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Former President Bill Clinton on his global summit on poverty, religious conflict & more.
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MR. RUSSERT: Coming next, in his first MEET THE PRESS interview since 1997, former President Bill Clinton reflects on poverty, religion, and politics 2008, right here on MEET THE PRESS.
(Announcements)
MR. RUSSERT: Former President Bill Clinton on Katrina, Iraq and his wife's possible run for the White House after this station break.
(Announcements)
MR. RUSSERT: Yesterday in New York, I sat down with former President Bill Clinton who's overseeing his own three-day global summit seeking solutions to some of the world's toughest problems.
(Videotape, September 17, 2005):
MR. RUSSERT: Mr. President, welcome back to MEET THE PRESS.
FMR. PRES. BILL CLINTON: Thank you, Tim.
MR. RUSSERT: How would you describe the Clinton global initiative?
MR. CLINTON: It's an effort to bring people together from all walks of life with national leaders from all over the world to discuss four of the subjects that will shape the 21st century, especially in the poorer countries, how to help people escape from poverty through their own efforts, how to use global warming as an economic opportunity, not an economic burden, how to use our religious differences in a positive, not a negative way, and how to build better governance in poor countries, and then to do something most of these conferences don't do, to ask every participant here to make a personal commitment to do something in one of these four areas in the next year. That's really the thing that's been different and thing people find exciting.
So we tried to organize the whole conference with fewer speeches, more conversations, smaller groups, and then we have people sitting around a table like this talking about what they could do. And a lot of the commitments I'm announcing now actually grew out of these table-top conversations after people made presentations on these matters.
MR. RUSSERT: Accountability, how can you enforce it?
MR. CLINTON: Well, we're going to take some of the funds that we made here and set up an office, an ongoing office, because I think we'll probably have 100 to 300 commitments, something like that, coming in after the conference is over, because the whole purpose was for people that hadn't done this before to be able to see and get ideas from people who knew more than they did. And then we will then, on a regular basis, get reports from people on what they're doing to fulfill their commitments. And several times between now and next year, we will report on the progress of not only obtaining commitments, but fulfilling them. So a year from now we'll be able to know what was done. And then we'll do this all over again and then we'll continue to make reports. I--the--we don't have any way of forcing the commitments, but I think the fact that everybody knows we're going to make public whether they've kept them or not will have a salutary impact.
MR. RUSSERT: When you talk about religion, how concerned are you that we are, in fact, in a religious war, Islam vs. Christianity?
MR. CLINTON: A little bit, but I think the important thing--you know, we had the king of Jordan here, who did an astonishing thing several months ago. He brought in the leaders of every major sect of Islam, and none of them would say that the Koran justified the killing of innocent civilians, whether they were Muslims or non-Muslims. My experience has been that most of these terrorists have political objectives which can be clearly defined, and then try to give them a religious overlay. Now, maybe some of the people they get to go do suicide bombings are in the grip of a religious fervor or have been convinced that God wanted them to do this, but religion has been used by people for political reasons, just the way Milosevic used ethnic differences in Bosnia. I still believe behind a lot of this is just cold-blooded power concerns and people fighting over land and resources and all the things people have fought over since the beginning of time.
MR. RUSSERT: Are you concerned that Iraq may wind up with a fundamentalist Islamic regime?
MR. CLINTON: A little bit. I think there has been an effort to make it a representative constitution, and I think the American ambassador there has exerted extraordinary positive efforts. And keep in mind there are very few countries in the world that have the kind of separation between church and state that we do. It's been a blessing to us. And one of the reasons America is the most religious big country in the world in terms of participation in religious services and devotion to one's faith is that we don't pretend that politics is religion. We don't pretend that politics is perfect and we don't mess up people's ability to practice their faith. On the other hand, Iraq can have a recognition of the role of Islam in the Sunni and Shia traditions and the presence of non-Muslims in Iraq and still have--be a freer place than it was before. We just have to watch it and encourage them, work with them.
MR. RUSSERT: Do you think the war in Iraq has hurt the U.S. image in the world?
MR. CLINTON: I do. I think it's been a net negative, partly because we went in there before the United Nations finished the job of the inspections, which undermined the credibility of the original argument for needing the authority to use force. I think that was a big mistake. And on the other hand, Saddam is gone and 58 percent of those people voted. That's an even higher percentage of people than voted in America in 2004, when we were proud of our turnout and when nobody's life was at risk. So there's still a chance this will work. And if it does, there's still a chance it will be a net plus for the Middle East. But it--I think that most people saw it as premature, unilateral and taking away from the real fight against terror in Afghanistan and against bin Laden and al-Qaeda.
MR. RUSSERT: Global warming: There used to be a deep philosophical, ideological debate about it. Do you think that has dissipated?
MR. CLINTON: It's dissipated quite a bit, and I think a good deal of the credit belongs to business leaders like Sir John Brown, the head of British Petroleum, and most recently in our country, Jeffrey Immelt, the head of General Electric. And I'm not pandering here to NBC, but when Immelt said, you know, that building a clean energy future was going to be at the center of GE's profit strategy within America and around the world for the next several years, it tended to undercut all those naysayers who said, "There's nothing to this." And so I think that's changed.
I think we deserve--that the Republicans in the Senate who are trying to do something serious on this deserve a lot of credit. You know, Senator McCain has taken two trips with Hillary, one to northern Norway and one to northern Alaska, to monitor the measurable visual effects of climate change and to know what the consequences are going to be. So I think the fact it's becoming more bipartisan in the Congress and that American business leaders are joining in the campaign has really helped in our country.
MR. RUSSERT: Do you think global warming influences, effects, creates hurricanes or the severity of them?
MR. CLINTON: I think that the--whenever there's a marked change in the weather, it has ramifications across a whole wide range of activities. I don't think there's any question--I don't think any person with a straight face can tell you that Katrina was caused by global warming. But what we do know, what the evidence shows, is that there is an increase in the number and severity of bad weather events all across the globe. We know that. So--and that will continue.
Keep in mind, in the last decade, 12 blocks of ice the size of the state of Rhode Island have broken off the South Pole. We now have some significant evidence that the North Pole and, even worse, the ice cap on Greenland, the massive island of Greenland, are thinning. This is going to lift the water levels. It's going to complicate the rebuilding of New Orleans. If we don't reverse it within 50 years, we'll lose 50 feet of Manhattan Island. That--one of these little countries I'm working with, the Maldives, the water will just roll over it; we'll never recover it.
So I think that we just need to face the fact that the climate is changing. and this is one of the consequences.
MR. RUSSERT: John Lehman, the Republican, former secretary of the Navy, who was on the September 11 Commission, said that the woefully inadequate lack of preparation for the hurricane, he believes it will embolden terrorists to know what kind of havoc they can wreak on the United States. Do you buy that?
MR. CLINTON: Not necessarily. Let me say, I think that John Lehman did a good job on that 9-11 Commission. He questioned me for four hours and I think he did a good job. I have a high respect for him. So it's not a partisan thing. But I think what really happened with this is that when the Department of Homeland Security was created, it seemed natural enough to bring FEMA in because somebody releases a biological weapon on a subway in New York or drops a chemical weapon from the top of a big building in Chicago or, God forbid, explodes a small-scale nuclear weapon in a barrel full of fertilizer in Washington, the human consequences look like a tornado or a hurricane or whatever. The problem is that most of the people at Homeland Security are like Mr. Chertoff. We want smart, tough, law enforcement people working with these intelligence agencies around the world and all that.
We are going to have some natural disasters. And there's a special expertise involved in dealing with them, so it may have given aid and comfort to our enemies, but it shouldn't, because we're getting better. We were pretty good at it by my second term and we'd gotten better and better and better at stopping bad things from happening. It's just that dealing with a natural disaster and the aftermath is different, and we inadvertently reduced our capabilities to do that by blurring the two functions of Homeland Security and emergency management, in my opinion.
MR. RUSSERT: So we should take FEMA out of Homeland Security and make it an independent agency again?
MR. CLINTON: Yeah. We--in my opinion, we should either do that, I have a bias for that because that's the way it worked under me. But if they want to leave it in Homeland Security, they should at least restore its disaster preparedness function, which was diverted, and have a requirement that I think should be in the law that the FEMA director should be qualified by previous experience in disasters. And then when a disaster occurs, he--if it's natural, he or she, the FEMA director, should be in charge of that.
You know, the first couple days, I mean, my heart almost went out to him because if you looked at him, it was like should the FEMA director be the spokesperson or should the Homeland Security director be the spokesperson? Who's going to do this? And I think that this exposed the fact that there really is a difference in handling the aftermath of a natural disaster and stopping a biological or chemical attack--you know, inspecting more of the containers at the ports and all of this sort of stuff.
MR. RUSSERT: The president said we're going to rebuild New Orleans. It's estimated to cost probably close to $300 billion. How can we afford that? What is it going to do to the deficit? And what should we do about tax cuts and spending cuts?
MR. CLINTON: Well, I don't think the--it may cost $300 billion, but a lot of it will be borne by the private sector. And New Orleans, I think, will be repopulated at about the level that it was before the tsunami--I mean, before the hurricane, but it'll be different people. Not all the people that left will come back. But it will take a certain population density to support the tourism, to support the French Quarter, to support all the people who will live there doing other things, and the Port, which is still a major force. And I think it will cost a significant amount of money. And whatever is appropriate for the government to spend, I think, we should spend.
I don't think we need to just throw money at this. We need to really be careful now to make sure that we take care of the needs of the really poor people that were dislodged. They should be first. Then having the area clean and safe should be second. Then giving a little time to have a serious rebuilding plan should be third. Right now we're all just flying blind with these numbers.
Now, in terms of the budget deficit--you know what I think. I mean, I think it was always a mistake for people in my income group to get tax cuts. I think before it was terrible. I think that we shouldn't be-- this--Katrina is going to force us to go back and think about three things. What are our obligations to the poor, there, and in America? What is the role of government? And who's going to pay for it?
Right now our position is--the American government's position, and everybody in the world knows this, this hurts us, is that we should be able to fight a war in Iraq, be aggressive in Afghanistan, deal with this massive expenditure of Katrina, have a big new benefit for senior citizens on drugs, and it should be paid for largely by borrowing money from countries, except for Japan and the U.K. that are not as wealthy as we are. The rest of the money we're borrowing from China, from Korea, from the Middle East. So we go into the debt market--we borrow this money every day to cover our deficit. In effect, we're borrowing the money to pay for Katrina, pay for Iraq, and pay for Bill Clinton's tax cuts. I don't approve of that. I think it's ethically not good, and I think it's terrible economics.
MR. RUSSERT: Do you think these are the kind of issues that will be front and center in 2008?
MR. CLINTON: Yes, but I don't think they should wait till then. I really believe that these--in the congressional elections, I would like to see an honest debate. You know, we don't have to call each other names anymore. We have honest differences. We don't really--we don't have to be mad. We don't have to, you know--we don't have to be angry at each other on a human level. But we got honest differences. What are our obligations to the poor? Did some of these things happen in Katrina, in the aftermath of Katrina, not so much because of race but because of class?
You know, St. Bernard Parish in--next to New Orleans is largely poor white people. The disproportionate number of poor who were really hurt were African-Americans. But, you know, you just can't give poor people living like those folks were living an evacuation order. A lot of them didn't have cars. If they did have cars, they had kinfolks who didn't. They didn't have any flood insurance. We could have had--there were no vans down there so they--everybody could at least take a few of their life's belongings away. There were lots of things going on. We need to rethink what are our--how are we going to relate to the poor, how are we going to--what's the role of government, who's going to pay for it?
MR. RUSSERT: And that's the theme of this initiative?
MR. CLINTON: Yeah. It is. And I don't think the government has to do it all. I think there are lots of things that can be done through the private sector, and there are lots of things that are going to be done in Katrina through the private sector. I think--you know, I've been just overwhelmed. Former President Bush and I, we've already gotten nearly $100 million in our fund. I never dreamed that would happen. And we've had to give a lot of thought to how we can spend this money to maximize the fact that it will go to help the people who were hurt the worst. And we're going to have an announcement on it in a week or so. We're trying to figure out how to work with religious organizations and others to really help people put their lives back.
MR. RUSSERT: Did you ever here of the Dennis Thatcher Society?
MR. CLINTON: Yeah, he used to be the object of jokes on late-night shows.
MR. RUSSERT: He was the first man of Great Britain...
MR. CLINTON: Yeah.
MR. RUSSERT: ...when Margaret Thatcher was the prime minister.
MR. CLINTON: And a very nice man, he was.
MR. RUSSERT: And first men all around the world formed the Dennis Thatcher Society. Are you about to apply?
MR. CLINTON: No. I can't answer that. I don't know the answer to that. I--you know, Hillary's got this re-election coming up. And I have always said to other people, so my family's going to observe the rule that I've observed in my life, you know, you look past the next election, you might not get past the next election. She's got to get her service ratified before she can even entertain this. I think she'll be re-elected, and I think she'll be re-elected because she's done a really good job. And I know I'm biased, but I got pretty good judgment about what makes a good senator, and I--she's really been--I knew she'd be good. She's been better than I thought she would. She's been effective in your area of New York, upstate New York. She's been effective at--as a first New York senator ever on the Armed Services Committee. She's been effective for New York City on health care and in the aftermath of 9/11. I think she's been great. But she's got to go through a big campaign. And then she'll have a decision to make like probably a dozen other Democrats will. And whatever she decides, I'll be for. But I think we've got to get through this campaign first.
MR. RUSSERT: She should avoid making a pledge that she'll serve another full six-year term.
MR. CLINTON: Yeah, I think she should say she wants to be judged on both her record and her plans for the future, but I think, you know, for figures that are large figures in their parties who honestly don't know and can't know this early whether they're going to run, we have no idea what facts will unfold. I don't think they should make commitments. President Bush didn't make a commitment when he ran for re-election as governor of Texas and he was remarkably candid. He said, "You know, the voters will have to take this into account if it bothers them," but I think that that's where big figures in both parties are in a position where two years in chance, they may think they will, they may think they won't, but the truth is they don't know because there could be lots of intervening events. So I think she should just run, put her service out there, put her plans for the future out there and trust the voters of New York to make a judgment.
MR. RUSSERT: Mr. President, we thank you for joining us and sharing your views.
MR. CLINTON: Thank you, Tim.
