Chris Dodd for President

On Saturday at the Yearly Kos Convention, Senator Dodd sat down with one of my favorite bloggers, Glenn Greenwald. Greenwald's site is well known for his investigations into the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance of American citizens and his eloquent defenses of the rule of law. The interview was a real meeting of the minds -- the only presidential candidate who's made restoring the Constitution a central part of his campaign and one of the blogosphere's leading advocates for an unmitigated defense of the Constitution. If you like the work Senator Dodd has done to fight for the rule of law, against the use of torture, against the politicization of the Justice Department, and for restoring the Constitution, I think you'll enjoy reading Greenwald's interview. Here is an excerpt of Senator Dodd's interview with Greenwald:

GG: One of the things that I think could be invigorating about your campaign is that you are making these constitutional issues the centerpiece of your campaign. You said in the debate that one of the most critical issues we face is the assault on our constitution, which you indicated was unprecedented. Can you talk about why this assault on the constitution is so fundamentally different than anything that has come before it? You were in the Senate during the Iran-contra scandal under Reagan. What is it about what they are doing now that makes it so fundamentally different? CD: Well, it's so pervasive. I mean, its domestic. It's foreign. And it is has been so calculated on so many levels. With Iran-contra, Reagan wanted to give money to the contras. I didn't like the motivation, but it was very targeted, focused point. But here -- winning elections. And pursuing people or not pursuing people. That takes it to a whole new level. The power of the U.S. attorney is real power. Power. The power to prosecute people is enormous. It saddens me that it even has to be an issue -- the fact that "defending the Constitution" even has to be an issue in the presidential race. But there is an audience for this. This is really important. This is not a narrow audience. This is a broad audience. This is an audience that will surprise you if articulated well. We can win on this. A campaign for president allows you to have a megaphone here on a national scale to talk about these things, at a time when this crowd, if it continues, can enable you to stop them, do even more than raise the issues. But secondly, if I don't win this thing, I want everyone else to be talking about these issues. I think it reaches into a conservative constituency who ought to care about this as much, and does in many ways. So it gives us a chance to do that. I carry every day, and have for 26 years, a copy of the U.S. Constitution given to me by Robert Byrd [takes Constitution out of his back pocket]. And to me, what could be more fundamental? With all due respect, I care about health care, education, global warming. But if you get this wrong -- what do you got? A trade association. Who wants to be president of a trade association? And this [holding the Constitution] is the spark, the illumination, it is, if I may so say, the envy of many around the world. We have been a guiding set of principles. What is going on with the rule of law isn't just happening here. . . Other countries are saying, "We can do this, too." So there has been an erosion in the world with the rule of the law. Having led the world in the rule of law in the post-World War II period, and having nations reluctantly moving in the direction we were moving in, and they now see the U.S. has retreated, and they are making a hasty retreat themselves. Josh Tucker [of NYU] makes the point about the Soviet Union collapse -- You can make the case that it was military, and that was part of it, but he believes and I believe that it was the rule of law. It was Eastern European countries recognizing that this was a total sham, beginning with the Prague Spring and 1956. The Soviet Union collapsed because it rotted from within, they just rotted without the rule of law. So in addition to the other factors, this has international reverberations, beyond just what happens in our own country. GG: Well, it is good to see the real passion and conviction that you obviously have for these constitutional issues. CD: I will never forget, it was a night in New Hampshire back last fall, and I'm talking about health care and talking about education and something else -- and I said "I just want to share with you something I care about." And I talked about this and the room exploded. And I was startled and I realized, "God, people really do care." I thought I was the only one who did. You sound very arcane when you talk about the Military Commissions Act. But this really reasonates.

You can read the Greenwald interview here.