Democratic Senate candidate Phil Bredesen, who is running in Tennessee for retiring Sen. Bob Corker's (R.) seat, said Wednesday that one of his problems with Washington, D.C. is that politicians there are shortsighted and care too much about what voters think today rather than long-term effects.
"One of the problems that I've got with Washington, you know, today that I would really like to be one [who] helps to address is everything is so transactional about, you know, what do the voters think today and so on, and there's not enough people thinking out about the long-term impacts of some of these kind of decisions," Bredesen told the Tennessean's editorial board.
Bredesen was discussing the rising influence of China and how politicians are not taking the long-term impact of their decisions into account.
"China I see a little differently where I think, you know, that could go either way. They either could become an enormous economic partner and beneficiary, or they could become a, you know, an enemy," Bredesen said. "One of these that really struck me is that, you know, China for most of the last couple of millennia has been the dominant economy of the world. They haven't been for the last couple hundred years. It was clear to me they had every intention of being the dominant economy of the world again."
Bredesen added that he believes President Donald Trump's decision last year to pull the U.S. out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement between several Pacific Rim countries, was a mistake that ceded influence in Asia to China.
"I also think we have plenty of tools today to compete with them for that honor [being the dominant economy of the world]. I don't think the 21st century is going to be the China century necessarily unless we withdraw and allow them to do it," Bredesen said. "One of the mistakes we've made is this whole rejection of the TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership."
Bredesen has a history of making questionable comments. In one instance, he compared his lucrative public speaking career to being a "loose woman."