Democrat Chris Dodd (left) and Republican Sam Brownback (right) with students Amanda Short ’07, president of the College Republicans, and Patrick Healey ’07, president of the College Democrats, at the April 23 event “Catholic Senators and Presidential Candidates: Their Faith and Public Policy,” moderated by Tim Russert.
Story courtesy of the Office of Public Affairs
By Reid Oslin
Staff Writer, The Boston College Chronicle
As US senators and presidential hopefuls Chris Dodd (D–Conn.) and Sam Brownback (R–Kan.) took the Conte Forum stage Monday evening, each candidate stopped to remove his jacket. The nearly 4,000 people in attendance at the debate on issues of faith and public policy figured that this gesture would surely be the prelude to an old–fashioned political free–for–all.
Instead, those attending Boston College’s latest Church in the 21st Century event were treated to a civil and thoughtful discussion in which both candidates and moderator Tim Russert, NBC’s top political analyst, exchanged ideas, views of their Catholic faith and hopes for the future in what may be a welcome glimpse of the possible mellowing electoral climate as America chooses a new president in 2008.
The candidates aired their thoughts on a variety of hot–button issues: the war in Iraq, stem cell research, the death penalty, abortion and gay rights, all standard fare in presidential primary debates. Dodd, a liberal, and Brownback, a conservative, differed on a number of points, but both agreed that their own religious beliefs spur them to work together to find solutions and policies that will unite, rather than continue to divide, the nation.
“People have different views, but the way I have always carried this is that faith informs my decisions,” noted Dodd in his opening statement. “It doesn’t define my decisions but it informs them.” Added Brownback: “I think that we as a society are trying to find our way back into talking about how faith does inform things instead of just dismissing it or saying that we really can’t go there. We are a faith–oriented country, so we should talk about things of faith.”
Like nearly all pre–election discussions, the spotlight turned to the war in Iraq. Although both senators said they voted to support the start of the war in 2002, they differed on a solution to bring the ongoing conflict to a close.
“At this point here, it’s up to the Sunnis and Shiites, the political leadership and the religious leadership, to decide whether or not they want a country,” said Dodd. “There’s not a military big enough or a treasury deep enough to do that for them. If the appetite or desire for that is not there, they have got to make that decision. I am prepared that if they make that decision to finally be supportive in some way of getting that, but in the absence of that, it seems that there needs to be some sense of clarity, some sense of certainty about this.”
Brownback called for a bipartisan effort to find a solution to the Middle East problem. “You cannot conduct a war effort in this country with one party for it and one party against it,” he said. “It doesn’t work.
“Right now, what we are seeing in Washington is both sides just saying, ‘OK, it’s got to be my way,’ with the Democrats emphasizing more on the political and diplomatic and the Republicans more on the military. The answer lies together on this.
“The answer is that you have got to have sort of political solution, but it is not really being aggressively pursued now. You are going to need a long–term military effort. One thing we are learning in a post–Cold War era is that when that you remove big military apparatus off of places, ancient hatreds are still there.”
Both candidates fully agreed on the need for young Americans to serve others in society, a notion that is a cornerstone of Jesuit education.
“One of the things that I think we have walked away from in public life – and in public and private universities as well – is that we are developing the mind but we are not developing the soul,” Brownback said. “Both need to be developed for a well–rounded person. You need a good head and a good soul. I want to see this country rejuvenate our culture, rebuild our families and have another American century based on goodness.”
Dodd, the father of a daughter born two days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks asked, “I wonder what kind of world she will have? This is a collective responsibility. Do we know what our dreams and aspirations and our hopes are? We need to do a lot of things together in this country. My daughter is going to ask you and me someday what we did at the outset of the 21st century to get things right.”
After the forum, Russert told Chronicle that the value of the C21 series goal to illuminate critical issues facing the US Catholic community cannot be overstated. “It gives the opportunity for the Boston College community to come together to listen to people involved in political life talk about how their faith has formed them.
“Sometimes, they have differences of opinion,” Russert said. “But they disagree agreeably. They also demonstrate, I think, an intellectual capacity that they did not come to decisions lightly and I think the more we know each other and understand each other, the easier it will be to find common ground and common purpose and celebrate our faith as one.”
The forum was made possible through the Murray Monti Speaker Series Fund.