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Photo by James V. Carroll |
Award-winning CNN host Lou Dobbs has built an audience of millions by taking stands on issues from illegal immigration to outsourcing the U.S. economy. Forty-five years ago, he stood before a group of Legionnaires in Idaho and discovered he had what it takes to speak his mind.
Lou Dobbs might be described as what happens when you cross a rural southern Idaho upbringing with a Harvard-educated mind for business, economics and outer space. Not the world’s most common combination. But if the Populist Party were to rise again, Dobbs would be their man. That’s not likely to happen. So, for those who believe the 62-year-old CNN co-founder, author and television host belongs in the White House, Web sites like www.loudobbsforpresident.org exist to nudge the unabashed anchor into the political arena. That’s not likely to happen either.
What did happen, however, is that Dobbs received the National Commander’s Public Relations Award at the 48th Annual American Legion Washington Conference on April 2.
“Lou Dobbs is a true American patriot,” American Legion National Commander Marty Conatser said. “His compassion for America’s veterans and support for the U.S. military is clear to the viewers of ‘Lou Dobbs Tonight.’ Lou has been a tireless and true leader in the fight against illegal immigration. America would be better off if lawmakers would heed his common-sense solutions to serious problems that this nation faces.”
His newest book, “Independents Day: Awakening the American Spirit,” was released last November. Two others he penned, “War on the Middle Class,” and “Exporting America,” were New York Times best sellers.
He has millions of loyal viewers and perhaps millions of ardent detractors. But no matter which side of Lou Dobbs one falls, there’s never a doubt where he stands. He recently spoke with The American Legion Magazine.
Q: What kind of effect did a rural western upbringing have on you?
A: I took my wife about 30 years ago back to Rupert, Idaho, to show her where I had grown up. She was very anxious to see where I had been raised. I had told her stories about rafting on the Snake River, fishing and hunting – some of the boyhood things we all did. I showed her around, and driving back East, I asked, “What did you think?”
She said, “Well, hon, I really understand more about you. I understand the code of the West you grew up with.”
I said, “Well, would you like to buy a place out there? A farm?”
She said, “No, I think we should stay right where we are.”
She was pleased to see it, just not so happy to think about going there permanently.
Q: It was in southern Idaho where you had your first connection to The American Legion.
A: My first experience with The American Legion was, I believe, when I was 16 years old. One of my English teachers asked me to join The American Legion speech competition. The discussion was “individual rights and responsibilities.” That was my introduction. I won the state competition in Idaho. So I have always had more than a fond feeling for The American Legion. It’s been a lifelong bond, in fact. That experience was fundamental to my ability to communicate in public. I don’t think I would have had it without.
Whenever I think of The American Legion, I do so for a lot of reasons besides a national character of serving the nation. The American Legion deserves respect on that basis alone. For me, it’s a personal relationship, as well.
Q: Did the experience in The American Legion Oratorical Contest also trigger your interest in constitutional rights?
A: No, but it gave me an opportunity to think more deeply and to express those rights and those responsibilities. It’s been an element of my life throughout my life. I never think about rights or privileges without thinking about responsibilities. It’s something I have tried to inculcate in my children, my wife and I have.
Q: You describe yourself now as an independent. What does that mean in the 21st century?
A: I think there has never been a more important time in our history for Americans to be independent. The problems we are encountering right now in society are not going to be resolved by partisanship. They’ve been created by partisans, by Democrats and Republicans, over the course of the past 30 years, who’ve lost sight of American ideals.
There are fundamentally two ideals in this nation, embodied in our Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. I feel absolutely, profoundly, passionately about those ideals. They are, first, individual liberty and individual freedom. And equality. Equality of rights and equality of opportunity, both educational and economic. Both parties have submerged their concern for those rights and for our citizens behind higher interests. The Democratic Party – for special interests, for group and identity politics. And on the part of the Republican Party, in the representation of corporate interests and multi-national interests, that literally subordinate the individual and the American citizen.
Q: So you think the major parties and the average American have lost contact with each other.
A: There is no such thing as the perfect American, the average American. But there is the American. And he or she is not being represented by either of these political parties. The fundamental tenet of democracy is the rule of the majority. I don’t think we can claim that we have a democracy today in this country because the rule of majority is not occurring in this government, in this system of government, this political process, this political system. I truly believe that the greatest crisis we face is that this government no longer represents the rule of the majority.
Q: You have built a huge following with your coverage of illegal immigration, an issue that neither of the major parties has been clear on. What about your approach to the subject drives audience interest?
A: When I talk about illegal immigration, I’m talking about national sovereignty. I’m talking about respect for our law, respect for our borders, respect for our ports, the security of this nation and the safety of our people.
We have laws. If ever there were a time for law and order, and recognition of the importance of both, it is now. Here we are in a global war on radical Islamist terror. Here we are at the end of three decades of fighting a war on illegal drugs, at the time when Mexico represents the primary source of methamphetamines, cocaine, marijuana and heroin entering this country. Irrespective of the views one has on illegal immigration, there isn’t a single parent in this country who should not be immediately demanding that that border with Mexico be secured, that our ports be secured, so that another generation of young people will not have to deal, at least in part, with the supply of illegal drugs into this country. I think there is special place reserved in hell for those who continue to permit it.
Q: Illegal immigration is a subject you hit over and over again on your show, like an old-school news beat. Others in media don’t do it that way.
A: Lesley Stahl, “60 Minutes,” a year ago, said, “Well, you’re very repetitious in your treatment of these problems.”
I said, “Well, you know, that depends on if you are my critic or my friend. If you’re my critic, I’m repetitious. If you’re my friend, I’m thorough and ongoing with my journalism.”
And I mean to be thorough and I mean to be ongoing, even to the point of being repetitious because these problems don’t go away. I can understand people saying I am being repetitious on illegal immigration if I filed a report on illegal immigration a week ago, and the problem is now solved. But it’s not solved. It’s worse. What am I supposed to do? Ignore that reality? That is a statement of a hidden agenda on the part of those critics who say I am being repetitious. Yes, I am. We’re going to report on it, and we are going to report on it, and we are going to be relentless.
Q: By repeating the same themes, no one seems to wonder about your priorities.
A: No. I want the audience to know, transparently, what the score is and where I am coming from.
Q: You broke into prime-time national television journalism on the ground floor at CNN. What was that like?
A: I turned down a job at CNN three times before they convinced me to join. I joined at the end of February 1980. My first job was to put on the first nightly business newscast on television. We did. It was called “Moneyline.” It was terrific. We had more fun … it received great attention.
Q: Can you describe CNN’s ascension among world media?
A: We covered every major event since 1980. The Gulf War was the turning point in the standing of the network. More than a billion people were watching CNN and not one of the other networks. It was striking. That’s when CNN came of age.
Q: When “Moneyline” first aired, the U.S. economy was at a very different juncture than it is now.
A: It was the very outset of the bull market after the disastrous decade of stagflation and recession from the 1970s. As we begin the 1980s, Ronald Reagan is elected. We begin the great bull market, and three decades of incredible prosperity following.
Q: The average American became more deeply involved and interested in the economy from that point forward.
A: Absolutely. The 1980s and 1990s were unparalleled. The longest peacetime period of economic expansion in our country’s history. It was a time of real prosperity, prosperity that was shared fully throughout the economy.
Q: In October 1987, however, the fragility of a stock-driven economy became glaringly apparent. You received the prestigious Peabody Award for your coverage of Black Monday. Amid all the growth and prosperity of the decade, did you see it coming?
A: In the narrow horizon, yes. I started seeing markets becoming increasingly volatile. Alan Greenspan had joined the Fed in August of that year. The markets were more volatile than I’d ever seen them. I positioned live trucks on Wall Street on that Black Monday, because I had seen what was coming the previous week.
Q: The past year in the U.S. stock market also has been defined by volatility, too. Any parallels to 1987?
A: One hates to suggest a parallel. There is no question we are seeing volatility. It’s not a volatility I would say augers for an immediate stock-market crash. It does, however, certainly suggest strongly that we should be very, very cautious.
Q: How would you describe the U.S. economy right now, and what is responsible for its condition?
A: We are looking at a major crisis on the part of our financial institutions, Wall Street, the credit markets. When the fifth largest investment bank has to be bailed out by the Federal Reserve, no one needs a large signpost saying “economic crisis.” It’s clear. It’s unavoidable. When we have a million people, as we do now, facing foreclosure over the next four months, we have a crisis. And we have a government that is not being responsive. This is not an issue of being a Democrat or Republican, conservative or liberal. These are the facts. Our government right now is dysfunctional. It is not responding. We have a lack of leadership in responding to these crises, and we need, desperately, leadership in terms of economic policy and the direction this country is headed. It’s absent, and it’s intolerable.
Q: Are we in a recession now?
A: Absolutely.
Q: Are we heading into something bigger?
A: If we do not honestly and vigorously deal with the crisis in front of us, yes. We could be heading for something much worse.
Q: How much of that do you attribute that to the outsourcing of the American economy to overseas labor?
A: Well, we have lost over 3 million manufacturing jobs in the last five years. We have had 3 million jobs outsourced to cheap foreign labor markets – middle-class jobs. We have watched wages stagnate. The working man and woman in this country, trying to provide for their families, face inordinate challenges. Higher energy costs. Higher tuition costs. A public-education system that literally is failing a generation of Americans. A work environment where one does not have job security. That is not the social contract that made this a great country. We’ve got to stop the business practices that have eroded the contract between worker and employer.
Q: Today’s generation of workers has watched the gradual extinction of defined pension programs. As they are replaced by 401(k)s and stock investments, is the average American worker becoming too wedded to corporate America?
A: There is no question that the contract between the employee and employer in corporate America is changing rapidly. There is no longer an allegiance to that worker on the part of corporate America. In the late ‘80s and 1990s, we heard CEOs talking about the empowerment of the employee, the importance of the employee – his or her talent to that corporation, innovation. We now hear about their efficiency, their productivity, their competitiveness – all of which are code words for “How cheap can that labor be?”
We are caught, unquestionably, in a downturn in wages, a hollowing of the country in terms of manufacturing base and in terms of the defense. What would we do if we needed to convert industrial production to the manufacture of tanks, aircraft, vehicles and weaponry? We would be utterly, utterly dependent on other nations.
Q: How much has illegal immigration contributed to the country’s economic condition?
A: Illegal employers are bringing in illegal employees. That is, of course, illegal immigration. It’s a violation of our border security. It’s a violation of our identity-theft laws. It’s a violation of the use of Social Security identification. Those who talk about amnesty don’t realize the number of laws that are broken by an illegal alien in this country. It is not simply entering through one of our ports or crossing one of our borders and then overstaying a visa. Then, there is the fraudulent identification, the fraudulent Social Security. It goes on and on. It is mind-boggling to me that we continue to permit these employers to hire illegal aliens.
George Morehouse at Harvard University did a study three or four years ago estimating that excess immigration into this country is costing American workers $200 billion a year in suppressed wages. That’s a lot of money. Then you have overcrowding of schools, particularly in our border states, the cost of health care, welfare, all sorts of social benefits, including education. The cost is incalculable to American society and to the American taxpayer. And these illegal employers are driving all of these benefits without sharing in the cost.
Q: How do we find our way out?
A: It’s very simple. Nothing complicated about it. We have a 2,000-mile border with Mexico. Sixty-five percent of illegal aliens in this country are from Mexico. They are, as I said, bringing in the preponderance of heroin, marijuana, methamphetamines and cocaine into this country. We have to stop the flow of illegal drugs across our southern border. There is no man or woman of conscience who would not want this border closed immediately. Secure the border. That’s the first thing that has to be done.
And we are faced with the prospect, in the Global War on Terror, of dirty bombs, of biochemical warfare. Why in the world are we now, almost seven years after Sept. 11, still not inspecting 95 percent of the cargo entering our ports? It’s inexcusable.
Q: A lot of people may not realize that astronomy is one of your big interests. You launched the Web site www.space.com and take a great deal of interest in NASA. Why?
A: From the time I was a kid on the plains of southern Idaho, I have been fascinated by rocketry, fascinated by astronomy. I was an amateur astronomer – that’s probably too strong a word for the first part of my life because I could not afford a very fancy telescope – but I have always been fascinated by it.
Young folks today don’t realize what a big deal the space program was. When President Kennedy said we’re going to the moon by the end of the decade, that was pretty compelling stuff. Every one of those astronauts was a national hero. For me, they still are. The Apollo Program, Gemini or Mercury, or whichever the program, it was a magnificent time, a wonderful time in the national character, to see what this nation could do.
That’s why I find it so difficult to understand why so many people accept our limits as a nation, rather than talk about our potential, and the opportunities that we should be fulfilling.
Interview by Jeff Stoffer
Watch the video: Lou Dobbs defends his flag pin
