From Capitol Hill to New Zealand

HPR — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 18:49:23 +0000

A discussion with former Senator and Ambassador Carol Moseley Braun

BY JAKE AUCHINCLOSS

Carol Moseley Braun served as the first and only female African-American senator in U.S. history from 1992-1998. After a brief tenure as ambassador to New Zealand, Moseley Braun ran for president in the 2004 election. She currently operates a private Chicago law firm and markets her own line of organic food products. During a recent stint as a visiting fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics, Moseley Braun shared some reflections on her career and on politics in general with the HPR.

Harvard Political Review: What advice do you have for women and minorities, or anyone else, who aspire to public service?

Carol Moseley Braun: The most important thing you just said was public service. Do what you can in your time to make things a little better, or at least to keep things from getting worse. It distresses me when I hear people saying that they want to run for office, but all they understand is that it’s a game, that it’s about having a platform on which to be heard. The correct motivation is you care about your community, your care about your country, you care about your world, you have a point of view or a specific contribution to make, and you decide to sacrifice to make it. On the front lines of the political arena, you give up your privacy, you jeopardize your family very often, you certainly give up the time you could spend developing your life in other ways, and you open yourself up to the attacks that go with the territory. Looking back on my political career, I’m very proud of what I was able to do.

HPR: Do you find yourself still drawn to political issues and activism despite having been apart from the political scene for a number of years?

CMB: I’ve made it a serious point not to be as embroiled in politics as I have been over the last 25 years of my life. But it’s really hard—it’s like Michael Corleone, you know—because the life keeps pulling you back. I mean, you started off this interview with a political question. That’s my last life. I tell people I’m on my fourth career: I was a prosecuting attorney to begin with. Then I was an elected official with the state legislature, county government, and national government––I’ve served at all levels of government. Then I was a diplomat, and now I’m an entrepreneur, and it’s back to nature.

HPR: As a legislator you were particularly passionate about improving national education and health care. How would you rate current prospects of reform and how big a role do you feel that each issue will play in the upcoming presidential election?

CMB: I’m afraid education has not occupied as significant a place in the presidential debate thus far as it should have. Health care, also, has not received the kind of attention that it could or should. The war has pushed those core domestic concerns to the sidelines. I have not seen health care plans from any of the candidates other than Senator Clinton. When I was in the Senate she attempted to do what she could to provide universal coverage, but there was entirely too much bureaucracy associated with it.

The objective of universal coverage was so important that we were prepared to take this “Rube Goldberg”-type mechanism to get there. Happily, what I’ve seen of late from Senator Clinton has been a lot more direct and a lot clearer. There is no question in my mind that we absolutely, positively have to get to universal coverage in the United States. And I personally believe that a single-payer system is the only way to do that.

HPR: What did you find particularly memorable about your diplomatic experiences in New Zealand?

CMB: When I received that appointment, I called myself “ambassador to paradise.” I was credentialed to New Zealand and Samoa, and for good measure the Cook Islands and Antarctica were thrown in. New Zealand was just magnificent in every way. They had a universal health care system, a single-payer system. There were some drawbacks, frankly, that needed to be fixed, and could be fixed with an American version that gives doctors more control in the system. Such a system does not give rise to the lines and the waiting periods, and still allows for research, investment and development––because when it comes to that there’s no system in the world that even comes close to ours, the finest mechanized health care system on the planet.

Having said that, we need to focus more, as New Zealand does, on wellness and on prevention and on the kinds of things that will give people the ability to heal their bodies. I’m doing what I’m doing now, because nutrition is part of a continuum for health. If you start out providing people with healthy food choices, then you will give people the ability to keep themselves from being sick in the first place.

HPR: What inspired your 2004 presidential run? And looking backward, how do you feel about your experiences from the campaign?

CMB: New Zealand influenced my decision to run for president back in 2004. I had come from a country that was on its second female prime minister, and where they would routinely ask me why the United States hadn’t elected a woman yet. And then when I got back home, my little niece, who was ten at the time, was listening to a conversation about the saber-rattling that had started about Iraq, and she said, “Auntie Carol, Auntie Carol, come quick!” I went into her room and she was sitting there with her social studies textbook open to the centerfold where it had pictures of all the presidents, and she looked up at me and said, “ Auntie Carol, all the presidents are boys.” I looked at her and I said, “but sweetie, girls can be president, too,” knowing I was lying to her. I felt terrible about it.

That was largely what drove me. The issues did as well: to talk about health care, education, and not going to war. I feel good about having run. People all over the country were very nice to me, and were very receptive to my candidacy. The political class kind of dismissed it out of hand, but the voters would come to rallies and bring their children to see that a person of color or a woman could be president. I got a lot of that, and I got it in places where there are no black people, so I came away really inspired by the goodness of the American people in places where you’d least expect that kind of receptivity.