Image source: Kleeb Campaign Website.
With moderate Republican Senator Chuck Hagel announcing his retirement from Congress, his Nebraska Senate seat is seriously in play this year for the first time since Hagel's first Senate win in 1996.
Democrat Scott Kleeb is running for Senate in Nebraska against Republican, and former Nebraska Governor, Mike Johanns. A genuine Midwestern cowboy who worked as a ranch hand during college, Kleeb also happens to have a Master's in International Relations and a PhD in History from Yale. He was kind enough to call me up this past weekend, right after visiting a Nebraskan chili-tasting contest, to grant MOMocrats an interview.
After we spent a few minutes comparing notes on our vegetable gardens (we both had a bumper crop of tomatoes, and a total failure in the pepper department last year), I asked Kleeb: As the father of two young children, what three issues facing our nation today do you consider to be most important for the United States government to address to ensure a safe and prosperous future for our kids?
SCOTT KLEEB: I decided to run for the Senate this year because I think that our country is right now at a critical time in our nation’s history. The challenges that we face as a country, whether it’s on debt, whether it’s on health care, or whether it’s facing the lowest standing that we’ve had in world opinion for generations; the energy crisis that we’re facing, the stagnation of wages, the increasing costs, the squeeze that’s been put on more and families across the state and across the country—the whole host of reasons that are coming together in this moment, as well as the excitement of people recognizing that this is one moment that we all know that we need to participate—we need to come together to find solutions to these challenges.
I decided to run for a simple reason: I have two young girls, and I want them to look back on this period and recognize that their father and their mother were part of this change that we all know has to happen. That’s the greatest lesson that we could give to our kids. We’ve been blessed in our life, and we’ve got to commit ourselves again to creating a better world so that in our case, our kids don’t inherit the challenges that we face. We can do something about this now, and hopefully they will learn that same lesson and do the same for the generation following them.
Specifically, under the larger heading of finding ways to support the strongest economic engine of our county, and that is the middle class, the three issues are:
Health care—the fact that 31% of Nebraskans last year chose to forgo medical care because they had to pay for bills. That’s a real problem when we’re trying to support a society. We’ve got to do something about health care, to cap those costs, to bring down those costs and to ensure access to all Nebraskans and all Americans—affordable, quality access for everybody in our country.
Energy—One of the greatest challenges that we’re facing is combating climate change, and dealing with an energy crisis right now that’s more than just about higher costs—it’s about the way that we produce and consume energy in this country, and I really think that we have to do more. We have to ask more, not only of ourselves, but of our elected officials, ask more of businesses and industry, to really challenge them, as we’ve done before, challenge them to do more with less. To find ways of producing new forms of energy, the whole broad array of alternative energies, but also find ways of consuming less, too—raising CAFE standards, encouraging businesses and industries to reinvest in cost-saving measures and energy-cost-saving measures.
I really think that we have not had any leadership, at all in developing a broad and coherent strategy on energy production and consumption.
The third issue is education—to the extent that there is a silver bullet to all of the problems we face, we have got to invest in education. To find the solutions to the challenges we face, to challenge science—make sure that we have a robust educational system that begins at birth and continues throughout life.
I was able to go to college, to go on and get higher degrees, because of Stafford loans and Pell Grants, which used to provide 51% of a college education, and now provide less than a third of the cost. That means that fewer people can go to college; fewer people can participate in the 21st century economy and actually realize better lives for themselves.
JAELITHE: As part of a busy working family, do you think our country's current laws regarding employee family and medical leave are adequate? If not, what would you do to change them?
SCOTT KLEEB: The Family and Medical Leave Act is one of the greatest legislative accomplishments in years. There is no question that it makes it easier for more Nebraskans and more Americans to prioritize one of our greatest strengths in this country, our commitment to family.
We often talk about family values. And our ability to spend more time with our families, especially at critical points, like birth and illnesses—these are times when we need family; we need to strengthen our commitment to one another, and more families want to do that. Unfortunately, at this time of stagnant wages and higher costs [. . .] it’s more difficult for families to take that unpaid leave that they are entitled to under federal law. There are proposals now in Congress to make the Family Medical Leave Act paid, and I strongly support that idea.
JAELITHE: You state on your campaign website that you are in favor of universal voluntary early childhood education. How do you plan to fund such a project, and how would you structure it to ensure that children in all areas, both rural and urban, would get equal access to such a resource, and would receive educations of similar quality?
SCOTT KLEEB: The simple answer is: return to fiscal responsibility. We often forget that only seven years ago we were having a debate on how best to use the budget surplus that we had—a budget surplus that we hadn’t seen for decades—we had a budget surplus and we were debating how best to use this, whether it was tax cuts for middle class families, whether it was for investments in education, whether it was for shoring up Social Security . . .
In the last seven years, the inability of Congress and the President to balance the budget, and not literally spend trillions of dollars—literally trillions of dollars outside of the normal budgetary process, has made it more difficult to invest in the things that we value, such as early childhood education.
When we hear about bridges to nowhere in Alaska, we hear about runaway earmark spending, we hear about programs and policies that don’t actually ask for accountability. The fact that our Pentagon cannot account for eight billion dollars of spending in Iraq is a major problem, because that is money that we are still spending, but we don’t know what we actually got for it.
So we need transparency. We need openness. We need people, if they do believe in an earmark, and want to stand by it, they need to sign their name to it. We need to completely and totally reform the earmark process, bring it back into the normal budgetary process, and run it through the Appropriations Committee, so that we know that every dollar that is being spent is being spent on those things that we value most, education being one of those things we can all agree on. It’s going to be that silver bullet.
Once we’ve found the money, once we’ve returned to fiscal responsibility, how do you best apply it in a way that’s going to support more families, both rural and urban? In our state, we’ve got a densely urban population in Omaha, we’ve got a smaller urban population in Lincoln, and we’ve got some of the most rural areas in the entire country, throughout the western part of the state.
I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about how best to do this, reforming education so that we can support an individual’s education, and not punish schools or school districts, and I think that Senator Dodd’s proposal to target the reforms in such a way that the standards are applied to individual students, so that we know, that students are achieving, that students are improving, we’re not punishing an entire school simply because of where they may or may not exist, what opportunities they have, whether it’s a rural or urban area.
And we can then target that money that we’ve invested in early childhood education, not just on programs like Head Start and Early Head Start, but actually to individual students, so that every student can reach their full potential. By placing it on students, rather than simply on districts, you would get the aid to those students who need it most, regardless of where they actually live.
JAELITHE: You grew up overseas on a military base. You have a Master's in International Relations and a PhD in History. How do you feel your education and experiences abroad have affected your view of American foreign policy?
SCOTT KLEEB: You know, growing up on a military base overseas, and being as I was, on the community soccer team that I played on, I was known not just by my name, Scott, but I was living in Italy at the time, and I was known as the Americano—the American. From the earliest age, my earliest memory, I have been the American. I have been the representative for our country to the thousands of people that I have met overseas. And not just where I’ve lived, but where I’ve traveled, and I have traveled extensively.
The understanding that that has given me about America’s role in the world, and about position that people have for our country, the respect that they have for those things that we stand truest on, our history. I remember distinctly, a story if I can—
My dad was a high school teacher, and he taught world history, and on the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Italy, when the American soldiers were marching on Italy, because our base was there, because many of the families that were serving there had family members who had served in World War II, he spent a tremendous amount of time that year on studying the Second World War. Now, we lived way off the base in a small Italian community.
And we’d heard stories about that time, about the war, from our landlord, who was an old Italian farmer, who was a young kid when the American soldiers came up into his town. He was telling stories about this firefight that had happened between the Nazi soldiers who were retreating and the American soliders who were advancing. When the Nazis were retreating, they thought that partisans were firing on them from both sides.
And this young Nazi soldier got down off of his tank, came down to his farmstead, accused my landlord, who was a 14-year-old boy at the time, of firing on the soldiers, put a gun up to his head, and pulled the trigger, and there wasn’t actually a round in the chamber, so he ended up just pistol-whipping him, and left him for dead.
About 45 minutes later, the American soldiers were advancing, came to that same farmstead, and a soldier got off his tank, and reached down, and gave the same man—this 14-year-old boy at the time— a sack of flour. And the sack of flour said Farina degli Stati Uniti, which in Italian means Flour from the United States.
We heard this story, and this old American soldier was traveling with his wife up the Italian peninsula, following the same route that he’d taken with his soldiers 50 years earlier, and he heard my dad was teaching this course, comes in, and starts talking to the students about this experience. And he starts talking about this firefight in this small town where we lived, and slowly we realize that it’s the same firefight my landlord had been talking about for years.
We get these two old men together, and now this was 50 years after the firefight, and after about five or ten minutes of conversation, it dawns on them that this soldier was the same soldier who 50 years before had jumped off his tank and given the sack of flour to my landlord. And these two old men just burst into tears.
My landlord takes him back into his bedroom. Like every Italian farmstead, there’s a picture of the pope, there’s a crucifix, and right between the two was this old sack of flour, that said Farina degli Stati Uniti. He points up to this sack of flower, and he says to this old soldier, “You know, for fifty years, that sack of flour has been America to me.”
When you are around these stories, and around these experiences that mean so much to so many people, and become the ambassador, you come to recognize what our greatest strengths are in this country. Taking that forward, the work that I did in international relations, the work that I’ve done at the United Nations, the willingness to recognize that our greatest strengths come not just from our military might, which is the strongest in the world, of course, but also from those values that we carry, those values that endure, those values that mean giving a sack of flour to this 14-year-old boy, and how can transform his life, and how that can transform their view of America and the world.
Those values that we carry, and that recognition of those values and what they can mean to people overseas, I think is something that we need to return to.
And it troubles me deeply that we now have the lowest standing in world opinion in a generation. That for us to get back to not only those strengths in terms of diplomatic and economic strengths, but those strengths in values that have made us out strongest and made us our most secure throughout our history.
Those are the values that I carry with me. So it’s not just from an educational standpoint of having studied international diplomacy, having, again, worked at the United Nations.
But it’s also understanding what it means in the lives of real individuals that receive a sack of flour.
JAELITHE: What steps would you recommend the next President take to rebuild our global reputation and our relationships with our allies?
SCOTT KLEEB: A recognition that our strength comes not just from our military and economic might, but also from our values and our principles that we stand on, and those things that we choose to lead on.
First and foremost, the next president should take a very lengthy trip to all of our allies and reassure them that we have turned the page in this country. That our approach of going it alone without regard to wanting to have people standing next to us, wanting to have the help of our allies, wanting to have their assurances that they will be with us, and that we will work together to build a world that is safer and freer, and more in line with those things, whether it’s human rights, labor rights, environmental standards, those things that we want partners in. Partners make us stronger. We need partners.
The president should take a very lengthy trip around the world to our major allies, and also to our burgeoning allies, to make this point, that we have turned the page, that the era of go-it-alone diplomacy is over.
Other things that we could do is, work on a couple of areas that we have to have allies on. To combat climate change, for instance, no one country can do it alone. We can lead in the effort to redouble our investments in alternative energies, to redouble our investments in efficiency standards. We can actually lead—we can become a global player in this new challenge that faces not just our country, but faces the entire world.
Our desire to face terrorism, to face fundamentalism, to face radicalism—we can’t do this anymore—we have got to have the aid and assistance of allies. We’ve got to have people who are going to fight this with us. We can in fact build the world that each of us wants, but we’re going to have to work together to do it.
We can actually lead the world [. . .] as we did when we set up the United Nations—and we were a leader in the effort to set up the United Stations, an organization that has dedicated itself to alleviating poverty, to alleviating misery, to working for those freedoms that stand within the United Nations Declaration of Basic Human Rights. We set up this standard, and we can actually lead other countries, but it’s going to have to take a willingness and a recognition on the part of the next president to go to other countries, and let them know that we are stronger when we work together than when we work alone, and that we are ready to be a part of the world community again.
JAELITHE: I am curious, then, what you think regarding this controversy, that has been getting a lot of press in the presidential primary campaign, about whether or not to speak to our enemies as well as our allies? Do you have an opinion on that you'd be willing to share?
SCOTT KLEEB: Throughout the history of the Cold War, we always, especially during the Cuban Missile crisis, we kept an open dialogue with the Soviet Union. After the beginning of the Sino-Soviet split in 1969, we kept an open dialogue, whether through back channels or otherwise, we kept an open dialogue with China.
We have worked with countries—we have always spoken with people who agree with us and people who don’t agree with us. And speaking with people who don’t agree with us does not mean that we are somehow weakening our position at all
And when we spoke to the Soviet Union, we were talking about cultural exchanges. We were talking about weapons reductions. We were talking about non-proliferation treaties. We were talking about finding a way to make this world safer in the interests of all people. We can actually lead again in this effort, and it doesn’t make us weaker.
There are going to be times when speaking is not enough. But it doesn’t mean that we close the door on diplomacy. Diplomacy has been critical in forming the modern world, which America has been a leader in since the Second World War, and it’s critical to our national security.
You can’t always just talk with people who agree with you, or like you.
Stay tuned for Part Two of the MOMocrats interview with Senate hopeful Scott Kleeb tomorrow!
Audio clips from the MOMocrats interview with Scott Kleeb coming soon!
When Jaelithe isn't discussing international diplomacy with candidates for the United States Senate for MOMocrats, she writes about negotiating with a four-year-old at her personal blog, The State of Discontent.
Thank you for this interview! I'm not completely done reading it yet but I'm looking forward to reading the whole thing as well as part two tomorrow. I'm a Nebraska resident and I'm very impressed with Mr. Kleeb's comments.
Posted by: April | June 03, 2008 at 07:09 AM
The sack of flour story brought tears to my eyes. I think that's exactly the illustration of what it means to "restore America's moral authority" in the world. To be thought of as helping and not hurting other countries, to be the liberator and not the conqueror...what happened to those values?
Thank you for sharing your story with the MOMocrats. Good luck with the campaign.
Posted by: Glennia | June 03, 2008 at 08:00 AM
Oof. That story about the sack of flour really got to me. I lived in Germany as a teenager, also in a small German village a ways away from the base, and experienced many of the same things from those old enough to remember WWII. It is just tragic that we've wasted, completely wasted, so much good will towards the U.S.
I'm so thrilled to hear Scott Kleeb's position on these issues. As a former Nebraskan, the wife to someone who still calls himself a Nebraskan, and with parents and in-laws living in the state, I feel I have a vested interest in who their next Senator is - even if I can no longer vote there.
Go Huskers!
Posted by: Lawyer Mama | June 04, 2008 at 11:54 AM