QUESTION 1 TO SENATOR KERRY:
Senator Kerry, after talking with several co-workers and family
and friends, I asked the ones who said they were not voting for
you why. They said that you were too wishy-washy. Do you have a
reply for them?
MR. SOBRAN REPLIES:
Senator Kerry insists that he's been consistent and decisive. This
is dubious, when nearly the whole country has had a different
impression, his own statements adding to the confusion. He often
wants to have it both ways.
But the charge can be turned around. President Bush has been TOO
consistent, refusing to change his mind in the face of mounting
evidence (1) that the Iraq war hasn't achieved its stated purpose
and (2) that his original justifications have been proven wrong.
QUESTION 1 TO PRESIDENT BUSH:
Mr. President, yesterday in a statement you admitted that Iraq did
not have weapons of mass destruction, but justified the invasion
by stating, I quote: "He retained the knowledge, the materials,
the means, and the intent to produce weapons of mass destruction
and could have passed this knowledge to our terrorist enemies. Do
sincerely believe this to be a reasonable justification for
invasion, when this statement applies to so many other countries,
including North Korea?
MR. SOBRAN REPLIES:
Yet the president keeps insisting that Saddam "could have"
acquired them and helped the terrorists. This is simply desperate.
I agree with Senator Kerry that President Bush's misjudgments, to
call them that, have made the world more dangerous. Yet Senator
Kerry voted to give the president more war-making power, and he
remains impenitent about this. If you authorize dictatorial power,
you can't complain later that it was misused.
QUESTION 2 TO SENATOR KERRY:
Senator Kerry, the U.S. is preparing a new Iraq government and
will proceed to withdraw U.S. troops. Would you proceed with the
same plans as President Bush?
MR. SOBRAN REPLIES:
Senator Kerry keeps repeating that he'd involve "our allies" in
the operation. Here President Bush is right, for what it's worth:
Those allies would hardly sacrifice lives for a cause Senator
Kerry has already rightly condemned, as they have.
The United States simply has no justification for invading Iraq in
the first place, or for remaining there now. Iraq had nothing to
do with the 9/11 attacks.
QUESTION 2 TO PRESIDENT BUSH:
Mr. President, my mother and sister traveled abroad this summer
and when they got back they talked to us about how shocked they
were at the intensity of aggravation that other countries had with
how we handled the Iraq situation. Diplomacy is obviously
something that we have to really work on. What is your plan to
repair relations with other countries, given the current
situation?
MR. SOBRAN ANSWERS:
Here, as Senator Kerry has said, President Bush's father was right.
The president made no adequate provision for either occupying the
country or getting out. But how could he? If centralized government
can't work here, how can you micromanage a large territory from the
other side of the globe? Yet President Bush and Senator Kerry both
assume there must be a way to do it. But there is no way. The whole
enterprise is both wrong and doomed. Its futility is underlined by
events every day. Senator Kerry's assertion that more troops could
succeed is as unrealistic as President Bush's impenetrable
optimism.
QUESTION 3 TO SENATOR KERRY:
Iran sponsors terrorism and has missiles capable of hitting Israel
and southern Europe. Iran will have nuclear weapons in two to
three years' time. In the event that UN sanctions don't stop this
threat, what will you do as president?
MR. SOBRAN REPLIES:
Both President Bush and Senator Kerry share the narrow view that
the United States could and should force these states to disarm.
This is very doubtful. Neither considers the obvious possibility
that U.S. interventionism provokes other regimes to seek nuclear
weapons, just as it provoked the 9/11 attacks themselves. The best
defense is not "a good offense"; it's not to offend at all. The
best foreign policy would be the one recommended by George
Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson -- to remain
aloof from Old World wars and to rely on the shield of two oceans.
But this wise policy, caricatured as "isolationism," has been
abandoned by both parties, which share the premise that
interventionism of some sort must be the premise of any American
foreign policy.
QUESTION 3 TO PRESIDENT BUSH:
Mr. President, since we continue to police the world, how do you
intend to maintain our military presence without reinstituting a
draft?
MR. SOBRAN REPLIES:
Again, the question presumes that the United States must rule the
world, and that this supposed right and duty must decide whether
the U.S. Government should enslave young people for that purpose.
The draft is a form of involuntary servitude, forbidden by the
U.S. Constitution and inherently wrong. The question should be
rephrased: Can the United States exercise tyranny abroad without
tyrannizing its own citizens?
By the way, it follows that if there is not going to be a draft we
can end registration for selective service, too.
QUESTION 4 TO SENATOR KERRY:
Senator Kerry, we have been fortunate that there have been no
further terrorist attacks on American soil since 9/11. Why do you
think this is, and if elected what will you do to assure our
safety?
MR. SOBRAN REPLIES:
The menace of al-Qaeda has been hugely exaggerated, or there
surely would have been further attacks by now. But they remain a
danger as long as the United States insists on global domination,
which antagonizes countless people around the world. U.S
intervention may also create other enemies where there were none
before. President Bush absurdly insists that the enemies the
United States makes for us "hate freedom." No, they hate our
government, which is more nearly the opposite of hating freedom.
The U.S. Government is OUR enemy as well as theirs.
QUESTION 4 TO PRESIDENT BUSH:
Mr. President, why did you block the reimportation of safer and
inexpensive drugs from Canada, which would have cut 40-60 percent
off of the cost?
MR. SOBRAN REPLIES:
The U.S. Government has no constitutional authority to regulate
drugs of any kind, from any source. The most basic problem with
this whole debate is that both Bush and Kerry assume that the U.S.
Government has comprehensive authority over virtually everything.
Neither of them grasps the principle of "enumerated powers" --
that under the U.S. Constitution the government can claim no
powers but those specifically delegated in the Constitution
itself.
QUESTION 5 TO SENATOR KERRY:
Senator Kerry, you've stated your concern for the rising costs of
health care, yet you chose a vice-presidential candidate who has
made millions of dollars successfully suing medical professionals.
How do you reconcile this with the voters?
MR. SOBRAN REPLIES:
What's wrong with trial lawyers as such?
QUESTION 5 TO PRESIDENT BUSH:
Mr. President, you have enjoyed a Republican majority in the House
and Senate for most of your presidency. In that time you've not
vetoed a single spending bill. Excluding $120 billion spent in
Iraq and Afghanistan, there has been $700 billion spent and not
paid for by taxes. Please explain how the spending you have
approved and not paid for is better for the American people than
the spending proposed by your opponent.
MR. SOBRAN REPLIES:
Right. This makes nonsense of his claim to be a conservative.
Under President Bush's administration, Federal spending has
reached fantastic heights. Senator Kerry is right, in a sense, to
point out that President Bush has wasted the surplus he inherited
from President Clinton, though that ignores the stupendous overall
Federal debt both parties have amassed since World War Two.
QUESTION 6 TO SENATOR KERRY:
Senator Kerry, would you be willing to look directly into the
camera and, using simple and unequivocal language, give the
American people your solemn pledge not to sign any legislation
that will increase the tax burden on families earning less than
$200,000 a year during your first term?
MR. SOBRAN REPLIES:
More important, will he try to abolish existing taxes? Of course
not. Neither President Bush nor President Kerry will even reduce
taxes significantly. Here again, both men agree far more than they
disagree; their rhetorical differences shouldn't obscure that
basic fact. Both favor a Federal Government monstrously larger
than the Framers of the Constitution contemplated.
QUESTION 6 TO PRESIDENT BUSH:
Mr. President, how would you rate yourself as an environmentalist?
What specifically has your administration done to improve the
condition of our nation's air and water supply?
MR. SOBRAN REPLIES:
Yet again, both men's replies showed implicit disdain for private
property and for any limits on government power. President Bush
boasts of all his environmentalist programs; Senator Kerry
complains that these weren't enough.
Here Senator Kerry replies to President Bush's description of him
as a liberal by asserting that "labels don't mean anything." Only
a liberal would say this. Labels mean plenty; for one thing,
liberals virtually always demand more government power, as Senator
Kerry does. A more honest reply would have been that Senator Kerry
isn't really much more liberal than President Bush.
Senator Kerry actually cites his votes for more and bigger
government programs to prove he's not a liberal!
QUESTION 7 TO SENATOR KERRY:
Senator Kerry, how can the U.S. be competitive in manufacturing,
given the wage necessary and comfortably accepted for American
workers to maintain the standard of living that they expect?
MR. SOBRAN REPLIES:
This question contains another unchallenged premise: that the U.S.
Government is responsible for promoting economic growth. Both
President Bush and Senator Kerry accept this assumption; I deny
it. We will prosper by being free, regardless of whether we
outprosper other countries. But freedom is our right, regardless
of its aggregate results. Both of the major-party candidates
merely promise that their "policies" would produce results.
Senator Kerry is more rhetorically socialist, President Bush more
rhetorically libertarian; but neither appeals to freedom in
principle.
QUESTION 7 TO PRESIDENT BUSH:
President Bush, 45 days after 9/11 Congress passed the PATRIOT
Act, which takes away checks on law enforcement and weakens
American citizens' rights and freedoms, especially Fourth
Amendment rights. With expansions of the PATRIOT Act and PATRIOT
Act 2, my question to you is why are my rights being watered down
and my citizens around me and what are the specific justifications
for these reforms?
MR. SOBRAN REPLIES:
There is no real disagreement between the two major-party
candidates here either, though Senator Kerry, for a change, was
slightly more rhetorically libertarian. But instead of condemning
"homeland security" measures on principle, he speaks only of their
"abuses." President Bush merely denies that the "abuses" are
serious.
QUESTION 8 TO SENATOR KERRY:
Senator Kerry, thousands of people have already been cured or
treated by the use of adult stem cells or umbilical cord stem
cells. However, no one has been cured by using embryonic stem
cells. Wouldn't it be wise to use stem cells obtained without the
destruction of an embryo?
MR. SOBRAN REPLIES:
Yet one more area the Fed Government has no "colorable pretext"
for getting into. President Bush was more forthright, pointing out
that embryonic stem-cell research requires the killing of live
embryos; yet he boasted of having allowed it, and Kerry nailed him
on the self-contradiction.
QUESTION 8 TO PRESIDENT BUSH:
Mr. President, if there were a vacancy in the Supreme Court and
you had the opportunity to fill that position today, who would you
choose and why?
MR. SOBRAN REPLIES:
President Bush says he'd appoint only "strict constructionists,"
who would interpret the Constitution rather than "legislate." This
left the question why he has ignored the Constitution himself.
Senator Kerry quoted him as saying he favored "conservative"
justices like Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas; whereas he,
President Kerry, would pick men and women who were "neither
conservative nor liberal." Yet he described the people he'd seek
entirely in liberal buzzwords: They'd be for "equality," "women's
rights," et cetera.
I would appoint only people who interpreted the Constitution with
utter rigor, recognizing the legal right of states to secede and
denying that the Fourteenth Amendment was properly ratified.
QUESTION 9 TO SENATOR KERRY:
Senator Kerry, suppose you were speaking with a voter who believed
abortion is murder and the voter asked for reassurance that his or
her tax dollars would not go to support abortion. What would you
say to that person?
MR. SOBRAN REPLIES:
Senator Kerry waffles badly. He makes smarmy professions of his
"deep respect" for abortion opponents and of his own Catholicism.
But he says he had no right to "legislate an article of faith,"
showing his poor grasp of Catholic teaching on the subject, which
is based not on faith but on natural law. He completely dodged the
question, and President Bush, in his finest moment of the evening,
showed him up with the blunt declaration that he would spend no
tax money for abortions. But President Bush went on to boast of
his administration's "maternity programs" -- which, of course,
have no warrant in the Constitution.
QUESTION 9 TO PRESIDENT BUSH:
President Bush, during the last four years, you have made
thousands of decisions that have affected millions of lives.
Please give three instances in which you came to realize you had
made a wrong decision and what you did to correct it.
MR. SOBRAN REPLIES:
Instead of answering the question, which was a gift to Senator
Kerry, President Bush makes a perfunctory admission of fallibility
and basically said he had no real regrets. Senator Kerry of course
was glad to enlarge on President Bush's blunders and repeated his
standard charges: that President Bush, instead of making war as a
last resort, rushed into it, failing to follow his own prudent
advice. Once again I agree with Senator Kerry's criticism, but not
with his alternative: continuing the Iraq war and occupation with
multinational help.
MR. SOBRAN'S CLOSING STATEMENT:
The Federal Govt must be at least stripped down to constitutional
dimensions. The great majority of its powers are unauthorized. Not
that even its authorized powers should be retained. Neither
President Bush nor Senator Kerry, in fact, so much as adverted to
the most urgent tasks facing freedom-loving Americans: repealing
laws, abolishing taxes, and dismantling the huge apparatus of
tyranny the U.S. Government has become.
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