Common ground
Toolbox
By Darren M. Allen Vermont Press Bureau - Published: April 13, 2006
MONTPELIER — Bob Barr is an unabashed conservative on most issues, a former congressman who was one of the chief supporters of impeaching then-President Clinton and who, as early as this week, defended embattled former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.
Bernie Sanders is a self-avowed Socialist who rails against multinational corporations, outsourced jobs and just about anything for which Republicans stand.
But on Wednesday, the two men stood together in Montpelier in denouncing what they see as a growing erosion of Americans' civil liberties under President Bush and the GOP-controlled Congress.
"This is not a Democratic issue or a Republican issue or a conservative issue or a liberal issue," said Barr, who represented the Seventh District of Georgia in the House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003 aside then-speaker and fellow Republican Newt Gingrich. "This is a fundamental American issue."
The issue, according to the two men, is a president and Congress who seem willing to let the government peer more into the private lives of its citizens. Both point to the recently reauthorized Patriot Act and to the President's domestic wiretapping program as examples of too much government power. They also said they believed that Bush "simply decides which laws he wants to obey and ignores the others."
"What this shows is that when it comes to protecting America, party has nothing to do with it," Sanders said to the gathering of about 60 people in the Unitarian Church here. "This is the first time in 15 years that I have invited a Republican member of Congress up here to Vermont. Bob and I disagree on millions of things, but we believe that this country must remain a free country."Sanders — who has been one of the nation's vocal critics of the Patriot Act and its provisions allowing access to library lending records — paid for Barr's trip and hotel room out of his personal funds, according to his press secretary.
And Barr insisted that his visit here wasn't political. But it was hard to ignore the sight of two men on completely opposite ends of the Washington, D.C., political spectrum — both, incidentally, dressed in blue suits and blue shirts, Barr with a red tie; Sanders in a blue one — sitting side-by-side advocating a change in leadership based on a perceived erosion of civil liberties.
Barr is not officially endorsing Sanders' bid for Senate but he did allow a "when Bernie gets to the Senate," into his speech.
Asked later if that was a campaign endorsement, Barr demurred, saying, "It must have been a Freudian slip."
The joint appearance was not unnoticed by Sanders' likely GOP opponent, South Burlington businessman Richard Tarrant. The Tarrant campaign had a staffer at the event who was recording the conversation.
And Tim Lennon, Tarrant's campaign manager, said all the gathering demonstrated was that being out of the political mainstream also was not limited to one party or the other.
"You might think that Bob Barr and Bernie Sanders are the odd couple," Lennon said. "But they're both extremists and they are the main reason why people around this country are shaking their heads at Washington."
Barr, who recently wrote a book called "The Meaning of Is: The Squandered Impeachment and Wasted Legacy of William Jefferson Clinton," called Bush's civil liberties stance "dangerous" and urged Congress to start standing up to what he views as an erosion of their power.
"I can't understand that while you have a president thumbing his nose at Congress and the country and expressing disdain for the Constitution that Congress just sits there and takes it," Barr, a top member of the American Conservative Union, said. "How is it that one individual can take power from the people and not be held accountable?"
Republicans — and quite a few Democrats — have supported Bush's course on national security issues, particularly since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Many of them have called criticism of Bush's approach "dangerous" for the country, and insist that the United States is at war against terrorism.
"We are not at war in the sense the Constitution contemplates," Barr said. "One person saying so doesn't make it so."
Contact Darren Allen at darren.allen@rutlandherald.com
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