Quotes of the Day

Sen. Joe Biden, the senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, has become one of his party’s gurus on foreign policy and a key adviser to John Kerry. Biden sat down with TIME editors and correspondents this week for some blunt talk on Kerry, George Bush and foreign policy. Excerpts from that interview:

On his role in advising Kerry on foreign policy:

I’ve talked to John as much as anybody about foreign policy and made recommendations when asked. Most of what I’ve been doing for John over the last year has been as the crises of the day erupts. John would usually call sometime between 11 and 12:30 at night as he got off the trail and say, ‘How would you do this, how would handle this?’ Not that he needed my input in terms of what position he should take, but more, ‘How’s it playing, what do you think?’ And occasionally, while making up his mind particularly about Iraq and Afghanistan and dealing with the Europeans he’d want to know what should he do. So I put all my cards on the table.

“There’s a group of about five or six people, who occasionally get on an extended conference call on a specific subject with John. They’ve included [former Secretary of State Madeleine] Albright, [former U.N. Ambassador Richard] Holbrooke and [former Joint Chiefs Chairman John] Shalikashvili.”

What Kerry should say about Iraq Thursday night to distinguish himself from Bush:

“I don’t think he should try to do it on Thursday night, but that’s me. Keep in mind I didn’t make it through [the] Iowa [Democratic caucuses as a presidential candidate] so you’ll know how much judgment I have about what to do about these things. I think he should basically level with the American people and say, ‘Look, I don’t know what I’m going to inherit on Jan. 20. And I’m going to come back here and I’m going to have to ask you some very difficult things.’ He should look out to the camera and say to the American people, ‘I’m going to have to ask for some real sacrifice. I may very well come back here and have to tell you I’m going to spend another $100 billion in Iraq. I’m going to keep troops in Iraq. I don’t know what the circumstances I’ll inherit will be, but I know it will not be easy — any more than the $600 billion deficit I’m about to inherit. I’m going to have ask for sacrifice of the country and sacrifice of our allies.’ And I’d say to our allies, ‘By the way, you had an excuse not to do something. Get over it. It’s in your interest to move on.’

“Quite frankly, what is he going to inherit? It may very well be that we get there and Iraq has become Lebanon. And there’s no way by Jan. 20 to retrieve it. He may have to make terrible decisions and say, ‘Look this is not redeemable.’ Conversely, he may have to make a decision and say, ‘I’m going to really have to bite the bullet and I’m going to have to actually put in another 25,000 or 30,000 troops and I’m going to have to call up the reserves across the board. I’m going to have to make some real decision to try to clamp this down.’”

On an exit strategy for Iraq:

“Our exit strategy is actually having an Iraqi army and an Iraqi police force that can maintain security. That’s a minimum one-year to two-year deal. This is not money morning quarterbacking. There was nothing in the administration plan to train Iraqi troops or Iraqi police… [Now] this is like that bad baseball joke. George is a center fielder who made five errors in two innings. The coach took him out and put in Joe. Joe goes in and the first routine fly ball hits Joe’s glove and he drops it. The coach goes nuts and say, ‘Joe, out of there.’ As Joe crosses the third base line the coach grabs him by the lapel and says, ‘What’s the matter with you?’ And Joe looks at the coach and says, ‘Coach, George screwed up center field so badly no one can play it.’ That’s what’s happened [in Iraq]. That’s why no one in Europe is in on the deal now [to help reconstruct Iraq].”

On Bush’s performance after 9/11:

“Bush is going to be punished by history for the squandering of the opportunities he had, not the mistakes he’s made. Hell, Al Gore would have made a boatload of them. I would have made them. Kerry would have made them. It was a tough position Bush was in. But he squandered the opportunity to do something to really make it clear this wasn’t a zero sum game when it came to nation states, and squandered the opportunity to be able do some real serious business in this country. Imagine if Franklin Roosevelt had been president. Imagine if Ronald Reagan had been president, for that matter. I could hear them saying, ‘I’m going to ask now, as we fight this menace that we have, we are going to have to unite the country. And I’m going to call for a program of national service for all our young people. And with the energy crisis you’re going to have to make some real sacrifices. I’m going to ask each of you to do the following, and it’s going to be painful.’”

On public confidence in Bush and his national security advisers:

“The one thing that kept [Bush] up…was that he had very good people around him. That was the essence of the reason why those who voted for him were able to vote for him. He’s like all wealthy guys who are nice guys. He buys the best help he can buy…And you all wrote that now the grownups are back. Well, guess what, they don’t like the grownups. They’d rather have the kids. They don’t like Cheney. They don’t like Rumsfeld. And they’re really disappointed in Powell. They love him but they’re disappointed in Powell.”

• DOUGLAS WALLER/Boston
• The senator talks to TIME about Kerry, Bush and foreign policy