Chafee: On Iran, Biden and lessons from horses

Susan Page | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Lincoln Chafee on Biden, Clinton and former dormmate Jeb Bush On USA TODAY's Capital Download, Democratic presidential candidate Lincoln Chafee talks 2016 politics with Susan Page.

NEW YORK — Lincoln Chafee argues he has unique qualifications for the White House, including being the only contender in either party who has served not only as a governor and senator but also as a mayor. "There's not a big learning curve for Lincoln Chafee to become president," he declares.

Not to mention the seven years he spent as a farrier.

Chafee, now 62, cites lessons learned as a young man when he shod horses at harness racetracks across the United States and Canada, including how to maneuver large and obstinate forces. "Sometimes the organization is bigger than you are," he says. "You can't put the shoes on if you're arguing with the horse."

Résumé aside, Chafee's campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination isn't just low-budget. It's no-budget — he and a single aide had driven his car to New York City through a driving rainstorm Tuesday morning for interviews on cable TV and with Capital Download — and he has yet to register in the polls.

But the quirky Rhode Islander is articulating the case against Hillary Clinton's judgment in voting in 2002 to authorize the invasion of Iraq, the issue that fueled Barack Obama's primary challenge to her in 2008, and raising concerns about policies she advised as President Obama's secretary of State. "That muscular approach on Libya and Iran back then, I have some differences with that," he told USA TODAY's weekly video newsmaker series.

He adds, though, that Clinton's support of the Iran nuclear deal could be a way for her to make amends.

"If we can get behind the Iran deal that President Obama has crafted," he says, "maybe that would be a way to heal that bad vote back in 2002, for those who voted for it." At the time, he was the only Republican senator to oppose it.

Chafee also speculates that the Democratic field soon will get bigger. His "gut" tells him that Vice President Biden, a colleague from his days in the Senate, will jump in. Chafee notes that Biden has been included in "the high-profile pictures" and "the big, big decisions" at the White House — a signal, in his view, that "the president wants Joe to get in this."

"I'm a former race-track person, so if I was going to make my $2 bet, it would be that he would do it," Chafee says. "Secretary Clinton has some possible issues, with the emails and credibility issues. That's another reason he probably would look at it." Biden has promised to announce his decision in the fall.

Those "possible issues" are another reason Chafee sees no reason to entertain the idea of getting out of the race himself — though he acknowledges Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has become her most prominent challenger, taking the role of progressive alternative that he had hoped to fill. He says the controversy over Clinton's use of a private email server when she was in the Cabinet and the erosion in the perception of her as an honest and trustworthy person makes the primary contest unpredictable.

Front-runners sometimes falter, he notes, ticking off examples from past Democratic contests. "History shows whether it's Gary Hart — different things can happen," he says. "Howard Dean. Ed Muskie, going way back. John Edwards. Some of these people can disappear pretty quickly."

And long shots sometimes surge. "John Kerry — no one expected him to win" the nomination even as the primaries were about to begin in 2004, he said. "He came out of nowhere at the end."

Still, Chafee's own path to victory is hard to map at this point. The RealClearPolitics average of recent nationwide surveys puts him sixth in a five-candidate field (not-yet-a-candidate Biden outpolls him) at just below 1%. His first campaign finance report last month showed contributions of $30,000, three digits shy of the amounts being raised by top-tier contenders. He doesn't have a super PAC behind him.

"There's pros and cons with that," he says of his anemic fundraising. "You don't owe anybody anything."

He won't go into debt for his campaign, he says, but he says huge amounts of money may not be necessary. "Didn't a presidential candidate campaign by sitting on his porch?" he asks. "McKinley, I think."

It's true that William McKinley won the White House with a close-to-home "front-porch campaign." In 1896.

Actually, Chafee has a family connection to that contest. His great-great-uncle, Charles W. Lippitt, also a Rhode Island governor, unsuccessfully sought the vice presidential nomination at the Republican convention that year. Indeed, Chafee has a political legacy that makes the Clinton and Bush families look like newcomers. (And in an odd footnote to the 2016 race, Chafee and Jeb Bush were high-school housemates at Exeter Academy in Andover, Mass.)

Chafee's great-great-grandfather, Henry Lippitt, was governor of Rhode Island in the 19th century. His father, John Chafee, served as Rhode Island governor and secretary of the Navy before being elected to the Senate. When he died, his son was appointed to fill his father's Senate seat. Lincoln Chafee then won the seat in his own right in 2000, running as a Republican. Defeated for a second term, he was elected governor in 2010, running as an independent.

Now he's seeking the presidential nomination as a Democrat, and he pledges to support the party's nominee, even if it doesn't turn out to be him. "It is such an important election," he says, ticking off the reasons, from Supreme Court appointments to environmental protection to the risks of a "belligerent" approach to the world.

"We cannot have Republicans get elected in 2016," he says.