A: Well, we should do this at a federal level, it'd be OK for the military. Just think of how the government caused all the segregation in the military until after World War II.
Q: You would vote against the Civil Rights Act, if it was today?
A: If it were written the same way, where the federal government's taken over property--it has nothing to do with race relations. It has nothing to do with racism, it has to do with the Constitution and private property rights.
A: Yeah. It's sor of like alcohol. Alcohol's a deadly drug, kills more people than anything else. And today the absurdity on this war on drugs has just been horrible. Now the federal government takes over and overrules states where state laws permit medicinal marijuana 1 for people dying of cancer. The federal government goes in and arrests these people, put them in prison with mandatory sentences. This war on drugs is totally out of control. If you want to regulate cigarettes and alcohol and drugs, it should be at the state level. That's where I stand on it. The federal government has no prerogatives on this.
Q: But you would decriminalize it?
A: I would, at the federal level. I don't have control over the states. And that's why the Constitution's there.
A: We elected conservatives to get rid of the Department of Education. We used to campaign on that. And what did we do? We doubled the size. I want to reverse that trend.
Q: What about public schools? Are you still for dismantling them?
A: No, I'm not. It's not in my platform.
QWhen you ran for president in 1988, you called for the abolition of public schools.
A: I bet that's a misquote. I do not recall that.
A: Absolutely. But remember, the Arabs would get cut off, too, and the Arabs get three times as much aid altogether than Israel. But why make Israel so dependent? Why do they give up their sovereignty? They can't defend their borders without coming to us. If they want a peace treaty, they have to ask us permission. We interfere when the Arab League makes overtures to them. So I would say that we've made them second class citizens.
A: Why should we unless the Congress declared war? I mean, why are we there? In South Korea, they're begging and pleading to unify their country, and we get in their way. They want to build bridges and go back and forth. Vietnam, we left under the worst of circumstances. The country is unified. They have become Westernized. We trade with them. Their president comes here. And Korea, we stayed there and look at the mess. I mean, the problem still exists, and it's drained trillion dollars over these last 50 years. We can't afford it anymore. We're going bankrupt. All empires end because the countries go bankrupt, and the currency crashes. That's what happening. And we need to come out of this sensibly rather than waiting for a financial crisis.
A: Oh, I think some, just like the West is wanting to do that all the time. Look at the way they look at us. I mean, we're in a 130 countries. We have 700 bases. How do you think they proposed that to their people, saying "What does America want to do? Are they over here to be nice to us and teach us how to be good Democrats?"
Q: So you see a moral equivalency between the West and Islamic fascism?
A: For some radicals on each side that want to impose our will with force. Not the American people--I'm talking the people who have hijacked our foreign policy, the people who took George Bush's humble foreign policy and turned it into one of nation-building.
Q: The president himself?
A: The president himself has changed the policy. I liked the program he ran on. That's what I defend. It changed at the first meeting of the Cabinet, [when they discussed] when were we going to attack Iraq?
A: OK, you may have picked that up 20 or 30 years ago, it's not part of my platform. As a matter of fact, I'm the only one that really has an interim program. Technically, a lot of those functions aren't constitutional. But the point is I'm not against the FBI investigation in doing a proper role, but I'm against the FBI spying on people like Martin Luther King. I'm against the CIA fighting secret wars and overthrowing governments.
Q: Would you abolish them?
A: I would not abolish all their functions. But let's go with the CIA. They're involved in torture. I would abolish that, yes. But I wouldn't abolish their requirement to accumulate intelligence for national defense purposes. That's quite different.
A: You got it completely wrong. I've never voted for an earmark in my life.
Q: No, but you put them in the bill.
A: I put it in because I represent people who are asking for some of their money back.
Q: If you put it in the bill, and then you know it's going to pass Congress and so you don't refuse the money.
A: Well, no, of course not. It's like taking a tax credit. I'm against the taxes but I take all my tax credits. I want to get the money back for the people.
Q: If you were true to your philosophy, you would say no pork spending in my district.
A: No, no, that's not it. They steal our money, that's like saying that people shouldn't take Social Security money. I'm trying to save the system, make the system work
A: How many of them ever got passed? But the whole point is, we have a right [to our money back from taxes].
Q: They pass. You vote against them, but you take the money.
A: They take our money from us, and the Congress has the authority to appropriate, not the executive branch. And I'm saying that I represent my people. They have a request, it's like taking a tax credit. The whole process is corrupt so that I vote against everything. I vote against it, so I don't endorse the system.
Q: But when it passes overwhelmingly, you take the money back home.
A: I don't take it. That's the system.
Q: Well, when you stop taking earmarks or putting earmarks in the spending bills, then I think you'll be consistent.
A: I'm trying to change that system. To turn it around and say I'm supporting this system, I find it rather ironic and entertaining.
A: But I never ran on voluntary term limits. There's a big difference. I didn't sign a pledge for a voluntary term limit. Matter of fact, some of the best people that I worked with, who were the most principled, came in on voluntary term limits. Some of them broke their promises, and some didn't, and they were very good people. So some of the good people left. I didn't run on that. I support term limits. We had 16 votes on term limits, and I voted yes for them. But voluntary term limits is a lot different than compulsory term limits.
Q: But if you believe in the philosophy of term limits, why wouldn't you voluntarily [limit your own term]?
A: Philosophy is the solution. What the role of government ought to be, so if you have a turnover and the same people come in and they believe in big government, nothing good is going to come of it.
A: I don't know the exact number, but more than we need. We don't need any.
Q: It's 572,000. And you'd bring them all home?
A: As quickly as possible. They will not serve our interests to be overseas. They get us into trouble. And we can defend this country without troops in Germany & troops in Japan. How do they help our national defense? Doesn't make any sense to me. Troops in Korea since I've been in high school! It doesn't make any sense
A: A lot.
Q: Over a trillion dollars.
A: That's good. We could save hundreds of billions of dollars if we had a sensible foreign policy. If you're going to be the policeman of the world, you need that. You need the income tax to police the world and run the welfare state. I want a constitutional-size government.
Q: Would you replace the income tax with anything else?
A: Not if I could help it. You know, there are some proposals where probably almost anything would be better than income tax. But there's a lot of shortcomings with the, with the sales tax. But it would probably be slightly better than the income tax--it would be an improvement. But the goal is to cut the spending, get back to a sensible-size government.
A: To operate our total foreign policy, when you add up everything, it's nearly a trillion dollars a year. So I would think if you brought our troops home, you could save hundreds of billions of dollars. You can start saving immediately by changing the foreign policy and not be the policeman over the world. We should have the foreign policy that George Bush ran on. You know, no nation building, no policing of the world, a humble foreign policy. We don't need to be starting wars. That's my argument.
A: Well, read what the ringleader says. Read what Osama bin Laden said. We had a base in Saudi Arabia that was an affront to their religion, that was blasphemy as far as they were concerned. We were bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've interfered in Iran since 1953. Our CIA's been involved in the overthrow of their governments. We side more with Israel and Pakistan, and they get annoyed with this. How would we react if they were on our land? We would be very annoyed, and we'd be fighting mad.
Q: Under your doctrine, if we did not have troops in the Middle East, would al Qaeda leave us alone?
A: Not, not immediately, because they'd have to believe us. But what would happen is the incentive for Osama bin Laden to recruit suicide terrorists would disappear. Once we left Lebanon in the early '80s, suicide terrorism virtually stopped, just like that. But while we were there, suicide terrorism killed our Marines. We have to understand how we would react if some country did to us exactly what we do to them, and then we might have a better understanding of their motivation, why somebody would join the al-Qaeda. Since we've been over there al-Qaeda has more members now than they did before 9/11. They probably had a couple hundred before 9/11.
A: No, it's both. It's sort of like if you step in a snake pit and you get bit, you know, who caused the trouble? Because you stepped in the snake pit or because snakes bite you?
A: When you have war--whether it's a war against drugs war against terrorism, war overseas--the mentality of the people changes and they're more willing to sacrifice their liberties in order to be safe and secure. So, yes, right after 9/11 my reaction was, "it's going to be a lot tougher selling liberty." But I'm pleasantly surprised that I'm still in the business of selling liberty and the Constitution and there's still a lot of enthusiasm for it. I might have been too pessimistic immediately after 9/11 because, in a way, it has caused this reaction and this uprising in this country to say, "Enough is enough. We don't need more Patriot Acts, we don't need more surveillance of our people. We don't need national ID cards. We don't need the suspension of habeas corpus. What we need is more freedom."
A: And during that campaign I got into trouble with Libertarians because I said there may well be a time when immigration is like an invasion and we have to treat it differently. My approach to immigration is somewhat different than the others. Mine is you deal with it economically We're in worse shape now because we subsidize immigration. We give food stamps, Social Security, free medical care, free education and amnesty. So you subsidize it, and you have a mess. Conditions have changed. And I think this means that we should look at immigration differently. It's an economic issue more than anything. If our economy was in good health, I don't think there'd be an immigration problem. We'd be looking for workers and we would be very generous.
A: Well, amending the Constitution is constitutional. What's the contradiction there?
Q: So in the Constitution as written, you want to amend?
A: Well, that's constitutional, to do it. Besides, it was the 14th Amendment. It wasn't in the original Constitution. And there's confusion on interpretation. In the early years, it was never interpreted that way, and it's still confusing because individuals are supposed to have birthright citizenship if they're under the jurisdiction of the government. And somebody who illegally comes in this country as a drug dealer, is he under the jurisdiction and their children deserve citizenship? I think it's awfully, awfully confusing, and, matter of fact, I have a bill to change that as well as a Constitutional amendment to clarify it.
A: I'll bet you any money I didn't use the word 'traitor.' So I think that's misleading. But a failure, yes, in many ways. The government didn't shrink. Ultimately, after he got in office, he said, "All I want to do is reduce the rate of increase in size of government." That's not my goal. My goal is to reduce our government to a constitutional size.
Q: But if he's a total failure, why are you using, using his picture in your brochure?
A: Well, because he ran on a good program, and his idea was a limited government. Get rid of the Department of Education, a strong national defense.
A: Because I represent what Republicanism used to be--that part of the Republican Party that used to be non-interventionists overseas; when the Republicans defended individual liberty and the Constitution and decreased spending. So the reason the Republican Party is shrinking, why the base is so small, is because they don't stand for these ideals any more. So I stand for the ideals of the Republican Party.
A: I have no intention to do that.
Q: Absolute promise?
A: I have no intention of doing that.
Q: Well, but "no intention" is a wiggle word.
A: Well, I deserve one wiggle now and then.
Q: So no Shermanesque statement like "I will not run as an independent."
A: I have no intention, no plans of doing it, and that's about 99.9%. I don't like those absolutists terms in politics.
Q: But the door's open a little bit.
A: Not very much. We have February 5th coming up. We have a campaign to run. How many other candidates have you asked, "Are you going to run as a third party candidate if you don't win?" Have you asked John McCain that?
Q: Well, if someone has a history of running as a third party candidate, sure. You ran in '88 as a Libertarian. It's a logical question.
A: But there are independents. So ask them, too.
A: I think we need to offer the kids the chance to get out. But right now, if we don't save the money, we can't take care of the other. I never voted to spend one penny of Social Security money. So I'm the one that has saved it. I say take that money--and I say this constantly--don't turn anybody out on the streets--people we have conditioned--but I would say take care of the people that are dependent on us. The only way you can do that is cut spending. If we don't, they're all going to be out in the street. Because right now Social Security beneficiaries are getting 2% raises, but their cost of living is going up 10%. A dollar crisis is going to wipe them all out.
A: Well, I know. That's why I don't want it.
Q: So you have nothing?
A: I want to cut spending. I want to use the Constitution as our guide, and you wouldn't need the income tax.
A: That's a good idea. I like that idea.
Q: What would happen to all those lost revenues? How would we fund our government?
A: We have to cut spending. You can't get rid of the income tax if you don't get rid of some spending. But, you know, if you got rid of the income tax today you'd have about as much revenue as we had 10 years ago, and the size of government wasn't all that bad 10 years ago. There're sources of revenues other than the income tax. You have tariff, excise taxes, user fees, highway fees. So, so there's still a lot of money. But the real problem is spending. But, you know, we lived a long time in this country without an income tax. Up until 1913 we didn't have it.
Q: But if you eliminate the income tax, do you know how much lost revenue that would be?
A: A lot.
Q: Over a trillion dollars.
A: That's good.
A: Well, they're not going to. That is like saying "Iran is about to invade Mars." They don't have an army or navy or air force. And the Israelis have 300 nuclear weapons. Nobody would touch them. But if it were in our national security interests, Congress could say, "This is very, very important; we have to declare war." Presidents don't have the authority to go to war. You go to the Congress and find out if they want a war, and do the people want the war.
A: Well, I don't know the individuals, but we know that their leadership--you read it in the papers on a daily basis--about the government of Israel encouraging Americans to go into Iran. I don't think that's top secret.
Q: That the government of Israel wants us to bomb Iran?
A: I don't think there's a doubt about that, that they've encouraged us to do that. And of course the neoconservatives have been anxious to do that for a long time.
A: Absolutely. Six hundred thousand Americans died in a senseless civil war. No, he shouldn't have gone to war. He did this just to enhance and get rid of the original intent of the republic. I mean, it was that iron fist..
Q: We'd still have slavery.
A: Oh, come on. Slavery was phased out in every other country of the world. And the way I'm advising that it should have been done is do like the British empire did. You buy the slaves and release them. How much would that cost compared to killing 600,000 Americans and where the hatred lingered for 100 years? Every other major country in the world got rid of slavery without a civil war. I mean, that doesn't sound too radical to me. That sounds like a pretty reasonable approach.
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The above quotations are from Meet the Press: Meet the Candidates 2008 series, individual interviews with Tim Russert, throughout 2007.
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