Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL)
Press Conference
Manchester, NH
December 10, 2006
[DEMOCRACY IN ACTION TRANSCRIPT]

OBAMA:  My name's Barack Obama and it must be a slow news day.

I'm so glad to be here in Manchester, New Hampshire...  I had a wonderful book signing this morning in Portsmouth.  Everybody has been extraordinarily gracious.  We have had a terrific time so far, and I'm looking forward to helping the New Hampshire Democrats celebrate an unbelievable victory on November 7th.  It's I think a signal that the American people are interested in a new kind of politics and I think what New Hampshire accomplished is indicative of a seriousness of purpose and an interest in engagement on the part of voters that we haven't seen in some time.  And I think that bodes well for the country as a whole.  We've got some serious challenges and when voters pay attention usually they elect people who match that seriousness and are up to the challenge.  So with that, let me stop and open up [to] any questions people may have.

QUESTION:  ...with this politics of hope.  You've got 12,000 online petitions from the RunBarackRun groups today, saying run and I think the question on everyone's mind as they come to listen is are you going to translate what seems to be happening into an actual campaign?

OBAMA:  Well I haven't made that determination, Andy.  I'm still running things through the traps.  Obviously this is one of the more important decisions that I've confronted in my life.  Probably The only thing that matches up with it is the wisdom of begging Michelle to marry me.  And so I want to take my time on it, make sure not only that the politics makes sense but that I feel that I have something unique to offer that would help move the country forward.

Yes sir?

QUESTION:  What do you say to voters who look at you two years out of the State Senate in Illinois and say what makes you think you have any right to even think about running for this office?

OBAMA:  Well I haven't met any voters who have said what makes me think I have the right to run, but look here's what I will say.  I think that it is entirely legitimate for people to look at the body of my experience and the other candidates' experience and ask tough questions and put us through the paces.  That's how our democracy's supposed to work.  The one thing that I'm confident about, and I think New Hampshire is part of this process, is that if I decide to run, at the end of the process people will know me pretty well and they'll have a pretty good sense of whether they think I'm qualified to serve or not.

And so since I haven't made a decision yet, I think it's premature for me to give you a point by point response to that, but I don't mind people asking tough questions.  I think that they should of every candidate, and I don't think that we should-- And one of the values of retail politics like New Hampshire is is that by the end of the process they know where you stand and they have a sense of who you are.

Yes sir.  Go ahead.

QUESTION:  Senator as you contemplate this and you talk to your family and you see the response that you've got in Portsmouth and the crowd here today, what could possibly dissuade you from running?

OBAMA:  Well I think you identified one thing that's important.  I've got an 8-year old daughter and a 5-year old daughter and I love 'em to death and I want to make sure that if I--  At each juncture where I've made political decisions I've talked to my wife and made sure that our family would not be adversely affected by it.  So that's something that I'm spending a lot of time thinking about.

But the second thing is making absolutely certain that, let me put it this way, I think this is one of those offices where you can't run just on the basis of ambition.  I think you have to feel deep in your gut that you have a vision for the country that is sufficiently important that you need to be out there and that there is an opportunity as a consequence of your candidacy for people to rally around a new approach to the problems that we face.  And so I'm spending a lot of time thinking substantively about what are the issues that are out there that I care deeply about?  Do I have a particular approach that not only resonates with people but could actually produce results in helping on issues like health care and energy and education and meeting the challenges of globalization and trying to create a more effective national security strategy than we have right now?  And you know I guess what I'm saying is I don't want to be driven into this decision simply because the opportunity is there, but rather because I think I will serve the country well by running.

QUESTION:  Do you think that what you're offering is in some way not different from the other Democratic hopefuls?

OBAMA:  Well I think that there is a certain tone that I've taken in my career that seems to be resonating right now.  I will say this, that I am suspicious of hype.  The fact that I've become, that my 15 minutes of fame has extended a little longer than 15 minutes I think is somewhat surprising to me and completely baffling to my wife, and I think what's going on is that people are very hungry for something new.  I think they are interested in being called to be part of something larger than the kind of small, petty, slash and burn politics that we've been seeing over the last several years.  And to some degree I think I'm a stand in for that desire on the part of the country.

Whether it's me or somebody else, what's most important, and I think over the long term most newsworthy, is that desire on the part of voters, because you know typically in politics, whether in America or anyplace else, I think that politicians are caught up in waves.  They're shaped by what the people are feeling and I think right now the people are feeling they want common sense, non ideological, practical approaches to the problems that they face.  And so they're wondering, could I be somebody who would help be partners with them in that, but I think that they're looking at a whole host of other leaders who are on both the Republican and Democratic side, who can fulfill that desire on their part.

QUESTION:  Senator.

OBAMA:  Yeah....

QUESTION:  Two questions.  One.  Can you give us a better sense of what it is about you that makes your politics different than the politics of other Democrats who may be running or other Republicans who may be running?  And secondly, can you give us any insight at this point into whether your wife is enthusiastic about this or resistant to it?

OBAMA:  Well with respect to my wife, I'll keep those conversations private, but what I'll say is that she is the smartest, toughest, funniest, best friend that I could ever hope for, and she's always had my back, and so whatever decisions we make, we'll make together.

In terms of what's unique about me, I think it's hard for me to step outside myself and evaluate myself in that way.  What I can tell you is that since I announced that I was running for the United States Senate and before that I like to think in my State Senate career and as a community organizer and civil rights lawyer, I think what's worked for me has been the capacity to stay true to a set of progressive values, but to be eclectic in terms of the tools to achieve those progressive values.  To not be orthodox.  To be willing to get good ideas from all quarters.  And I think part of that is to be able to disagree with colleagues of mine who are of a different political persuasion without being disagreeable.  That seems simple but maybe because we haven't seen that a lot over the last decade or so, maybe it looks new.

QUESTION:  ...the politics of pettiness.  Does that reach across party lines?

OBAMA:  Yes.

QUESTION CONT'D:  Could you give me an example of Democratic pettiness?

OBAMA:  Well you know look--  I was born at night, but not last night.   Right, yeah.  I'll take a pass on that one.  But what I will say is I think we have had a politics in which sometimes who's up and who's down is more important than getting things done, in which, in which the attack ads and the personal attacks have overwhelmed our capacity to find common ground on issues.  And I think there are times where Democrats have been guilty of it, of that kind of strategic or tactical behavior as Republicans.  We haven't always been as good at it as the Republicans, but there are times where we've practiced that kind of politics.

The argument I've made, I made this actually in my book that just came out, is that that kind of politics breeds cynicism, and I think cynicism is the biggest enemy of a progressive politics.  If you don't believe in government then it's not bad to cultivate cynicism among the population.  They get sick of it; they say a plague on both your houses, and that's been I think to the advantage of the right, the political right, over the last decade.  I think that if you think that government has a role to play, not the sole role, not even always the most important role, but a role to play in giving opportunity and helping people to achieve their potential, then we have an incentive in a hopeful politics, one that ordinary folks want to participate in and that means we've got to use a different tone and a different language, tap into what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature.

QUESTION:  Senator, this morning you said that you didn't think that the 2006 successes by the Democrats was simply a vindication of the Democratic agenda.  If you're basing your victory on the failure of Republicans and the war in Iraq, I mean how do you or how does any Democratic candidate go into '08 winning, you know convincing the American people to vote for them.  Don't you have to offer them something other than we're not Republicans?

OBAMA:  Absolutely.  Well I think you've got two years to prove a) that we can govern and b) to present a set of bold ideas about the challenges that ordinary folks are facing.

What that means I think in Congress is there are some issues that are ripe for action, that have been vetted, that have been debated, and it's time for us to go ahead and bring them up.  A hike in the minimum wage, passage of stem cell research and overturning a potential veto from the president, doing something about rising student loan rates that are putting a stress on families.  So there are some things I think we can do right now even with the relatively slender majority that we have in the Senate.

And then what I think we have to do is to create a framework and a longer term agenda on the big challenges we face, and I'll just name a few.  Health care.  I think that there is no reason why in a country that is spending as much on health care as we are that we can't provide basic coverage to everybody, and I don't think we should shy away from that.  I think we should present an agenda for universal health care.

I think we should have an aggressive, ambitious strategy for energy independence.  We have been nibbling around the edges and now is the time for us to put something forward that is serious.

Fiscal responsibility.  It's a difficult issue, but one that we're going to have to approach because--  you know we're in New Hampshire; I have to say that I don't always agree with him, but Judd Gregg, a New Hampshire colleague, delivered a speech two days ago on the floor of the Senate that I think was absolutely accurate.  We have not been responsible in how we're managing our money, the people's money, and we are running up the credit card for our kids and our grandkids and that has to stop, and we're going to have to--and that's going to require a series of tough choices.

And then on national security I think Democrats are going to have to indicate a tough and smart approach to foreign policy.  What we've seen is a lot of tough talk and poor decision-making on the part of the White House.  But people do want tough.  They are concerned about how we can keep them safe, and we've got to be able to project a foreign policy that matches the might of our military with the strength or our diplomacy and the strengthening of our alliances, and that is going to require I think some hard intellectual work on our part.

QUESTION:  ...you've said very little about the Iraq war.

OBAMA:  Actually I've been talking about it quite a bit.

QUESTION CONTD:  Where do you stand on the Iraq war?  Where do you stand on all these proposals out there at the moment?  Are you for a speedy withdrawal or a phased withdrawal?

OBAMA:  Well I gave an extensive speech in Chicago three weeks ago which is on our website barackobama.com, and what I said at the time was that we need to initiate a phased redeployment in four to six months.  Originally I would have liked to have seen it begin at the end of this year.  That is probably not possible given where we're at at the moment, but it is my view that unless we initiate that kind of redeployment we will not change the dynamic in Iraq.  The Iraqi government, the Shi'i and the Sunni and the Kurds, have to understand there's no military solution to the problems that we face.  It's going to require political accomodation.  And as long as they think that we are there to baby sit this low grade civil war, I don't get a sense that there's going to be a willingness for them to make the tough choices that are required.

Now I think we have to do it responsibly.  I think we have an obligation to continue with training and logistics and counterinsurgency work, but I think begin we must.

I also was pleased to see that the Iraq Study Group called for a regional conference and that Iran and Syria should participate in that.  That doesn't mean that we are any less tough on their participation in terrorism, it doesn't mean that we change our view of the unacceptability of a nuclear Iraq--Iran rather, but it does suggest that they are stakeholders in a stabilize Iraq and right now they have the luxury of sitting back and watching us flounder and contributing to the difficulties we have there.  They won't feel as comfortable doing that if they see that there's the possibility of a million Iraqis pouring over their borders.  And so having them at least at the table in the same way that we spoke to the Soviet Union when they had nuclear weapons pointed at every major American city I think is the right approach.

So overall I think the Iraq Study Group did a good job of describing the reality of Iraq, and that's great progress.  There's been a lot of partisan bickering about just the basic facts of Iraq.  And now we have a baseline.  This is what's going on.  The situation is grave.  Our position has deteriorated.  That allows us then to arrive at bipartisan consensus around some options that won't lead to a Jeffersonian democracy but at least can stabilize the situation and prevent it from becoming what Afghanistan was under the Taliban.

QUESTION:  Senator, race is still very much an issue in America today.  We saw during the Harold Ford campaign in Tennessee that race came to the forefront.  Do you think that America is ready to elect its first black President, and if you do think so can you please explain your reasoning?

OBAMA:  You know I noticed there was an article about this in the New York Times "Week in Review" section.  Look, race is still a powerful force in this country.  Do I--I think any African-American candidate or Latino candidate or Asian candidate or a woman candidate confronts a higher threshold in establishing themselves with voters.  I think that there are a set of assumptions and stereotypes that come with being African-American, for example that a non African-American, a white male, doesn't have to deal with.

But despite lingering prejudice and stereotypes, what I've found and this was my experience in Illinois when I ran for the U.S. Senate, people said boy he's a wonderful legislator, well qualified, but let's face it his name's Barack Obama; that's not going to sell down state.  And what I found is that if people get to know you, if they have an opportunity to hear you and if you have an opportunity to listen to them and you can talk about common values and common ideals, that people will judge you on the merits.  And so are there some voters who would not vote for an African-American candidate because of race?  I'm sure there are.  Although those are the same voters who probably wouldn't vote for me because of my politics.

I don't think by the way that Harold Ford lost because of his race.  I thought that the Harold Ford election showed enormous progress.  I mean something that hasn't been noted is the fact that Harold Ford did better among white voters than the polls would have indicated, and historically it's been the reverse.  There's always been this what was called the Wilder effect or the Tom Bradley effect, and this time out he actually surpassed what the polls would have indicated.  That I think points to the progress that we've made.  That isn't to say that we don't have progress that we still need to make.

Lynn?

QUESTION:  ...quick two part.  What do you make of the recent fascination that people have as they're getting to know about your middle name being Hussein?  And a quick book keeping question.  Mayor Daley is announcing tomorrow.  Do you support him?

OBAMA:  You know I mean it'd be one thing if my name was John Hussein Smith.  Then you know this might be a real problem.  When you're already starting with Barack Obama you know--let me put it this way.  If my name's going to be an issue, then I don't think my middle name is relevant.  For those voters who are going to judge me on the basis of my name, the fact that I've got one more strike against me in the name category I think's not going to be of concern.  Let me finish, Lynn.  The American people are not concerned about middle names.  What the American people are concerned about is who can deliver a vision that moves us forward and allows them and their children to fulfill their aspirations.  And if you can deliver that message and if you can show them that you're going to be fighting on their behalf, then I think they will support you.  So that is not something that I'm giving a lot of thought to.

QUESTION:  [off mike].

OBAMA:  You know I was scheduled to meet with him yesterday.  We were in 'til 1:30 the night before and so we had to reschedule the meeting.  I'll be meeting with him next week.  Let me have a discussion with him before I say anything publicly about it, but that meeting is in the works.  I won't--I'm not trying to make news here, I'm just going through the process of meeting with him.  It was originally scheduled for yesterday, and we'll be having that meeting and I'm sure I'll have something to say about it in the future.

All right?  Thank you guys.  Appreciate it.
 

Who's got my tea?

# # #