AI: Senator, it’s a pleasure to talk to an independent thinker here in the Russell Building who’s not afraid to voice his views. I want to talk mainly about the future, after the Bush Administration passes into history, but let me start off with a personal question: You’re often referred to as a realist. Do you accept that label, and whether you do or not, where do you think your basic approach to politics came from—parents, grandparents, certain teachers or books, your experience in Vietnam?

Senator Hagel: I don’t pay much attention to labels, and I do get labeled—“realist”, “moderate”, “conservative”, “maverick”, and so on. I just am what I am and what I believe. As to the specifics of the term “realist”, I think that any of us with responsibilities for helping to govern this country have to be realists; we have to start from the base of reality. That doesn’t mean we ignore the hope and possibility of making a better world. I’m as exuberant about the future of our country and the world as anyone, but I try to connect my hopes to reality. One reason we’re in so much trouble today in Iraq and the Middle East is that we’ve disconnected the reality of the consequences of invasion with the noble objective of promoting democracy. It’s a worthy goal, but how do you get there? How do you establish a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli dilemma under conditions where both leaderships are too weak to compromise and deliver?

As to where my approach to politics comes from, well, of course we’re all products of our environments. My parents shaped me in the conversations about politics we had at the dinner table in our small town in midwestern Nebraska. My grandparents talking about Eisenhower, and a couple of outstanding teachers in high school who developed my interest in politics helped, too. My experience in Vietnam certainly shaped my attitudes about war and its consequences. It taught me that war is not an abstraction, and in Washington we like to deal in abstractions and theories. But our abstractions are often too disconnected from the reality of the rifleman who risks getting his brains blown out or losing his legs. We forget all that, and just slap a bumper sticker on our car that says “Support the Troops.”

However my views got formed, I hope I haven’t lost the ability to learn and listen and frame the world in new ways. I like new experiences. Always have. I suppose growing up in rural Nebraska made me that way.