Democrats Spar on War, Health
Presidential Candidates Vie to Show Who's Best Choice to Beat Bush

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 4, 2003; Page A04

COLUMBIA, S.C., May 3 -- The Democratic presidential candidates tangled here tonight over Iraq and who can best keep the country safe, and they differed sharply over how to provide health care to all Americans in a lively debate that helped kick off the next phase of their battle to become the party's challenger to President Bush in 2004.

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) pointedly criticized former Vermont governor Howard Dean for opposing the war in Iraq and attacked Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) for seeming to be ambivalent about supporting Bush on the war. "No Democrat will be elected president in 2004 who is not strong on defense, and this war was a test of that strength," he said.

Kerry disagreed, saying that his quarrel was over whether Bush had exhausted all other options for disarming Iraqi President Saddam Hussein before going to war. But he said he supported that objective. "There's no ambivalence," he said.

Dean said Bush had waged "the wrong war at the wrong time" and said the United States could face new threats if Iraq falls into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists. But he said he was "delighted to see Saddam Hussein gone," a stronger declaration than he has made previously.

The candidates repeatedly tried to offer criticisms of the president, especially on the economy, attacking Bush's tax cuts as fiscally irresponsible and a failure in helping the economy create new jobs. They also attacked his record on civil liberties, arguing that in the name of the war on terrorism, they were jeopardizing basic American values. But they spent much of the evening arguing with one another over policy and who is the most electable.

Democrats face a steep climb as they grapple with one another for the nomination. At this early stage of the presidential race, Bush holds a commanding lead over several of his best-known potential Democratic rivals, and Americans see no clear leader of the opposition party, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News Poll.

Tonight's 90-minute debate was held on the campus of the University of South Carolina and was moderated by ABC News's George Stephanopoulos. Other participants were: Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), Sen. Bob Graham (Fla.), Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (Mo.), former Illinois senator Carol Moseley Braun, Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (Ohio) and community activist Al Sharpton.

The debate culminated a weekend of intensive political activity in a state likely to play an influential role determining the party's nominee. Its Feb. 3 primary will come a week after the New Hampshire primary and two weeks after the Iowa caucuses. It will be the first southern state to vote and the first with a substantial African American population to register its judgment on the candidates.

Kerry and Dean carried on a fight that has been raging for days over a comment by Dean suggesting that the United States may not always have military supremacy. Kerry called it an "extraordinary" statement and said that anyone preparing for the day when the United States is not the strongest military in the world "is preparing for serious problems."

Dean, whose rise in the polls in New Hampshire directly threatens Kerry, said his statement had been misunderstood and that he had no intention of doing anything to weaken U.S. military strength. "No commander in chief would ever -- and I am no exception -- willingly allow our military to shrink," he said. But he complained that Kerry had questioned his credentials through a spokesman rather than doing it directly.

Kerry also confronted Dean over a published statement questioning the Massachusetts senator's courage on gay rights and health care issues. Noting his combat service in Vietnam, Kerry said, "I don't need any lectures on courage from Governor Dean."

Dean defused that moment by saying that he had been misquoted and that he never questioned Kerry's record on gay rights.

At one point Edwards came to the defense of both men, saying either would be a better president than Bush, but he said the Democrats should not focus on the war but on the postwar agenda for Iraq and to repair damage done by Bush's diplomacy. "We have an opportunity to rehabilitate relationships that have been severely damaged," he said.

As the candidates went at each other, Sharpton offered a word of caution. "We should not have the bottom line tonight be that George Bush won because we were taking cheap shots at one another," he said.

Health care also brought out clear differences among the Democrats as the candidates critiqued a plan for universal health care recently proposed by Gephardt. The plan calls for federal tax credits for companies to cover 60 percent of the cost of health care for their employees, with other measures aimed at Americans without health care who are not in the workforce.

The plan would cost more than $210 billion in the first year and grow rapidly in subsequent years. Gephardt said he would pay for the plan be repealing all of Bush's tax cuts.

Edwards sharply attacked the plan as a giveaway to corporate America that would take money "out of the pockets of working families." Claiming that working people have been hurt by the "greed and the corporate culture that exists," he said Gephardt's plan "feels like saying, 'You're in good hands with Enron.' "

Gephardt called Edwards "wrong on my plan" and disputed that it represented a tax increase on working families. "This is not helping corporations; this is helping corporations give people the thing they most need, which is health care."

Kucinich said Gephardt did not go far enough and that it was time to get private insurers out of the business of health care and instead provide "guaranteed, single-payer universal health care" funded by the federal government.

Lieberman jumped in to attack Gephardt's plan as one that would take the country back to the days of big government. "We're not going to solve these problems with the kind of big-spending Democratic ideas of the past," he said.

Dean long has championed universal health care, and he disputed Edwards's characterization of the Gephardt plan, but criticized Gephardt, saying he knew ways to insure nearly all Americans at far lower cost, using programs he implemented in Vermont. "It's affordable and it will pass," he said.

Braun attacked Bush for what she said was an assault on civil liberties. "I think we have a crisis in America when it comes to civil liberties," she said.

Lieberman and Graham appealed to their fellow Democrats by arguing that they were most electable. Lieberman said he could go toe-to-toe with Bush on areas of the president's strength -- defense and moral values -- and beat the president "where he is weak, the economy and his right-wing agenda." Then to laughter he added, "I know I can beat George Bush. Why? Because Al Gore and I already did it," a reference to the fact that the Democrats won more popular votes than Bush in 2000.

Graham cited his record in Florida as both a senator and a governor and said, "I represent the electable wing of the Democratic Party."

The new Post-ABC poll showed that Democrats start the 2004 race at a clear disadvantage. Matched against Lieberman, Gephardt and Kerry, Bush is favored by about 3 in 5 Americans, while the three Democrats were supported by one-third or fewer.

On a question that matched Bush against a generic Democratic opponent, the picture was slightly brighter for the Democrats. Bush still leads but by the far smaller margin of 53 percent to 40 percent.

Right now, the Democrats do not have a recognized leader. More than half of those surveyed -- 55 percent -- either said "no one" or had no opinion when asked who they thought of as the party's leader. Even Democrats had trouble agreeing on their leader, with 56 percent of them saying "no one" or offering no opinion.

Asked whom they would vote for in a Democratic presidential primary today, 29 percent cited Lieberman. Gephardt was second with 19 percent, and Kerry was third at 14 percent. Braun was at 6 percent, largely on the strength of her support among African American voters, while Edwards was at 4 percent. Graham, Sharpton and Dean were at 3 percent, and Kucinich was at 2 percent. Fourteen percent said they had no opinion.

Tonight's debate will air on C-SPAN at three different times Sunday -- 1 p.m., 6:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. -- and also will be shown at 12:30 a.m. Monday. ABC's "This Week" program will show extended excerpts Sunday morning.