Warner outlines platform to CSE

By Rob Humphreys

Published: October 5, 2008

WOODBRIDGE — During an editorial board meeting last week, U.S. Senate candidate Mark Warner — a Democrat and self-described “radical centrist” — sat down with newsroom leaders of the Culpeper Star-Exponent, Potomac News and Manassas Journal-Messenger.

Warner, who served as governor of Virginia from 2002 to 2006, gave the keynote address at last month’s Democratic National Convention in Denver.

He is running against another former governor, Republican Jim Gilmore (1998-2002). The latest polls show Warner, 53, with a lead of 25 to 33 percentage points. Election Day is Nov. 4.
A meeting with Gilmore is planned later this month.

Here are the highlights of our conversation with Warner:

The bailout
Warner sees the need for quick government action regarding the financial crisis but says President Bush’s initial proposal was an “arrogant” plan with no oversight. The administration, he said, blundered by not fully explaining the problem (or the need for its inappropriately labeled “bailout”) to the American public.

In Warner’s mind, the ideal economic plan would include:
* an oversight board of proven financial leaders
* no golden parachutes for CEOs
* a good shot that taxpayers get their money back
* a buy-back structure that ensures a return on investment
* establishing the framework of real regulatory reform for a 21st-century financial system
* additional relief in the foreclosure process.

The big question, Warner said, is, “How do you find a way to re-establish the bond between the lender and the lendee?”

“I am a proud capitalist,” said Warner, who made tens of millions of dollars in the cell phone industry. “I have benefitted from the free market, but the free market should have some rules of the road.”

Global competitiveness
Warner believes America needs a national competitive strategy to stay atop the rapidly evolving global marketplace. His four-pronged approach stresses the need for:

* a well-educated work force
* America regaining its footing as the global leader in innovation
* competitive, privatized health care
* a national reinvestment in infrastructure (road, rail and broadband).

“Most issues we face now are less ‘left-right’ and more ‘future-past’,” he said. “If you think the last 10 years have been wild, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

Energy and autos
When it comes to the schism between Democrats and Republicans over whether America should invest in alternative energy or drill for more oil, Warner says “it shouldn’t be an either-or.”

“The country really needs a ‘win’,” he said of the nation’s generally downtrodden mood. “This should be the one.”

Warner predicts that over the next 25 years, the industry that will create the most American jobs is energy — whether that be through traditional means like offshore drilling (which he supports but calls “just a piece of the solution”) or through advances that create jobs in hybrid and electric automobile technology.

Warner also pushed for the development of more nuclear energy and promoted Virginia’s switchgrass crop as a better solution to government-mandated corn ethanol production, which drives up food prices.

Illegal immigration
While emphasizing that America must continue to value the important role legal immigrants play, he also pushed for increasing border security and creating a failproof way for companies to make sure they’re not hiring illegal workers.

“I think the ultimate way you deal with the undocumented folks is to eliminate jobs,” Warner said, cracking a joke about how — after that statement — the headlines will declare he wants to wreck the economy. Laughing, he clarified by saying “and that means an identity-validation system that with a swipe you can check a person’s legal status.”

Health care
Warner’s goals for improving America’s health care system include:

* expanding the power of information technology (such as electronic medical records)
* making prescription drugs more affordable, in part through foreign trade negotiations with countries whose artificial price caps hurt U.S. consumers
* financing long-term care
* creating an affordable, privatized minimum coverage plan
* being more aggressive with preventative medicine and healthy-living education in schools.

On his big lead
“Don’t believe the polls,” Warner said, adding that he actually gets more nervous when his numbers go up.

On Jim Gilmore
“He is constitutionally unable to have any bipartisanship to him,” Warner said, referencing his opponent’s partisan attacks during their first debate in July. “When he was elected, that ’90s style Karl Rove slash-and-burn stuff worked, but it doesn’t work now.”

Rob Humphreys can be reached at 825-0771 ext. 128 or .