John Kerry

How do you face the opposition of the oil and auto companies?

Let me tell you something: As gas prices go up, and fuel hits sixty bucks a barrel, I'm going to have a lot of allies. This does not have to be combative and confrontational. I'm going to reach out to the companies and offer them a very significant helping hand in the retooling and transformational costs.

I want American workers working; I want American cars made in America; I want American cars to be able to be sold anywhere in the world. I want to lead the world in these technologies. So I want these companies part of the solution -- not the problem. I think we can get there -- I really believe that.

How big a priority is that for you?

Huge. Creating jobs is one of the top five priorities of my administration. First of all, make America safe, and deal with nuclear proliferation and the global confrontation. Second, we have to create jobs and be fiscally responsible -- so that we're creating the framework for America to be strong at home.

Third, we have to have a system that provides health care for all Americans, and I have a plan to do that. Fourth, we're going to have education that works for everybody -- that lifts people up. Ongoing adult education -- a system that works. And fifth, we're going to have an environmental policy that leaves this planet to our kids in better shape than we got it from our parents.

That's it -- that's the agenda.

Why has environmental policy disappeared from the radar this election cycle?

I don't think it has.

But why do we hear so little about it?

Well, you have Iraq blowing up on the front pages of newspapers every day. But every speech I make, wherever I go, I talk about energy independence. I've talked about energy independence every single day of this campaign.

Will you communicate to the American people the size of the crisis we face?

I'm doing it in the course of this campaign. I'm already talking about it -- and I will as president. Look: I'm a person who has always believed that you tell people the truth and they'll make reasonable decisions. Truth is powerful.

This administration disrespects the truth, because they have a different credo. The truth unfortunately works against their interests, because their interests are in keeping power and in making money. And so they feed the drug industry, and they feed the oil industry, and they feed the big power companies.

And that's the difference between us. I'm fighting for the middle class -- he's fighting for a tax cut for people who earn more than $200,000 a year. He won't raise the minimum wage -- I'm going to raise the minimum wage. He won't give people extended unemployment benefits -- I will. He cut job training -- I'm going to restore job training. He's made it more expensive for kids to go to college -- I'm going to raise the Pell grants and the Perkins loans. He gave the drug industry a windfall profit of $139 billion -- while he was shutting down the ability of people to bring drugs in from Canada and shutting down Medicare's ability to negotiate a lower price for drugs. That's wrong -- morally and economically.

People say this is the most important election of our lifetime -- do you agree?

I believe it is. And I want your readers to stop in their tracks and consider what's at stake for them. Because not enough people connect the things they hate, or feel or want, to the power of their vote. And they've got to be willing to go out and work in these next couple of weeks.

How do you yourself feel? What burden does it place on you?

You know, I've been in public life all my life -- with one brief exception, when I was a lawyer and started a small business. I accept the weight, but I don't feel it. I've lived out so much frustration over the last few years that this is a liberating experience for me. I feel excited by it. I feel energized by it. I welcome it. And I just want other people to understand what's at stake here.

I mean, the next president may appoint three or four justices to the Supreme Court. The rights of Americans may be affected for the rest of our lives by what happens on November 2nd: whether or not we're going to have equal opportunity; whether we fight against discrimination; whether we're going to have equal pay for women; whether we protect women's right to choose; whether we're going to have a country in which people can grow up and live out the full measure of citizenship.

Why do you think you'd be a good president?

Because I'm a good executive, I'm a good leader, and I know what we have to do. I'm tough, I'm strong, I'm decisive. I know exactly what this country needs to do to move forward. All my life I've never shied away from standing up and telling people what I think, and what I think is true -- and I've taken the consequences of it. I'm even hearing about what I said in 1971.

What have you learned about yourself in this campaign?

That the intrusiveness is greater than I thought it would be. And there are parts of me that dislike that more than I thought I would, but it's something I have to put up with in order to achieve what I want to get done. I always knew that I was tough enough to do it; I always knew there'd be tough moments and I'd be tested -- because everybody is tested on the road to the presidency. But I think the intensity of it is greater than I could imagine. It is, actually, beyond description. You have to experience it to know what that is.

How did you feel when you first saw those Swift-boat ads?

Disappointed -- a sense of bitter disappointment. That people will stoop to those depths of lying -- for their personal reasons.