National Public Radio (NPR)
October 13, 2007 Saturday
SHOW: Weekend Edition Saturday 1:00 PM EST
Peace Prize, Genocide Resolution
ANCHORS: SCOTT SIMON
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I’m Scott Simon.
This week, the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to former Vice
President Al Gore for his work on global climate change. And the
House Foreign Affairs Committee approved a resolution calling the
1915 killing of Armenians by Turks a genocide.
NPR’s senior analyst Dan Schorr joins us.
Dan, hello. Thanks for being with us.
DANIEL SCHORR: Hi, Scott. My pleasure.
SIMON: And let’s start with Mr. Gore.
SCHORR: Yes.
SIMON: He shares this award with the United Nations’
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They cited him as the
individual who is in the most to promote greater understanding of
climate change.
SCHORR: Right.
SIMON: He joins other Americans who have won the award including
Theodore Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter, Jane Adams and Henry Kissinger.
Now, we have to ask the political question…
SCHORR: Of course.
SIMON: …of the weekend, does this award make it more likely that
he’ll run for president or that there will be a public demand for him
to do?
SCHORR: Well, you may have to ask but I don’t think I have to answer
without being wrong on these things before. But let me say my
impression is he has not indicated any intention of getting into this
race, and the way it now looks, he could hardly get into the race
without threatening the frontrunner or the next frontrunner. And if I
were he, I would say a good Democrat would not want to upset this
thing right now and he can probably accomplish more by getting the
various Democratic candidates to accept his version of what a climate
change policy should be and talk to whoever is the nominee.
SIMON: Now, deadlocked conventions are usually figured to be a thing
of the past because you win for several election cycles now,
nominations have been won or lost in the primaries.
SCHORR: Right.
SIMON: But at the moment, the delegate votes from two large states,
Michigan and Florida…
SCHORR: Right.
SIMON: …the Democratic Party says because they’ve moved up their
primaries that they will not be counted. Does that introduce the
possibility that there may not be, mathematically, a majority that
one candidate is able to win in the primary?
SCHORR: Well, if you’re suggesting the possibility of a deadlocked
convention that we haven’t had that for a very long time. When the
convention is deadlocked, anything can happen. At that point, people
look around on how we can we get out of this. But I think it’s not
really an odds-on chance.
SIMON: In the Republican Party, Fred Thompson, former senator from
Tennessee, made his first appearance in debates without the
Republican candidates. His standing in the polls had been impressive,
mostly because he hadn’t been campaigning to get it.
SCHORR: Right.
SIMON: Now, he’s begun. is he as popular as a candidate as he was
when he wasn’t kind of standing outside that ground?
SCHORR: Well, his test really was not to do anything wrong. You can
say he didn’t do anything wrong. Chris Matthews sort of popped the
question at him, who’s the prime minister of Canada? He said, Hopper;
he had that right. And that was probably the biggest hurdle he had to
get over. From there on, he gave rather traditional kind of
Republican policy statements.
But what I must say that what he really has to overcome, people still
remember that when he was the Republican counsel to the Senate
Watergate Committee, Nixon said of him, he’s dumb as hell but he’s
friendly. Well, he’s going to have to point out now that he’s
friendly and not dumb as hell, and that is what he has to do.
SIMON: I have to ask a question. What does it say about the United
States when asking someone running for president who the prime
minister of Canada is, is this considered a trick question?
SCHORR: Indeed. It’s meant to catch you unawares and attitudes toward
Canada as such a lot of people don’t know who the prime minister is,
but Thompson, luckily for him, is not one of those.
SIMON: This week, House committee passed a resolution recognizing the
killing of 1.5 million Armenians by Turks…
SCHORR: Yes.
SIMON: …as genocide.
SCHORR: Yes.
SIMON: Why is this resolution brought up now?
SCHORR: Well, the mass killing of Armenians was back in 1915 in the
Ottoman Empire. And why it is that the present Turkish government has
to answer for it, then you have to understand American politics.
Armenians everywhere want to have it known that that was genocide.
Now, as it happens, there are a lot of Armenian Americans in
California, where the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, comes from
and a couple of other Democrats in the House. Fine, that you can make
some progress politically by calling it a genocide.
It is, I must, a rather unfortunate thing but what happens now is
when America desperately needs Turkey for a whole group of things and
is trying to keep Turkey from invading Iraq to fight the Kurds that
at this moment, they’ve gotten them very, very angry. It’s not very
helpful to foreign policy whatever it does for Democratic politics.
SIMON: Secretary of State Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates
have been in Moscow this week. They were trying to convince Russia to
drop its opposition to U.S. plans to put a missile defense shield in
Europe. President Putin was notably truculent at a press conference.
SCHORR: And he remains truculent and not only about the fact the U.S.
wants to have a missile defense shield but wants to put elements of
the missile defense shield kind of looking down the throat of Russia
– in the Czech Republic and in Poland. And Putin has said, you know,
you can’t do that. And all that the U.S. has tried to do to convince
him it’s not meant against him do not convince him. And Russia is
another country that is needed at this point if only to try to work
with Iran and try to do something about the Iranian nuclear program.
If you need friends, we have certainly found a way of antagonizing
people whom the United States surely desperately needs.
SIMON: Thanks very much, Dan Schorr.
SCHORR: Sure.