NEWSWEEK: Is John Edwards the best-prepared person that you could have picked as your running mate to deal with defense and foreign-policy questions?
KERRY: If I were just looking for someone who is solely versed in one topic, I could go find someone who would know a little more than him or even me on some one topic. But that’s not what the vice president is or what the president does. I selected the best person in this country, in my judgment, to exercise the judgment of the presidency, whose lifetime of experience, his values, his way of thinking, the example of his family, all of the ingredients of his life commitments and beliefs, make him the best-prepared person, if something were to happen to me, to lead this country in the direction that I care about.
As VP, you would be one of the principals on the national-security team in the Kerry White House. Who in your view, or what, is behind the insurgency in Iraq, and what’s the best way to beat them on the ground?
EDWARDS: There’s a lot of things we need to do, a number of which Senator Kerry has already talked about, both in terms of acceptability on the ground in Iraq and in terms of us being more effective. We do need not to be doing this alone. I was in Brussels at NATO a few weeks ago, and there’s an enormous amount of work to do to bring our friends at NATO to this effort. Second thing is, now that we have a caretaker government in place, is to establish legitimacy. And I think John has made a specific proposal about a high commission to make sure that all of the ethnic elements in Iraq’s voices can be heard. To see the process as legitimate, that is critical. I think the third thing is for us to show a serious investment in making sure Iraqis can provide security for themselves. We are clearly not there.
Iran is a big problem; everyone is trying to grapple with it. How do you go about enforcing nuclear agreements when it seems the countries have a different agenda? And how do you stop Iran’s nuclear program?
KERRY: Do you mind… since John just joined this ticket two days ago and he and I have not had the time to sit down, so he and I haven’t fully brought up to speed on the speeches… I gave a speech in Fulton, Mo., in which I laid out what I sense are the priorities with Iran and proliferation. And I specifically put proliferation at the top of the agenda of this administration. A major new proliferation initiative not unlike what President Kennedy did with the nuclear-test treaty of the ’60s, where we are leading by example, as well as by statesmanship and diplomacy. And that example is giving up the current insistence of this administration to create a new wave of nuclear weapons and to turn its back on small-nuclear-weapons restraints.
EDWARDS: First of all, I should state very clearly that it is the job of the president, and it will be the job of this president, to make decisions about the administration’s policy on these issues. My job is to sit in the room, offer my advice and counsel, and it’s his job, not mine, to make the decision. And I trust his judgment. If someone’s going to be making decisions about myself and my family and our safety and security, there is nobody better than him. I believe that to my core. What he just described sounds very similar to a proposal I had during the primaries, which is America leading, setting up what I described as a global nuclear compact, where we actually deal with some of the holes in the nuclear nonproliferation agreements and we put an international sanctions regime in place. The most critical thing is for America to lead. When Senator Kerry talks about the importance of our alliances, strong alliances, in fighting the war on terrorism, it applies to everything. We can’t effectively resist proliferation unless we have the help of others. And without America leading, there is a huge vacuum there. John Kerry understands that, George Bush does not.
George Bush said yesterday he would win the South because he shares the values of Southerners. What’s your response?
EDWARDS: He’s wrong. I grew up in the rural South, and I believe I understand at a gut level what the values are of people in the South. And I believe they will decide between now and this election that John Kerry represents those values. Everybody I grew up with–they believe in family, in faith, and not any particular faith, by the way. They believe in honesty. They believe that everybody should be treated with respect and that everybody ought to have a chance to do what they are able to do. And I might add–and this is not a little thing–they look up to and admire and respect people who have put their life on the line to serve this country. I’m just here to tell you, when they get to know this man the way that I know him, they will embrace him, and I believe we will be very successful in the South.
Bush’s advisers said they were talking about things like gun control, partial-birth abortion, the marriage penalty, tax reductions–these are positions you take that are not consistent with the values of the South, they say.
KERRY: Well, let’s talk about it. Once again, they are distorting… I voted for and support getting rid of the marriage penalty, and my tax plan, in fact, is better than George Bush’s because… I give a real tax cut to middle-class Americans, average folks. So they are going to benefit more from John Kerry’s value system that wants to help them, rather than a plan that helps rich people. On partial-birth abortion, I’m against partial-birth abortion. On gun control, I’ve been a hunter and a gun owner and user and a fisherman since I was a kid, and I’m not going to listen to these guys tell me that what law enforcement wanted is wrong for America. John and I want to get health care to America. They care about that in the South. John and I want to talk about how to get real jobs to people, to rural and small-town America, where they are losing their manufacturing base. George Bush doesn’t talk about that. He doesn’t do anything about it.
EDWARDS: I think that both in North Carolina and other places in the South, people are–and this is in the Midwest and in other parts of the country–people are desperate to feel optimistic again. It’s real. They watch these young men and women dying in Iraq, they see jobs leaving, they can’t pay for their health care, and they get up and read the newspaper in the mornings and they watch TV and they think, “When is it ever going to be better?” And what to me this team represents is hope for those people. These are the people I grew up with. I know them like the back of my hand. I know what they need. I know what they want. And they know George Bush is never going to change. He is what he is. And they associate these things happening, even if they like George Bush personally, they associate them with him and his administration. They want someone who will lift them up again, in a real way, not rhetoric.
