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5.03.00 4.27.00 4.27.00 4.24.00 4.21.00 4.20.00 4.19.00 4.17.00 4.13.00 4.13.00 4.11.00 4.11.00 4.07.00 4.05.00 4.04.00 4.03.00 4.03.00
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5/03/00
3:00 p.m. |
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National Review: Were there any surprises for you in yesterday’s primary? Rep. McIntosh: The whole total in the end was much more than what we expected — 72 percent, I think, is what it came out to this morning. It was a real validation of my conservative agenda of tax cuts — in this case, property tax cuts — reform, education, and free markets to create jobs for the future. NR: What is the campaign going to focus on now? How might it be different from the primary campaign? Rep. McIntosh: I used the primaries to lay out the key issues for us, but the contrast in the fall with Gov. O’Bannon, who is a very nice man and well-liked — I like him. He’s really genuinely a nice man. It reminds me a lot of the 1980 race where it’s the ideas of the past versus the ideas of the future. I’m going to be emphasizing tax cuts, property tax cuts 25 percent across the board, here in Indiana where we have a surplus. So my view is that people are paying too much money and the government should let them keep more of it and have freedom to make choices for themselves. Education reform: Our children here in Indiana start out in the top 5 percent in math on the national assessments and above average in English, but by the time they are in high school they are 45th in S.A.T. scores around the country. We need to do something to dramatically shake up our public-education system; and I’ve titled my plan "The Kids First Plan." The focus will be on doing what’s right for the children. Also, I have pushed for common-sense regulation on the environment. The current governor’s record of a command-and-control approach has really failed on the environment. We had a fish kill here in one of our main rivers. I wanted to bring in a new vision for that — one which respects property rights, and uses incentives to achieve better results on the environment by focusing on the things that really matter and not having a lot of fines and command-and-control regulations. NR: Let me ask you about one of those issues you mentioned: education. There is that controversial testing program in your state, which your governor stands by. In Indiana, criticism of you and the Hudson Institute, which recently issued an analysis of the state’s program, are dismissed as voucher supporters, who look for the worst in public education. Is there a proper balance that conservative candidates need to maintain between vouchers and reforming public education? Do you think you have that balance? Could your campaign, in that sense, be a model for others? Rep. McIntosh: I do. Let me mention that the Hudson Institute report criticized the current system and we based our plan, in part, on the knowledge they presented about the downsides. What we need to do to move forward in education is focus the resources down to the classroom level. One statistic tells you a lot about Indiana: 53 percent of the money in our current education budget does not go to the classroom teachers. That is a huge overhead. I have proposed what they call a Merit Pay System — I don’t use those words — but essentially paying bonuses for teachers who do a good job in improving performance, and then charter schools that escape from the mass of regulations and work rules that tie the hands of teachers. I do think that is a great model for Republicans on how we can improve public schools. When that has happened, then I think we can move ahead with a lot of the other elements that we have stood for in competition and other things. The key is to shake up the status quo and get a public mandate for that essentially by saying, "Look at our children. They are not getting the education they deserve." Here in Indiana, 11,000 seniors won’t graduate this year because they can’t pass a ninth-grade math and English test. Now, the Democratic response to that is, "Let’s stop testing. We don’t like the bad news, so let’s stop testing." My response is that that doesn’t do any good for the children. Let’s reform the system and make sure that those 11,000 children have a shot at graduating so that they can have a good education. And, by the way, the history of it is that Indiana is one of the first states to move to testing, so we were on the cutting edge of reform about 12 years ago. But, because the establishment and the special interests and Democratic governors haven’t wanted to make it work, we now have a test that actually works against teachers. They take it in the fall. They don’t get the results until the spring. I’ve proposed a straightforward, one-day, annual test. But, then, the most important reform is to use that test to identify when a child is falling behind immediately and stop what they call "social promotion" and say that we are going to intervene with summer school and ensure that before they go on to the sixth grade they know fifth-grade math, English, and science. It’s a tough-love provision, but is essentially what is best for that child because under the system now they keep being bumped along — saying that they’ve got to keep Johnny or Jane along with his or her classmates. Then they’re getting into high school, and they’ve fallen so far behind they can never catch up. I believe everybody has the capacity to learn and, if stretched to their potential, many of them could succeed. But they’ve been beaten into the ground because the system never focused on their needs. The short answer to your question is "Yes." I hope this will be a model for how we can transform our public system. Indiana, as I pointed out, ranks near the bottom on that. My hope will be that after four years as governor, we will have seen that climb to the top half and be a very demonstrable way of how we can make public education work in this country. NR: How much of the Indiana gubernatorial race is Clinton vs. Gingrich? That suggestion has obviously been made. Rep. McIntosh: My Democratic opponents have been trying to make it that way. I’ll share with you my hunch that in Indiana, Clinton loses. My Democratic opponent has a tough choice because if he sticks with Clinton-Gore, Indiana has never voted for Clinton, they won’t support Al Gore this year, and he will have to decide to divide himself and say that I’m really kind of a conservative Democrat or more like a Republican, which Evan Bayh has run on successfully in Indiana. At that point, my message is, "let’s have new, vigorous leadership that is a Reagan Republican — worked in his White House, trained by him — the real thing. " I’ll frame it as Reagan versus Clinton. They’ll try to frame it as Gingrich versus Clinton. NR: Either way, Clinton loses? Rep. McIntosh: Yes. NR: Also in the primaries, one of your opponent’s big issues — and the papers have focused on this — is campaign-finance reform and the fact that he limited himself and you didn’t. The fact that he lost by such a wide margin, does that suggest that campaign-finance reform isn’t what voters care about? Rep. McIntosh: I think that it is very much a third-level issue. They want to see clean and fair campaigns. We were very open about disclosure of all of my donors. They want to know that, but beyond that they care much more about the issues that affect them in their daily lives. When asked in the debates, "What’s my position," I shared with them, "I believe in the First Amendment." One way to participate is for citizens to contribute to candidates that they believe in, to let them exercise First Amendment rights to buy advertising on TV and in the newspaper. And voters understand that. They realize that we’re not given free TV time and if we were they’d be a little suspicious because they know the media is a little biased. So I think the American people aren’t clamoring for campaign-finance reform. They want to see reform in government. That’s the distinction. Senator McCain used campaign-finance reform as a symbol of reform across the board. I believe the voters do want to see a more responsive form of democratic government. And that was part of our election in ’94 with the "Contract with America." I think the challenge for George W. Bush and our party is to demonstrate to people that we will have a more open, transparent democratic process where we’re going back to the public, we’re enlisting them, we’re following their views and engaging them. In the current society we live in, everything is 15 minutes of fame and then you move on to the next subject. That is a challenge for leaders in the democratic area, but it’s one we have to take on very squarely, and show people how, as a Republican Party, we would engage the public and bring them into the process. When that happens, then you pick up the Jesse Ventura votes, the reform votes, because it is a reaction from feeling disenfranchised. I want this race to be a mandate in Indiana, and an example around the country of a true Reagan conservative philosophy versus an old New Deal philosophy the incumbent governor has. He’s going to try to mask that and run away from it, because voters in Indiana have always supported that conservative Reagan philosophy. It’ll be a national race, because it’s a true test of whether those conservative principles continue to be endearing and enduring in the American electorate. NR: Elián González. The papers this morning are suggesting that your colleagues in the Senate might be backing away from holding hearings in the Justice Department and how the Justice Department handled it. I wonder how much the raid and the case have been a concern to the Indiana voters. Do you think it would be a mistake if Congress backed away from having a hearing? Rep. McIntosh: I think Congress has to look into it. My reaction when I saw the pictures of what went on was, "Here’s another example of Janet Reno abusing her authority." I know the poll numbers don’t show that because the Clinton spin machine said we were protecting this child and returning him to his father. The fact is they issued an arrest warrant and went in there with guns to extract him. The judicial process could have worked its way through. I think that there should be hearings on that. I think that, ultimately, it was one of the strongest arguments for the Second Amendment and as a party we should stand up for our principles of freedom and limited government. When we do that, when we don’t look like we’re pandering to the polls and we talk about the principle straightforwardly, I think the party does well. The media always ridiculed Ronald Reagan when he was governor and said that he was too conservative to be elected, but the American people knew he was talking about core values in our political system — of freedom, of limited government, of strong families and moral values. I believe that that’s what the majority of Americans want to see and hear from their leadership. And in this case Clinton has clouded the issue by saying, "We only did what we did because of the value of strengthening this family." I think the smart thing to do at the hearing would be to ask the grandmothers and Mr. González to come their together and say, "Do you really want to go back to Cuba?" Then the American people could see what was best for that family. |
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David McIntosh, a candidate for governor of Indiana, has been a congressman
from the Second District of Indiana since 1995. His campaign address is
