Wesley Clark, Karl Rove debate issues in contentious faceoff at UB
Lecture series starts with bang
It wasn’t Obama-McCain, but Western New York had a pretty good debate of its own Friday night at the University at Buffalo. On one side was Karl Rove, Republican strategist and former White House deputy chief of staff.
On the other side was retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark, who had sought the Democratic Party’s nomination in 2004.
The two launched this year’s Distinguished Speakers Series in Alumni Arena with a bang, by debating some of the same contentious issues the presidential candidates faced, such as the economy, a $700 billion government bailout, health care and the war in Iraq.
Each started with five minutes for opening comments on his party’s slant.
“We are blessed to be citizens of this country,” Rove said. “There is something called the American Dream and people around the world want to share in it. Never lose sight this is the greatest country in the history of the world.”
“We’re a nation in trouble,” Clark said. “We need new ideas, and we need new leadership for America.”
When the question turned to the Iraq War, the debate became much more spirited, with a mix of applause and boos from the audience of 3,500 greeting some of Rove’s comments.
“Our goal must be nothing short of complete victory in the war on terror,” Rove said. “We need to finish the job in Iraq, and we need to add additional forces in Afghanistan.”
“They’ve [American troops] done a great job there,” Clark said. “Now, let’s get ’em home.”
Rove noted that the United States has not been hit by terrorists since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, saying, “I will make no apologies whatsoever for that at all.”
“I know this is a contentious issue,” Rove said. “We could debate this all day long. The fact of it is, when we went into this, it was a consensus.”
He pointed at Clark and said the retired general had supported the Iraq War resolution, then opposed it when he ran for president.
“I didn’t support a blank check for George Bush,” Clark said. “I didn’t. I wouldn’t. I don’t, and I won’t.”
When the discussion between the two heated up, Rove asked for a few more minutes to clear up some of his points.
“This won’t take long,” Rove said.
“That’s what was said about Iraq, as I recall,” Clark snapped back.
At one point, as the debate turned into a back-and-forth, moderator Dennis Black, vice president for student affairs at UB, stepped between the two speakers to move the program along.
“We invited everyone for a debate,” Black said. “We have one.”
Rove, often dubbed “Bush’s brain” from his days as President Bush’s chief political adviser, has become even more visible since leaving the White House as an analyst for Fox News and a frequent contributor to the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal.
Clark, who was a last-minute fill in for two-time presidential aspirant John Edwards, spent 34 years in the military and was the supreme allied commander in Europe for NATO from 1997 to 2000.
“Each year, we try to bring in some type of political leader. In an election year, we wanted to bring in both a Red State and Blue State perspective,” Black said before the debate. “If we were going to do that, we thought why not do it on the same night, so you get to hear them both side by side.”
The speaking engagement turned out to be on the same night as the first presidential debate. But UB recorded the encounter between Barack Obama and John McCain and played it for the audience after the Clark-Rove event.
The evening was complete with demonstrators outside Alumni Arena, protesting the appearance of Rove, and his involvement with the Bush administration’s decision to send U.S. troops to Iraq.
Some of the more than 50 protesters carried such signs as “War Criminals are not Distinguished Speakers.”
“We’re just here to remined Mr. Rove that . . . he doesn’t have a get-out-of-jail-free card with us,” said Elea Mihou, executive director of the Western New York Peace Center. “Someone like him should be reminded that there are citizens watching and don’t support him.”
