<snip>
Q: If Democrats don't choose you to lead them, will you run as an independent?
A: No, I have no interest in doing that.
Q: Your critics say you spend too much time focusing on the impossible at the expense of getting things done. A Cabinet-level
department of peace comes to mind. How do you respond?
A: I wonder what the Founders heard a couple of hundred years ago when they were thinking about creating a new America.
We're forgetting the kinds of dreams that help found a nation. I don't think there's anything impractical about advocating a full
economy, about advocating that everyone in this country have health care, about advocating that every young person be entitled to
go to public college or university tuition-free, about advocating that young families have a chance to send their children to a
five-day-a-week day-care program for free. It can be paid for. The question is what our priorities are. If our priorities are war, then
we don't have resources for the things that need to be done. I come from the inner city; I lived in a car when I was a kid. No one
can tell me that you can't achieve something with the resources of this country. But as long as we give tax cuts to people in the top
bracket, as long as we give $87 billion — and more — for a war, as long as we have a Pentagon budget that is $400 billion, totally
driven by fear, then you can say that all of this is impossible. But it isn't a question of whether someone's a dreamer or not. The
question is: Is someone ready to address the practical aspirations of people? Everything I talk about is practical. I can't think of
anything more impractical than this war. I can't think of anything more impractical than continuing the occupation of Iraq. I can't think
of anything more impractical than a draft. What to me is practical is nuclear abolition, working cooperatively with the world
community.
So I consider myself the most practical politician in the whole contest. Am I a dreamer? You bet I am. But my dreams are informed
by the reality of our conditions, which can be changed through the human heart and the human spirit.
Q: You say you're a pragmatist, even as you talk of your dream for world peace. As a pragmatist, how would you get North Korea
to give up nuclear weapons? And how would you deal with India and Pakistan?
<snip>
full op/ed heredp
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