2004 Debate Two: Alan Keyes and Barack Obama (pdf document) free file download at fliiby.com

"~ ILLINOIS SENATE RACE 2004 ~ DEBATE TWO: ALAN KEYES BARACK OBAMA 2004 DEBATE TWO: ALAN KEYES AND BARACK OBAMA AlanKeyes.com Alan Keyes and Barack Obama Debate Sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Illinois ~~~ October 21, 2004 Tonight's moderator, Ron Magers. RON MAGERS, ABC 7 NEWS ANCHOR: Good evening, and welcome to the first televised debate between the candidates for the U. S. Senate, from the state of Illinois. Tonight, the candidates will debate the issues so that you, the voters, may make a more informed decision when you vote on election day. Tonight's debate is produced with the cooperation of the League of Women Voters of Illinois, the Asian American Institute, the Chicago Urban League, and the Mikva Challenge Grant Foundation. To question our candidates tonight are WBEZ radio's political reporter, Carlos HernandezGomez; ABC-7's political reporter, Andy Shaw; and Laura Washington, the Ida B. Wells Barnett Professor, DePaul University, and contributing columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. The candidates for U. S. Senate are Democratic candidate Barack Obama, and Alan Keyes, the Republican candidate. We sincerely welcome you both, and we thank you very much for this opportunity. I apologize for the raspiness of my voice tonight, but it is, after all, their voices that will count during this hour. Let us begin with those voices. Opening statements. By a drawing held earlier, Mr. Obama is first and, Mr. Obama, a minute, thirty seconds. BARACK OBAMA, (D) ILLINOIS U.S. SENATE CANDIDATE: I want to thank Channel 7, and those who sponsored this wonderful debate tonight. I want to thank those of you who are watching this evening. You know, I came to Chicago twenty years ago, to help communities that had been devastated by steel plants that had closed. I worked with churches and community residents to bring job ~2~ 2004 DEBATE TWO: ALAN KEYES AND BARACK OBAMA AlanKeyes.com training programs to the unemployed, and to bring economic development to hard-hit neighborhoods. After law school, I worked as a civil rights attorney, helping to build affordable housing and community health centers, and for the last eight years, I've worked as a state senator, focused on the issues that are working, affecting working families all across the state of Illinois. I've provided tax relief to families that needed it, health care to those who didn't have it, and helped to reform a death penalty system badly in need of repair. I accomplished these things by setting partisanship aside and seeking common ground. That's what you, the people of Illinois, have told me that you want—somebody who can reach out and find practical solutions to the problems that we face. Now, my opponent in this race doesn't have a track record of service in Illinois. Instead, he talks about a moral crusade, and labels those who disagree with him as sinners. I don't think that kind of talk is helpful, in terms of providing the sort of solutions that all of us are looking for. I think government works best when we focus on common solutions to the problems that we face as Americans. I'm running for the United States Senate to save our jobs, our health care, our pensions, and our dreams for college. And, working together, I'm absolutely certain we can accomplish all of these tasks. MAGERS: Thank you, Mr. Obama. Mr. Keyes, your opening statement. A minute and a half. ALAN KEYES, (R) ILLINOIS U.S. SENATE CANDIDATE: I think one of the things that shocked me most when I first got involved in this race, was a line I read in a letter that Senator Obama had sent to Jack Ryan about the issue of debates, in which he said that there was, at stake in the race, no great issue of principle, such as that which had divided Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas in their famous debates here in Illinois. That showed a decided and total lack of understanding of what is at stake for the people of this state and, indeed, of our nation in issues like abortion, in issues like the defense of traditional marriage. In point of fact, the most important principle of our nation's life—that we are all created equal and endowed by our Creator, not by human choice, with our unalienable rights—is at stake in this election, as it was in the great election that was the dividing line between Lincoln and Douglas in 1858. I stand for the defense of innocent life. I stand for the defense of traditional marriage. I stand on the platform of those great principles that Martin Luther King fought for, and that Frederick Douglass espoused, as they fought against great injustices. And I stand there not just for reasons of principle but because, for instance, in the black ~3~ 2004 DEBATE TWO: ALAN KEYES AND BARACK OBAMA AlanKeyes.com community in this country, the Number One taker of black life is abortion. More than AIDS, more than violence, more than heart disease, more than any of those causes, including accidents and so forth combined, abortion has claimed the lives of black people—more than twice as many, amounting to twenty-five percent reduction in the black population. This is the practical truth of the moral crisis that we're in. MAGERS: Thank you, gentlemen. And now, I have the pleasure of asking the first question, and by a drawing earlier, Mr. Keyes, the first response is yours. A minute and a half. The war in Iraq. Is it the right war at the right time, and where and how does it end? KEYES: Well, the truth is, the question is raised as if we have a choice. We either fight the war against terror, or the terrorists kill us. We must fight that war by carrying the war to the enemy. What President Bush did, in going into Iraq, was take a situation where there was a probability that we were going to be attacked with weapons of mass destruction developed by Saddam Hussein, handed off to the terrorist network that he was part of, for he had provided payments, for instance, to Hamas—they work with Al Qaeda in the training camps, and so forth—all of this, he understood. What probability was there, when he got that information? Was it fifty percent? Forty percent? Thirty percent? Ten? Well, what probability would you like, that there is going to be a chemical or biological attack against Chicago, that a weapon of mass destruction will go off and destroy the Loop? What G. W. Bush did was what any responsible president would have to do. He acted in order to reduce that probability to zero, because when you're dealing with the situation we face right now, that is the only chance you want the American people to take. So I think that we had no choice, and we have no choice now but to confront the terrorists where they live, to attack them before they attack us, to disrupt their lines of supply, their financial lines of supply, their training camps, and to make it clear to state sponsors of terrorism—such as Saddam Hussein was—that we are not going to tolerate their activities, and that none of them are going to be left alone. It has clearly had an effect. Libya has backed off. Syria is talking a better game. Others are taking the lesson of our resolve, and that lesson is, even now, saving Americans from terrible disaster. It was a necessary decision, and that's what counts. MAGERS: Thank you very much. Mr. Obama? OBAMA: The fact of the matter is, is that there were no weapons of mass destruction. There was no connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. This has cost us billions of dollars, ~4~ 2004 DEBATE TWO: ALAN KEYES AND BARACK OBAMA AlanKeyes.com thousands of lives, and has in fact made us less secure, because it has frayed a set of international norms and rules and institutions that were in place, that could have helped us defeat terrorism. Mr. Keyes referred to the notion that, somehow, by fighting this war in Iraq, we reduced the probability of attack to zero. That obviously cannot be the case, particularly when we have nuclear fuel that's lying around in the former Soviet Union, and we have not advanced bills in the Senate that would accelerate our securing that nuclear fuel. There are all sorts of holes in our homeland defense, that have not been attended to. We still have ports that are unsecure. We still have nuclear plants and chemical plants that are unsecure. The fact of the matter is, this has not been a well-fought, or well-thought-out war. Now, I do believe that, at this point, unfortunately, it is everybody's war, not just George Bush's, and I've repeatedly said that we have to make it work, by internationalizing the reconstruction process, by making sure that we are training police officers and army officials within Iraq so that they can make certain to provide basic law and order, as we try to transition to democracy there. But the notion that, somehow, as Osama bin Laden runs around in the hills of Afghanistan or Pakistan, that we've eliminated the terrorist threat, I think is simply not the case. MAGERS: Thank you. Mr. Keyes, you have thirty seconds to rebut. KEYES: As is often the case, a willful misunderstanding of what I made clear. We reduced the probability of an attack from Saddam Hussein to zero. I think all of us can agree on that. The breathtaking naïveté of the assertion that there are no connections between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, when Saddam Hussein was providing payments to the families of suicide bombers sponsored by Hamas, when Hamas and Al Qaeda have intimate ties—I worked on the problem of terrorism on the National Security Council staff. Maybe that's why I understand it a little better than Senator Obama, and know that, in point of fact, those ties are real, and we can't afford to let them operate. MAGERS: Thank you, and thirty seconds to rebut, Mr. Obama. OBAMA: Well, the fact of the matter is, is that Mr. Keyes' information I don't think is better than Donald Rumsfeld's, or Paul Bremer's, or all the other analysts who've asserted that, in fact, there was no connection between those who perpetrated 9/11, and Iraq. The fact of the matter is, is that this was an ideologically-driven war. We have an obligation to make it work on behalf of the enormous bravery of our troops and the sacrifices that they've made, and now we have a hotbed of terrorism in Iraq that we've got to solve, but this was not the kind of war that we had to fight to defeat terrorism. MAGERS: And now, back to questioning from our panel. We begin with Mr. HernandezGomez. ~5~ 2004 DEBATE TWO: ALAN KEYES AND BARACK OBAMA AlanKeyes.com CARLOS HERNANDEZ-GOMEZ, CHICAGO PUBLIC RADIO CORRESPONDENT: Senator Obama, the city of Chicago is, in many respects, still a one-party political system. Mayor Daley has vast influence with the city council and, indeed, with many elected officials. If elected to the U. S. Senate, how will you maintain independence from Daley and his power base? OBAMA: Well, the same way I have done for the last eight years, as a state senator. The fact of the matter is, is that if you look my track record, I don't come out of a world organization. I don't come out of a political organization. And when I announced I was running for this race, the general estimation was, "The guy's got no money. He's got no organization, and nobody can pronounce his name." So, certainly, we were not made by any political organization, anywhere in the state. What we did was we built a grassroots movement, and the fact of the matter is that I've got a track record of independence as a community organizer, as a civil rights attorney. There have been times where I've been on the other side of legal issues with the mayor, and in Springfield, one of the things I'm most proud of is working with Paul Simon to develop the first campaign ethics reform legislation in twenty-five years, consistently voting against special interests legislation, even when it was sponsored by my own party. So I think that I've displayed the sort of independence that people can feel confident about. It's very easy to talk about independence. It's a lot harder to practice it, and when you look at the work that I've done, day in and day out, whether it's on making sure that the consumers are protected from telephone rates that are too high, or rejecting sweetheart casino deals, or any of the other pieces of legislation that, all too often, are dominated by special interests in Springfield, then I think you can feel confident that in fact I'm gonna serve the people of Illinois, and no one else. MAGERS: Though I suspect you may be independent from Mayor Daley, Mr. Keyes, you do have a minute and thirty seconds to use, sir. KEYES: Well, I don't think independence from Mayor Daley is the only problem. I think we face a political machinery in the state of Illinois that has, sadly, been altogether too prone to politicians who are going to be the tools of special interests. Senator Obama, for instance, receives more money from the trial lawyers than, I think, anybody else in America, practically, which may explain why tort reform and the skyrocketing rates of malpractice insurance have come in for short shrift from him, during his years in the senate. These are the kind of ties that I'm utterly free of. A lot of you have probably noticed, I'm an independent Republican. I will speak the truth with integrity to the people of this state. I will act on behalf of what I deeply believe to be the common-sense, best interests of the people, whether I'm criticized by folks in my own party, or supported. ~6~ 2004 DEBATE TWO: ALAN KEYES AND BARACK OBAMA AlanKeyes.com I don't take money from a large clique of special interests giving big donations. My money comes from common folks all over the state of Illinois, all around the country, who want only one thing from me, and that is that I should act with integrity, and act out of the fear of God, and according to my conscience. And that's exactly what I do. And I think that it's one thing to talk about what is possible, and then when you turn sideways and disappear on controversial issues of great importance to the state, that's not a way of showing independence—it's a way of resolving that you will not take risks. And risks will be necessary if we are to do things like address the trade crisis that has caused the destruction of manufacturing jobs in this state. We'll need somebody who has my background in international affairs and multilateral negotiations, but who also has the independence and guts to fight for the working people of this state. MAGERS: Mr. Obama, thirty seconds. OBAMA: Well, it's true that Mr. Keyes hasn't gotten much money from special interests in this state. He hasn't gotten much money from people in this state, generally. Seventy-five percent of his money comes from out of the state, so I don't think that he's in a position to make assessments about my independence or anybody else's independence, here in Illinois. With respect to the trial lawyers, for example, I've repeatedly voted against the trial lawyers on a whole host of issues, including this session, passing, voting for a bill that ensured that we could deal with the malpractice crisis, sponsored by doctors. MAGERS: Thank you very much. The next question goes to Mr. Keyes, and it comes from— (Interruption: I think he gets—) MAGERS: Oh, I'm sorry. Mr. Keyes, you do get thirty more seconds. KEYES: I certainly do. MAGERS: Thank you very much. KEYES: I think one of the advantages of having a broad base of support is that nobody can pull your strings. We have had a crisis dealing with the problem of skyrocketing malpractice insurance rates, in which Senator Obama has shown no leadership whatsoever, in which he has, in fact, taken a back seat while that crisis has continued to drive important specialists out of this state. ~7~ 2004 DEBATE TWO: ALAN KEYES AND BARACK OBAMA AlanKeyes.com I think that's a practical problem of medical access, that then runs at cross purposes with other things—including, for instance, the fact that we've got slum landlords in the very city of Chicago being protected by a political machine, and he wouldn't even go take a look at the problem. MAGERS: And now, Mr. Keyes, you will also get the next question, and it comes from Mr. Shaw. ANDY SHAW, ABC-CHANNEL 7 REPORTER: Mr. Keyes, you shocked a lot of people a month ago when you said that law-abiding citizens trained in gun safety should be allowed to carry machine guns on the streets of cities like Chicago. Explain that, if you will. KEYES: Well, actually, as you know, Andy, I never said that. I was asked a question about whether or not people should have access, under our Constitution and laws, to automatic weapons, and I referred the reporter to the factual situation—that, in fact, under our Constitution and laws, such access is allowed. I will state boldly, though, that I am a supporter of the Second Amendment, and I believe strongly that law-abiding citizens should have their right to keep and bear arms left intact. The gun control mentality is ruthlessly absurd. It suggests that you pass a law which will bind law-abiding citizens. They won't have access to weapons. Now, we know that criminals, by definition, are people who don't obey laws. Therefore, you can pass all the laws that you want. They will still have access to these weapons, just as they have access to illegal drugs and other things right now. That means you end up with a situation in which the law-abiding folks can't defend themselves, and the crooks have all the guns. Happy enough, I guess, for Senator Obama, since he doesn't believe that homeowners should be able to defend themselves if their house is broken into. He voted against a bill that would have allowed that self-defense to be a plea against the charge that you were in illegal possession of a firearm. But, no! That's not good enough. But he wants the crooks to get warning from the police, if they are breaking into a place where they know armed criminals are waiting, he wants to make sure that they give them fair warning, so I guess they can shoot the police to death. I don't believe in arming the criminals and protecting the criminal, while leaving the law-abiding citizens disarmed, and telling our police that they must work under every disadvantage. That doesn't serve order. It doesn't serve law. And it doesn't make sense. MAGERS: Mr. Obama. OBAMA: Well, let's be clear. Mr. Keyes, for example, does not believe in common gun safety laws like the assault weapons bill. I have, as one of my guests today, the head of the Fraternal ~8~ 2004 DEBATE TWO: ALAN KEYES AND BARACK OBAMA AlanKeyes.com Order of Police. I'm proud of the support that I've received from that organization, in part, because they are concerned precisely about what Mr. Keyes referred to—getting shot by assault weapons, when they go in, in an attempt to do a drug bust. Now, Mr. Keyes suggested that, somehow, because criminals break the law, that we shouldn't have laws in the first place. That defies logic. People break all sorts of laws, but we still have the laws in place. And the fact of the matter is, is that Mr. Keyes does not believe in any limits, that I can tell, with respect to the possession of guns, including assault weapons that have only one purpose, and that is to kill people, unless you're seeing a lot of deer out there wearing bullet-proof vests, then there is no purpose for many of the guns. I think it is a scandal that this president did not force a renewal of this assault weapons ban. If it had problems with it, then we should have closed those loopholes that might have made it not as effective as it should have been. MAGERS: Thank you very much, Mr. Obama, and Mr. Keyes, you have thirty seconds to rebut. KEYES: I think one of the great problems is that the Assault Weapons Ban deals with a fictional distinction. You have guns that are exactly the same guns as are banned, in function, that were banned because of the way they look. And you know, that's the whole truth of this policy: it's to make politic..."

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