President Chen Shui-bian met with members of the US Democratic Party policy task force on the morning of January 16, 2006. He represented the government and the people of Taiwan in welcoming them and thanking them for their visit. They exchanged ideas on a number of broad topics.
The president said that the delegation's leader Joe Lockhart has been an experienced political campaigner for several presidential candidates including Jimmy Carter and John Kerry. He has experienced failures as well as successes. The president discussed two issues with his guests making reference to Lockhart's rich campaign experiences.
The president said that he has gained some public concern over his 2004 re-election, especially after he and the Vice President Annette Lu were hit by the so-called "two bullets" on March 19, 2004. He said the issue came up in meetings with former Republican Party officials. The president expressed that the success of their re-election in 2004 was a result of winning over the hearts of the Taiwanese people and an indication of the mainstream values of Taiwanese. The first national referendum held alongside the election, which promoted Taiwanese consciousness, was actually the key reason for the victory. And some believe that Bush's victory over Kerry was initiating the anti-terrorism war in Iraq. One Republican Party official said to him in a meeting that the key to the election was the seizing of traditional American vales, for which many states and cities were pushing for through referendum at the same time, such as whether or not homosexuals should be able to marry. The President said that that is the Republican Party's stance and asked them about the Democratic Party stance.
The president said he has learned from news media that US first lady Laura Bush had indicated her hope that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would run for president and become the first woman president in US history. If Rice contends, is it possible that she could run against former first lady Hillary Clinton? The president told his guests that on February 27 and 28, 2005, former president Bill Clinton visited Taiwan for the first time. In less than 24 hours, they met twice for over four hours and they spoke over a number of far-reaching issues, including the possibility of Hillary running for the office of president. Clinton said that Hillary has not yet made the final decision. The President said that it has almost been a year since his meeting with Clinton and that there have been many changes since then and he wonders what is the chance of Hillary running and successfully being elected president of the United States. Could 2008 be the year of the first woman to become US president?
Lockhart thanked the president for sparing time to meet with them and he answered his questions. He said that the main reason Bush won the election is that the American people had not recovered from the pain of the September 11 terrorist attacks and they were not willing to place the presidency in the hands of an inexperienced person. He said that he would not be so bold as to presume whether Hillary Clinton would run for office and, as far as he knows, Hillary hopes to be re-elected as senator, but he is sure that the answer would not be clear until 2007.
The guests were curious about Chen's strategy behind his New Year's Day talk. The president responded by saying that being the head of state requires him to clearly indicate to the people the reasons behind the nation's goals. In a Newsweek interview, Chairman of the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) Ma Ying-Jeou recently indicated that one of the ultimate goals of his party is to bring about unification between the two sides of the strait. The president said that the so-called "eventual reunification" is in violation of the principle of the spirit of "sovereignty for the people," because, he said, the 23 million people of Taiwan have the right to make that decision. Polls indicate that 89.3% of the people support this claim and only 6.6% of the people support "eventual reunification."
The president reiterated that the cross-Strait problem must be solved on the four principals of sovereignty, democracy, peace and parity. He stressed that one major aspect of his New Year's Day talk was trade policy. He said that Taiwan is moving toward globalization and will not become like China or Hong Kong. Taiwan must step out into the world, but it cannot place all of its bargaining chips and its economic fate with China. This is particularly because China expresses untiring enmity toward Taiwan. Continually leaning toward China as a trading partner will cause a change in the status quo of cross-Strait relations. This is his reason for his "active management, effective liberalization" in cross-Strait trade policy. He hopes that the government manage the trade well and effectively reduce the political dangers while doing so.