Transcripts For CSPAN Interview With Former Governor Lincoln

CSPAN Interview With Former Governor Lincoln Chafee D-RI June 22, 2024

I am saying that if we can get peace over there and north africa and around the world, ukraine included, that is money that comes back to our health care, our social programs, our environment, this is where we should be spending money, how education, our infrastructure, not in this generational war. What is your path to the nomination . Gov. Chafee sanders is showing that this is not a done deal. They tell me i am glad youre running. That means they want choices. That is what elections should be about. That is another reason for my run, voters should have choices, not one or two people. When Lincoln Chafee makes a decision, policy, senate vote, executive order governor, or decision to run for office, walk us to the process. Who do you seek advice from, where do you go to for counsel and what you ask yourself internally . Gov. Chafee it has to do with the confidence you have from Life Experiences. I am lucky to have a good education. I went to work on a horse racetrack where nobody knew who i was. They hired me based on the quality of my work and that shoes they put on the horses. That was a terrific confidence building experience. Public hearings, and hearing distant testimony, different testimony, teacher strike, working with teachers union, all Life Experiences they give you confidence. And where i served as a republican under bush and cheney, despite a very radical agenda. Tax cuts that supported the wealthy, rollbacks on environmental spending. Here i was a republican having to stand up and show that confidence are making these votes, and i think history will show that i had the courage to listen to all sides and then make the right judgment call. Did president bush call you personally to ask you for your support . Gov. Chafee there was more pressure on the tax cuts. That was the first really radical agenda item, even before september 11, 1. 6 trillion tax cut that favored the wealthy. We had just gotten back to surpluses, a lot of political pain expended by his father, who went back on read my lips, no new taxes, his pledge at the republican convention. It cost him his reelection in 1992 because he went back on that pledge. And bill clinton came in with a big deficit reduction package that included taxes, and he lost the house and senate, the Democratic House and senate he had in 1994. Great political pain. He had a surplus. Bill clinton lost the house and senate. Bush lost the presidency reelection. We finally got to surpluses, and in come bush and cheney saying that we can avoid this 1. 6 trillion hacks tax hike. By the time the iraq war came, they knew that this is somebody who will be independent thinking. In your book, you talk about the partisan gridlock and lame blame both the democrats and the republicans. How do you break that . Gov. Chafee it seems to be ongoing and has a lot to do with the primaries, right and left, closeness of the senate and house, so every two years there is a battle for control, especially the senate. There is so much political posturing that goes on in preparing nonissues for political purposes, such as burning of the flag. I was there and we had a big debate over flagburning. Nobody is burning the flag in 2006. A constitutional amendment vote on that. These are political issues put forward that dont have any resonance for the people. The way to fix it i would say is experience. Ive been a mayor, governor, senator, of all the candidates running, im the only one who has those three experiences, mayor, local level, governor state level, senator, federal level, and being able to deal with both parties to get things done, and ive been able to do that at all three levels. You wrote in George Herbert walker bush in the election of 2004. Why . Gov. Chafee governor bush from texas ran as a uniter, not a divider. He said we are going to be humble in our Foreign Policy. The exact opposite was true when he came in. He was a divider, not a uniter. He went on an antienvironmental agenda. He was very arrogant with the world, just what he promised not to do, getting out of international treaties. So when somebody campaigns one way and governors governs the opposite, they dont deserve my vote. I felt betrayed. You are one of the few families with a father to serve in the senate, you took over when he passed away at 77. Was the Senate Different for your dad . Was the Republican Party different in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s compared to where it is today . Gov. Chafee he said it changed a lot in 1994. Thats when the republicans started to change, social issues more important, how are Baker Nancy Baker with so many moderate liberal republicans prochoice, alan simpson from wyoming, across the country, ted stevens in alaska, so across the country and into these red states, proenvironment prochoice, and there was room for that. He saw that change in 1994 when militant republicans came in and made life hard for him and his public works committee. Either you tow the agenda 100 of the time or we will take away your chairmanship, and thats not the way it should be. I realize this is a hypothetical, but if your dad was starting in Politics Today would he be more comfortable in the Democratic Party or Republican Party . Gov. Chafee i think he would be cheering me on as a democrat. There is no room for independent thinking with republicans. I had a republican primary in 2006, trying to hold onto the most of a crack state in the country, and i still get a primary because im not 100 with the agenda. What was your dad like . Gov. Chafee he went right from college to guadalcanal is a marine. To open our, fears fighting, signed up again in korea, so he had that war record, which gave him his confidence to survive those experiences later in life. He had six children, a big family, superintendent of our sunday school, very strong believer in our episcopal religion, and a great father the best you could ever imagine. Your mom is still alive . What age . Gov. Chafee yes, she is. 87. Is religion important to you . Gov. Chafee yes, i do take some i am not as a good attendee at church as i was as a child, but we had to learn all the books, stories from the old testament, parables from the new testament, thanksgiving, lords prayer, so i have a good education. I get a lot of my education outdoors with nature now. The president attending the National Prayer breakfast, would you attend that breakfast . I ask you that because when you were sworn in as governor of rhode island, you bypassed a religious service that morning because you said you wanted to have a separation between church and state. Gov. Chafee we will cross that bridge when we come to it, but dont forget i come from rhode island, where for the first time anywhere in the world liberty for religion was granted in our charger. Charter of 1663. So we just celebrated the 350th anniversary of that charter which said full liberty in religious concern it, first time anywhere in the world. Roger williams got the charter. I have a strong feeling of public work separated from our religious beliefs, and as long as they might be, they should be in their proper place. I ask you this because you are part of the debate. Is it a Christmas Tree or holiday tree . Gov. Chafee let me clear this up. My first year, the employees in the Governors Office who had been there through previous administrations said what you want to do in the state house with a Holiday Celebration . I gave them six words, do what they did last year. I did not want to spend any more or less. I need to focus on getting people back to work on the issues we had in rhode island, pension reform, the economy wasnt good, these were my priorities. I said do what they did last year, which was call it a holiday tree. First thing you know, there is a huge controversy. I think that is because people were out of work and were stressed out in their lives understandably, and this was a chance to vent on an issue that was not my fault. What did you learn from that experience . Gov. Chafee that flash fires can occur so unexpectedly, the most unexpected. I had a pension reform bill we were working on and the implementation of that, getting people back to work, so many important issues, i just never thought this one would explode on me. In a family of six, where are you in the lineup . Gov. Chafee i am number two. One of your classmates was jeb bush . Gov. Chafee thats right. We have not seen each other since high school much. I saw him at a parade in new hampshire, and i consider we are still friends. What did you learn during those times . Gov. Chafee those were the 60s. Things change so fast. We had coats and ties for classes, required Assembly Five days a week, chapel on wednesdays, required chapel on sundays, all required, coats and ties, by the time i left three years later, no required chapel, no required assembly bellbottoms and tshirts. It was interesting to be part of those fastchanging, questioning of authority times. In 1964, you travel to San Francisco with your father at the republican convention, nominating a very conservative Barry Goldwater. What do your member about the party, and what you saw . Gov. Chafee i was 11 years old in 1964. The cow palace is still there. Barry goldwater. What i remember is that after the nomination was over and very Barry Goldwater had secured the nomination, the vanquished Nelson Rockefeller got up to made a talk, which is usually a unifying moment, the loser gets up and everybody cheers. It was so different. People started billing. Booing. They shook the rafters of the cow palace. They had no room for a different point of view. It was almost a precursor to what we are seeing today with the tea party, no room for independent thinking. I saw it back in 1964. It was about 15 minutes, then it quieted down and he got up to the microphone to talk again and it would start again. As soon as he opened his mouth something to see it as an 11yearold. Why the university . Gov. Chafee it was one of the best expanses of my life, good teachers, majored in classics, terrific teachers, very lucky. Why classics . Gov. Chafee i always liked the translating. You either did it or didnt. It was either black or white the translation of latin to english. So i took it at brown and immediately liked the professors. That was the big reason i stayed with it. It was the 1960s. You admitted you have used marijuana and cocaine. How often and what did you learn . Gov. Chafee back then, so much of that was going on. I was on the wrestling team at andover and brown for four years, so you cant be a good athletic competitor if you are abusing substances. I did some experimenting, but not a big part of my life. When did you become interested in horses . Gov. Chafee it started maybe in first grade, learning how to ride, and we got a horse, and any time you can get along with a 1000 pound animal, it gives you a great deal of confidence. Horses are smart animals. It is still a part of my life. How do you shoe a horse . Gov. Chafee first of all, you have to pull off the shoe. There is a tool to pull off the horseshoe. Then you have to prepare the inside of the hoof. The outer wall grows, so you cut around the outer wall. In order to get flat, you have a file to smooth out the hoof. You shape the shoe. Every shoe is shaped differently. Youre banging around on the anvil until it fits that particular hope, some are wider, some have flat spots on it, so you banged that shoe until it fits. You bang the nails in, there are three on each side, six nails in all. You clamp them over and swing around and put the golf on your knee, on your apron, and then you clench the nails down so the shoe will come off. Are there any nerves down there . Gov. Chafee if you go too deep, you will hit blood. It does not happen too often. You have to be careful. Once you know, you wont go any further. Sometimes the horse will let you know. Some horses jump around a little bit. If you dont get along with them, you will not get the shoes on. I would let them move around a little bit. I was not strict about how they stood. It can be a good experience. As a result, i had good luck on the racetrack. It was a good business. How often do you have to do that . Gov. Chafee every three weeks on a racetrack. They wear out the shoes. The trainers want them fresh. When you watch a major derby like the Kentucky Derby or pimlico or belmont, can you tell which horse is best prepared . Gov. Chafee ive been on the racetrack a long time. Ive been there for seven years. Thousands of races. I have a pretty good record taking, just watching, but being there, there is no substitute for being on the track and watching these horses every day. You began your career as a republican, why . Gov. Chafee in rhode island, we were the loyal opposition to the very democratic machine that was everywhere in rhode island. I enjoyed being that alternative choice for rhode island. My dad did it. It was an uphill climb every step of the way, but i got elected as a councilman, then as mayor, reelected three times then became an independent governor. When you lost your senate bid for reelection, what did you think . Gov. Chafee i knew the party was changing. Others left the party because there was no room for prochoice, proretirement environment, antiwar, but i had to deliver for rhode island. We had a republican president , republican majority in the house and senate, so i had to deliver. I stayed a republican and gained as many votes as i could and kept my standards, and my record will support that on the issues and convictions i have, but after i lost, having a priory primary, that gave me the opportunity think of the party was ever going to come back. The social issues, conservative, not getting us back into deficit, which the Republican Party was doing, and i did not think the party was going to come back, so i became an independent. I took a lot of abuse, but my colleagues in the senate were good to me. The committee chairs, believe it or not, were good to me. They understood that a man has his convictions and he is going to stand up for them. He is not a flip flopper. So i kept good relations with my colleagues. I am very proud of that. When you talk about healing the partisanship, i certainly have the experience of voting my conscience, but still keeping good relations with my party. Lindsey graham, senator graham we differ on many issues, but we are good friends. I saw him at a parade in new hampshire. It is great to see him. I still consider him a friend. What is americas role in the world and what should our Foreign Policy be . Gov. Chafee what worked for us during the cold war, strong alliances, listening to our friends, making better friends around the world. Hugo chavez wanted good relations with the united states. Why are we picking fights with venezuela . I think we could be in much better shape with russia. The whole idea of the restart, that was insulting to the russians. Thats what we have to get back to, what worked in the cold war, containment, strong alliances, admiration for america, and trust in what we say. A good ability to listen to other points of view. I just saw where there were a bunch of former gis having a july fourth get together with former vietcong soldiers. Our ambassador, who had been a pow, was quoted as saying that we could have avoided the vietnam tragedy if we had just listened better to the political realities in vietnam. That is what i believe in, listening to them, the political realities that are different from us, and understanding them and trying to avoid war. We can do it. We did it with china and russia. We are not shooting and killing each other and bombing each other. That is the way it should be. You brought up vietnam, do you think that mindset continues to impact or shape american foreignpolicy . Gov. Chafee how did we get into vietnam . An arrogant approach to not understanding what was happening with the people in the villages and their susceptibility to Something Different other than the regime that was in there. We just miscalculated, obviously, after all that blood shed and lost of American Life we had to get out. So, yes, we have to be very careful about being arrogant. We are a strong country economically, politically, we have so much to our advantage, and all the more when you are this strong, you should listen to others around the world. What is the biggest threat we face . Isis . Terrorism . Where are the weak spots . Gov. Chafee i think Nuclear Proliferation and any chance of some Nuclear Incident taking place is my biggest fear, and that is another reason why i am so concerned about what is happening in the middle east because pakistan does have Nuclear Weapons and a sophisticated military. This is a country of 160 million people, nuclear armed, sophisticated military, and if we dont make good decisions, im very concerned. We should not be doing these drone strikes. We see what happened in yemen that turned the population against the american supported government because of the civilian casualties from these drone strikes. In pakistan, another area where we are doing drone strikes, it turns the people against us. We should be careful. We forget about hiroshima and nagasaki too quickly. Everything should be done to make sure that never happens again. Do you think Hillary Clinton accomplished anything in the senate . Gov. Chafee thats a big question. Accomplishments are a legitimate question for secretary clinton. Not in health care. Senate does not have a good record of accomplishments. As secretary of state, i think things got worse. The difference is the approach to the world. To see that same muscular america, right or wrong, we will tell you how to do things to the rest of the world, i dont think that is in our best interest. I see that and i think we need to be smart in this age of Nuclear Weapons, how we deal with other countries. We want everyone on our side admiring us, respecting us listening to us as we listen to them. Whats the biggest difference then . Gov. Chafee its that approach to the world. I call it the neocon approach. These are very smart people. If they have

© 2025 Vimarsana