Debate
Republican Presidential Debate
October 22, 1999Durham, New Hampshire
[Excerpt]
The following is a transcript of Ambassador Keyes' remarks, with summaries of the questions he was answering.
(The candidates were first asked why New Hampshire voters should vote Republican, given the improvement in the New Hampshire economy during the Clinton years.)
KEYES: I actually think that the premise of the question is correct. On the basis of pure economic issues, we are not going to persuade the American people to hand the White House from the Democrats to the Republicans. They never have done so without a good reason, and right now, in the economic sphere, we don't face a huge crisis; in the international sphere we don't face one.
I think we do face an enormous crisis. It is a moral crisis. We have been through the most shameless and humiliating period in our country's history, and it has threatened the integrity of our most important institutions. On those grounds, we absolutely need to change the hands that are now upon the White House, and give them to folks who will have the kind of integrity the Democrats have not shown during this moral crisis.
But I also believe that, based on renewed moral self-confidence, we reclaim control of our money. Not by piddling tax cuts, not by "plans" that come from on high claiming that they are going to improve our economy. We need to get back control of our own money, and we will get back control of our own money only when we get rid of the socialist structures that gave that control to government, beginning with the income tax itself. So I think that the key to making sure we are able to take advantage of the enormous opportunities our technology is handing us is to get back control of our money by abolishing the income tax and returning to the original Constitution of our country, which funded the federal government with tariffs, duties and excise taxes, not a privacy-invading income tax. And that is where I think we need to start.
(The next question, from a set proposed by the American Catholic Bishops: "How will we overcome the scandal of a quarter of our pre-schoolers living in poverty in the richest nation on earth?" The reference to Senator Hatch was to his comment that the President can help the problem of poverty by setting an example of responsibility.)
KEYES: I think it is a little unfair to ascribe it just to personal decisions. Government helped to create this problem. We had a welfare system that actually destroyed the family structure, drove the father out of the home, took away the incentives for work. And I think we need consciously to revamp that system, so that it will put incentives behind marriage, behind the maintenance of a strong family structure, behind the presence of fathers in the home.
We also need to understand, though, that at the end of the day, helping people ought to be the business of the charity sector, and the faith sector, and the private sector. And that is why I think it is so critical to get up off the money. Government doesn't need to be spending this money. Give it back to people themselves, let them decide what to do with it, so they can put it in the channels that will actually strengthen their families, strengthen their church and faith institutions, to meet the challenge of doing for one another what needs to be done.
KEYES: The whole premise of the question has to be questioned. One, I think it is a mistake we have been making for thirty, forty years, that plays right into the hands of the socialist mentality that, unfortunately, dominates everybody in our politics. (Cokie Roberts attempts to reply by mentioning the bishops again.) The Catholic bishops have gone down that left-wing road, Cokie, and don't tell me otherwise because I am a Catholic and I know it. And I get to criticize them when they are socialist, because socialism is not a requirement of our theology. As a matter of fact it goes against what the Pope has laid out as the best approach to economics.
But the point I want to make is this. The fundamental question we face is two-fold. Whether it is education or anything else, we know first of all that throwing money at the problem doesn't solve it, that the key to success in all these areas turns out to be the sort of thing, in fact, that Senator Hatch was pointing to. If by "example" you mean creating a moral environment in which there is going to be the decency and the discipline necessary for people to work together to pass on elements of their heritage.
My parents were poor, Cokie, and other parents in the black community were poor, for the longest time. That didn't make them depraved, and it didn't mean that they couldn't raise decent children who knew how to work hard and get out of that poverty. I think we have to be careful not to make money the criterion.
(The next question was whether government should ensure that American children all receive health care just as the elderly all receive health care. Senator McCain turned the discussion to the proposed "bill of rights" for medical patients, including the right to sue health care providers.)
KEYES: I think that it is quite clear that the reason the Democrats favor this is that they want to unleash the trial lawyers on the existing health system in order to destroy it, so that they can step in and tell us that the government has to be the savior. If we can't see that coming, then we are awfully dumb.
I think that the premise that we need in our health care system is to make the individuals who are receiving that health care once again into empowered consumers, who will actually be able to police the relationship between price and value instead of turning that chore over to bureaucracies in the government OR the insurance companies. And that is why we need voucherization. We need medical savings accounts. We need the things that will once again make those individuals empowered parties, who will be able to determine who their doctors are, whether they are getting the kind of service that they need, but who will be able to ENFORCE that, then, by taking their dollars where they want to take those dollars.
(The candidates were next asked where they stand on the charge by President Clinton's National Security Advisor that the Republicans are becoming "neo-isolationist.")
KEYES: I think that what we have to recognize is that when you live in a world where you have somebody in a high position like Strobe Talbott who tells us that the nation-state is going to be a thing of the past, and we should surrender to some global government, those of us who resist that idea are not isolationists. We are just defending the sovereignty and the Constitutional integrity of the United States. And I think it is essential right now. We should NOT follow the Clinton Administration in the surrender of American sovereignty.
And we should certainly not accept their betrayal and it's not just appeasement; it's treachery and in terms of handing off our secrets to the communist Chinese, and doing God knows what in exchange for their purchase of influence over our security policies, making decisions that have transferred our technology and the things that actually gave us the security edge into the hands of the country that is liable to be our strongest potential enemy in the course of the 21st century if we are not careful. It is a huge error.
We need to base our foreign policy on a clear sense of our national sovereignty, and our national interest, that puts the interests of the American people in first place, knowing that by doing so we are actually serving the best interests of the world.
We also need to understand, though and what some of my colleagues here, I think, do not and that that translates into a policy on trade that is not willing to surrender the sovereignty of the American people to the World Trade Organization or any other international body, and that, again there, is willing to put the interests of our people FIRST, by making it clear that if you want to come trade in the American emporium, you can help us bear the freight for keeping that emporium open. I think that is fair to the American worker.
(The next question was "What about trade? Is it a good thing?" Gary Bauer asked Steve Forbes if he would repeal most favored nation status for China, and Forbes gave a long reply that never answered that question.)
KEYES: Two things are clear. One, I think we just need a clear answer to that very simple question. Most favored nation status for China sends a signal of business as usual to a bunch of dictators who are brutalizing and destroying the rights of their people, and we shouldn't be doing it. I think it is that simple, and one ought to be able to say so.
Second, I think that the answer that was given about fair trade and free trade always sounds very good, until you think through its implications. It means that through the mechanism of so-called "free trade," we are going to sit down and negotiate a minutiae of regulations and so forth, to be enforced by what? A bunch of international bureaucrats. So that it turns out that, as I often tell people, free trade is not free trade, it is managed trade. It is socialism. And what we are seeing here on this podium, a bunch of free traders, and what they are actually doing is introducing socialism into America through the international back door. It is not the right thing to do, and we oughtn't to accept it.
(Another question from the Bishops' list: "How will we address the tragedy of 35,000 children dying every day of the consequences of hunger, debt, and the lack of development around the world?" Cokie adds: "What about this question of third world debt, and what about this question of the United States' moral role in the world?")
KEYES: I served as Ambassador to UN Economic and Social Council and Assistant Secretary of State. I dealt with those issues and having to do with development and what we do, or don't do, and how third world countries are doing, and what the terrible situations are in day in and day out for several years. And I'll tell you the truth: the notion that we can wave some magic wand, send money, do loans, do whatever, that is fundamentally going to change the situation of a lot of these developing countries is false. Do you know why? Because at the end of the day it is up to the people in those countries themselves to adopt the path of freedom, and to establish the institutions that can sustain it. Including institutions we don't always think of, like honest courts, where you can go to suit in order to sustain business relationships, and things of that kind.
I think, yes, we need to take an interest in helping other countries develop to the point where they can be effective trading partners with us, but we shouldn't fool ourselves into believing that some "transfer of resources" is magically going to achieve this objective if they are not willing to adopt the right kind of free enterprise policies that will actually sustain their growth and development.
KEYES: You made a point a minute ago about banks, like there is a distinction between banks and taxpayers. Excuse me. We have farmers sitting in Iowa, where we have to appropriate billions of dollars to try to help them get through hard times. Why? Because that capital isn't being made available to them through the banking system. So I don't think that distinction is fair. Our banks shouldn't be giving preference to people overseas either.
(Question: "How did we get into an educational crisis in America, and how do we get out?")
KEYES: I think it is clear that one main principle needs to be re-implemented in our approach to education: parents need to be put in the diver's seat once again, instead of educrats and bureaucrats. To that end, we need to break the government monopoly on education by making sure that the money we spend on education follows the choice of parents, not the choice of the educrats and the bureaucrats.
That will then do two things. It will make sure that the schools have to be responsive to the parents, who will then be able to send their children to schools of their choice, set up new schools if they think that is what is necessary. But it will also reestablish a vital link that has been broken between faith and moral viewpoint, and our educational system. People say, "Why are there guns and killing in school?" Well, I'll tell you. We got the guns in because we drove God out. And we will get God back in, when we put parents back in the driver's seat so they can send their children to schools that reflect their faith, their values, their sense of the moral priorities that are the real basis for educational success and motivation.
I think that that two-fold approach, which empowers parents at the grassroots and which reestablishes the vital connection between education and our moral discipline and our moral principles are the key to seeing our schools improve.
What is NOT the key, by the way, is what is often implied when people talk in these terms of poor and rich, and all this stuff. We have some of the poorest people in the country in the District of Columbia; we also have some of the highest per capita spending per student. It hasn't produced great results, because money is not the key. We need to look at the true keys, and not talk as if throwing money at education will solve things.
(The next question was why the House voted against school vouchers and for more federal education spending. In replying, Senator McCain mentioned that special education programs are being abused by the transfer of disciplinary problems to special ed programs, but that the program must be fully funded and this problem solved.)
KEYES: Well, I would have to say that what Senator McCain just said is a good example of what I think is part of the problem with the whole federal role in education. Let's not pretend that the things that are being done at the local level aren't influenced by the sense that, "well, we'll get federal funds if we move over here," and that the way they make decisions is then distorted by the fact that the federal government is in various ways leveraging and manipulating control over those local institutions.
That's why I think it is essential that we stop talking out of both sides of our mouths, stop talking about "national standards" and "what I'm gonna do when I get in there to make education this and that." I'll tell you one thing: it's not what I'm going to do as President that will satisfy the need. (The question is) am I going to put power back into the hands of people at the grassroots, so they can do what has to be done? And once I have achieved that, am I going to do what Ronald Reagan promised to do, abolish the federal Department of Education, so that we can make it clear that education is a local, grassroots responsibility?
(Senator McCain was asked how he would have voted if he had been present for the Senate's recent votes against partial birth abortion and for overturning Roe vs. Wade. His entire response, over which he stumbled, was: "I would have voted for the abolishing of Roe vs. Wade," and he immediately turned the subject back to education, telling a story about going to a charter school and seeing that it was teaching moral principles and in this case, the principle of always telling the truth and without having to teach religion.)
KEYES: By the way, Senator, I think that the abolition of Roe vs. Wade would deserve a little louder affirmation than that, maybe a little clearer, in the sense that, "of course" you would have voted to abolish Roe vs. Wade, because it is not a matter of majority vote. If our basic principle is correct, and our rights come from the Creator, then they don't come from our mother's choice.
We need, at every opportunity, as we had to do with slavery and civil rights, to remind the American people that we, as a people, claim our rights based upon a premise that forbids it to us to deny those rights to other human creatures of God, including the creatures in the womb.
I think that that was what that vote was about. I am glad that the Republicans in the Senate overwhelmingly affirmed that truth. And I think that it is a disgrace to suggest that we can back away from that fundamental principle of truth, and then expect our children to accept the notion that we ought to tell the truth. Because if we abandon our fundamental principles, and we don't have the moral character at the public policy level, then we are setting such a bad example of truth for our children that we should expect their consciences to be corrupted.
(The candidates were first asked why New Hampshire voters should vote Republican, given the improvement in the New Hampshire economy during the Clinton years.)
KEYES: I actually think that the premise of the question is correct. On the basis of pure economic issues, we are not going to persuade the American people to hand the White House from the Democrats to the Republicans. They never have done so without a good reason, and right now, in the economic sphere, we don't face a huge crisis; in the international sphere we don't face one.
I think we do face an enormous crisis. It is a moral crisis. We have been through the most shameless and humiliating period in our country's history, and it has threatened the integrity of our most important institutions. On those grounds, we absolutely need to change the hands that are now upon the White House, and give them to folks who will have the kind of integrity the Democrats have not shown during this moral crisis.
But I also believe that, based on renewed moral self-confidence, we reclaim control of our money. Not by piddling tax cuts, not by "plans" that come from on high claiming that they are going to improve our economy. We need to get back control of our own money, and we will get back control of our own money only when we get rid of the socialist structures that gave that control to government, beginning with the income tax itself. So I think that the key to making sure we are able to take advantage of the enormous opportunities our technology is handing us is to get back control of our money by abolishing the income tax and returning to the original Constitution of our country, which funded the federal government with tariffs, duties and excise taxes, not a privacy-invading income tax. And that is where I think we need to start.
(The next question, from a set proposed by the American Catholic Bishops: "How will we overcome the scandal of a quarter of our pre-schoolers living in poverty in the richest nation on earth?" The reference to Senator Hatch was to his comment that the President can help the problem of poverty by setting an example of responsibility.)
KEYES: I think it is a little unfair to ascribe it just to personal decisions. Government helped to create this problem. We had a welfare system that actually destroyed the family structure, drove the father out of the home, took away the incentives for work. And I think we need consciously to revamp that system, so that it will put incentives behind marriage, behind the maintenance of a strong family structure, behind the presence of fathers in the home.
We also need to understand, though, that at the end of the day, helping people ought to be the business of the charity sector, and the faith sector, and the private sector. And that is why I think it is so critical to get up off the money. Government doesn't need to be spending this money. Give it back to people themselves, let them decide what to do with it, so they can put it in the channels that will actually strengthen their families, strengthen their church and faith institutions, to meet the challenge of doing for one another what needs to be done.
KEYES: The whole premise of the question has to be questioned. One, I think it is a mistake we have been making for thirty, forty years, that plays right into the hands of the socialist mentality that, unfortunately, dominates everybody in our politics. (Cokie Roberts attempts to reply by mentioning the bishops again.) The Catholic bishops have gone down that left-wing road, Cokie, and don't tell me otherwise because I am a Catholic and I know it. And I get to criticize them when they are socialist, because socialism is not a requirement of our theology. As a matter of fact it goes against what the Pope has laid out as the best approach to economics.
But the point I want to make is this. The fundamental question we face is two-fold. Whether it is education or anything else, we know first of all that throwing money at the problem doesn't solve it, that the key to success in all these areas turns out to be the sort of thing, in fact, that Senator Hatch was pointing to. If by "example" you mean creating a moral environment in which there is going to be the decency and the discipline necessary for people to work together to pass on elements of their heritage.
My parents were poor, Cokie, and other parents in the black community were poor, for the longest time. That didn't make them depraved, and it didn't mean that they couldn't raise decent children who knew how to work hard and get out of that poverty. I think we have to be careful not to make money the criterion.
(The next question was whether government should ensure that American children all receive health care just as the elderly all receive health care. Senator McCain turned the discussion to the proposed "bill of rights" for medical patients, including the right to sue health care providers.)
KEYES: I think that it is quite clear that the reason the Democrats favor this is that they want to unleash the trial lawyers on the existing health system in order to destroy it, so that they can step in and tell us that the government has to be the savior. If we can't see that coming, then we are awfully dumb.
I think that the premise that we need in our health care system is to make the individuals who are receiving that health care once again into empowered consumers, who will actually be able to police the relationship between price and value instead of turning that chore over to bureaucracies in the government OR the insurance companies. And that is why we need voucherization. We need medical savings accounts. We need the things that will once again make those individuals empowered parties, who will be able to determine who their doctors are, whether they are getting the kind of service that they need, but who will be able to ENFORCE that, then, by taking their dollars where they want to take those dollars.
(The candidates were next asked where they stand on the charge by President Clinton's National Security Advisor that the Republicans are becoming "neo-isolationist.")
KEYES: I think that what we have to recognize is that when you live in a world where you have somebody in a high position like Strobe Talbott who tells us that the nation-state is going to be a thing of the past, and we should surrender to some global government, those of us who resist that idea are not isolationists. We are just defending the sovereignty and the Constitutional integrity of the United States. And I think it is essential right now. We should NOT follow the Clinton Administration in the surrender of American sovereignty.
And we should certainly not accept their betrayal and it's not just appeasement; it's treachery and in terms of handing off our secrets to the communist Chinese, and doing God knows what in exchange for their purchase of influence over our security policies, making decisions that have transferred our technology and the things that actually gave us the security edge into the hands of the country that is liable to be our strongest potential enemy in the course of the 21st century if we are not careful. It is a huge error.
We need to base our foreign policy on a clear sense of our national sovereignty, and our national interest, that puts the interests of the American people in first place, knowing that by doing so we are actually serving the best interests of the world.
We also need to understand, though and what some of my colleagues here, I think, do not and that that translates into a policy on trade that is not willing to surrender the sovereignty of the American people to the World Trade Organization or any other international body, and that, again there, is willing to put the interests of our people FIRST, by making it clear that if you want to come trade in the American emporium, you can help us bear the freight for keeping that emporium open. I think that is fair to the American worker.
(The next question was "What about trade? Is it a good thing?" Gary Bauer asked Steve Forbes if he would repeal most favored nation status for China, and Forbes gave a long reply that never answered that question.)
KEYES: Two things are clear. One, I think we just need a clear answer to that very simple question. Most favored nation status for China sends a signal of business as usual to a bunch of dictators who are brutalizing and destroying the rights of their people, and we shouldn't be doing it. I think it is that simple, and one ought to be able to say so.
Second, I think that the answer that was given about fair trade and free trade always sounds very good, until you think through its implications. It means that through the mechanism of so-called "free trade," we are going to sit down and negotiate a minutiae of regulations and so forth, to be enforced by what? A bunch of international bureaucrats. So that it turns out that, as I often tell people, free trade is not free trade, it is managed trade. It is socialism. And what we are seeing here on this podium, a bunch of free traders, and what they are actually doing is introducing socialism into America through the international back door. It is not the right thing to do, and we oughtn't to accept it.
(Another question from the Bishops' list: "How will we address the tragedy of 35,000 children dying every day of the consequences of hunger, debt, and the lack of development around the world?" Cokie adds: "What about this question of third world debt, and what about this question of the United States' moral role in the world?")
KEYES: I served as Ambassador to UN Economic and Social Council and Assistant Secretary of State. I dealt with those issues and having to do with development and what we do, or don't do, and how third world countries are doing, and what the terrible situations are in day in and day out for several years. And I'll tell you the truth: the notion that we can wave some magic wand, send money, do loans, do whatever, that is fundamentally going to change the situation of a lot of these developing countries is false. Do you know why? Because at the end of the day it is up to the people in those countries themselves to adopt the path of freedom, and to establish the institutions that can sustain it. Including institutions we don't always think of, like honest courts, where you can go to suit in order to sustain business relationships, and things of that kind.
I think, yes, we need to take an interest in helping other countries develop to the point where they can be effective trading partners with us, but we shouldn't fool ourselves into believing that some "transfer of resources" is magically going to achieve this objective if they are not willing to adopt the right kind of free enterprise policies that will actually sustain their growth and development.
KEYES: You made a point a minute ago about banks, like there is a distinction between banks and taxpayers. Excuse me. We have farmers sitting in Iowa, where we have to appropriate billions of dollars to try to help them get through hard times. Why? Because that capital isn't being made available to them through the banking system. So I don't think that distinction is fair. Our banks shouldn't be giving preference to people overseas either.
(Question: "How did we get into an educational crisis in America, and how do we get out?")
KEYES: I think it is clear that one main principle needs to be re-implemented in our approach to education: parents need to be put in the diver's seat once again, instead of educrats and bureaucrats. To that end, we need to break the government monopoly on education by making sure that the money we spend on education follows the choice of parents, not the choice of the educrats and the bureaucrats.
That will then do two things. It will make sure that the schools have to be responsive to the parents, who will then be able to send their children to schools of their choice, set up new schools if they think that is what is necessary. But it will also reestablish a vital link that has been broken between faith and moral viewpoint, and our educational system. People say, "Why are there guns and killing in school?" Well, I'll tell you. We got the guns in because we drove God out. And we will get God back in, when we put parents back in the driver's seat so they can send their children to schools that reflect their faith, their values, their sense of the moral priorities that are the real basis for educational success and motivation.
I think that that two-fold approach, which empowers parents at the grassroots and which reestablishes the vital connection between education and our moral discipline and our moral principles are the key to seeing our schools improve.
What is NOT the key, by the way, is what is often implied when people talk in these terms of poor and rich, and all this stuff. We have some of the poorest people in the country in the District of Columbia; we also have some of the highest per capita spending per student. It hasn't produced great results, because money is not the key. We need to look at the true keys, and not talk as if throwing money at education will solve things.
(The next question was why the House voted against school vouchers and for more federal education spending. In replying, Senator McCain mentioned that special education programs are being abused by the transfer of disciplinary problems to special ed programs, but that the program must be fully funded and this problem solved.)
KEYES: Well, I would have to say that what Senator McCain just said is a good example of what I think is part of the problem with the whole federal role in education. Let's not pretend that the things that are being done at the local level aren't influenced by the sense that, "well, we'll get federal funds if we move over here," and that the way they make decisions is then distorted by the fact that the federal government is in various ways leveraging and manipulating control over those local institutions.
That's why I think it is essential that we stop talking out of both sides of our mouths, stop talking about "national standards" and "what I'm gonna do when I get in there to make education this and that." I'll tell you one thing: it's not what I'm going to do as President that will satisfy the need. (The question is) am I going to put power back into the hands of people at the grassroots, so they can do what has to be done? And once I have achieved that, am I going to do what Ronald Reagan promised to do, abolish the federal Department of Education, so that we can make it clear that education is a local, grassroots responsibility?
(Senator McCain was asked how he would have voted if he had been present for the Senate's recent votes against partial birth abortion and for overturning Roe vs. Wade. His entire response, over which he stumbled, was: "I would have voted for the abolishing of Roe vs. Wade," and he immediately turned the subject back to education, telling a story about going to a charter school and seeing that it was teaching moral principles and in this case, the principle of always telling the truth and without having to teach religion.)
KEYES: By the way, Senator, I think that the abolition of Roe vs. Wade would deserve a little louder affirmation than that, maybe a little clearer, in the sense that, "of course" you would have voted to abolish Roe vs. Wade, because it is not a matter of majority vote. If our basic principle is correct, and our rights come from the Creator, then they don't come from our mother's choice.
We need, at every opportunity, as we had to do with slavery and civil rights, to remind the American people that we, as a people, claim our rights based upon a premise that forbids it to us to deny those rights to other human creatures of God, including the creatures in the womb.
I think that that was what that vote was about. I am glad that the Republicans in the Senate overwhelmingly affirmed that truth. And I think that it is a disgrace to suggest that we can back away from that fundamental principle of truth, and then expect our children to accept the notion that we ought to tell the truth. Because if we abandon our fundamental principles, and we don't have the moral character at the public policy level, then we are setting such a bad example of truth for our children that we should expect their consciences to be corrupted.