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Clark, Rove square off on the issues
Wesley Clark and Karl Rove debated a variety of issues, from the crisis on Wall Street and the war in Iraq to health care reform and claims of U.S.-sponsored torture. Photo: Steve Morse
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“As we help American financial institutions, we also must help American families in their homes.”
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“Ninety-seven percent of the people paying mortgages on time are under no obligation to give [the other 3 percent] a home they couldn’t afford in the first place.”
The crisis on Wall Street, the war in Iraq, health care reform and claims of government-sponsored torture—no topic was off the table Friday night as two stalwarts of America’s major political parties squared off in a debate launching the 2008-09 Distinguished Speakers Series.
Retired U.S. Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark, who served as the supreme allied commander for NATO from 1997 to 2000 and sought the Democratic party’s presidential nomination in 2004, and Karl Rove, Republican strategist and former senior advisor to President George W. Bush, engaged in a spirited debate before an audience of 3,500 in Alumni Arena on the same night presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain met for their first debate in Oxford, Miss.
In his opening remarks, Clark, who stepped in earlier this month in place of former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, noted that America is “a great nation with great values, great skills, great heritage and wonderful resources.”
“And we’re a nation in trouble, and we need new ideas and we need new leadership in America,” he said.
Guaranteeing access to health care and education for all Americans, restoring U.S. confidence overseas, ensuring American military forces are only used as a last resort and tackling worldwide challenges such as global warming, conflict and disease are some of the main challenges currently facing the United States, he added.
Rove, also laying out an agenda for America’s future, focused on reforming health care, education and Medicare by reducing government controls; restoring the economy by implementing a “simple, flat and low” tax system; controlling America’s dependence on foreign oil by focusing on technology; and encouraging stable democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan by “fighting and winning the global war on terror.”
“Our goal must be to put in place the institutions and to gather the strength of the West to commit to the challenges that will shape the 21st century,” he said, “including transnational terrorism, WMDs (weapons of mass destruction) and rouge states like Iran and the threat of an insurgent Russia.”
On the subject of the current economic crisis, Rove repeatedly said that legislation designed to reign in mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during the Bush Administration was blocked twice by Democrats, but Clark replied that the point was not enough to erase the record of a political party that’s long been opposed to government regulation.
“As we help American financial institutions, we also must help American families in their homes,” Clark added in support of freezing government-acquired adjustable rate mortgages. But, Rove said, “97 percent of the people paying mortgages on time are under no obligation to give [the other 3 percent] a home they couldn’t afford in the first place.”
On health care, both men agreed that preventive care and electronic medical records should play a greater role in the future of the country’s health care system, but sharply diverged in their vision of how to deliver such services to the average American.
“We need a plan to extend health care to those 47 million Americans who cannot afford insurance,” Clark said. “We need to move step by step, bringing Medicare down in age, bringing the children’s health insurance program up in age…and requiring insurance companies to accept people without disqualifying them for pre-existing conditions.”
In contrast, Rove outlined an independent system based on tax credits for health care costs, competition for health insurance across state lines and stricter restraints on medical malpractice suits. He also called for legislation enabling small businesses to pool their resources in order to provide stronger group benefits to their employees.
The most contentious moment came during a disagreement over whether the American military’s use of harsh interrogation tactics against enemy insurgents—tactics used against U.S. soldiers during the Korean conflict, according to Clark—constitute acts of torture. Rove referred to the reports of prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay that were cited by Clark as “gossip” and “slander” against the U.S. military.
“There is a reason American has not been hit for seven years,” Rove said. “It’s because we’ve squeezed every bit of intelligence that we can from our enemies and we’ve used every intelligent technique at hand in order to find intelligence before they hit us again. I will make no apologies whatsoever for that at all.”
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