In a speech alternately scathing and humorous, Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe (LAW ’84) addressed Georgetown University’s College Democrats yesterday, calling for increased student activism in the November elections.
“You punch me, I’m going to punch you back harder,” McAuliffe told the capacity crowd in McShain Community Lounge, which had been riddled with Democratic Party posters, yard signs, flags, balloons and t-shirts. “I’m going to take it to these Republicans.”
The DNC chairman called for greater participation by young voters in the electoral process, reminding students of the narrow margin of victory in the 2000 presidential election and asking for volunteers willing to devote time to campaigning in states such as Iowa, Florida and Pennsylvania. Polls show that these states are closely divided between President Bush and Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry.
“You can’t tell me your vote doesn’t count,” McAuliffe said. “I need you in a battleground state.”
McAuliffe also dismissed polls showing the president with a five- to ten-point lead coming out of the Republican National Convention in the first week of September. He recalled doubts about former President Bill Clinton’s (SFS ’68) chances in the elections of 1992 and 1996, and set a goal of drawing even with Bush’s poll numbers by the time of the first presidential debate later this month.
“Millions of people are going to wait for the debates and then they’re going to move,” McAuliffe said. “We’re going to win this election … We’ve got to do it. We’ve got to move forward.”
But McAuliffe’s loudest applause was reserved for his criticisms of the Bush administration policies on tax cuts, job creation, terrorism and military operations in Iraq.
“George Bush has been an abject failure on every single issue,” he said. “Now, we’ve had some doozers of presidents over the last 75 years, but not one of them failed to create one single job.”
Noting that he was one of the top 1 percent of wage-earners that he claimed benefited the most from the Bush administration’s economic policies, McAuliffe said that Bush “shouldn’t keep giving tax cuts to people like me, and making them permanent … I don’t create a single job.”
McAuliffe also criticized the administration’s national security policy, as he voiced doubts about the timing of terrorism warnings by the administration and pointed to a high-profile security alert involving financial institutions in the District and New York that was issued shortly after the conclusion of the Democratic National Convention.
“Do I think George Bush uses terror for partisan political gain? You bet I do,” McAuliffe said.
He also denounced the Bush-Cheney campaign strategy that emphasizes security in the war on terror.
“George Bush is running on one plank: `I can keep you safer,'” he said. “Please, Dick Cheney, and r. President … You had your opportunity, and you made this a less safe world, and not a more safe world.”
McAuliffe also criticized the decision to attack Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power.
“We went in on false pretenses,” McAuliffe said, citing the administration’s failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which Bush and others had claimed to be in Hussein’s possession.
“We have spent $200 billion [in Iraq] for what? Are we safer today? I would make the argument not,” he said. “Saddam Hussein didn’t pose a threat to us.”
McAuliffe also spent a significant portion of his address defending Kerry from attacks on his record of military service in Vietnam, most notably by the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which has run advertisements for several weeks accusing the Democratic nominee of lying about his conduct in Vietnam and of forsaking his fellow soldiers when, after completing his tour, he criticized the war.
“His boots hit the ground,” McAuliffe added. “George Bush’s never did.”
McAuliffe questioned military draft deferments received during the Vietnam War by Vice President Dick Cheney and Attorney General John Ashcroft, and noted that he had played a large role in organizing Democratic attacks on Bush’s military record, accusing him of not fulfilling his duties in the National Guard in the Vietnam era.
McAuliffe often interspersed his criticism of Republicans with humor, at one point joking that, had Clinton maintained the same connections to Halliburton as Cheney, “He would have been stripped, gassed, burned, in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue, and have his body dragged 30 blocks for being a criminal.”
Yet McAuliffe had no illusions about the seriousness of the upcoming election battle.
“This is the most important 50 days of your lives,” he told students. “Your entire futures are on the line.”
McAuliffe’s speech was part of a sweeping tour of 11 colleges and universities in the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest that will take him from Washington, D.C., to Pennsylvania and Ohio – two major battleground states in this fall’s presidential contest. McAuliffe addressed many of the same themes in a Feb. 20 address in McNeir Hall.
