Roundtable: A Two-Clinton Campaign, Obama in 2008?

FARAI CHIDEYA, host:

This is NEWS & NOTES. I'm Farai Chideya.

On today's Roundtable, will Hillary and Bill team up for 2008? And what would happen if Barack Obama joined the race for president? Plus, are soldiers who carry debt too risky to carry guns overseas?

Joining us today from our New York Bureau is Robert George, editorial writer for the New York Post. At WGBH in Boston are Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, professor of globalization and education at New York University, plus Callie Crossley, social cultural commentator on the television show Beat The Press in Boston.

Thank you all for joining us. Let me start out with all the presidential talk. I mean it is about the time - it's right before the 2006 midterm elections. And this is when people start wildly speculating as to what's going to happen on the presidential scene two years later.

So you've got Barack Obama on the cover of Time magazine listed as the potential future president in an article by Joe Kline. He was on the Meet the Press yesterday. He acknowledged he was considering a run. That sort of goes against what he had said previously.

Meanwhile, Hillary Rodham Clinton, also a lot of talk about her running and the question is could Bill Clinton be her vice-presidential candidate. Let's talk a listen to something on CNN.

(Soundbite of CNN broadcast)

President BILL CLINTON: There's only one thing I know with absolute conviction: If she got elected, she'd be fabulous. I don't know if she's going to run. I don't know if I want her to run. I don't know if she'd win if she ran. She would be a magnificent president.

CHIDEYA: Robert, so there's a question of whether or not a Clinton-Clinton ticket would even be Constitutional because of the limits, term limits on presidency. But, you know, what do you think of that and of Barack Obama?

Mr. ROBERT GEORGE (Editorial Writer, New York Post): Oh, my goodness. Oh my -not only can we have another Clinton in the White House, we could have another two Clintons in the White House on the same ticket.

All of this speculations is all wonderful and fanciful. But I will say two serious points here. After having President Bush I, Bill Clinton, President Bush II, I really just, in the context of being a small-d Democrat, don't really want another Clinton in the White House under any circumstances. Because this isn't supposed to be a royalty where the two big royal families take turns each time.

Beyond that I don't think that - Bill Clinton is not going to be the - would not run as her vice-president. Whether it's constitutional or not, it's - it would just be…

CHIDEYA: He doesn't want to leave Harlem now?

Mr. GEORGE: He doesn't want to - you know, he doesn't want to move all the way downtown to Washington D.C. now that he's uptown. So I don't think that's going to happen.

I think the Barack Obama story is very, very interesting. He is definitely somebody who, along with Hillary Clinton, has a certain rock star sensibility within the Democratic Party. I think it's a little bit too early for him, frankly, though. But, you know, stranger things certainly have happened. I mean he is one of the best speakers on the stump that the Democrats have and he may have a certain amount of crossover appeal.

CHIDEYA: Callie, John Edwards ran, you know, obviously to get the nomination -John Kerry eventually got it. But Edwards was telegenic, photogenic, you know, camera-ready. But a lot of people said, he just hadn't been in office long enough. Is that what Barack Obama faces?

Ms. CALLIE CROSSLEY (Commentator, Beat the Press): Absolutely. And it's the first thing I thought about when I heard that Barack had said on Meet the Press that he was thinking about it. John Edwards, John Edwards, John Edwards.

And in fact he was on the Meet the Press where I think began the undoing of John Edwards in terms of folks saying he didn't have the electoral experience, he didn't have the other kind of experience.

You know, as many people have said before, the only way to get experience to be president is to be it. And so George Bush wasn't - obviously had no presidential experience before either. So I don't know that in and of itself should be a blocker. What I think is going to be an issue, as turned out of be an issue for John Edwards, is that very few people know him now. So all of the telegenic, charisma, all the great stuff that's surrounds him right now, people are looking at him in a bubble.

And once they start to look very closely, there will become the teardown. I live in Massachusetts where, right now, a fairly unknown candidate, Deval Patrick, is running for governor opposing the incumbent lieutenant governor. And that's exactly what happened. This has been noted now as the nastiest race, one of the nastiest races, in the United States. Because they didn't know him before, they went looking and there you have it. So there are some issues there if he really get serious.

CHIDEYA: Marcelo, you know, I'm not sure which one of these you want to weigh-in on. But with Barack Obama I mean there is always kind of this lure of the first future blank president. You know, with Obama it would be the first black president. With Hillary it could be the first female president. Is there a danger to being, you know, the potential first? And always having that be the thing that people focus on as opposed to, say, your record?

Professor MARCELO M. SUAREZ-OROZCO (Professor of Globalization and Education, New York University): Well, as Callie said, the danger is in the more we are post the glamour and post the romance of the first, let's say, introduction to the national media, the more likely it is that the wrinkles will begin to appear.

On the other hand, I think that the level of incompetence we've seen in government over the last eight years, by the time of the next election, suggests that a very smart, very charismatic, highly-articulate individual with rock appeal, as Robert said earlier, would make a formidable candidate. But it's too early to tell.

Mr. GEORGE: Though, you know, I would also say to - well, first of all I thought that Bill Clinton was the first black president, but we'll put that aside for the time being.

What I think is kind of interesting, though, in the context of what has happened over the last eight years. And if you also look, we have, you know, running statewide, a really large number of what could be considered like non-traditional candidates.

You just mentioned Deval Patrick up in Massachusetts. We've got Harold Ford running for the Senate in Tennessee, Michael Steele running in Maryland and so forth. Now we've got in this mix talking about Hillary Clinton as possibly the first female president, Barack Obama as the first black president.

It is almost seems as if one of the reactions to the last eight years of, you know, the last of a presidency that has been shaky led by a kind of two traditional white men, is a look at the untraditional and saying hey, maybe it is time to give a chance to put people in office who, you know, who don't look like the usual type.

CHIDEYA: Robert, I want to follow up on one thing. You know, Barack Obama is someone who has not been in national office long enough to, at least from what I can tell, create a lot of enemies or a lot of negative buzz. Hillary Clinton was someone who was absolutely reviled by the right. Is she still - are her negatives too high for her to be electable?

Mr. GEORGE: I think it's going to be very, very difficult. I'm not going to say never - I won't say never say never, because, you know, who knows exactly what's going to be happening in the other multiples that could be going on. But, yeah, I think it's still very, very difficult. Even though she had certainly on a professional level shown that she can be very bipartisan. She's been able to work with Republicans in the Senate and so forth and has a very good wide level of support within New York state even amongst Republicans.

I think, though, once she - if she actually got back on to the stage, you know, if you see - after all this fractiousness you see amongst Republicans and conservatives now, one thing that I think would certainly reunite them would be the possibility of a Clinton getting back into the White House.

CHIDEYA: Callie, what about a Barack-Clinton ticket?

Ms. CROSSLEY: Mm. Well, that's kind of interesting. There's so…

CHIDEYA: You don't sound sold.

Mr. GEORGE: Too weird, too strange.

Ms. CROSSLEY: …Well, no. No. No. No. I think - what I was - I was thinking not so much of my personal response, as the response of the nation. I think that would be a lot on the plate of folks who are just moving toward thinking about first anything.

And now all of a sudden you have two firsts on one ticket. I don't see that happening from just a general global response.

Mr. GEORGE: Too many ceilings to crack.

Ms. CROSSLEY: I just want to add. Right. I was just going to say…

CHIDEYA: Too many ceilings to crack, yeah.

Ms. CROSSLEY: One thing about the Hillary candidacy that remains a problem for her I think - if you just polled women, she doesn't just carry women as you would think a candidate of her stature bringing to the table the kinds of things that women traditionally want to support. She, you know, she's got some difficulties in that arena, and I think that's one of things she'd have to deal with.

CHIDEYA: Well, Marcelo, I want a transition to another topic. Latin Americans who work outside of their countries are sending home roughly $60 billion this year. About three-quarters of the money is being sent by the nearly 13 million Latin American immigrants living in New York, Los Angeles and Miami.

The report that was issued by the Inter-American Development Bank said that a lot of this is not going to development in home countries. It's really going to just feed people's families. What kind of lessons can we learn from the numbers of this and kind of how the money is being spent?

Prof. SUAREZ-OROZCO: Well, I think the most important lesson is really how intertwined Latin America and the United States have become. The money that immigrant workers in the U.S. send back home throughout the Caribbean, throughout Latin America is, in most instances, the largest source of foreign exchange for these economies. So if you take a country like the Dominican Republic, if you take a country like El Salvador, Guatemala - for Mexico, Mexico is a rich country. It's a very big country. Now the money sent by immigrants in the United States is the largest source of foreign exchange into the Mexican economy.

So in a way it really is the Americas as a kind of a hemisphere that are increasingly bridged by these long-term relationships between folk who need to leave Latin America because the economic condition simply are not viable to sustain certain standard of living and the behavior of the immigrants once they come to the United States. It's an amazing…

CHIDEYA: But how about? Let me just ask you something. I come from a family that's split between African members and American members. My father was African. My mom is American. And I've sent money home to the continent. Now I'm in a position to do that, but if you're living in the U.S. and you may be stretched already, you know, say a family with kids, what does it do to people here to have to feel obligated to send money home all the time?

Prof. SUAREZ-OROZCO: Well, that's why people migrate. People migrate to be able to be in a position to send money back home. Every million Latin Americans in the U.S. sends on average a billion dollars every year back home. People move to be able to put themselves in the economic position to help their relatives. And in fact it really is a first generation dynamic. It's the newly arrived who are, by the way, the least educated and the poorest of all Latinos in the U.S. It's the newly arrived immigrants that are most likely to be sending money to the D.R. and even to Cuba, to Mexico, to Ecuador, to Columbia, all over Latin America.

CHIDEYA: Robert, is there any opportunity here for the U.S. to, you know, reach out to immigrants and say okay, well, you know, for example, there are issues like kind of shady wire transfer services that charge a lot of money. Should there be more of a government interest in how this money is being transacted?

Mr. GEORGE: Well, I think there should be. And in fact there have been actually, you know, post 9/11 there have actually been - there are some problems in terms of wire transfers with the government actually looking at them, you know, from a national security standpoint.

But the immigrant issue, though, I think that this issue raises has to be looked at in the controversy over the levels of immigration both legal and illegal. Because on the one hand, you've got many of those people who feel that there should be more restrictions on immigration feeling - well, look, you know, these people are coming here and many of them feel - many anti-immigrant folks feel that they're taking American jobs. And that money isn't staying here, it's going back to the home country. So that's problem number one.

Problem number two, issue number two of course, though, is when we look at the level of immigration, we have to think if we do seriously cut down on immigrants coming in, legal and illegal, what is that going to be doing to the, you know, the economies of the region? Sixty billion dollars is a lot going down to Latin America and Central America, and if that seriously gets cut down and those economies start to suffer, you're going to see reverberations throughout the region. So I mean I think that the issue is as multiple layers.

CHIDEYA: Callie, one last topic. Financially related - thousands of U.S. troops are being barred from overseas duty because of their debt load. They're just carrying too much credit card debt than other debt. And they're considered security risks. Now there are - the AP did a bit of research and found that the number has increased steadily since 2002 but it also wasn't able to get the full figures from the Army. Should we be concerned that with the Army and other branches of the military are already being really stretched in places like Iraq and Afghanistan that people with credit card debt are now going to be, you know - I mean it's kind of ironic that the military seems to be looking for new recruits and at the same time the financial issues that many Americans face are barring some people from serving.

Ms. CROSSLEY: This is absolutely something that has to be looked at very closely. I mean I think this is a really strong security risk. If you are worrying about money, worrying about sending money home as a matter of fact, all of those things, you are so susceptible to a bribe and you're far from home and you're thinking to yourself I might not make it. I know what the numbers are until Wednesday and I'm not going to take this money. Of course, you're going to think about it real hard. I'm not suggesting that, you know, a lot the troops over there are doing that. I'm just saying that it's a real, real risk. And I think that this is something that can resonate with any American who's ever had to try to make ends meet. And you think to yourself, I wonder if I just pass by this bank if I could just get a little bit more. I mean it's really - this is -

CHIDEYA: That's precisely right.

Ms. CROSSLEY: You're vulnerable.

CHIDEYA: The military is blocking people. Very briefly, we're almost out of time. Robert and Marcelo, what's the solution? Should it be more, you know, kind of financial oversight by the military to help people spend better or higher pay for the military? Robert.

Mr. GEORGE: I mean I think a higher pay is only going to go so far. Because if you're looking at these particular debt loads, I mean what it seems that the military is stock doing right now is keeping those with high debt loads here in within the United States and reshuffling others. That's only a temporary solution beyond the -

CHIDEYA: Marcelo. Got to go to you.

Prof. SUAREZ-OROZCO: Well, this is part of a more general problem. We've become a credit card nation and we really need to think about the implications of this for security and really for the financial well being of our country.

CHIDEYA: All right. We've been talking with Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, professor of globalization and education at New York University. Callie Crossley, social/cultural commentator on the television show Beat the Press in Boston. And Robert George, editorial writer for the New York Post. Thank you all so much.

Mr. GEORGE: Thank you, Farai.

Ms. CROSSLEY: Thanks.

Prof. SUAREZ-OROZCO: Thank you.

CHIDEYA: As always, if you'd like to comment on any of the topics you've heard on the Roundtable, you can call us at 202-408-3330. That's 202-408-3330. Or you can send an e-mail. Just log on to npr.org and click on Contact Us. And please be sure to tell us where you're writing from and how to pronounce your name.

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