Chris Shays has represented Connecticut’s Fourth Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1987. 

Conducted by Tom Kidd

In the 2006 election, the Democratic Party enjoyed an historic victory. Do you think that Democratic gains were due to changes in Democratic strategy, or rather the public’s general discontent with Republican leadership?

I think the Republicans lost the election; the Democrats did not win it. We had basically become more interested in maintaining power than being reformed minded. Our concern about ethical issues has waned over the twelve years we were in power. But obviously there are issues such as the war in Iraq that had a tremendous impact.

Would you say that the Republicans lost sight of some of the core values that led to their victory in 1994?

Back then we were a reform-minded party. We were campaigning against a congress that had spent 40 years in power, 40 years not worrying about ethics, 40 years just muddling through. By 2006, Democrats could say the same thing about us, after only twelve years.

What do Republicans need to do to stop Democratic momentum come 2008?

We need to earn back the trust of the American people. We need to have an agenda that the American people want. We need to be a center-right party, not a far-right party. It will be the Democrats’ to lose, in the sense that if they try to lead from the center-left they will be credible. However, if they focus too much on the agendas of some of the special interests that make up the Democratic Party, they will make the same mistake we made.

You mention the Republicans leading from the center of the right. Many saw the 2006 election as a validation for moderate and conservative Democrats, yet many moderate Republicans lost their seats.

I am the only Republican representative left in New England, but the story is even deeper than that. There is only one Republican on Long Island and only one in New York City, on Staten Island. The rest of the Republicans in the state of New York are all north of Albany.

You have been an integral figure in campaign finance reform, going back to 2002 and the Shays-Meehan Bill. Considering that 2008 could be the first time that both major parties’ presidential candidates don’t use public funds, what do you think of the current state of campaign finance?

First off, what we tried to do was enforce the 1907 law that forbade donation of corporate treasury money, the 1947 law that forbade union dues money, and the 1974 law that limited individual funds. That is what we did. We banned the corporate and union dues money and we made sure that individual contributions could not be above a certain amount.

Another issue is public funding of presidential campaigns. In the last presidential election, we had some candidates who did not use public funding for the primary. We have legislation in to increase the 40 million dollars that was for primaries to 150 million dollars, and the 75 million dollars for general elections to 100 million dollars. That bill, if it were to pass, would not go into effect until after next election.
The next presidential election will most likely see all its money raised outside of public funding. That means there will be a lot of special interests groups weighing in big time. There will be a lot of efforts by candidates to solicit money, and they will spend a lot of time doing that.

Would you support Barack Obama’s consideration to forgo private funds and use public funds in his potential general election campaign?

Rep. Marty Meehan and I sponsored legislation to do that, although it wouldn’t go into effect until after next election. So the answer is yes, I believe in public funding of presidential races.

You have traveled to Iraq more than any other U.S. legislator. You were the first Republican to call for a timeline of withdrawal from Iraq, yet you recently voted against a resolution condemning the so-called “surge” of troops in Iraq. Why did you vote against this resolution?

I voted to go into Iraq. There were four members on the Republican side who voted against going into Iraq, and some of those members have thought we needed to get out and were eager to have that happen.

Last August I said that we need a timeline to motivate the Iraqis to make the necessary compromises between the Sunnis and the Shias, such that they know if they don’t make those compromises, we’re going to get out of there, and they will be stuck solving their problems without us. That was viewed as a surprising position, but it came only after my fourteenth visit, when Ambassador Khalizaid said Prime Minister Maliki was simply not motivated to do the heavy lifting. I want to motivate him to do it.

With regard to the resolution, I was strong proponent of the Iraq Study Group, which reported three necessary actions. The first was to get Iraqis to take our place patrolling the streets, which we are starting to do. In other words, get the Iraqis to be the tip of the spear and let American troops do just special operations work, not police work. The second was to have Sunnis and Shias talk out their differences with consequence. The administration is doing that, but they are not focusing enough on consequences. The consequence is that if they don’t come to terms over their differences, we are out of there. And the third was to have an all-out diplomatic effort in the region, including Syria and Iran. The administration is not doing that.

I felt that the resolution should not have states what we didn’t want a surge but to instead state what we did want, which was to implement the three main recommendations of the Iraq Study Group. My perception of the Democratic resolution was that it amounted to, ironically, saying that we should stay the course. In other words, it would have suggested that we not add, not do anything different, but just do what we have been doing

The other point I would make is that the critics of how this war has been fought, and I am one of them, have called for a new secretary of defense, and now that we have that, we have also called for a new commander on the ground, which we now have as well with General David Petraeus. Petraeus is outstanding, as good as you can get. He believes, along with Secretary of Defense David Gates, that we needed a new strategy in Baghdad, a strategy is to clean up an area, hold it which is the unique part and then rebuild it. To do that we need Iraqis to move their troops in, but they still need to be augmented by our troops. So the new strategy isn’t a surge; the new strategy is to clean up and hold. To do that the Iraqis need some of our troops imbedded with their troops. We abolished their entire police force, border patrol, and army. We left them defenseless. Now we are building this new army that doesn’t have any sergeants or corporals, the backbone of any military. Our guys are want to make the Iraqis first among equals.

I thought, frankly, the resolution sent the wrong message to our President, our allies, and our troops. It said to our troops that we don’t have faith in Petraeus and to our enemies that we didn’t have a plan to win, but that we just knew what we didn’t want.

You mentioned the need to have Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds come together and talk out their differences and create positive solutions. What steps do you think the United States can make to have this happen and create tangible results?

Give them deadlines. Do what we did in 2004. They had a deadline to elect a provisional government in January 2005. They had a deadline to adopt a new constitution, and they had a deadline to create a government under that constitution. They had deadlines to workout all those differences. The only way I see this working out is for us to simply say that we are not going to baby-sit a civil war.

Do you think it is possible that by the time the next president is inaugurated, U.S. troops can be out of Iraq?

No, they cannot be out of Iraq because we got rid of all Iraqi military structure, and Iraq doesn’t have enough military resources to solve this on their own. Could we be out of some of the hot spots? Yes. Could we be garrisoned in certain areas to conduct special operations? Yes. Our goal is to get our troops out of doing daily police work. However, Iraq still needs our helicopters, they still need our hospitals, and they still need our logistics because we abolished every part of their military. That is the reality.

The other part is the odds the new plan in Baghdad will work. If you had asked me two years ago, I would have said three out of four, if you ask me now, I think it is one out of four. What we now need to do is think of our Plan B, which could be to take our troops and put them on the borders and let the Sunnis and Shias fight it out. Finally, Plan C is absolute failure, which would be awful.

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