Chris Dodd for President

Experience. Achievement. Respect. Likability. These are all traits commonly considered requisites to winning the U.S. presidency. They are also terms commonly used to describe Senator Christopher Dodd.

Yet the Connecticut Democrat, who's seeking his party's presidential nomination, remains mired in the low single digits in national polls and in the critical early contests. Media pundits and pollsters say it's a three-way race: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards.

That says something about both this particular contest, with its unusual number of political heavyweights, and the presidential-selection process in general, which too often ignores the crucial question of qualifications for the office.

Dodd, 63, says he is unfazed by his lowly status in the polls: "This race is still very open and a lot can happen." He says campaigning this year has been "tremendously uplifting for me to see how, despite our problems, optimistic Americans are, how serious they are, and how much faith they have in the system."

More than Iraq or any other major issue, he says, there is a central question on voters' minds: "Are you listening to them?"

"He is very effective, with a great temperament for public office, a willingness to listen to competing points of view, yet a strong advocate for his principles," said the former Senate leader George Mitchell, a Democrat who served with Dodd for 14 years. "I never heard any senator say anything negative about Chris Dodd; in itself, that's striking."

Some political heavyweights, like Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, have held off entreaties for support from the front-runners, mainly because of their regard for Dodd. . . .

Democratic presidential candidate Chris Dodd expressed his hope Friday for talented people to join the military, an issue that arose after someone asked him why the military offered recruiting bonuses.

The Connecticut senator said it has become increasingly difficult for the military to retain soldiers, noting it is difficult for families.

"Families can't take it any longer," he said. "I want to see talented people want to make that a career choice. I don't want dumb, ignorant people who are less qualified joining the military."

Dodd said he was bothered by the perception that volunteers who sign up for the military are not "terribly bright or talented."

"We need to be as a nation here respecting those who do it and encouraging talented people and having leadership that won't send them to war as a choice, but will be there to do things out of necessity."

Dodd said that as president, he would begin redeploying troops from Iraq immediately. . . .

When Senator Christopher J. Dodd finished speaking at the Iowa State Fair this afternoon, he did something that is quite ordinary for presidential candidates here. He signed autographs. He posed for a few pictures. Then, he took questions from an Australian broadcaster.
It’s not only the presidential hopefuls descending upon Iowa. A contingent of foreign correspondents are here, too, questioning the Democrats and Republicans and capturing the spectacle of a presidential campaign.
Mr. Dodd and his rivals spend so much time in Iowa, of course, to meet the voters who will help open the 2008 presidential nominating contest early next year. Their conduit to those voters is the well-established corps of Iowa political reporters. And barely a day goes by when a candidate – or several – don’t make themselves available for interviews.

Today, standing amidst the Iowa pack, was John Barron, who is working on a documentary of the campaign. The old adage of all press is good press is applicable here.

Mr. Barron opened the questioning with a standard: Why are you running?
“Frankly, I don’t like the way I see my country headed,” replied Mr. Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, who ticked through his list of accomplishments and credentials. “I know how to do this. I think the country is ready for experienced leadership and proven success. They are tired of on-the-job training.”
Then, Mr. Barron said: “You’re running against some big names, though, how are you going to beat them?”
“People in Iowa aren’t impressed by names,” Mr. Dodd said. “They want to know what you stand for, what you believe in and if you get elected, what you’re going to do. The fact that you have a big name or a lot of money, that does not overly impress people in this state.” . . .

By Senator Christopher J. Dodd

In the 1980s I travelled many times to Nicaragua, where I met President Daniel Ortega. At the height of the cold war, I was subject to criticism in some quarters for meeting a leader with ties to the Soviets. But my goal wasn’t to become friends with the Sandinista president, it was to press him to renounce violence as a political tool and allow the people of Nicaragua to choose their next leader.
Despite opposition from the Reagan administration, Congress voted to restrict US funding of the Contra rebel forces and Mr Ortega later agreed to elections. In 1990 Violeta Cha¬morro won and Mr Ortega respected the results by stepping down. As a result, Nicaragua today has an imperfect demo¬cracy but a democracy nonetheless.
At the recent CNN/YouTube Democratic presidential debate, we were all asked whether, as president, we would meet leaders of Syria, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and North Korea without preconditions. With American security at stake and our reputation in the world in tatters, it was a chance for us to demonstrate how we might use diplomacy to help America lead on the global stage in the 21st century.
But rather than using this opportunity to showcase to the country their diplomatic bona fides, two candidates – senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton – have chosen to squabble and make irresponsible statements.
To be sure, there was little disagreement on the stage about the Bush administration’s diplomatic failures. In six years, Mr Bush and Dick Cheney have weakened America by refusing to meet representatives of certain nations, irrespective of their importance to US interests and security.
However, we were not asked whether as president we would try to correct the failed Bush-Cheney course – how could we not? Rather, we were asked how we would use our experience and judgment to plot a new course.
John F. Kennedy famously said that we should never negotiate out of fear, but never fear to negotiate. This was something his one-time rival, Richard Nixon, understood, when he went to China and met Mao Zedong. Reagan also understood this, calling the Soviet Union the “Evil Empire” in one breath and meeting Mikhail Gorbachev in the next. Theirs was a generation that gave us the Marshall plan, Nato, arms control agreements and the UN – institutions that helped ensure 60 years of relative peace and security.
Our leaders created systems and structures for the postwar world because the world’s problems could not have been tackled without inter¬national co-operation and US leadership. This international architecture strengthened America’s global leadership and enhanced US security.
This administration, on the other hand, is walking away from those institutions, treating diplomacy as if it were a gift to our enemies.
But with due respect to senators Clinton and Obama, on this question they are not only wrong to turn this into a political debate; they are also wrong on the substance. The notion that America should treat these five countries the same is naive at best, irresponsible at worst.
Meeting Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad would be a mistake; no leader who denies the Holocaust ever took place and actively calls for the destruction of Israel should be rewarded with a face-to-face meeting with a US president – although in a Dodd administration this would not preclude American diplomats from meeting other high level Iran¬ian officials.
In contrast to Iran, I would be open to meeting other difficult leaders. Indeed, I have already met Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez as a US senator on the foreign relations committee. I have also met Bashar al-Assad, because engaging with him was – and is – in America’s interest.
What is not in America’s interest is letting the actions of bad actors fester. For all its flaws, Syria should play an important role in stabilising Iraq, and a constructive role in achieving a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians. Syria can also enhance Israel’s security by applying pressure on Hamas and Hezbollah while ceasing interference in the political life of Lebanon. Likewise, by engaging with Mr Chávez in Venezuela – to whom we are somehow losing a PR war – we can re-establish US leadership in our own hemisphere and shine a light on the importance of upholding democratic institutions and practices in his country. And while no one likes Kim Jong-il, if we can de¬nuclearise the Korean peninsula by engaging with him, we should.
Responsible leadership engages with the world. It does not needlessly provoke nuclear powers by declaring in favour of specific military actions, as Senator Obama did recently.
The next president must understand that diplomacy is essential to repairing our nation’s fractured world relationships. He or she must recognise that the choice between coddling tyrannical leaders or going to war with them is a false choice when the US is no longer acting alone. When the US is once again a leading, strong moral voice in the world, it will be the terrorists and the tyrants who are isolated, not the US. And if my colleagues would stop scoring political points in the media for a moment to recognise that, they would probably realise that that is one point on which we all agree.

Standing on the front stoop of Joe and Sarah Pace's Pleasant View Drive home while his young daughter Christina hugged his leg, Sen. Chris Dodd told a crowd of 40 people why he decided to run for president.
Dodd, a longtime Democratic senator from Connecticut, told the crowd of his daughter's birth just two days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"I'm standing before you because of this young lady and her sister, who's 2 1/2, wondering what kind of world we're going to leave them," said Dodd, 63.
Dodd arrived at the Paces' house party just after 1:30 p.m. He addressed the crowd for more than an hour, touching up on his decades of experience in politics, his universal health care plan, his foreign policy experience and his plan for troop withdrawal from Iraq.
He acknowledged that he is not as well known as some of the candidates, but hopes the style of New Hampshire primary politics can change that.
Dodd was first elected to Congress in 1974 and served three terms in the House of Representatives before being elected a senator in 1980.
"I think experience does matter to people," Dodd said. "We've been through six years of on-the-job training with this administration." . . .