought for for years that I know many millions of Americans deeply believe in, and that I know many millions of Illinois deeply believe in.

So, people are rallying already. They have been flooding the phone lines, they've been coming forward, they're organizing independently, we're getting contributions, so, yes, I think this is going to make a difference, and to tell you the truth, I think that it puts Illinois in play in the presidential election.

MALZBERG: Now, Alan, I think there's 87 days left before the election. Your opponent, I believe, is one of the most liberal, if not the most liberal, in the state legislature in the State of Illinois. That is correct? Am I speaking the truth here?

KEYES: Based upon my analysis of his voting record, because that's what I had to go through and look at before I made this choice--take, for example, the issue of abortion, the issue of principle that so clearly divides us. In the Senate of the United States, there was a vote taken, 98-0, to stop the practice of live-birth abortion--that is, if a baby is born alive in the course of some abortion procedure, they had been setting it aside, letting it die. And there was a bill that was against this practice, and 98 to nothing, liberal Senators like Ted Kennedy and Barbara Mikulski, as I recall, they voted to stop this heinous practice. When the same issue came before the State Senate here in Illinois, Barack Obama refused to support a bill, he voted against it, to stop the same heinous practice.

I mean, this is a form of extremism that I think most Americans are totally unused to, and that has been the hallmark of his career.

MALZBERG: I want to go back to one thing you said, and then I'm going to let you go. I know you're on a tight schedule in what you're going to talk about with Stephanopolous later--and you previewed a little bit here. Do you think that's groundbreaking, in a sense? I mean, it seems common sense, but it's not talked about much. I mean, just because you're both African American--not only are your views different, but, as you put it, you come from different backgrounds with different upbringing, and it does differentiate you two, not only for what you believe in now, but how you got to that point.

KEYES: Well, I think it does make a difference, or otherwise I wouldn't have observed it, but I don't think it's just an incidental one; I think it's essential. I think that my slave heritage has been an important constitutive element of who I am. And the heritage that springs from it, in terms of segregation and discrimination and all of this, this is something that has been borne particularly by the descendants of slaves in this country, and we all know it.

And I think that that makes a tremendous difference in terms of how you think about the issues, particularly, by the way, the fundamental issues of justice, because my whole way of looking at the world was affected by the encounter I had as a very young person with the reality of slavery. It broke my heart, and that heartbreak, I think, has been my whole lifetime in healing--and it hasn't healed yet, because you see still in this world, like the assault against innocent babes in the womb. The truth is that the principle of injustice that assaulted my ancestors still operates in the world, and we must still think about it and fight against it.

MALZBERG: And, of course, Obama born to a Kenyan and, I believe, a white American female--you believe without that history cannot feel what you feel to that extent?

KEYES: Well, I wouldn't want to make any judgments, but I think that folks need to think about this, because the contrast in our views is related to the fact that I have been wrestling with something all my life that perhaps he hasn't had to take as seriously.

MALZBERG: All right. Alan Keyes, we wish you luck, sir. We'll have you back. Thank you for your time this morning.

KEYES: Thank you very much. Bye-bye.

MALZBERG: Bye-bye. Alan Keyes, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Steve Malzberg.