Senator Mitch McConnell - Press Releases

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CBS Transcript: Senator McConnell Appears On CBS Face The Nation
from the Office of Senator Mitch McConnell

Sunday, April 24, 2005

SHOW: Face the Nation

BOB SCHIEFFER, host:

With us now in Louisville, Kentucky, the Senate majority whip, Mitch McConnell. Here in the studio, Senator Chris Dodd. Joining in the questioning this morning, Doyle McManus of the Los Angeles Times.

Well, gentlemen, the nomination of John Bolton was already in trouble, as we talked about at the top of this broadcast; allegations he tried to force intelligence agencies to shape their findings to fit his views, allegations that he browbeat and intimidated subordinates; today, some new allegations surfacing in Newsweek magazine, and they say that the Foreign Relations Committee is investigating whether he actually told the truth at times under oath, that he again tried to hype intelligence in a different area, and that British diplomats actually complained about him and said that he was making it impossible to try to come to some agreement on how to deal with Iran.

Senator Dodd, can you confirm, is that--or is the Foreign Relations Committee investigating those things now?

Senator CHRISTOPHER DODD (Democrat, Connecticut; Foreign Relations Committee): I'm told they are. And we reached an agreement, Senator Biden did and Senator Lugar, on how to proceed over these next couple of weeks, and one of the agreements was to have cooperation between majority and minority staffs. They'd be present, have these depositions taken under oath, recorded depositions, so we have the transcripts properly down, and then seeking the kind of cooperation we'll need from the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, among others, so that we can get the information in a timely fashion so that members will have the opportunity to look over this material...

SCHIEFFER: Well...

Sen. DODD: ...and decide whether or not it's sufficient enough to confirm or not confirm Mr. Bolton.

SCHIEFFER: Well, how serious do you think it is? I mean, here Newsweek says that British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw actually complained to Secretary of State Powell that Bolton was making it impossible for the United States and Britain to come to some agreement on how to handle Iran, and they...

Sen. DODD: These are the most serious allegations, this and the intimidation of intelligence analysts. There needs to be a firewall, in my view, between policy-setters and intelligence. That wall ought to be sacrosanct. In the case of Mr. Bolton, on five different occasions over a space of 48 months, confirmed by a series of witnesses, all of whom are officials in the Bush administration, Mr. Bolton sought to have fired two intelligence analysts, one at the State Department, one at the Central Intelligence Agency. To me, once you've done that--it's not about his personality and how blunt he is or how--whether or not he's got the management skills. Those aren't things that I'm as concerned about as I am violating this wall between policy and intelligence.

We've been through a terrible time in recent past history where we've seen intelligence being distorted. We've made policy decisions on the basis of that distortion. I don't think any American, regardless of your politics, wants to see that wall violated. Mr. Bolton violated it. That's the problem I have with his nomination.

SCHIEFFER: Well, Senator McConnell, the president came out very strongly for Bolton this week and said it's all a case of politics, that people are playing politics with this nomination. Yet it seems to be the Republicans right now who are raising the questions. How do you respond to that or what do you say about that?

Senator MITCH McCONNELL (Republican, Kentucky; Majority Whip): Well, first let's talk about the Democrats. I mean, it's not like they haven't heard of John Bolton before. He's been confirmed four times by the Senate. He's had a long public career. He's testified before the Foreign Relations Committee for eight hours already. As recently as 2001, my good friend Chris Dodd said of John Bolton an indivi--that he was an individual of integrity and intelligence. That was just four years ago.

Look, we're not nominating somebody here for Miss Congeniality. I'm not sure this is a standard that many senators could pass. We know that Bolton is a person--a forceful person, a person of strong opinion. What's he being nominated for? He's being nominated for ambassador to the UN. The UN is in a lot of trouble. The oil-for-food scandal is unfolding. We've been--we've all known the UN is in need of serious reform for a long time. And I think there are some of the--of our Democratic colleagues that are simply uncomfortable with sending somebody to the UN that may actually challenge business as usual up there.

With regard to the Republicans, not a single Republican has announced opposition to Mr. Bolton. And until--unless and until that happens, I don't think you should assume that Republican senators are going to be against John Bolton.

SCHIEFFER: Well, I take your point. But yet, as Senator Voinovich, who is a Republican from Ohio, said, `Wait a minute, I--the more I hear, the more I want to think about this, let's don't vote.' Senator Chafee, who was thought to be on board on this nomination, says he's having second thoughts. Senator Hagel is being rather ambivalent right now. And I'm told that Senator Murkowski has also raised new questions about this, now that she unders--hears these reports that he's been chasing aides up and down a hallways of a Moscow hotel. I mean, you say, you know, we're not electing Miss Congeniality, but I wonder, Senator, if a senator got caught doing something like that, I'm not sure that would be looked on favorably.

Sen. McCONNELL: Well, I think all of those are unsubstantiated allegations. The committee's decided to vote, as I understand it, on May the 12th. There will be adequate opportunity for whatever additional questions any of the senators on the Foreign Relations Committee have to be responded to by Mr. Bolton.

Mr. DOYLE McMANUS (The Los Angeles Times): Senator McConnell, you're the Republican whip. It's your job to line up votes for the president's nominees. Bob mentioned there are at least four Republicans who have said at this point they're not ready to vote for Mr. Bolton. They haven't said they'll vote no, but that's pretty shaky for a Republican president. Should those Republican senators be mindful of the damage it might do to the administration, to the president's leadership if that nomination went down? Is that a message you think you ought to be taking to them?

Sen. McCONNELL: Well, look, the president stands behind the nomination. This is the president's choice of a bright, intelligent man, as Senator Dodd said in 2001, for a very tough job, to go up and represent the United States at the UN, which has a lot of problems and needs to be confronted, not just rolled over to--in the course of this whole reform debate at the UN. Not a single Republican has come out against John Bolton. The president stands by John Bolton. My assumption is the Foreign Relations Committee will vote on May the 12th, and I'm optimistic that John Bolton will have the support of the majority of the members of the Foreign Relations Committee, including all of the Republican members.

Mr. McMANUS: Senator Dodd, you're on that committee. How do you think this is going to come out? And if it goes to the floor, will Democrats filibuster this nomination?

Sen. DODD: Well, I don't know about a filibuster. That's way down the road at this point. But remember, this is--it isn't just these allegations about violating the wall between policy and intelligence, which I think is critically important. Even though the post at the United Nations may be not that important in some people's minds, what Mr. Bolton did is important in my view. And the fact that he didn't succeed at it is not a case to be made either. He tried to have intelligence doctored, cooking the books in effect to conform to his particular point of view. That's the danger here, and the chilling effect it has on those intelligence analysts. Secretary Powell had to go to the intelligence bureau after this incident and go down there and reassure the individual in particular, as well as all the other intelligence analysts, that don't you let policy-setters try to intimidate you. That was the message. That was a unique set of circumstances.

Since then, you've had the chief of staff of the former secretary of State say, `This man is absolutely unqualified to be the ambassador to the UN.' You've had Carl Ford, a longtime Republican, intelligence analyst, worked with the CIA defense intelligence agency. You've had Ambassador Hubbard, had to call the committee and say, `What Mr. Bolton said about what happened in South Korea was untrue.' In fact, he had to admonish him about language he wanted to use in the speech there. You've had Secretary Powell himself, in sort of guarded language apparently, but all of us in town know what he was saying here.

Well, those are very senior people who have worked with this man who don't think that he really is the right person for this job. He may be bright, and he is. I've never suggested he wasn't. The problem is here he brings too much of a heavy ideology to this and an unwillingness to listen to intelligence before he sets policy. That's the danger with this man.

SCHIEFFER: Well, Senator McConnell, what about that, the fact that Secretary Powell has had virtually nothing to say about this at least for the record? And it's an open secret that he was not really on Powell's team when he was at the State Department. They sort of kept him off over in the corner there. What about the fact that the secretary of State doesn't seem ready to endorse this man?

Sen. McCONNELL: Well, the last time the secretary of State had anything to say about John Bolton publicly it was very favorable. To read in to what the secretary of State may believe when he is not speaking it seems to me is unfair. In addition to that, all of the allegations that Chris are talking about have not yet been proven. The committee's going to have an adequate opportunity presumably over the next three weeks to get to the bottom of whatever it would like to find out about Secretary Bolton even though they've already confirmed him four times in the past and had eight hours of testimony so far. I'm sure that all of these questions will be addressed before the vote is taken.

Look, John Bolton is the president's man, the president's choice. The president won the election. The president's choice to go represent us at the UN admittedly it's anticipated by a lot of us that he would be a different kind of UN ambassador. It's about time somebody went to the UN with some degree of skepticism that would put some pressure on the UN to engage in the kind of serious reforms that the oil-for-food scandal clearly indicates are needed at long last.

Sen. DODD: Well, let me just say, you know, my good friend from Kentucky can't suggest that John Bolton is the only man who could do that. Many of us sort of agree with what John Bolton has said about getting the UN in shape here and being tough up here, but the suggestion somehow that the only credible Republican that you could possibly have to take on that job is John Bolton just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. There are plenty of other people to do the job.

I noted the other day just last week that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice put out a worldwide memo to people who would like to be the chief of mission and that the qualities you ought to have as chief of mission, I'm quoting it here, the first quality mentioned is to "have good interpersonal skills and good management skills." Whatever else we've talked about here, this is a man who has dreadful interpersonal skills and dreadful management skills. And you're going up to a diplomatic post...

Sen. McCONNELL: Well, that's not something, Chris...

Sen. DODD: Well, I think it's important. It's very important issue.

Sen. McCONNELL: ...that everybody agrees to.

Sen. DODD: No, this is important. It's pretty much agreed to and the UN is not the issue...

Sen. McCONNELL: No, everybody doesn't agree to that, Chris.

Sen. DODD: ...and even this isn't the issue of being blunt and so forth. I'm not placing a lot of stock; other members might. You've got to come back to the point, Mitch, you can't change the debate. The debate is: Did he--and seven different individuals--I think it's seven--have said that he tried to have two people fired on at least five different occasions, have said he tried to have these two people fired. Now that is dangerous when policy centers try to see that intelligence analysts are fired, that's crossing the line, and we've gone through this over the last number of months. You don't promote an individual like that, in my view.

SCHIEFFER: Do you think that he ought to withdraw his name?

Sen. DODD: I would. I would hope he would. I think he's going to embarrass the president. I think he's going to have a very difficult job serving if he's confirmed narrowly by the Senate. He should withdraw or the president ought to withdraw this nomination. There are plenty of other good people who embrace his ideological views who can go up and do exactly what Mitch is talking about at the UN. John Bolton is not that individual.

SCHIEFFER: All right. Let's take a--well, go ahead.

Sen. McCONNELL: Well, President Bush believes that John Bolton is that. President Bush is the one who gets to select these nominees. He believes that John Bolton is the appropriate person to go to the UN at this particular time and, look...

Sen. DODD: That's why we have a separation of powers.

Sen. McCONNELL: ...we're going to have a vote in a Foreign Relations Committee on May the 12th and we'll see what happens.

Sen. DODD: That's true.

SCHIEFFER: All right. Let's take a break. We'll come back and talk about filibusters...

Sen. DODD: Good.

SCHIEFFER: ...when we come back.

(Announcements)

SCHIEFFER: And we're back again now with Senators Mitch McConnell and Chris Dodd.

Gentlemen, as you both know the Republican leader in the Senate, Senator Frist, says he may move to outlaw the filibuster, in other words, stop debate and allow things to be voted on by a simple majority--it now takes 60 votes, as both of you of course, know, to do that. He says he's going to try to change that rule if Democrats don't free up and unblock what's going on now and let the Senate vote on some of these judicial nominees that the president has nominated. The Democrats, of course, say if that happens, they're going to just shut down business entirely in the Senate. Those are the threats being made by those sides.

Senator McConnell, is this really going to happen? Is Senator Frist determined to do this if the Democrats don't allow a vote on these judges?

Sen. McCONNELL: What is going to happen, Bob, is that we're going to get back to the way the Senate operated for 214 years prior to the last Congress, which was to give nominees who have a majority support in the Senate an up or down vote on the floor of the Senate. The easiest way to get there, obviously, would be to--for the Democrats simply to decide to go back to the behavior they were advocating as recently as 2000 when Senator Reid was saying members are entitled--nominees are entitled an up or down vote on the floor. Senator Schumer was saying nominees are entitled to an up or down vote on the floor. That's in 2000, just a few years ago.

SCHIEFFER: OK.

Sen. McCONNELL: We're going to get back on that and there are several different ways you can get back to it. One of them is to change the precedence of the Senate--it's called the Byrd option. Senator Byrd, when he was the majority leader, did that on four different occasions. An easier and better way obviously would be to simply discontinue this practice and go back to allowing nominees who have a majority support...

SCHIEFFER: Let...

Sen. McCONNELL: ...an up or down vote in the Senate.

SCHIEFFER: Well, let me ask you this, Senator, the hard news question. Do you have the votes right now to do that?

Sen. McCONNELL: Yeah. We will have the votes to do that and that step will be taken sometime in the near future at the determination of the majority leader.

SCHIEFFER: `Will have' or will--or have them now? Do you have them now?

Sen. McCONNELL: Oh, yeah.

SCHIEFFER: Or do you think you will have them?

Sen. McCONNELL: Look I never announce my whip count, but I'm telling you there's no doubt in my mind, and, I'm a pretty good counter of votes, that this--that we have the votes we need.

SCHIEFFER: Well, what happens, Senator Dodd, if they do that?

Sen. DODD: Well, it will be a sad day. Howard Baker called the extended debate rule one of the principles, deep principles of democracy. Jim McClure, Malcom Wallop, certainly strong conservative Republicans, Bob Dole, have urged the Republican leadership today to think long and hard about doing what they want to do. And something else is occurring here other than just allowing simple majority vote on federal judges. To change rules in the United States Senate requires 67 votes under normal circumstances. What the Republican leadership wants to do here is change the rules in the middle of the game with 51 votes to change the rules of the Senate. For 200 and quarter--220-some-odd years, the Senate has operated on protecting the rights of a minority. The House of Representative protects the rights of the majority.

And I would just warn my Republican friends, you know, things do change, and be careful what you wish for in these matters. I wonder if people in some of the states in the South, for instance, are going to be terribly happy when a Democrat president, a Democratic president sitting there, virtually deciding for him- or herself who the federal judges will be out of that state because you'll no longer have to consult with the senators from those states as you do today, because of the importance of having some comity in working things out. This rule is important at well because it forces Democrats and Republicans to work together, to come to consensus. You abandon this rule and you'll find even more partisanship in my view in the United States Senate. I think it's a major step back.

I'd urge the Republican leadership, they may have the votes today but I think it's a major mistake to allow and take away a filibuster for a lifetime appointment, the only position in the federal government that we give the person a lifetime job. No general gets that, no diplomat gets that, no civil servant gets that. In fact, the deputy assistant secretary of nothing could be filibustered but a 40-year-old nominated to the federal bench could be approved to serve for 40 years, if he lived that long, in serving on the United States Federal District Court. That's a huge mistake in my view.

Mr. McMANUS: Now a lot of people, obviously...

Sen. McCONNELL: Bob...

Mr. McMANUS: ...are trying to avoid this kind of crisis...

Sen. DODD: Right.

Mr. McMANUS: ...and are putting out proposals for a compromise.

Sen. DODD: Yeah.

Mr. McMANUS: Our friend David Broder at The Washington Post has said, `Well, maybe Democrats would let all or some of those nominees get to the floor, the president could agree not to make recess appointments, the Republican side could agree that each of those nominations would get a full debate on the floor.' Senator Dodd, is that a good idea?

Sen. DODD: Well, I don't know--I read the piece this morning and I know my colleague Senator Biden made a suggestion on another program this morning. There are various other ideas kicking around out there. Certainly I'd urge people to examine ways to avoid this, because I really think the damage we would do to the institution of the United States Senate--we're only temporary custodians of this institution, and we bear a responsibility. Our founders knew what they were doing. There's a separation of powers here, and the checks and balances provided by a judicial, legislative and executive branch are going to be violated if we go this route. Let's compromise.

SCHIEFFER: Let's let Senator McConnell respond here.

Sen. DODD: Yeah. Yeah.

Sen. McCONNELL: Yeah. Could I say something here?

SCHIEFFER: Sure.

Sen. McCONNELL: What's being changed here was filibustering judges who have majority support in the Senate. That hasn't been done for 214 years. The Democrats act like we've come up with something new here. They're the ones who changed the games. They went off to a seminar in 2001; Laurence Tribe and some of their other liberal constitutional lawyers said, `You need to change the rules of the game.' And that's what they did in the last Congress and started filibustering judges who had majority support in the Senate. We're not trying to get rid of the filibuster rule. We actually had that, by the way, back in 1995, that vote to get rid of filibuster for everything--legislation, for everything. Nineteen Democrats voted for it; not a single Republican. What we're talking about here is not the filibuster rule overall, but getting back to the practice of allowing judicial appointments for judge candidates who have a majority of support in the Senate to have an up-or-down vote in the Senate, as we did for 214 years until the last Congress.

Sen. DODD: Well, Mitch...

Sen. McCONNELL: They're the ones who started operating differently. We need to get back to the traditions...

Sen. DODD: But, Mitch, you didn't...

Sen. McCONNELL: ...in the Senate.

Sen. DODD: President Clinton sent 69 nominees to the Senate Judiciary Committee. We didn't even give them a hearing. There were 25 district court judges--25 appellate court judges and 44 district court judges; never even got a hearing. Now that's a pocket filibuster, when the committee wouldn't even consider the nominations. So, you know, going back and signing...

Sen. McCONNELL: The first President Bush--look, the first President Bush had...

Sen. DODD: And here you have 215 nominees, Mitch, 215; 205 of these people...

SCHIEFFER: Let me...

Sen. DODD: ...have been confirmed.

SCHIEFFER: Let me...

Sen. DODD: That's not a case you make...

Sen. McCONNELL: Could I respond to that?

SCHIEFFER: All right, quickly.

Sen. McCONNELL: Could I respond to that? Could I respond?

Sen. DODD: Yeah.

SCHIEFFER: Yes. Go ahead.

Sen. McCONNELL: President Clinton was in office for eight years. My party controlled the Senate for six of those eight years. He got 277 nominees through. President Reagan, eight years, his own party controlled the Senate for six of the eight years. He got 382; only five-judge difference. Sure, some judges were killed in committee; the same for President Bush. The first President Bush had some nominees who didn't make it. The vast majority of those nominees were people who were nominated toward the end of the term. What has dramatically changed, and it's not in dispute, is the filibustering of judges who have a majority of support on the floor of the United States Senate. It began in the last Congress. It needs to stop.

SCHIEFFER: All right. Senator, we have to stop there. I apologize. We didn't get around to Tom DeLay...

Sen. DODD: No.

SCHIEFFER: ...because we talked a lot about this. I'll be back with a final word in just a minute. Thanks to both of you.

Sen. DODD: Thank you.

Sen. McCONNELL: Thank you.