Andre Heinz, stepson of Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, has hit the road, travelling across the nation to talk about the environment and youth voter turnout. He talked to 'Street' about this, as well as why he will go against his Republican-voting past in November.
Andre, what's your role been in the campaign?
It's been a slightly evolving role. It started with doing occasional appearances on stage with John and the rest of the family ... Starting at the convention ... it was more or less appearing on stage with them, saying, "Hey, look, there's the family that's come out" ... I started doing some of my own speaking stuff, either around the field I am involved with, which is, to say, the environment, or something with my siblings, college tours, talking about things that would matter to the demographic.
How can the environment become a more important issue?
Aside from just saying that the environment is important, which is more or less the hackneyed expression for how you represent the importance of the environment, it takes some more involved explanation, unless of course you're talking about some well-publicized, well-known local or national issue.
How will John Kerry affect change with the environment? How will he differ from the president? It doesn't seem that George Bush has done much.
Actually, I take issue with that. George Bush has done a lot to reverse many of the hard-won victories around the environment ... It's not simply that he's doing a James Watt, which is to say staffing extremely industry-friendly civil servants in positions, or having a "paper pillage" attitude toward natural resources.
It's not just that. He's certainly done that. But he's also dug deep into the bureaucracies and civil service and replaced non-political career employees with political people ... One of [Bush's] big campaign promises in 2000 was that he would declare CO2 a pollutant, which technically it is. It is systematically increasing in concentration, contributing to global climate change. Of course, not only does he not do that, but he basically gives the bird to the international committee and the Kyoto Protocol. [He] just walks away from it, which, from a diplomatic perspective, is a nightmare ...
I believe that an American can only hope to remain competitive in a world of increasing pollution, less resources and more people by being at the leading edge of efficient, clean technologies ... What is unique to John Kerry's and John Edwards's platform is ... a 2020 energy policy, which is by the year 2020, 20% of our electricity should come from renewable sources, alternate energy. They also have a clearly stated and repeated goal of becoming independent of imported oil.
Kerry's been labeled a flip-flopper, while Bush is framed as consistent, even if he's consistently wrong. How is he getting away with it?
When you're trying to do more full-cost accounting and economics ... you start seeing some funny goings-on. On our national accounts, for example, we don't actually have any value put down for our capital, such as our forests and our fisheries. It's zero. We treat it as a zero on our national balance sheet. That's really funny because we know it's not zero. There's a huge debate over how you're supposed to value that ... We're choosing to be absolutely wrong, rather than somewhat right. Say it's one dollar. You're more right than you are for zero.
Voting for Bush is the same way ... You're still absolutely wrong voting for Bush, rather than somewhat right voting for John ... Bush and his team are merciless with the American people in being willfully deaf to the truth and sticking to message ... This notion that [John has] flip-flopped, which still is pervasive with people, is just wrong ...
In the case of the voting, John voted to give the President the authority to go to war. John and 97 other senators thought it was important that the United Nations go to Saddaam Hussein with the threat of force ...
If anyone goes back and remembers what the language was that our President was using -- the one who later said the UN sucks and screw the French -- it was we're doing this because he has violated and flaunted international law ...
If Bush had gotten another month with inspections, which is what the French had wanted, it could have been a very different situation ... The 87-billion dollars that the Democrats voted for, John being among them, was to actually give the troops everything they needed, which the President sent them in without -- something that people forget to mention.
The Republican leadership turned around and said 67-billion for the troops, 20-billion for a slush fund ... The perspective we have is that somehow John has flip-flopped and the President has been a stolid bulwark of American manhood and toughness ... The only explanation I have at the end of the day is that the American people don't believe that they can be lied to so egregiously because they themselves don't lie like that. Therefore, when their president gets up and says these kinds of things, they want to believe him.
How can you and others motivate younger voters not only to vote, but to inform themselves about the candidates?
[For] this election, the research I saw said that 80% of students are following the issues in general. 70% are following them quite closely. And yet, the fear is that you'll still have miserably low turnout, even though people care. One thing we're trying to do is to make sure that we communicate whatever the reasons are that kept you from voting before, [they] aren't good enough to actually stay out of the decision-making process ...
I think that our political system is almost inherently at odds with youth culture and mentality ... One of the reasons that Ralph Nader has been an appealing candidate to youth is because he's unpolished, unscripted, and gruff ... I don't think people like being labeled. I think that we have been, of late, too couched in parties, rather than voting for the candidate.
You're not registered with either party, correct?
Yeah. In Pennsylvania, you can decline to state.
Is this election so divided because of the current President, or is this the way it will always be?
Personally, I think it's because the Republican leadership today, actually starting in '94 with the Gingrich Revolution, has made a pact with the devil. They have decided to take a very divisive, polarizing, wedge issue-oriented route to power ...
The Republicans today don't focus much on what we share as a nation, and when they do, they do it in a slogan-esque way. When you look at how they back it up with policy, I find it to be fairly elitist and fairly romanticized. And I voted Republican. One reason I feel I can say that is that I grew up in a time when you not only wanted to, but you had to work with someone across the aisle. Not any one person had all of the answers. Even if you're right, it's a dangerous path for democracy to the other half.
