Gore Highly Critical of Bush Foreign Policy
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: The former Vice President Al Gore takes a very dim view of the Bush administration's policies on Iraq. CNN political analyst and "Los Angeles Times" reporter Ron Brownstein joined fellow journalists for a sit-down with the former vice president earlier this week. You can find his article, by the way, about that meeting in yesterday's "Los Angeles Times." Ron's joining us now with more insight into Al Gore's take on Iraq, as well as his political future. I want to get to that in a second, Ron. You once wrote a book about Hollywood and politics. Listening to Ed Asner and Ron Silver, two liberal Democrats go at each other over this whole issue of Iraq was pretty surprising.</s>RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, it was. In the last few months, you almost have to go to Hollywood to get a debate about Iraq, given how little there was in Congress, but that was a remarkable segment and a sign that after 9/11, the politics of national security has changed in some respects, and there are clearly voices that once would have been skeptical enormously skeptical of Iraq. Al Gore, however, is not one of those.</s>BLITZER: Al Gore seems to be much closer to Ed Asner's position than he is to Ron Silver's position. Talk about that.</s>BROWNSTEIN: He's actually trying to come at it, I suppose, from almost a third way, almost criticizing this from the right, in an argument that's been heard from very few other Democrats, one of them Bob Graham, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Essentially, Al Gore is arguing that President Bush is shifting the focus too fast from Al Qaeda to Iraq, that it's premature to put both our material resources and time and energy of our leaders into a new war against Iraq while Al Qaeda remains a threat. Wolf, let me read quickly what he said to me, "I don't think there is any question that we lost focus the war against terrorism, and that the risk to our country has been increased as a direct result." And he then implies that the shift in focus was made to help Republicans in the midterm election. That's quite a strong charge.</s>BLITZER: All of the other serious Democratic candidates virtually, all of them have not had problems getting re-elected in the Senate this time around, supported the president as far as the authorization resolution. Had Al Gore been in the Senate, you think he would have voted differently? That's a hard question to answer. He gave a speech before the election, which was a little bit convoluted, in which he gave all the arguments against authorizing the use of force, but then seemed to suggest that he would have voted for it. You're right, though, not only most of the people, virtually all of the candidates in serious races supported Bush, but also those looking at 2004, John Terry, John Edwards in the Senate, Dick Gephardt, Joe Lieberman, also in the Senate, all voted for him, and none of them entirely echo what Gore is saying at this point.</s>BLITZER: Did you emerge from that session that you had with Al Gore convinced that he was go to run for the presidency once again?</s>BROWNSTEIN: I did not. I think it is very unclear whether he's going to run. What is clear is he's begun to think about what he would say and how he would say it. He's talking about running in a very different way, a much more informal McCain, more town meetings, more small meetings, and he's also talking about being less conventional in his ideas, bolder, perhaps, in what he says. You saw that and he's given indications of that in coming up with a universal health care plan which is beyond what Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton propose in '93, talking about repealing the later stages of the Bush tax cut,and going into this terrain, Wolf, on Iraq, where none of the other leading Democrats are going.</s>BLITZER: You'll remember a dozen years ago, Al Gore was among those senators, Democratic senators, there weren't a whole lot of them, who in the end after a lot of agonizing did support the first President Bush in going to war against Saddam Hussein to liberate Kuwait. Has he changed his views over these past 12 years?</s>BROWNSTEIN: No, I don't think so. As I tried to say at the beginning, I think he's trying to come at this not from a dovish point of view, like perhaps Ed Asner, but more from almost a hawkish perspective, similar to Bob Graham, arguing that we have a real present danger from Al Qaeda, from international terrorism, and that's where we should be focusing our military might and the attention of our national leaders. So it's not so much a philosophical objection to invading Iraq, it is that it should not be the top priority at this point, that there are other greater national security dangers at this moment.</s>BLITZER: Ron Brownstein of "The Los Angeles Times," our CNN political correspondent as well. We always learn something from you. Thanks for that good reporting.</s>BROWNSTEIN: Thank you, Wolf. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com