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Friday, Feb. 29, 2008

National Journal's Ronald Brownstein sat down with Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, for the Feb. 29 edition of "National Journal On Air." This is a transcript of their conversation. Audio of the full show is also available.

Brown: I think it's very close, but I have no way of knowing. As I travel the state, I hear more than anything excitement about both of them. I know there will be a huge turnout -- I've never seen anything like this in a primary in my state, and I think this surge in interest will continue into November.

Brown: I don't know -- it's awfully hard to tell from this because we don't have that many highly contested primaries. I think what you are seeing in Ohio now -- and I don't know how this is going to come out with more educated voters and less educated voters, and more blue-collar workers and other kinds of jobs -- but I think what we have seen is that both candidates are now speaking to the middle class. Both candidates are speaking very much to wanting 180-degree different policy on trade, on alternative energy, on manufacturing. That will contrast so sharply in the fall with John McCain, who really is running, for all intents and purposes, for a third Bush term.

Brown: The belief about the state is that northeast is industrial and the rest of the state is a little different from that. But there are industrial pockets all over the state, and that's really why the state is hurting -- because there are a lot of small towns that typically don't get the attention either from candidates or from the national media. There are a lot of small towns of 20-, 50-, 75,000 that have a factory or two or three that has shut down. Those are voters that both of these candidates are appealing to -- their messages are both strong.

I was just thrilled at the debate to hear both of them, I believe for the first time, say that they would renegotiate NAFTA. That is music to the ears of a lot of Ohioans who understand that globalization and trade have, in part, set them back.

Brown: I don't think it will be a question of walking away. Something like 80 to 85 percent of Mexico's exports come to the United States. If you are in business and you have a customer that is that important, you don't walk away when the customer is unhappy. I think that's a bit of a straw man when I hear commentators or questioners suggest that. I'm sure there will be real negotiations among the three countries.

But more than that, NAFTA is a symbol to Ohioans, and I think really in this campaign, of trade policy generally. I don't think anybody in Ohio thinks all of our problems are due to NAFTA or that even all of them are due to trade. But a significant part of our problem in Ohio with our loss of 200,000 manufacturing jobs, is a government who has betrayed them, and a Bush Administration that has sold out the middle class by allowing the drug companies to write Medicare law, and allowing the oil companies to dictate energy policy and allowing these corporations that outsource jobs get their way too often in Congress and in the White House. So the whole NAFTA question is also about trade with China and general globalization overall. Nobody is saying walk away from it, we're saying we want trade, we want more trade. We just want it under a very different set of rules.

Brown: No. There's a very big difference between renegotiating NAFTA and walking away from a treaty that has contributed to stability and peace around the world. What we should have done with NAFTA to begin with is to put in the core of the agreement labor standards, environmental, food, safety standards that not just help Americans, they help Mexicans.

In these trade agreements, the whole point of them is to lift up living standards of the developing world so that Mexicans don't just make products for us, they buy some of the products that people in the United States make. That will increase trade, it will raise the standard of living. It will mean food products in Mexico that they consume and export to the United States are safer. It means, ultimately, that toys the Chinese send to the United States will be safer. It may be in the Chinese Communist party's interest to send unsafe toys to the United States. It may be in American companies' interest if they can get away with it, but it's not in the interest of the people of China, it's not in the interest of the workers who are making those products, and it's not in the interest of our kids and our families that have these products in our homes.

Brown: People in Ohio, especially small-town Ohio -- and I grew up in one of them -- a town of 50,000 that had seven or eight major companies now has two or three or four. Voters in Ohio voted for me in 2006 and for Governor [Ted] Strickland after voting in 2004 for George Bush because they felt a real betrayal. As I said, they let drug companies write the Medicare law, insurance companies write health care legislation, these big companies that outsource jobs writing trade agreements and they felt that sense of betrayal.

And in these small counties, when people think they might have in 2004 voted for George Bush because of gay marriage or some social issue, the fact is when you talk to people anywhere in Ohio -- whether it is inner-city, whether it's suburb, whether it's small town, whether it's rural -- they have the same concerns about their kids going to school, and their health care and their wages. They have an anxiety that you can talk to them about, and reassure them that if we change our economic policy you can have a more prosperous, better life, and your kids are more likely to stay in the state, and we can really turn our state around.

Brown: What a shock, Ron, that I'm going to answer the way I am. No, one of the reasons I didn't endorse is because it gets me on shows like this that I can talk about what issues matter to middle-class Ohioans and working Ohioans. I like both of these candidates personally. I like what they stand for. I am thrilled by the way they are talking in Ohio, and I want to continue to help them and work with them on these issues to build the middle class in my state.

Brown: President Clinton has said she has to win Ohio. But that's her judgment, what she does after Tuesday. I think it will be very close; I hear it will be very close in Texas. We will see.

Brown: Ron, thank you very much.

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