Published: July 18, 2008 11:46 am            

Veepstakes aside, Obama and Bayh imagine policy

While none of the principles — Barack Obama, Evan Bayh, or Sam Nunn — would say much on the topic, virtually everyone at the Purdue Student Union Wednesday afternoon had the same thought. Could this be, in some combination, the Democratic presidential ticket?

And, strangely but fittingly, the spirit of another senator — Republican Dick Lugar — seemed omnipresent in the room. Nunn joked that because of the success of the congressional inspired (not presidentially inspired) Nunn-Lugar Nuclear Threat Reduction program, many people believed “my last name is Lugar.” Obama said, “Other than the fact that he’s a Republican, I can’t find anything wrong with the guy.”

While Lugar’s name has been floated as a potential Obama running mate, to which Lugar’s office has emphatically slammed the door, the surface tension in the political sense centered on Nunn and Bayh as two of the most prominent names in the veepstakes speculation. The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza had Bayh No. 2 on his list last week. Republican pollster Frank Luntz listed Nunn and Bayh as Nos. 1 and 2 when he spoke at an Indiana Pacers function in late June.

Bayh would call it “silly season” and deferred comment to the Obama campaign. Nunn said he didn’t “aspire” to the office. Asked about the importance of a vice president with foreign policy experience, Bayh said, “I personally think his credentials in that area are very strong on their own. I think you saw that today. He has a history of thinking beyond the horizon. He thinks strategically as well as tactically.”

Nunn added, “I completely agree with that. It is very obvious when I use the term we’re in a race between cooperation and catastrophe. He recognizes that clearly. He also recognizes you have to listen to lead and I think he recognizes we have to have cooperation all over the globe to tackle the major problems we have.”

Obama gave a fascinating glimpse as the kind of style you could imagine at a cabinet meeting. It contrasted sharply with the Iraq era stories of President Bush, who hyped intelligence and has been widely described as intellectually incurious. He narrated the discussion, probing Bayh and Nunn as well as other panelists with specific questions in their areas of expertise. He cited the 911 Commission report which cited a “failure of imagination” that allow airliners to thunder into American skyscrapers.

“The danger, though, is that we are constantly fighting the last war — responding to the threats that have come to fruition, instead of staying one step ahead of the threats of the 21st century,” Obama said. “Instead of taking aggressive steps to secure the world’s most dangerous technology, we have spent almost a trillion dollars to occupy a country in the heart of the Middle East that no longer had any weapons of mass destruction.”

He pressed Nunn, for instance, on how much it would cost over four years to “lock up all the loose nuclear weapons?” Out of a $750 billion defense budget, the answer was something in the range of a .25 percent. Obama would observe, “For the amount of money we spend in one month in Iraq, we could lock up all the loose nuclear weapons.”

Nunn would make a further blunt point from his “cooperation/catastrophe” scenario. In this asymmetrical theater of war that has included American skyscrapers, it would take the detonation of only one nuclear bomb in one major city to eviscerate the confidence of the general public.

At another point, Obama said, “I want to turn to Evan Bayh because he’s doing some good work with Dick Lugar with respect to a proposal to stop the flow of nuclear weapons while safely meeting the demand for nuclear power.” Obama noted that both India and China are going that route, as well as creating an “extraordinary demand for energy.” He said there would be a “strong compulsion” on the part of many nations to build more nuclear facilities. “But it does raise the question that if you have more nuclear plants resulting in programs ... how do you deal with the military” aspects that would result?

Bayh responded with a preface: that as State Sen. Obama campaigned in Illinois in 2004, “he was talking about Nunn-Lugar when he was running for the Senate.” He added that in the next 42 years, worldwide energy demand will double, and “we must prevent additional nuclear stockpiles” that will be enticing to terrorists.

Bayh said there would be “strong incentives” for many nations to pursue nuclear power. “Here’s the concept Dick and I introduced,” Bayh continued. “We would promise these countries an affordable, secure source of civilian nuclear power as long as they were willing to submit to inspections.” However, countries could have “nothing to do with global terrorism,” and “nothing to do with any aspect of proliferation. It maximizes cooperation and minimizes nuclear proliferation.”

On Wednesday at Purdue, there was almost two hours of vivid, in depth discussion of global threat assessment and imaginative policy coming from a political candidate who Lugar once described as having a “broad scope.” It came under the flashy wrapper of the veepstakes. And when the talking was done, Indiana found itself at the epicenter of the most profound public security issues facing mankind.

— Brian Howey is publisher of Howey Politics Indiana online at www.howeypolitics.com.

        

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