That would have been an interesting debate.
Posted on 10/20/2001 12:51:18 PM PDT by SAMWolf
It is one of the great disappointments of history that in both of Bill Clinton’s presidential elections he was never forced to confront a Republican debater who was even adequate. So we continue the Great Debates that Never Happened series by pitting the Great Fornicator against the Great Communicator. Now that Ronald Reagan has become the longest living US President, it is time for him to take one final shot at the fastest living US President.
The debate takes place in the Edwin Newman auditorium at BSNN's New York headquarters, in front of 250 invited guests and BSNN employees. So without further ado, I present the latest installment of Great Debates that Never Happened; Reagan v. Clinton.
MODERATOR: Thank you for attending tonight's debate. Before we begin, let me remind our audience that the bar will continue serving throughout the debate.
As you're well aware, the question of war and peace has emerged as the central issue concerning Americans this autumn. President Clinton has been criticized for ill-conceived responses to the aggressive actions of Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda network, and for a general dismantling of our armed forces. President Reagan, you have been criticized for being all too quick to advocate the use of lots of muscle - military action - to deal with foreign crises. Specifically, what are the differences between the two of you on the uses of American military power? To you first, Mr. Reagan.
Mr.REAGAN: Well. I don't know what the differences might be, because I have never been able to figure out what Mr. Clinton's policies are. Most of our military interventions during his presidency seem to have been ordered by his pizza delivery girl. I'm only here to tell you that I believe with all my heart that our first priority must be world peace, and that use of force is always and only a last resort, when everything else has failed, and then only with regard to our national security. Now, I believe, also, that meeting this mission, this responsibility for preserving the peace, is a responsibility peculiar to our country and we cannot shirk our responsibility as a leader of the free world because we're the only ones that can do it.
Therefore, the burden of maintaining the peace falls on us. And to maintain that peace requires strength. America has never gotten in a war because we were too strong. We can get into a war by letting events get out of hand, as they have in the last 8 years under the foreign policies of the Clinton Administration, until we're faced now with a crisis. And good management in preserving the peace requires that we control events and try to intercept before they become a crisis.
CLINTON: Well first of all let me just say that during my administration, I thwarted at least 15 terrorist attacks. Though neither I nor anyone can tell you there will not be another terrorist attack on U.S. soil, everything’s going to be all right. These terrorists can't win unless we give them permission. We are not about to give them permission.
That said, getting bin Laden will be difficult. He's smart, he's rich, he's ruthless, and bold. He is good at finding the seams in our defenses. I know. I tried to get him in 1996 and 1999. I spent more of my time and life on this in the last 6 years than any other issue.
Now as to the differences between Mr. Reagan and myself on this issue, I would like to say -- number one – that despite Mr. Reagan’s accusations, my administration did maintain the world's strongest defense. And frankly, given his involvement in the Iran/Contra fiasco, I hardly need to be lectured by him about causing a crisis. When I was president our military was the strongest, best prepared, best equipped it has ever been. We spent a lot of money to modernize our weapons system. I proposed a lot of new investments to improve the quality of life for our soldiers, for our men and women in uniform, for their families, for their training.
You ask when do you decide to deploy them. The interests of the American people must be at stake. Our values must be at stake. We have to be able to make a difference. And frankly we have to consider what the risks are to our young men and women in uniform. But I believe the evidence is that our deployments have been successful, in Haiti, in Bosnia, and Kosovo. I have done the following things: Number one, I managed the aftermath of the Cold War, supporting a big drop in nuclear weapons in democratic Russia. Unlike when Mr. Reagan was president, there were no nuclear missiles pointed at the children of the United States in my administration. I have worked hard for peace and freedom.
When I took office, Haiti was governed by a dictator that had defied the United States. When I took office, the worst war in Europe was waging in Bosnia. Now there is a democratically elected president in Haiti. Peace in Bosnia. We made progress in Northern Ireland and in the Middle East. I also stood up to the new threats of terrorism.
MODERATOR: President Reagan, do you have a rebuttal?
Mr. REAGAN: Well, some people look up facts, and some people make up facts. And Bill has just made up some very interesting facts. He mentions the existence of a democratic Russia and the end of the Cold War. Well, I am largely responsible for the end of the Cold War, Mr. Clinton. He says he stood up to new threats of terrorism, but the fact is that he is the only President ever to pardon a bunch of terrorists. History teaches that wars begin when evildoers believe the price of aggression is cheap.
So when you see all that rhetorical smoke billowing up from Mr. Clinton, well ladies and gentlemen, I'd follow his example; don't inhale.
MODERATOR: Moving on to the next question. Both of you entered your presidency under slow economies and left under booming ones. What do you believe is the most important element of your economic policies as president.
CLINTON: The most important element of my economic policies is that I represented real hope for change and a departure from the trickle-down economics of Mr. Reagan. I offered a new approach. It wasn’t tax and spend, as some have suggested, but invest in growth economics.
Reaganomics had been tried for 12 years before I entered office, and it failed. More people were working harder for less, 100,000 people a month lost their health insurance, unemployment going up, our economy slowing down and a massive budget deficit.
My passion was to pass a jobs program and get incomes up with an investment incentive program to grow jobs. To invest more in our people, to control health care costs and provide for affordable health care for all Americans. And above all else, my tax increase on the richest Americans, those with incomes above $200,000, from 31 to 36 percent is responsible for balancing the budget and eliminating the deficit that was left me by Reaganomics.
Mr. REAGAN: I know President Clinton is supposed to be replying to me, but sometimes, I have a hard time in connecting what he's saying with what I have done or what my positions are. Inflation averaged 12.5 percent when I entered office and was just to 4.4 percent when I left. Interest rates fell six points. Eight million new jobs were created and real median family income grew by $4,000. It is entirely disingenuous of Mr. Clinton to claim that his tax increase created the economic boom of the 1990’s. Before he took office the economy was growing briskly again. In addition, the end of the Cold War led to massive cuts in military spending and reduction in the size of government that I could never have enjoyed. And he has the nerve to claim this as his achievement?
One of Bill Clinton’s first acts as president was to raise taxes on the American people, and this he claims eradicated the deficit. There’s only one problem with that line of thinking. We didn't have a deficit because the American people were living too well. We had a deficit because the Government was living too well. Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, 'What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power.' But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector.
President Clinton talks of Government programs as his passion, and they have their place. But so many of them were dead-ends. He sees the solution to everything as another opportunity for a Federal Government program. The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. I happen to believe that the Federal Government has usurped powers of autonomy and authority that belong back at the state and local level. It has imposed on the individual freedoms of the people, and there are more of these things that could be solved by the people themselves, if they were given a chance. Government's view of the economy can be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
MODERATOR: Gentlemen, the Social Security system is fostering a struggle between the young and the old, and is drifting the country toward a polarization of these two groups. How much longer can the young wage earner expect to bear the ever-increasing burden of the Social Security system?
Mr. REAGAN: The Social Security system was based on a false premise with regard to how fast the number of workers would increase and how fast the number of retirees would increase. It is actuarially out of balance, and this first became evident about 30 years ago, and some of us were voicing warnings then.
What is needed is improvement on a study that I proposed 23 years ago, to look into this entire problem as to how it can be reformed and made actuarially sound, but with the premise that no one presently dependent on Social Security is going to have the rug pulled out from under them and not get their check. We cannot frighten, as Democrats always do, our senior citizens - leave them thinking that in some way, they're endangered and they would have no place to turn. They must continue to get those checks, and I believe that the system can be put on a sound actuarial basis. But it's going to take some study and some work, and not just passing a tax increase.
I am for a provision that destitution should not follow unemployment by reason of old age, and to that end I have accepted Social Security as a step toward meeting the problem. However, we are against those entrusted with this program when they practice deception regarding its fiscal shortcomings, when they charge that any criticism of the program means that we want to end payments.
CLINTON: Make no mistake about it. What Mr. Reagan and the Republicans propose is to privatize Social Security after giving away the budget surplus in a huge tax cut hoping that people spend it right... But ... if they don't spend it right, here's what's going to happen. In 2013 -- that's just 12 years away -- taxes people pay on their payroll for Social Security will no longer cover the monthly checks. I am always leery of people like Mr. Reagan, who opposed federal programs like Medicare, and now wants to tinker with Social Security.
Mr. REAGAN: That is a misstatement, of course, of my position. When I opposed Medicare, there was another piece of legislation meeting the same problem before the Congress. I happened to favor the other piece of legislation and thought that it would be better for the senior citizens and provide better care than the one that was finally passed. I was not opposing the principle of providing care for them. I was opposing one piece of legislation versus another. As for the future of Social Security, we must always ask: is government working to liberate and empower the individual? Is it creating incentives for people to produce, save, invest and profit from legitimate risks and honest toil? Or does it seek to compel, command and coerce people into submission and dependence?
MODERATOR: Racial division and economic strife continues to tear apart our great cities. Why is this still happening in America, and what would you do to end it? What plans would you propose for Federal involvement in saving our cities from these physical and emotional crises?
CLINTON: I grew up in the segregated South, thankfully raised by a grandfather with almost no formal education but with a heart of gold who taught me early that all people were equal in the eyes of God. I saw the winds of hatred divide people and keep the people of my state poorer than they would have been, spiritually and economically. And I've done everything I could in my public life to overcome racial divisions.
We don't have a person to waste in this country. We are being murdered economically because we have too many dropouts, we have too many low birth-weight babies, we have too many drug addicts as kids, we have too much violence, we are too divided by race, by income, by region. And I have devoted a major portion of my life to going across this country and looking for opportunities to go to white groups and African American groups and Latino groups and Asian American groups and say the same thing.
If the American people cannot be brought together, we can't turn this country around. If we can come together, nothing can stop us.
MODERATOR: President Reagan, what would you do to end the divisions and troubles in our great cities. What plans would you propose for Federal involvement in saving our cities from these physical and emotional crises.
Mr. REAGAN: Well, you've asked that question twice now, and I think you ought to have at least one answer to it. I think one of the problems today with the cities is Federal aid. The mayors that I've talked to in some of our leading cities tell me that if they had that money without Federal Government restrictions, they could make great savings and make far greater use of the money.
Why don't we start with the Federal Government turning back tax sources to states and local governments, as well as the responsibilities for those programs? Seventy-five percent of the people live in the cities. I don't know of a city in America that doesn't have the kind of problems you're talking about. But, where are we getting the money that the Federal Government is putting out to help them? New York is being taxed for money that will then go to Detroit. But Detroit is being taxed for money that, let's say, will go to Chicago, while Chicago is being taxed to help with the problems in Philadelphia. Wouldn't it make a lot more sense if the government let them keep their own money there in the first place?
MODERATOR: Do you have a rebuttal, Mr. Clinton?
CLINTON: You asked what Federal programs I would suggests to help the racial and economic tensions in the cities? Raise the minimum wage. Parents who work hard and play by the rules should not have to raise their children in poverty. Yet, for millions of Americans in minimum-wage jobs -- custodians and department-store clerks, home health-care aides and child-care workers -- as hard as they work, they still struggle to stay afloat. It's time to give them a raise. Of course, Mr. Reagan has a history of being against the minimum wage.
Mr. REAGAN: Well, there you go again. I wish Bill could have been with me when I sat with a group of black teenagers who were telling me about their unemployment problems, and that it was the minimum wage that had done away with the jobs that they once could get. And indeed, every time it has increased you will find there is an increase in minority unemployment among young people. And therefore, I have been in favor of a separate minimum for them. One minimum for the working parents and a separate one for young people who also need a job.
MODERATOR: You both talk about creating jobs, but we have an awful lot of high school graduates who don't know how to read a ruler, who cannot fill out an application for a job. What should the Federal Government do about education?
CLINTON: First of all, let me say that I've spent more of my time and life on this in the last 10 years than any other issue. So I care a lot about this, and I've spent countless hours in schools. So what should we do? Let me reel some things off real quick. Number one, we should provide matching funds to states to teach everybody with a job to read in the next 5 years and give everybody with a job the chance to get a high school diploma.
Number 2, we should provide 2-year apprenticeship programs to high school graduates who don't go to college. And community colleges are on the job. Number three, we should open the doors to college education to high school graduates without regard to income. They could borrow the money and pay it back as a percentage of their income or with a couple of years of service to our nation here at home. Number 4, we should fully fund the Head Start program to get little kids off to a good start.
And, 5, I would have an aggressive program of school reform. I favor public schools or these new charter schools. I don't think we should spend tax money on private schools.
Those things would revolutionize American education and take us to the top economically.
Mr. REAGAN: Excellence demands competition. Without a race there can be no champion, no records broken, no excellence--in education or in any other walk of life. The Federal Government is like a baby. It is an alimentary canal with an appetite at one end and a no sense of responsibility at the other, as the results of Federal involvement in education clearly show. The best way to revolutionize American education would be to remove the Federal Government from the process.
MODERATOR: People complain that the cost of medical care is now skyrocketing out of control. What should the Federal Government do to control the cost of health care.
CLINTON: I have proposed and still propose a managed competition plan for health care. I still believe we must set up a national ceiling on health care costs tied to inflation and population growth. But you can't just do it by cutting Medicare; you have to take on the insurance companies, the bureaucracies. And you have to have cost controls. I say if Germany can cover everybody and keep costs under inflation, America can do it, too. I'm tired of being told we can't. I say we can. We can do better, and we must.
Mr .REAGAN: The best way to control the cost of health care is to have the customer acutely aware of the cost of health care, and ultimately responsible for such costs. I would ask my fellow Americans, will you resist the temptation to get a government handout? Realize that the doctor's fight against socialized medicine is your fight. We can't socialize the doctors without socializing the patients. Recognize that government invasion of public power is eventually an assault upon your own business. If some among you fear taking a stand because you are afraid of reprisals from customers, clients, or even government, recognize that you are just feeding the crocodile hoping he'll eat you last.
You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream -- the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order -- or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity or their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, "The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits." Yet any time you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we're denounced as being opposed to their humanitarian goals. They tell us we're always "against," never "for" anything. It seems impossible to legitimately debate their solutions with the assumption that all of us share the desire to help the less fortunate.
MODERATOR: High energy prices and rolling blackouts have sparked a national debate on energy policy. Every serious examination of the future supply of energy and other essential resources - including air, land and water - finds that we face shortages and skyrocketing prices, and that, in many ways, we're pushing the environment to dangerous limits. What role should the Federal Government play in protecting the environment and regulating the use and conservation of energy?
Mr. REAGAN: Well, as I've said, I am not an enemy of conservation. I wouldn't be called a conservative if I were. I believe that conservation, of course, is worthy in and of itself. Anything that would preserve, or help us use less energy, that would be fine, and I'm for it. But I do not believe that conservation alone is the answer to the present energy problem, because all you're doing then is staving off, by a short time, the day when you would come to the end of the energy supply. To say that we are limited, and at a dangerous point in this country with regard to energy, I think, is to ignore the fact. The fact is, that in today's oil wells, there is more oil there that we can use. But it would require what is known as secondary or tertiary efforts to bring it out of the ground. And these are known oil reserves, known supplies.
There are hundreds of millions of acres of energy rich land that have been taken out of circulation by the Government for whatever reason. For example, President Clinton touted natural gas as the fuel of the future but his administration removed tens of millions of acres of federal land to gas exploration and made it much more difficult to obtain permits for new pipelines. I believe that this nation has been portrayed for too long a time to the people as being energy-poor when it is energy-rich. The largest known deposit in the world of this coal is located in Utah, but when Bill Clinton declared 1.7 million acres of it as the "Grand Escalante National Monument," he single-handedly locked up over a trillion dollars worth of coal. And he did this, mind you, without so much as discussing it with Congress or the local officials in Utah.
When you stop to think that the government has taken over 100 million acres of land out of circulation in Alaska, alone, that is believed by geologists to contain much in the line of minerals and energy sources, then I think it is the Government, and the Government with its own restrictions and regulations, that is creating the energy crisis. That we are, indeed, an energy-rich nation.
CLINTON: What Mr. Reagan failed to say is that one year after I protected the "Grand Escalante National Monument" for future generations, I decided to allow Conoco to explore for oil in the same area. My decision insured the continued protection of this magnificent national monument while at the same time honoring the commitment to recognize valid existing rights to use the land. Conoco owned such rights for over a decade.
From our inner cities to our pristine wild lands, I have worked hard to ensure that every American has a clean and healthy environment. Under my watch, we rid hundreds of neighborhoods of toxic waste dumps, and taken the most dramatic steps in a generation to clean the air we breathe. We have made record investments in science and technology to protect future generations from the threat of global warming.
I do believe that we shouldn't rely too heavily on the fuels of the past, and instead should invest in cutting-edge energy efficient technologies. I have never believed we had to choose between either a clean and safe environment or a growing economy. Protecting the health and safety of all Americans doesn’t have to come at the expense of our economy’s bottom line. And creating thriving companies and new jobs doesn’t have to come at the expense of the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, or the natural landscape in which we live. We can, and indeed must, have both.
MODERATOR: We have just enough time for each of you to make a short closing statement.
CLINTON: Since I suggested this debate I hope it's been good for all of you. I really tried to be faithful to your request that we answer the questions specifically and pointedly. I thought I owed that to you and I respect you for being here and for the impact you've had on making this a more positive experience.
These problems are not easy. They're not going to be solved overnight. But I want you to think about just 2 or 3 things. This debate tonight has made crystal clear a challenge that is old as Ronald Reagan -- the choice between hope and fear, the courage to move into a new tomorrow or to listen to the crowd who says things could be worse.
Mr. Reagan has said some very compelling things tonight that don't quite square with the record. In all the work I did as president, every decision I made, every executive action I took, every bill I proposed and signed, I tried to give all Americans the tools and conditions to build the future of our dreams, in a good society, with a strong economy, a cleaner environment, and a freer, safer, more prosperous world.
I steered my course by our enduring values. Opportunity for all. Responsibility from all. A community of all Americans. I sought to give America a new kind of government, smaller, more modern, more effective, full of ideas and policies appropriate to this new time, always putting people first, always focusing on the future. Thank you.
Mr. REAGAN: After listening to Mr. Clinton's closing remarks, I'm reminded of the old adage that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Only in this case, it's not flattery, but grand larceny: the intellectual theft of ideas that you and I recognize as our own. Speech delivery counts for little on the world stage unless you have convictions, and, yes, the vision to see beyond the front row seats.
I believe that growth, prosperity and ultimately human fulfillment, are created from the bottom up, not the government down. Only when the human spirit is allowed to invent and create, only when individuals are given a personal stake in deciding economic policies and benefiting from their success -- only then can societies remain economically alive, dynamic, progressive, and free. Trust the people. This is the one irrefutable lesson of the entire postwar period contradicting the notion that rigid government controls are essential to economic development.
It's time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.
That would have been an interesting debate.
Besides, half the fun is the speculative nature of the article. It's a given that Reagan would have trounced X42 mightily.
Socialists in Congress? Click on the zeppelin, Grasshopper.
I couldn't find any references to this, but I would have paid money to see it if it did happen.
You have mail.
President Clinton claims that two million new jobs were created per year during his watch. But when analysts measure it in terms of creating full-time jobs, the Clinton administration's record is that of an also-ran.
Further, job growth should be judged relative to the number of workers. And the working-age population is now almost 9 percent larger than it was in the Reagan years.
Moreover, the economic expansion began before Clinton assumed office. And even some Democrats agree with economists who point to the dampening effects of the Clinton income-tax rate hikes targeted at the key job producing sector of the American economy: small business.
In 1993, the Democrat-controlled Joint Economic Committee of Congress -- seeking to justify the so-called "economic stimulus package" -- warned that Clinton's fiscal policy would "continue to exert downward pressure on economic activity throughout the next five years." The committee was unanimous, and included such liberal notables as Ted Kennedy.
Source: Editorial, "It's Clintonomics, Stupid," Investor's Business Daily, April 11, 1996.
In the debate over tax levels and tax cuts, economic growth and family incomes, performance comparisons between the Reagan years and the recent Clinton years should provide solid guideposts to future policy. Taxes were decreased during the Reagan years; increased during Clinton's tenure.
Here are a few key statistics:
These changes occurred within the context of a labor force increasing at a 1.8 percent rate during 1983-89 and 0.8 percent during 1993-95.
Growth in the first quarter of 1996 also happened to be 2.3 percent, although real GDP was only 1.7 percent higher than a year before.
Slower growth of output naturally results in slower growth of real income. And when people are unable to better their lot, worker frustration sets in -- a phenomenon now being reported and examined in the press.
Two additional key comparisons should be noted:
Economists warn that marginal tax rates are much too high, and the tax system is horribly biased against savings and investment.
The predictable result has been little or no progress in livings standards during the past seven years.
Source: Alan Reynolds (Hudson Institute), "Clintonomics Doesn't Measure Up," Wall Street Journal, June 12, 1996.
The evidence is in and the results are clear: family incomes increase when government lowers taxes and reduces the regulatory burden, according to economic experts.
Reagan's abundantly successful policies were simple: cut marginal tax rates to reward work, investment, savings and risk-taking. Force Washington to join the productivity revolution by aggressively chopping away at the federal budget and regulations. But these policies were reversed in the Bush-Clinton years through tax increases and a new era of government regulation, highlighted by such measures as the Americans With Disabilities Act, amendments to the Clear Air Act, and Clinton's record tax hike which boosted the marginal tax rate from 28 to 40 percent.
In the Reagan era, low-earner households improved their lot. Households headed by blacks, for example, saw their income grow 14 percent -- versus 10 percent for those headed by whites. And the incomes of women grew faster than those of men.
Source: Stephen Moore (Cato Institute) and John Silva (Zurich Kemper Investments), "Middle-Class Blues," Investor's Business Daily, April 4, 1996.
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