John Edwards Announces Bid for 2008 Democratic Presidential Nomination

I hope we're doing some good for New Orleans, because if you walk -- as you know very well, as you walk around to these houses and through these neighborhoods -- we're in the Ninth Ward. Earlier this year I was in St. Bernard Parish doing work, along with a bunch of other people. What you hear is people, they feel like they're just forgotten, that no one's paying any attention.

And in the worst-hit areas of New Orleans, as everyone in New Orleans knows -- they certainly don't me to tell them -- you don't see much change.

And the change -- I will say, though, on a positive note, the change that has happened has been mostly done by volunteers and volunteer organizations.

So if we can help bring Americans to New Orleans to help rebuild this great city and get people to pay attention to what's actually going on here, I feel like we've done a good thing.

QUESTION: But you get something out of it, too, as well.

EDWARDS: Yes.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) patriotic about something other than war. What do you mean? And does that mean Americans should pay higher taxes to achieve benefits for global warming or universal health care?

EDWARDS: Well, I can give you some examples.

EDWARDS: We ought to be patriotic as Americans, not just as a government, although the government plays a critical role in helping to rebuild New Orleans.

We ought to be patriotic to do something about global warming. I don't mean in an abstract way. I mean, we've made mistakes in the past. We walked away from Kyoto unilaterally, which was, in my judgment, a serious mistake.

If you are under the age -- people often think about global warming as something that is going to affect the next generation. If you are under 60 and something doesn't change, global warming is very likely to affect your life.

And this is another example of a place where Americans can get off their addiction to oil, we can drive more fuel-efficient vehicles, we can invest in some of the cleaner alternative sources of energy -- wind, solar, biomass. There are a whole series of things that we need to do.

Because it's not just, by the way, a global warming or an energy security question, it's also a national security question, because it drives so much of our policy, particularly in the Middle East. And that has got to change.

QUESTION: Taxes? Taxes, Senator Edwards?

EDWARDS: Oh, I'm sorry. The answer to that question is, we do need, in my judgment, to get rid of some of the tax cuts that have been put in place, particularly for people at the top. I think that it may be necessary to put in place a tax on some of the windfall profits that oil companies are making in order to implement some of these changes that I've just talked about.

I think it's also really important that we be honest with people. We're in a -- we've gotten in a deep hole, in terms of our deficit. We have investments that need to be made. I've talked about some of them: Investments to strengthen the middle class; investments to end poverty; universal health care, which I'm completely committed to; some of these energy proposals that I've talked about briefly here today.

Those things cost money. So we're going to have to invest if we're going to transform America the way it needs to be transformed to make us successful in the 21st century, which is going to require rolling back some of these tax cuts, in my judgment, that have been put into place.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: ... it's still on its knees from Hurricane Katrina. And you've pointed out, properly, that much of the work that's gone on here has been, much of the lifting has been done by volunteer groups, faith-based groups, school groups.

EDWARDS: Yes.

QUESTION: Are you saying that there is a larger role for the federal government to play in the rebuilding of New Orleans that it's not now doing?

EDWARDS: Of course, there is. And my own view about this is, this was a place where presidential leadership would have been critical. I really do believe that. I think if the president of the United States had come to New Orleans, spent some time here -- I mean, the president has a lot of responsibilities. He can't stake himself out for the long term in New Orleans, but he should have spent a period of days here, saw what was actually happening on the ground, and then demanded action.

EDWARDS: Should have had somebody at a high level coming into his office every day -- if I'd been president, I would have had somebody coming into my office every morning, and I would say to him, "What did you do in New Orleans yesterday?"

And then the next day, "What did you do yesterday? What steps do we need to take? What are we not doing? What are the people in New Orleans telling us that we're not doing?"

And that's the -- unfortunately, that's the kind of thing that didn't happen. And as a result the federal government, while there's been money allocated -- and I'm telling you things everybody in New Orleans already knows, but of course the country needs to hear it -- all this money's been allocated and very little of it has gotten to the ground. You just don't -- you ride around and walk around out in these neighborhoods, you don't see much change.

So, yes, the answer is yes, there is a very significant role that the federal government needs to be paying, that it's not paying right now -- playing, playing, I'm sorry.

QUESTION: Senator, your call to action seems, at this point, a little bit vague or non-specific. What specifically are you saying that you want people to do, when you talk about the responsibility the people have?

EDWARDS: We're going to have a whole series of things that we're going to ask people to do, very specific.

For example, in January, January 27th, we will have a national call to action day, where we ask people to do a very specific thing. Let me give you some examples of what I think we can do -- the best examples, by the way, in terms of what's possible are the things I've actually seen done in the past: raising the minimum wage, making college available to kids who are willing to work when they're in college, the humanitarian work I saw occur in Uganda, the work that has been done to organize workers all over this country. The government had, basically, nothing to do with any of that.

EDWARDS: That's action that was taken by me but with lots of other people.

An example of what we can do now is we can do the kind of work these young people were doing here in New Orleans yesterday. More people can come to New Orleans and volunteer and help rebuild this city that's struggling so very badly.

Another example of what we can do is Americans are going to have to take responsibility to deal with global warming and the energy insecurity that exists in this country today.

This is not something the government or the president of the United States can fix on their own. That's what I meant when I said a few minutes ago, we need to call on Americans to be patriotic about something other than war.

I have personally seen what happens in communities where community action networks are involved in lifting up families that are living in poverty.

Again, the government plays a minor role in a lot of the work that's being done by faith-based groups, charitable groups and community organizations to lift up families who are living in poverty.

There is a long list of things that we can begin to do today -- not when the election happens, today -- to bring about the change that needs to occur.

Almost every state in America, we have thousands and thousands of kids who don't have health care just because they haven't signed up for the children's health insurance program. So we're not asking for the government to do anything. We're not asking for a new law. It's there. It's been there for a long time. But these kids don't know about it and they can't take advantage of it. Those are some of the kinds of things that we want to ask people to do.

QUESTION: Senator, you've done a lot of international travel recently, but some of your critics say all that's done is highlight how little experience you have in international and especially military affairs.

And in this age of the war on terror and the war in Iraq, why would the American people select as the commander in chief somebody with a relatively modest amount of experience in those areas?

EDWARDS: It's a very fair question and it's a question that I would ask if I were deciding who I thought should be the next commander in chief and the president of the United States.

My answer to that question is that what I've done over the last couple of years -- I've been all over the world, met with leaders, met with the people all over the world. And it's been helpful to me. It's given me some depth and understanding that didn't exist before that time.

EDWARDS: But if you look at what's happened over the last six years, we've had one of the most experienced foreign policy teams in American history -- Rumsfeld, Cheney. They've been an absolute disaster by any measure. Rumsfeld just resigned under -- resigned or was asked to quit by the president of the United States.

I don't think anybody in America thinks those people have done a good job, and they were extraordinarily experienced.

Experience, number one, doesn't equal good judgment, and, number two, doesn't indicate that you have a vision, long-term vision for what America should be doing, and, secondly, that you can adapt to a rapidly changing world. Because we've seen no capacity to be mobile, to be able to move when the environment changes, when the world changes.

If I can take just a second and say what I think America should be doing, I think that it is so critical that we not only maintain our strength, but that we -- when crises occur, when Ahmadinejad wants a nuclear weapon, when Kim Jong Il is testing missiles and nuclear weapons, when China's economic and military power is growing every single day with very little being done about it by the United States of America, when Hezbollah and the Israelis are engaged in conflict, when the Israelis are attacked by Hezbollah, America needs to be able to engage and bring the rest of the world with us to deal with those crises.

What's happening, instead, is we encounter resistance. When we go to the Security Council on all of these issues, we encounter resistance. Instead of the world naturally coming to us, they resist us.

And when we are not leading, there is no leadership. The world is literally in chaos. And look at what's happening from Central Africa all across the Middle East, and through Afghanistan, Pakistan, up through North Korea. We live in an unstable, chaotic world today.

The only way that'll change is if America becomes the stabilizing force. We cannot be the stabilizing force (inaudible) rest of the world once again sees us as the great beacon (inaudible)

To do that, we're going to have to show (inaudible) on the big moral issues that face the world, and that's what I've been talking about.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)

EDWARDS: My vote -- for those of you who can't hear, he asked if I wish I could take back my vote on the war. My vote was a mistake and I should never have voted for this war. I now know that. I came to that conclusion some time ago. I didn't do it for the first time here today.

I do think it's important to note, for anybody who voted for the war, that we didn't conduct the war. Bush, Cheney, those people -- Rumsfeld, they conducted the war. And they've been an absolute disaster in the conducting of the war.

But none of that changes or affects my responsibility. I'm responsible for what I did.

EDWARDS: And I believe that my vote was a mistake. I also feel a responsibility now to tell the truth about the circumstances we're in, which are very, very difficult.

I think America -- my own view is I think America can accept that we can't guarantee what the results are going to be in Iraq, no matter what path we take. And I think we should be honest with people about that.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)

EDWARDS: Yes. The answer's yes. The question was, should we be a part of the International Criminal Court? The answer's yes.

America -- when America doesn't engage in these international institutions, when we show disrespect for international agreements, it makes it extraordinarily difficult when we need the world community to rally around us to get them there.

We should be the natural leader in all of these areas, and, certainly, we should be a member of the International Criminal Court.

You know, we didn't used to be the country of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. We were the great light for the rest of the world, and America needs to be that light again. And we can -- and we can be that light again. Thank you all very much.

END

Source: CQ Transcriptions

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