Today Senator James Webb was the speaker at lunch at the National Press Club. For many the first sense of the intellect of the man they experienced was his response to the state of the Nation. Perhaps the contents of this speech, with its wide range of concerns, will give you a better sense of the man.
Below the fold I have posted the text of the speech as distributed by his office. If you'd like a sense of the setting, our own lowkell (Lowell Feld), who was on the dais for the event, has a story up at RaisingKaine that includes some of the Q&A.
And now to the speech. I will hold my own remarks until the comments.
It is a great honor for me to join you here at the National Press Club for your Newsmakers Luncheon. This is the second time I have done this. The last time, 19 years ago when I was Secretary of the Navy, I got into a little bit of trouble. I had decided to talk about the future of our foreign policy and the force structure issues of all of the military services, which a few people in the White House and the State Department thought was above my pay grade as someone who was responsible only for the Navy. So I’ll try to stay out of trouble today.
I have been fortunate to have a varied career. But let me start by saying that, of all the professional experiences that shape my approach to government, two stand out. The first is having commanded infantry Marines in combat. Nothing else I’ve ever done can match the sobering sense of responsibility that comes from making daily decisions that directly affect the lives of others, including Marines on the one hand, and the civilian noncombatants who populated much of our battlefield on the other.
The second has been the many years I have spent as a writer. There is another type of accountability in play when one writes. It is the accountability of having to marshal facts, to make judgments, and then to put one’s name behind the words that go onto the written page. Writing is a tough business. The self-discipline it requires brings to mind the many years I spent as a boxer – the regimen is solitary, and only you know how hard you’re really pushing yourself. And you have a personal accountability for your product, on which you can be judged for the rest of your life.
Suffice to say that one of the titles that I am proudest of is that of journalist. The work that I did for the News Hour, and the reporting I’ve done for various newspapers and magazines – and I’d especially mention Parade, for whom I’ve written from such places as Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Afghanistan – is some of the most important work of my career. I have a lot of friends and colleagues in this club, and I am proud of – most -- of them.
In the last few weeks, Americans have been reminded of the extraordinary importance of a free press to the success of democratic government. The reporting that Dana Priest and Ann Hull have done on the outpatient care at Walter Reed has made this government more accountable, and in the process, they’ll help ensure better care for the nation’s wounded veterans.
I know that the most interesting part of these lunches is usually the question and answer period, and I want to leave plenty of time for that. But I’d like to share with you a few thoughts on these first months of the 110th Congress and my role in it.
To do that, let me start not with the actions thus far in the Senate, but with the beginning of my campaign last year. A year ago today I had literally no money. I had no political base whatsoever, in either party. My opponent had just received the highest number of votes in a presidential poll taken during the Conservative Political Action Conference. I was 33 points behind in the polls. My political credentials were viewed with unease by both sides. On the one hand I had spent four years as a Republican Committee counsel in the House of Representatives and four years in the Reagan Administration, which did not exactly warm the hearts of many Democrats. On the other I had helped the United Mine Workers during their landmark 1989 strike against the Pittston Coal Company and I had been an early and vocal critic of the Bush Administration’s Iraq War policy, which did endear me to the hearts of many Republicans.
What we did have was a strong belief that it was time for the Reagan Democrats to return to their Jacksonian roots, and a message that I care deeply about, which we conveyed with relentless discipline. It is a message that I believe should be a continuing part of the national debate, and in fact should become the core message of a revitalized Democratic Party. I’ve said many times that this nation is going through a sea-change in terms of party politics, and that the old labels simply don’t work anymore. The political cards are being reshuffled, all across this country. Good, well-meaning people have watched their government flub things up, from Iraq to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. They want better leadership, and they want new approaches.
And so, in the campaign I talked about deeper themes rather than mere political issues. We never simply talked about Iraq. Instead, we spoke repeatedly, and in depth, about the need to re-orient our nation’s national security posture in a way that would allow us not only to withdraw our forces from Iraq, but also to restore a measure of stability in that historically volatile region, to increase our ability to fight the war against international terrorism, and to more properly address the wide range of strategic and foreign policy issues that have been dangerously ignored over the past five years.
We didn’t simply dwell on this bill or that regarding unemployment, lack of medical insurance, and the need to increase the minimum wage. We talked about the larger need for economic fairness and social justice, in an era where far too much power and money has gravitated to the very top, in both economic and governmental terms. I took great pains to outline the dangers in what I have come to call the "three America’s" – a breakdown of our country along class lines, the likes of which we have not seen for more than a hundred years. What are those three Americas? In the past twenty years we have seen a huge migration of wealth to the very top of our society, at the same time we have calcified at the bottom into what could soon become a permanent underclass, and at the same time the large group in the middle are receiving less than their fair share of the fruits of their labor.
And finally, in the wake of such seriously under-examined issues as the NSA wiretapping scandal, the failure of leadership during and after Hurricane Katrina, and the billions of dollars we have wasted in reconstructing Iraq, we talked about the need to restore simple accountability to our government, to make sure that the federal system works in the way our forefathers conceived it, and to ensure also that our taxpayers get real value for their investment.
In short, we offered voters context, in a time when far too much political energy was being wasted on contrived, emotionally divisive issues such as flag burning, gay marriage and focus-group tested phrases such as "cut and run."
We did something else that was a bit different. I was guided by my own sense of values and political instincts rather than polls and focus groups, and I think the voters understood that. We did our best to keep our message consistent, even when this gave our political advisers serious heartburn. I spoke directly about corporate responsibility to corporate leaders. I became the first statewide candidate in Virginia history to walk a union picket line during a campaign, even though Virginia is 48th in the country in terms of union membership. I spoke openly on the Tim Russert show and during televised debates about my views that affirmative action was originally intended to help African Americans remove the badges of slavery, and that many of its present policies tend to hurt not only poor blacks but poor whites as well.
A lot of commentators were saying that I was naive. Others were saying that I was a one-issue candidate. Still others were saying that my opponent made such serious errors that he was responsible for his own defeat. Allow me to respond, first, that one-issue candidates don’t beat strong incumbents – this was proven in Connecticut. And second, while it might have been risky, it was not naïve to have recognized that our voters have become disgusted with the cynicism of modern-day politics. We gambled on the likelihood that people in this country truly desire a clear and unambiguous approach to governing, and we won. And I am committed to doing my best to bring about that reality.
Iraq and Iran
I’ve had a very busy two and a half months since taking office, particularly given my assignments on both the Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees. We have held an exhaustive series of hearings to examine the way forward on Iraq and in the region writ large. Nearly all the expert testimony concluded that a sustained, meaningful diplomatic engagement was necessary to solve the crisis. I have been advocating this approach for three years, since well before I decided to run for the Senate. I believe the weight of this testimony, plus the reality of a Congress now controlled by the Democratic Party, has been a prime reason that the Administration is now beginning to pursue stronger diplomacy in the region rather than continuing its one-dimensional military approach.
I have long believed that an integral part of our strategy in Iraq must include engagement with all of Iraq's neighbors, including Iran and Syria. As Iraq's neighbors, they are stakeholders in both the future of Iraq and the need for stability in the region. We began to see this approach come to fruition earlier this month in Baghdad, and the minister-level meeting scheduled for next month is a hopeful sign that I and others will be watching closely.
On another note, I do not believe one can speak of our responsibility on these immediate issues without stating clearly our concerns about the entire region, and especially the administration's position regarding its constitutional authority to use military force outside of Iraq.
I’ve authored a bill in the Senate which would prohibit the use of funds for commencing a wider war against Iran without congressional authorization. This legislation is carefully drawn, with exceptions that will allow our military to defend itself against attacks based in Iran, including directly pre-empting those kinds of attacks, and including hot pursuit into Iranian territory if our military is attacked by forces that might withdraw into Iran. It takes no options off the table with respect to our long-held positions regarding Iran’s nuclear program or our demand that Iran recognize Israel. Its major function is to prevent this Administration from commencing a broad range of unprovoked military activities without the approval of the Congress. And for the good of our federal system, I believe this legislation should be passed.
We have other tools available. Sanctions are clearly already working to isolate Iran’s present leadership from the outside world and from its own people. And unilateral military activity should only be undertaken as a true last resort – the unfortunate situation in Iraq is clear testimony to the consequences of careless aggression. Properly balanced, robust diplomacy will enable us to bring greater stability to the region, to remove the American military from Iraq, to increase our ability to defeat the forces of international terrorism, and, finally, to focus on the true strategic challenges that face us around the world.
Accountability
With the Democratic majorities in Congress, we’ve also seen a renewal of the kind of healthy oversight that is critical to accountability in government. Americans are yearning for a government that inspires confidence and achieves results. They deserve oversight and accountability on a wide host of issues, from the exorbitant cost of this war, including billions of dollars worth of no-bid contracts, the evolution of a quasi-military Praetorian guard filled with 100,000 civilian contractors who are accountable to no one, to the arrogance of this administration on such issues as NSA wiretapping and selective dismissals of US attorneys, and finally to the lamentable inattention given to those who are still waiting for the Gulf coast to be revitalized in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
I have already mentioned my concerns about the care our veterans receive, and a story first broken not through congressional oversight but through the media. I have no doubt that aggressive oversight by the Armed Services and Veterans Affairs’ committees will hasten the kind of corrective measures we need to take in the coming months. As someone who has spent most of his adult life working with and helping our veterans, I’m also hoping that the congress will pass a meaningful GI Bill for those who have served since 9/11. The first piece of legislation I introduced in the Senate, S.22, is a GI Bill that will give our Iraq and Afghanistan veterans the same educational benefits as those who returned home from World War II. I believe they have earned it.
Economic Fairness
Finally, a word about fundamental fairness, and the anxiety that many Americans feel about their economic future.
Last month, I spent three days traveling in the far southwestern part of my state. It was my first visit back to Southwest Virginia since the campaign. What struck me during that visit was how the worries of families in these small towns seems to have actually deepened since last fall.
We visited with union coal miners; defense industry workers; high technology workers; and retirees throughout the region. People in many parts of my state are seeing an economy in which more and more manufacturing jobs are moving overseas ... where the purchasing power of families has declined or stated flat ... where heating and electric bills have suddenly skyrocketed... and where more and more of our people lack health insurance.
Even an area like Hampton Roads, which has traditionally been strong because of defense industries, last year saw the decision to close a major Ford truck plant in Norfolk, with thousands of good, high-paying jobs now heading overseas.
These fears have caused many Americans to question the basic fairness of our economic system. Many of you are familiar with the warning signs I have spoken about, but they are worthy of repeating here.
Top 1% now takes in an astounding 16% of national income, up from 8% in 1980;
Corporate profits in this country are at an all-time high as a percentage of national wealth, while wages and salaries are at all-time lows.
Today’s CEOs make 400 times more than the average worker – compared to 20 times the average when I graduated from college;
47 million Americans lack health insurance;
Fewer and fewer of our people own stocks, and of those that do, their holdings are smaller than they were a generation ago.
Almost equally important, many leaders are seemingly indifferent to these trends. Some even maintain that this growth in income inequality is a form of economic Darwinism, and that it should not be a source of governmental concern.
Our nation shows other serious strains as well. I’ve long been concerned about the staggering prison incarceration rates in the United States, which are higher than any other nation in the world. Speaking of reporting, 23 years ago I was the first American journalist allowed inside the Japanese prison system. Even then I wrote of my concern that the incarceration rate in this country was the highest in what we then called the "free world" – with nearly 700,000 people in prison. Today our country has more than two million people in prison, and more than 7 million under some form of correction supervision when one includes probation and parole. A black male who does not finish high school now has a 60 percent chance of going to jail. One who has finished high school has a 30 percent chance.
We want to keep bad people off our streets. We want to break the backs of gangs, and we want to cut down on violent behavior. But there’s something else going on when we’re locking up such a high percentage of our people, marking them at an early age and in many cases eliminating their chances for a productive life as full citizens. This is what I call a "trajectory" issue. It will take years of energy to sort it out. But I am committed to working an a solution that is both responsive to our needs for law and order, and fairer to those who become entangled in this system.
It is a matter of self-interest for all Americans – including the so-called elites -- to recognize the dangers of our present course. It’s simply not healthy for a democracy like ours to have such a wide gulf between the rich, the poor, and the vast majority of hard-working, productive people in between.
As many commentators have pointed out, if left unchecked the division of our society along class lines threatens to usher in an era of protectionism and political unrest. I am determined to do everything I can to advance a progressive agenda that addresses the issues surrounding economic fairness and social justice. I believe we can work toward solutions that keep the United States economy strong and engaged in the rest of the world, but which also safeguard the rights of workers and the environment.
Passage of legislation to increase the minimum wage is a good first step, but we clearly will have even more opportunities, as for instance during the consideration of tax and trade legislation ... the budget ... and educational reform.
And finally, let me just say that I firmly believe we have just assembled the finest staff in the United States Senate. We stand ready to serve the interests of the country, to take care of the needs of our constituents in Virginia, and to respond, as best we can, to the inquiries of the Fourth Estate – without which, as I well know from having worked on your side of the podium, we would not be able to function properly as a free society, in the open air of free debate.
Thank you.