Gary Bauer
Press Conference
Washington, DC
February 4, 2000
[transcript]
Good morning. I apologize for being late--a couple of accidents on the road today. I'm pleased that you all could stay until we got here.
I think many of you by now know my family, my wife Carol our oldest daughter Elise, both of whom worked in the campaign and have done a tremendous job. My son Zachary is in school today trying to catch up from being on the road so much, and our daughter Sarah is in college in Pennsylvania doing the same.
Well, I'd like to begin this morning by quoting from Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt, as you all know, has the reputation in the past century of being an American president that knew that some things were worth fighting for, and the quote is probably familiar to most of you, but let me share it with you. Roosevelt said,
Ten months ago I stepped into the arena of presidential politics to dare greatly, to undertake what I believed was a worthy cause, not because it was a--there would be certain victory, far from it, but because of my devotion to what Roosevelt called great enthusiasms. The greatest of these is our noble American experiment, and that experiment as I have emphasized during the entire campaign, is based on an idea.It's not the critics who count, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
It's in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence where it says, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among these the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." That is the central idea of the American republic. It defines our destiny.
In the last century when we sent our sons off to places like Danang and Khe Sanh, to Pork Chop Hill or to the beaches of Normandy, it was with them that idea went. It is because of that idea that we defeated Nazism and defeated Soviet communism. It is the defining idea of America. I believe that that destiny is in danger. It is why I've run for president. I think in one issue after another, we are forgetting the defining words of who we are.
The first example of that on the domestic front is on how we are dealing with the issue of our children. We have taken a whole class of Americans, only the second time in our history, and we have said of them that they are not part of the American family.
In the 1800s we did it with slaves. We said in the Dred Scott case that Dred Scott had no rights that the rest of us were bound to respect. It was a complete contradiction to those words in the Declaration of Independence. It was such a contradiction it almost destroyed us.
Well, we did it again 27 years ago. We took a whole class of our fellow Americans, our unborn children, and we said of them they have no rights that we're bound to respect. I believe this will stick in our throats until we get it right. I believe that we have to set a place at the table for all of our children, born and unborn, rich and poor, black and white. On this issue I will not be moved. On this issue I will not go away.
I think the second area where this is happening is in our foreign policy, and here too we're forgetting the founding value of America. On our foreign policy toward communist China, the trade wings of both political parties is putting the prospect of quick profits and money before our own national security and before our historic commitment to human rights. This is a disaster in the making.
When we put trade with China above everything else, we are betraying who we are. That trade is providing China with billions of dollars of hard currency that they're using for an arms buildup that once again America's sons may have to deal with. On this issue we are forgetting who we are. Chinese students in Tiananmen Square wave copies of our Declaration of Independence; they die with those words on their lips, and yet the policy makers in Washington, D.C. forget those words as they continue a policy that can only be described as appeasement.
On this there are members of my party who are as bad as Bill Clinton. I will continue to speak the truth about this issue. On this issue I will not be moved. On this issue I refuse to go away.
The third great issue facing our country and that has been a theme of my campaign is what is the nature of our wealth. I believe that we can all be proud of our things. The two cars in the driveway, our large houses when we can afford those, the wealth in our retirement accounts, a booming stock market. There's nothing wrong with material prosperity. We have given more of it to more people than any nation in the world. But, our material prosperity is not enough if we forget the values of the heart and soul, and I believe that our greatest wealth is in those things.
Our greatest wealth is at the breakfast table. It's nighttime prayers, it's lovingly packed lunch boxes, it's hard work and a little put away for the future. That is the real wealth of America, and our economic and tax policy ought to reflect that. I have argued this point through this campaign, that our wealth is in our families and in our children. On this issue I refuse to go away. On this issue I will stand and fight.
Well, those are the things that have been the themes of this campaign and the themes that I care about deeply and the things that I think ultimately will matter the most to America's future.
Today I'm withdrawing from the contest for the Republican presidential nomination. I do that feeling good about the effort that has been made, good about how I have moved the debate in this party and good about the American people that I have met in every state that I have traveled to.
I want to thank the incredible campaign staff that we've had and the incredible numbers of supporters around the country who have invested in what we've done. I particularly want to thank the voters of Iowa and New Hampshire. They are good people and good citizens. They listen carefully; they did the job they were asked to do. Some criticized the process, some criticized whether those two states should have so much impact. I think they do a better job than anybody else can do. I was amazed in New Hampshire earlier this week to watch long lines at every polling place as good citizens of that state exercised their rights as citizens and did it, I think, in a responsible way. It is great country. This is a great experiment in self-governing and I intend to be part of it for a long time.
Let me end with one story, an upbeat story. I've been very critical, as many of you know, of the fact that in one high school after another around America I have asked high school students whether they know those 35 words in the Declaration of Independence. And in one high school after another I have found that most of our high school children do not know those words. In fact, I find teachers that don't know them. This is extremely disturbing. When Chinese students know that those words are the only hope they have for liberty, but American students don't know those words, something is going deeply wrong in the American experiment.
Last week as I was campaigning in New Hampshire, I got a call from an elementary school there. A fifth grade teacher asked me to come in to spend time with three fifth grade classes in a public school. I walked into the room and was in a seat surrounded by nearly a hundred fifth graders. They were filled with energy. They were jumping out of their chairs with excitement. The teacher called on one of them and the little girl stood up and she quoted the first two lines of the Declaration of Independence, "When in the course of human events," et cetera. She sat down and a little boy stood up and made the next two lines. And I sat there in amazement as those fifth graders went through the entire Declaration of Independence. They did it with enthusiasm. They did it with excitement. They did it with a love in their heart. They hadn't just memorized it. They knew what the words meant. That was evident to me as we talked about it later. American politics ought to be as good as the excitement and the idealism that I saw in a hundred fifth graders in a public school in New Hampshire, and that's what I will continue to work to make it be.
Thank you very much. I'd be happy to take any questions.
Yes?
QUESTION: Do you plan to return to the Family Research Council now that you've withdrawn from the presidential race?
BAUER: I'm going to take some time now to reflect on what I'm going
to do next and make judgments on how best I can continue to be a major
factor in the debate in the country. I think we've built something
very important here. There's a tremendous amount of affection for
what we've done and support for what we've done, and I want to make sure
that I build on that and stay in the political arena. So we'll be
making specific judgments about the sort of question you've asked in the
weeks ahead, but I'm going to stay in the arena. That's the important
thing.
QUESTION: Mr. Bauer?
GARY BAUER: Yes.
QUESTION: You said that you will stay in the Republican Party. Are you prepared to endorse anybody today?
GARY BAUER: No, I'm not prepared to endorse anybody. I want to congratulate, by the way, my competitors in all of this, particularly Senator McCain for the incredible showing he made in New Hampshire. He is a good and decent man. Governor Bush who has put together a tremendous national campaign. Alan Keyes, Steve Forbes, the others that dropped out of the race over the months, they are all good and decent people. Any one of them would be a better president than the likely nominee of the Democratic Party, and so I congratulate all of them.
But I got into the race because I believed I had a superior governing vision. I continue to believe that I have a governing vision that is most important for the American people, one that will touch their hearts and ones that will make the country a better place.
I'm not going to endorse anybody until I see one of the other candidates move toward those issues which I've outlined today--making sure that all of our children are welcomed into the world and protected by the law, making sure that we have a foreign policy built on American values, not just on money, and making sure that our economic policy reflects the fact that our real wealth is in our families and in our children. So we'll be watching with interest as the debate continues.
Yes?
QUESTION: Sir, do you think your endorsement matters and why? Why does your endorsement matter?
GARY BAUER: Well, I'll let you all be the judges of whether my endorsement matters or not. I just will say that those that are still in the race seem very interested in my endorsement.
Yes, ma'am.
QUESTION: What does it say about the conservative movement that arguably the most conservative candidates in the Republican race have not come to the top of the pile?
GARY BAUER: Well, I don't think this morning that I want to get into an analysis of the conservative movement. I'm still trying to analyze my own performance in the campaign and where I did things right and where I made mistakes. I will say however, that all of my competitors are trying the best they can with rhetorical flourishes, sometimes right out of my speeches, to sound very conservative. I've been very flattered by that. I think I've been a leader in all of this.
So I would certainly hesitate if I were a political analyst or a reporter
to somehow read into what has happened at this point with me as being some
comment on the conservative ideas that I represent. Almost all of
my competitors suggest in debates and so forth that they too stand for
these ideas, but as I've tried to point out in the debate, the devil's
in the details, that I think we've got to get very detailed about, you
know, what we would do if we governed. So I don't think it says anything
about the conservative movement one way or the other.
QUESTION: Gary?
GARY BAUER: Yes.
QUESTION: Have you at any time felt pressured to leave the campaign in order to help unify the conservatives against John McCain?
GARY BAUER: No. I, you know, I hear those kinds of arguments about conservatives needing to unify and so forth. I don't think anybody thinks about that, thinks that way in politics. I don't think that establishment candidates think that they've got an obligation to all drop out in respect to another establishment candidate.
I think the people make these judgments. The marketplace of ideas makes these judgments, and over the last year we've seen one candidate after another, some of them conservative, some of them more establishment oriented, leave the race because the marketplace did not respond to them in the way that they wanted. And I think that's what it's about. It's about the voters and them making judgments on who has a governing vision for their futures, their families and their children. And all the rest of it I think is sort of inside-the-beltway speculation or inside-the-beltway games. It's not very relevant to how real people make judgments at their breakfast table about who they're going to vote for.
And, you know as the system goes on, people do have to drop out. You either can't get the money or you can't the enthusiasm or the volunteers or whatever, and that's they way it should be. It shouldn't be closed door meetings with people sitting around saying, oh, we ought to get together and we ought to do this and, you know, because of this candidate or that candidate. It's a great competition, and you get out there, do the best you can and let the voters make the judgment.
Yes.
QUESTION: Gary, do either Bush or McCain's position on abortion go far enough as far as you're concerned, and do you agree with Bush's characterization of McCain as sounding like a Democrat?
GARY BAUER: I'm not this morning going to comment on one candidate's characterization of another candidate. As I say, I think Senator McCain is a good and decent man. I think he's brought important issues to the table. I think that his insistence on campaign finance reform is important.
I want it to be fair. I don't want to disarm and allow the other party to have certain advantages, but I'm as disturbed as he is by the influence of big money in politics. I think it's a mistake to continue to allow big corporations and big unions to make four and five million dollar contributions to the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee.
And it seems to be that it ought to be a Republican idea to be disturbed by that because my party has stood with the idea of the individual and average people instead of the big special interests. So, you know, I think when candidates start making these kinds of criticisms of each other in that way, it hurts the party. Beyond that, I think I'll stop there. What was the first part, what was--
QUESTION: The abortion issue.
GARY BAUER: Yes, on the abortion issue, look, there's one important thing that a Republican president or any president does. It's the judges that they put on the courts. All the rest of it is rhetoric.
Abortion on demand will end when there are five pro-life judges on the court. I committed myself during the campaign to saying that my judges will be pro-life. The other competitors, major competitors in the race have been unwilling so far to make that commitment. I hope they will continue to move in my direction.
Yes, sir.
QUESTION: Do you see Pat Buchanan now as a greater threat to the Republican Party now that you've got out, particularly not only to Republicans, but to all Americans who know the value of life, and who's discerned the danger of communist China?
GARY BAUER: I'm not going to answer those kinds of questions.
I mean, Pat Buchanan has every right to be in the political arena as everybody
else does. The voters can make their judgments about it.
QUESTION: Who will take up the China issue?
GARY BAUER: Well, as I said, I'm not going away on that issue and on the other issues. I think this is one of the most important things facing the country. As far as who will take it up in--among the rest of the competitors, I don't know. It's a tremendous opportunity for somebody to be very Reaganesque.
It was Reagan who reminded us that the world would not remain half slave and half free, that we would have to win--freedom would have to win the Cold War. And because of that, even though he got tremendous criticism for it, a piece of the Berlin wall sits on his mantleplace in California today. We need a vision like that when it is--when it comes to dealing with communist China and so far we don't have it. So far this thing is being driven by the desire for quick profit.
China now has a lobbying force on K Street in Washington, D.C.
There are big important lobbyists in this city who constantly go to Capitol
Hill and defend the China viewpoint on these issues, and that is tragic
for our country. So it will be interesting to see who will pick it
up as an issue.
QUESTION: Mr. Bauer?
GARY BAUER: Yes.
QUESTION: Based on your experience, what's more important in this campaign, issues or character?
GARY BAUER: Well, it looks this time around that issues are not driving the campaign as much as perhaps they have in the past, but we'll see. Now that it's narrowing down, maybe it will be more of an issue--an issue focus. I do think people are looking for good character in Washington and certainly there are a number of people in the race that have been able to show good character in a way that resonated with the American people.
QUESTION: Why is that, and who do you think it benefits the most from that interpretation?
GARY BAUER: I'll let you all make that judgment.
Yes.
QUESTION: Why do you think your message didn't catch on? Why do you think you didn't get a groundswell of support on the issues you find important?
GARY BAUER: Well, I think my message did catch on. As I said, sometimes in the debates, I found, you know, I heard my words even when my lips weren't moving, so I think my message was catching on and has caught on with the other candidates. I think we've moved this debate a great deal. That was not why I was in it. I was in it to get the nomination of the Republican Party because I believed and continue to believe that I can most effectively make my own message and deliver my own message. It just didn't work.
People seldom make it on the first round. I think it's amazing that I outlasted some incredibly big names in American politics, and to be down in these last weeks to only five candidates--and as I've said probably to you all to the point of ad nauseum, one of them the son of a former president, one of them the son of an admiral, one of them the son of a tycoon and I'm the son of a janitor. I think we did real well, John. And you seem to be having a good time with it so--
Yes?
QUESTION: What big lessons did you learn during the campaign about our political system?
GARY BAUER: Well, one of the things I learned--you know, I've been in the Washington arena for a long time, and I think one of the dangers you run into when you're in this city for a long time is that problems facing the country become lifeless. They become words on paper. They become issue papers or memos, and one of the things that I learned as I got around the country is that these problems are real flesh and blood.
I remember the first time in a town meeting in Iowa that I stood there and saw a farmer stand up. One of these guys that reminded me of my father, a big hard-working man. You could just see it in hands and in his muscles, et cetera, the kind of guy you'd want to be in a dark alley with you if you were in trouble; the kind of guy that doesn't cry easy. And yet these guys would stand and they would start talking about the farms that had been in their families for a hundred years that they were now losing. And that nobody in Washington seemed to care one way or the other, and their voice would catch as they talked about it. Suddenly it wasn't, you know, an analysis of the Freedom to Farm Act or, you know, the latest quotes off the Chicago Board of Trade.
This was a good man standing there, the kind of man that the country
has been blessed with millions of. He was working harder than he'd
every worked in his life. He was doing a more efficient job than
any other kind of farmer in the world, and yet the system was failing him.
He was going to lose that farm. There was one incident like that
after another where I saw real Americans who feel that what's happening
in Washington just isn't relevant to the real problems of their lives,
and I think that's going to have a lasting change on me. I don't
think I'll ever look at issues as being policy papers anymore. I
don't think I'm going to forget that it's flesh and blood.
QUESTION: Would you consider the number two spot?
GARY BAUER: Gosh, you know, I don't want to answer that. It would be very flattering.
Yes, ma'am?
QUESTION: Are there any true conservatives left in the race?
GARY BAUER: Any true conservatives in the race? You're asking me to make judgments, again, about these guys as I go out, and I made my judgments about them in the debates when I tried to point out the differences between myself and the others. And I'll let what I said during the debates speak for itself.
Yes, sir?
QUESTION: Do you think the party will have any trouble unifying in the fall or do you [inaudible] 1976- or 1992-style bloodbath?
GARY BAUER: I think the most unified factor in the party is named Al Gore, and that would I think be enough to hopefully overcome any differences that people might have. I also, of course, want the party to remain a--the party of Lincoln and Reagan, so I certainly hope in the weeks and months ahead that we continue to move in the right direction on those things.
It's not enough just to replace a guy with a "D" next to his name with
a guy with an "R" next to his name. That's not going to by itself
make America better. We've got to have a governing vision for the
American people, and I tried to put one out there. I hope that the
other candidates will continue to follow my lead on the things that I emphasized.
QUESTION: I mean, that begs the question, what's your bottom line, in other words, how far will you go in the name of party of unity? What kind of abortion plank will you accept? What kind of China plank will you--
GARY BAUER: What will I accept? As I've said this morning as directly
as I can, I will fight on these issues with every ounce of strength that
I have and I'm not going to compromise any of these principles. You
can compromise on process. You can compromise on the exact budget
level of one government agency or another, but over the issue of whether
or not unborn children are part of the American family or the issue of
whether or not our foreign policy ought to be based on values rather than
money, on those things you really can't compromise.
QUESTION: Gary, are you considering starting your own organization. Is that part of the deliberations about what to do?
GARY BAUER: I'm going have--I'm going to put everything on the table, all the different possibilities so that I can remain, I hope, a major player in the days and weeks ahead in this debate, and there's a lot of different ways to do that. You can do that through new organizations. You can do it by writing. You can do it in a number of different ways, so we're going to look at all the alternatives.
Yes, ma'am?
QUESTION: When precisely did you make your decision and could you tell us a little bit about how you came to the decision?
GARY BAUER: To drop out? I made the decision as I was sitting
there watching the returns in New Hampshire. We had a plan to get
the necessary delegates to win the nomination, but when Louisiana was cancelled
and in Iowa and New Hampshire we underperformed, you then had to look at
what other states were coming up and what were the realistic possibilities
of getting the number of delegates that you needed. If I was a symbolic
candidate, I would have stayed in the race because a symbolic candidate
can campaign with a cell phone and a rental car and that continue to make
his point all the way up to the convention. I was in it to actually
get the nomination as I told many of you over and over again, and when
it became clear to me that I could not see a realistic way to do that,
then it seemed to me that the better part of valor was to move aside.
QUESTION: If history most remembers your denial of adultery and your falling off the stage in New Hampshire, do you think that says something about our American culture and media are at right now?
GARY BAUER: I don't believe that history will remember the things that you mentioned. I think that the performance that I've given in this debate with dignity, in spite of some of the asinine questions I've been asked, will speak for itself. [applause].
Yes, sir?
QUESTION: Gary, in terms of the nominating process, you've praised Iowa and New Hampshire, but are there some changes that you would suggest should be made in that? And a follow-up question, you've participated in perhaps a dozen or so debates; are some of those formats better than others in terms of--
GARY BAUER: Well, on the process, I guess my only--I don't want to say anything that sounds like I'm a whiner. You know, we all got into the race, we knew what the process was, and I think it's unbecoming for any of us to go, gee, I lost because they did this or there was too much money or whatever. I think generally speaking it would be better to elongate the actual voting process. Not the campaign, that's long enough, but spread out the primaries some more because I think that it's tough for any outsider, any underdog to deal with the concentrated nature of the primaries. So that would be one suggestion that I would make, probably the most important. What was the--what was the other?
QUESTION: In terms of the debate formats.
GARY BAUER: The debate formats. I thought it was really funny. One of the debates we had, they--we had a chance to exchange comments between the candidates, and that exchange involved us getting a chance to have 90 seconds to answer. And then you could take 30 seconds to do a follow-up question and then your adversary would have 60 seconds to answer that follow up. And the debate organizers called that a modified Lincoln-Douglas debate. Given that Lincoln and Douglas would stand for three or four hours in the sun and engage each other one on one, I think to call a 60-second, 90-second exchange a modified Lincoln-Douglas is a stretch.
I would like debates in which the candidates could talk to each other
more instead of just taking questions from various press personalities.
QUESTION: Gary, you've said that you're not planning on endorsing anyone at this time. Do you contemplate or plan to at a later time?
GARY BAUER: It depends. I--my view on all this is driven by this governing vision, this set of ideas and so I'm going to take it a day at a time and see who's moving in my direction.
VOICE: Thank you all. Thank you.
GARY BAUER: Just let me take this last one. Yes, ma'am?
QUESTION: What about the financial status of your campaign; do you have enough money left over to pay the bills? What's going on with that?
GARY BAUER: We basically controlled the spending so that we wouldn't go deeply in debt. I don't have the exact figures, but I think we've got a little bit of debt left over after the matching funds, and I believe that in relatively short order we'll be able to pay that off. I do not envision being one of these campaigns that four years later is still worried about the debt. There are some principles I have in that area, and we try to follow them in the campaign.
Thank you all very much. Really appreciate you being here this morning. It's been great working with you all on the campaign trail.
Let me just say that I believe you're treated me more than fairly.
I have not carped about anything. It's a great country, freedom of
press, the freedom of the press is great. You've taken me seriously.
You've reported what I've said, and I've made some lasting friendships
with you all and I'll look forward to working with you some more in the
future. God bless you all. Thank you.
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