The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MS. FARNSWORTH: Good evening. I'm Elizabeth Farnsworth in Washington.

MR. MAC NEIL: And I'm Robert MacNeil in New York. After tonight's News Summary, Margaret Warner reports on the weekend political pilgrimage to Ross Perot, next, how WorldWar II changed America, a conversation with our essayists on the 50th anniversary of V-J Day. Finally, Roger Rosenblatt has some thoughts on the death of Mickey Mantle. NEWS SUMMARY

MS. FARNSWORTH: Three major airports in the New York City area were under tightened security today. No official explanation was given, but the New York newspaper Newsday reported yesterday that officials had received terrorist threats from Middle Eastern extremists. Travelers at Kennedy, LaGuardia, and Newark Airports underwent more thorough security checks. Only ticketed passengers were allowed to enter the departure wing, and they could not check bags at curbside. Also, cars could not be left unattended at terminals, and some parking garages were closed. Security was the tightest since the Gulf War in 1991. Robin.

MR. MAC NEIL: Thousands of Croatian and Muslim refugees were expelled today from the Serb stronghold of Banja Luka in Northern Bosnia. More than a hundred thousand Serbs were forced to flee Croatia last week following the Croatian army conquest of Krajina, a rebel Serb enclave in Croatia. Meanwhile, Serb artillery is pounding the area around Dubrovnic, a historic city on Croatia's Adriatic Coast. We have more in this report from James Mates of Independent Television News.

JAMES MATES, ITN: On the hillside around the city of Dubrovnik, fires are raging out of control, the most visible evidence of the fiercest fighting here for more than three years. By day, aircraft dropped water onto the brushwood, but that too was having little effect. So far, the shelling has not reached the walls of the historic city, itself. The Croatian army is trying to force back the Serb frontlines to take Dubrovnik and its medieval treasures out of artillery range. Further North, the spiral of expulsion and ethnic cleansing continues. Only now, it's the turn of Croatians to be driven from their homes. Six hundred a day are crossing this river in flimsy boats, fleeing into Croatia after being ordered out of the Banja Luka area by Serbian soldiers.

KRIS JANOWSKI, UN: In the matter of days, we also expect a mass expulsion of the remaining Muslim population, and then Banja Luka will be--will achieve the barbaric goal of ethnic purity.

JAMES MATES: The United Nations is close to despair about what's happening here. It seems that all over the former Yugoslavia people are being driven out of homes they've lived in all their lives for no reason, except that they're the wrong religion or the wrong nationality.

MR. MAC NEIL: U.S. Assistant Sec. of State Richard Holbrooke arrived in Croatia today. He'll tour Balkan capitals this week in an attempt to broker a peace settlement.

MS. FARNSWORTH: The Indian government said today it would not swap imprisoned Kashmiri rebels for four Western hostages being held by separatists from Kashmir. The body of a fifth hostage, Norwegian hiker Hans Christian Ostro, was returned to New Delhi today. His decapitated body was found Sunday in the Himalayas. He had been held captive for six weeks, along with an American, a German, and two Britons. They were kidnapped by a Muslim extremist group called Al-Faran. Other organizations fighting for independence in the Northern Indian state of Kashmir have condemned the killing.

MR. MAC NEIL: First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton today urged further medical investigation of what's been called the Gulf War Syndrome. Mrs. Clinton spoke to a presidential panel looking into the unusual and unexplained health problems of some 10,000 veterans of the 1991 Gulf War. Symptoms include fatigue and memory loss. The panel met this morning in Washington.

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: This presidential advisory committee is an important example of the President's commitment to leave no stone unturned in the administration's efforts to understand Gulf War veterans' illnesses and to make sure that the government is responsive to veterans' needs. Just as we relied on our troops when they were sent to war, we must assure them that they can rely on us now.

MR. MAC NEIL: A recent Pentagon report concluded there is no proof the syndrome exists, but a private research group, the Institute of Medicine, today attacked the Pentagon's report. The institute said, "Based on the evidence, the Defense Department was premature to conclude that Gulf War Syndrome does not exist."

MS. FARNSWORTH: The first blustery effects of Hurricane Felix were felt in Bermuda today, as the storm swirled across the Atlantic. Gale force winds and whipping rains pelted the island as the eye of Felix neared Bermuda's shores. Residents packed supermarkets to stock up on supplies, and tourists scrambled to leave before the storm reaches its peak. Weather forecasters predict Felix will hit close to Bermuda late this evening. They say it's still not clear if the storm will strike the U.S. coast.

MR. MAC NEIL: Hollywood agent Michael Ovitz was named president of the Walt Disney Company today. Among other things, he'll assume responsibility for Capital Cities/ABC, which Disney bought two weeks ago in the country's largest media merger. Ovitz is chairman and co-founder of Creative Artists Agency, which represents some of Hollywood's biggest stars. He'll assume his new position in October. That's all for the News Summary. Now it's on to the Perot factor, how World War II changed the U.S., and Mickey Mantle. FOCUS - THE PEROT FACTOR

MS. FARNSWORTH: Now, the Perot factor. Over the weekend, Ross Perot's organization, United We Stand, America, held a convention in Dallas, where leaders of both political parties courted some 3,000 Perot supporters. Twenty million people, nearly one fifth of the electorate, voted for the Texas billionaire in 1992, and these voters also promised to be a major factor in the '96 elections. Margaret Warner reports on how the Perot voters are feeling now.

MS. WARNER: It was 100 degrees in the shade, if you could find any, when a caravan of Ross Perot supporters drove through downtown Ardmore, Oklahoma, last Thursday with a full escort of local police. The travelers had lost a half dozen RV's and as many cars to the blistering August heat over the days it took them to make their ways from Oregon and California and Wisconsin. But the rigors of the trek didn't dampen their excitement as they stopped for a barbecue hoedown before pushing on to their long-awaited convention in Dallas.

PEROT SUPPORTER: We're going to learn all about the candidates and the issues.

OTHER PEROT SUPPORTER: Yes.

PEROT SUPPORTER: We're going to make a difference in America.

OTHER PEROT SUPPORTER: Right. We're going to get the ground rules.

PEROT SUPPORTER: And tell 'em we still are not happy.

MALE PEROT SUPPORTER: It's time for a change.

MS. WARNER: Ardmore was a fitting place to meet and not just because it's an easy two-hour drive from Dallas. True, back in 1992, Ross Perot didn't have much of a campaign operation in Ardmore, the town of 24,000 people in the heart of Oklahoma's little Dixie region, where Democrats outnumber Republicans five to one and independents are a rarity. Yet, on election night, when Carter County election Secretary Janie Tipps recorded the votes, she found that 28 percent of the people in her county had chosen Ross Perot.

JANIE TIPPS, Secretary, Carter County Election Board: I was startled, as a matter of fact, the way Perot came in. It was shocking, especially down here in Southern Oklahoma.

MS. WARNER: Leon Chaney, who owns a motorcycle dealership, was among that 28 percent in '92, and he planned to attend the Dallas convention this past weekend. But most of supporters in Ardmore, particularly the younger ones, like Roger and Judy Williams, weren't going. For one thing, Roger had to work. The people headed for Dallas were mostly members of Perot's organization, United We Stand, America. They tended to be older, more affluent, and more politically active than the Williamses and most of the other 20 million Americans who voted for Perot.

UNIDENTIFIED OLDER GENTLEMAN: The younger people couldn't make it; they had to work, but I represent about 1,000 I know of that are strictly united with We Stand.

MS. WARNER: Whether they went to Dallas or not, Perot voters still share a perspective on the American political system that sets them apart, and they remain remarkably loyal to Perot and to his message.

LEO CHANEY: I like what he said. He came on, and he spoke the language of everyday people. He was very sincere, and I liked what he said about the American dream, that it was diminishing, and that we needed to look into the future, because we need to prepare for the future for our children and grandchildren.

MS. WARNER: Perot's supporters still believe the American dream is in peril, even more so now than when they first voted for him.

ROGER WILLIAMS: I'm sure I'm more cynical now, looking at the way government's run, than I was in '92. There's not anybody yet that's been able to stand up and take control of it and get it headed in the right direction.

JUDY WILLIAMS: They bounce back and forth between 'em, and all the bickering between the Republicans and the Democrats, they can't get it together.

MS. WARNER: These disenchanted voters aren't monolithic. They disagree on whether they should form a third political party and on whether Perot should run for President again, but they are still looking for some way or someone to force the political system to change.

MAN IN GROUP: I personally am very optimistic. I think that this, this conference is going to be the start of something big, and I think people are going to start reawakening themselves for the 1996 election and be more involved in the election process in 1996 than, than ever before.

MS. WARNER: Perot's 92 nationwide showing of 19 percent stunned and troubled the political establishment. For nearly three years since then, both political parties have tried to tailor their legislative agendas to appeal to these disaffected voters. Today the question vexing Democrats and Republicans is: Have they made any headway with Perot's voters, and can they win their support in the next presidential race? A who's who of major political figures trekked to Dallas over the weekend to pitch for that support. They were the rival party leaders, Republican Chairman Haley Barbour and Democratic Chairman Sen. Chris Dodd. They were rival congressional leaders like House Speaker Newt Gingrich and House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt. There were 10 competing Republican presidential candidates, each one arguing he would do more to advance the causes dear to these voters' hearts and stage-managing the entire three- day affair was an irrepressible Ross Perot.

ROSS PEROT: We know what has to be done. We're determined to get it done, and we know it won't be pretty, but we won't quit! Right!

CROWD SHOUTING: Right!

MS. WARNER: But the atmosphere was as much civics class as political rally. A few thousand earnest attendees sat for ten and twelve hour days in straight-backed chairs taking notes on the speeches, preparing for the workshops to be held on the final day. They were a skeptical audience but not a cynical one. [phone number written on podium over words United We Stand, America: 1- 800-925-4000]

FRANK LUNTZ, Republican Pollster: They were always optimistic. While they thought that things were going very badly in the country today, they thought that tomorrow would be better, that their kids would have a better life. I think that they are in a sense idealists, that they go back to the way government was meant to be formed.

MS. WARNER: Frank Luntz was Ross Perot's pollster in the '92 campaign. He's working for Republican Presidential Candidate Phil Gramm now and advising House Speaker Newt Gingrich too. But he's continued to track the Perot voters, and he says both parties have a tough case to make.

FRANK LUNTZ: These are people who believe that they voted for change in '92 and didn't get it. They voted for change again in '94, and while they've gotten some of it, it's not enough.

MS. WARNER: Unemployed college professor Bob Greene of Wisconsin, who joined the caravan that headed to Dallas from Ardmore, said he was disappointed that President Clinton hadn't fulfilled his new Democrat pledge to balance the budget and end partisanship in Washington.

BOB GREENE: I just can't believe anything he says. It's not that I--I don't say that he personally is insincere in his--in his-- we're not really talking about his character but his political persona is just--is just totally political, and the Republicans were correct in calling him "Slick Willie."

MS. WARNER: In Dallas, longtime Clinton friend and adviser Mack McLarty appealed on the President's behalf. His reception seemed lukewarm at best.

MACK McLARTY: Thank you very much.

MS. WARNER: But the convention goers also seemed impatient with the Republicans, even though in the congressional elections last November, more than 2/3 of Perot's supporters voted Republican. Jeff Frost is a commercial airline pilot from Manchester, New Hampshire.

JEFF FROST: The rhetoric is on the right track. Actions speak better than words though. We don't have a balanced budget amendment. We don't have campaign finance reform. We don't have term limits.

MS. WARNER: Another member of the caravan from Ardmore, retired home economist Mary Widen of Wisconsin, is skeptical now about the Republicans' motives and even about the Contract With America, itself.

MARY WIDEN: I think it was just offered in order to get our vote last election, and its carrying it through is not coming along, as we had hoped for.

MS. WARNER: And why do you think it's not?

MARY WIDEN: I don't really know. I don't really know. I think it's just part of the political game that people play.

MS. WARNER: Most of all, convention goers seemed upset that Republicans hadn't done more to curtail the influence of money and special interests in Washington.

FRED EVERETT: How can you expect an elected politician to cast an honest vote when he's got one hand on the voting lever and one hand on the wallet of the lobbyist?

MADELINE RHEW: I give most the politicians a very poor grade in campaign finance reform. It is "the" most popular issue here at the conference.

MS. WARNER: Perot voter Madeline Rhew, a former ballet dancer, lives in Southeast New Hampshire. She hoped this convention would kick the Republican leadership into moving faster on campaign finance reform, and if not--

MADELINE RHEW: Well, there was a Republican revolution; there can be an independent revolution in '96.

MS. WARNER: That's just what the Republicans are afraid of. Losing the Perot voters in 1996 could cost them control of Congress, they say, and end their hopes of recapturing the White House.

HALEY BARBOUR, Chairman, Republican National Committee: From the day I was elected chairman, I've said publicly and privately, Republicans ought to worry about the 19 percent of people who voted for Ross Perot, rather than about Ross Perot.

MS. WARNER: In Dallas, Gingrich tried to reassure Perot's troops of his commitment to their agenda, including campaign finance and lobbying reform.

REP. NEWT GINGRICH, Speaker of the House: Our freedom as a country and our tradition of over 200 years is too important to let it be bought off in a wave of money from a variety of sources that we don't understand and can't even follow. We have a third party. It's the House freshman Republicans. They're all militant; they're all committed; they all think they got elected by a coalition of United We Stand and the Republicans.

MS. WARNER: RNC Chairman Barbour doesn't think there will be a market for an independent presidential candidate in 1996.

HALEY BARBOUR: I think in 1996 most of these people will say the Republican Congress, I agree with them on the issues, they're doing what they said they're going to do, I disagree with Clinton on the issues, and I don't want him to go back in the White House, to slip back in the White House again with 43 percent of the vote.

MS. WARNER: And if there were a strong independent candidate, then that's the high likelihood.

HALEY BARBOUR: My Democrat friends have all worn out two sets of knee pads down on their knees praying for a third party candidate to split the vote.

SEN. CHRIS DODD, Chairman, Democratic National Committee: And his on his hands and knees praying they don't. I mean, it--you know, he's wearing out his knee pads as well.

MS. WARNER: What brought hundreds of reporters to Dallas was the parade of Republican presidential candidates on Saturday. The candidates were hoping to attract those Perot voters who are registered Republicans and the even greater number who are registered as independents but allowed to vote in Republican primaries in their states. Yet, polls show that for now at least, the Perot voters are looking for something more than they see in the current Republican field.

MS. WARNER: What do you all think of the current crop of Republican candidates?

ROGER WILLIAMS: I really haven't seen one I care much about to see get to be President.

JUDY WILLIAMS: I'm not overly impressed at all.

MS. WARNER: What's missing?

JUDY WILLIAMS: It's not that anything is missing; it's the same old, same old, if that makes sense.

FRANK LUNTZ: The populism, the expansiveness of Andrew Jackson, the go-getter, the directness of Teddy Roosevelt, the adventure, the straightforward, the straight shooter of Harry Truman, and the down home feeling of Ronald Reagan, you combine those four elements, and you've got the perfect presidential candidate for these Perot people.

MS. WARNER: In Dallas, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, the Republican front-runner, made his case.

SEN. ROBERT DOLE, Republican Presidential Candidate: I'm not perfect, but I've been tested, and I've been tested, and I've been tested. And I believe if I've got one asset is that you can ask any Democrat in Congress, any Republican, Bob Dole has kept his word. They may not like my word, but I kept my word.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Bob Dole looks to be thinking about World War II and 50 years ago, rather than 50 years from now, which is what most of us are concerned about.

MS. WARNER: The crowd pleaser, instead, was Pat Buchanan, with his tough talk on immigration, affirmative action, and trade.

PAT BUCHANAN, Republican Presidential Candidate: Join me. We'll take back my party, and then together we're going up the federal road, and we'll take back Washington, D.C., and we will take America back for the things we believe in.

MS. WARNER: While the candidates hope to leave Dallas with new supporters for next year's campaign, the Perot people seemed more interested in what they could do to force more immediate change in Washington. They left Dallas charged up over an idea advanced by Perot, himself, a second Contract With America on political and lobbying reform that he wants passed within the next hundred days.

ROSS PEROT: Let's make it a bipartisan second contract, and let's make all these government reforms in the next hundred days and give it to the American people as a Christmas present in 1995, right? [crowd cheering and applauding]

MS. WARNER: In an interview Sunday, Perot made it clear he expects Congress to take his challenge seriously.

ROSS PEROT: Those reforms have got to look like the teeth in an alligator's mouth. They've got to be real. That's why I love it, because the two parties can get 90 percent of what needs to be done the next three or four months. Will they or won't they? That's the question. If they duck, if those alligator teeth aren't there, that's a duck.

MS. WARNER: Perot knows he has some alligator teeth of his own, the threat of forming a third party or making another presidential bid.

MS. WARNER: And if they don't follow through?

ROSS PEROT: If they don't, then we will have to thoughtfully sit down and say, what is the--is in the best interest of our country.

MS. WARNER: Our convention goers said they left Dallas much as they'd arrived, still skeptical of those who hold power--

WOMAN: I'm suspicious. Some of it sounded too simple.

MAN: They can talk the talk, but they got to walk the walk.

MS. WARNER: But ever more firmly convinced of their own.

YOUNGER WOMAN: Well, one thing I've learned is that I don't think the Republicans are going to change things, I don't think the Democrats are going to change things, but I think I'm going to change things.

MS. WARNER: With the 1996 political season about to begin, that kind of determination is something that both political parties will continue to worry about.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, thoughts on the Second World War and an essay on Mickey Mantle. FOCUS - WAR AND REMEMBRANCE

MR. MAC NEIL: Fifty years ago today, American time, Japan surrendered, and World War II came to an end. Last Friday, I talked with our panel of essayists about all that has flowed from that first V-J Day, but we begin with a newsreel reminder of August 14, 1945, when President Harry Truman announced the Japanese surrender.

NEWSREEL SPOKESMAN: ["Victory! America Rejoices!] Outside the White House, the last hour of the last day of World War II. Here and across the nation, tense crowds await the end. Inside, newsmen are summon the President's office to see history made. Cordell Hull is present. It was in Hull's office that the Japanese ambassadors waited while their country struck Pearl Harbor. Now, Pearl Harbor is avenged as the President announces:

HARRY TRUMAN: [Newsreel segment] I deem this reply a full acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration which specifies the unconditional surrender of Japan. In the reply, there is no qualification. Arrangements are now being made for the formal signing of the surrender terms at the earliest possible moment.

NEWSREEL SPOKESMAN: This is it! The Second World War, which embroiled 56 nations and 85 million men is ended. Reporters make a dash for official handouts. Within a matter of minutes, the historic news is flashed to every country on the globe. Meanwhile, New York crowds have been waiting day and night for word from Washington. It is two minutes after seven, nerves keyed to the breaking point by last minute Jap stalling, by rumors and denials that surrender is on its way. Then the news hits Times Square. [crowd cheering as billboard reads: President Truman Announces Japanese Surrender] All the pent-up joy of five days waiting is unleashed. New York and Main Street everywhere pulls out the stops and lets go. [cheering]

MR. MAC NEIL: Most of you, I know, because I'm the oldest one here, are too young to have very vivid memories of World War II, but Richard, how relevant is World War II to you today? What relevance does it have to you?

RICHARD RODRIGUEZ, Pacific News Service: Well, I'm under the impression that history goes on after we decide that it's over. I'm still under the impression that we still haven't come to the end of the Columbus discovery of the Americas, or--

MR. MAC NEIL: So you keep reminding us, in essence, all the time.

MR. RODRIGUEZ: And more to the point, I mean, it seems to me that, you know, with neo-Nazis wandering around Wyoming, and with, with Germany becoming the preeminent country of the new European community, with, with the sort of the world in flux right now, with Bosnia meltdown, it seems to me that it's arguable, at least, that World War II was not the end, didn't settle the issues, and that we're still living certainly with the consequences of it insofar as it was the beginning of the, of the atomic age.

MR. MAC NEIL: That would astonish a lot of people to think that World War II didn't settle the issues. Anne, what do you think about that?

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: Oh, I certainly agree with that. One of the really interesting things when first asked this question about World War II, I thought, well, I'm not a child of World War II, I'm a child of Vietnam. But in many ways, I am a child certainly of the end of World War II and of the Cold War, and one of the things that's been really interesting to me to watch in all this Memorial stuff that's gone by is I've had a certain wistfulness for the moral certitude that people seem to carry coming out of that war, and certainly our fathers did coming home, and my feeling is along with Richard, is that it didn't end anything, because then that sort of paradigm of good guys and bad guys that came out of that war was applied to things like Vietnam with very little success. So all that followed, I am--I am a product of that war and of the end of that war.

MR. MAC NEIL: Didn't settle anything, Jim Fisher?

JIM FISHER, Kansas City Star: I think it did. I think it changed everything more than it settled. I mean, I remember vividly V-J Day, because I don't remember the bomb, because--

MR. MAC NEIL: How old were you?

MR. FISHER: I was eight, and we got in--we lived on 66th Street Terrace in Kansas City, and we were on gas ration, and everybody took off and went downtown with horns blaring, and filled downtown Kansas City with people. It was a huge celebration, and one that, that I hold in my memory, and then the boys coming home, and what really happened is--well, we in the Midwest were, were basically an insular population, and in World War II, everybody started moving. All my kin went to California. We went back to Connecticut, came back to Kansas, and I think that movement has never really stopped. We got the GI Bill. We educated a whole generation. It gave them the desire to educate their children, because they saw what it could do. So I don't think World War II's ended, but if you go back and look at the old papers, and I think if you had set up, and it's been a contention of mine, if you'd set up a, a satellite dish on Iwo Jima or Okinawa, it would not have been the Japanese maybe that would have sued for peace but this country would have changed its attitude completely.

MR. MAC NEIL: Because the bloodshed was so extraordinary.

MR. FISHER: The bloodshed was so great, and then--but not to get into the atom bomb controversy--but Americans were truly--and Canadians and English and the whole world was truly by August of 1945 sick to death of war.

MR. MAC NEIL: Clarence, do you think that there are still unsettled issues from World War II?

CLARENCE PAGE, Chicago Tribune: Yes, there are. And the more I think about the issue part, the more depressed I get. Thank you, Richard, for getting us off onto a depressing note, because you're absolutely right. Not only--the basic issues of fascism, Nazism, hatred, imperialism that that war was about are not over; they're just in different countries. You know what? Our ability to fight it is probably lessened today because of the bomb. World War II was not the war to end all wars but was the war to end all out war. The reason why we had Korea, Vietnam, and all these other little wars that we halfway have forgotten now--Panama, Grenada, the Persian Gulf War and all--is because this is the era of limited war. What does that mean? Anything short of using the bomb. We--we now talk about, you know, some kind of contained warfare, and this results in people getting chewed up very much like in World War II but with very indecisive endings, like with Korea, which became the forgotten war, because people just kind of wanted to put it aside, and because it didn't have that decisive ending that World War II had, and now we've got Bosnia and how many other wars around the world right now, all kinds of atrocities going on, open genocide going on in some cases, and we're kind of handcuffed in our abilities to deal with it now simply because we can't get ginned up with that excitement that we had over the Nazis or over the Japanese after Pearl Harbor.

MR. MAC NEIL: What do you think World War II left unsettled, Roger?

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Well, it certainly left a culture unsettled. Clarence talked about what was decisive about the end of the war and what was indecisive was the way we were to live after it. A whole generation starting--the baby boomers in 1945 but really coming into their own in '48 and '49--grew up referring to themselves as hibakusha, the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I remember going to school--I think everybody around this table does--hiding under desks, doing those duck and cover exercises. We grew up in an entire atmosphere of potential extinction, which was entirely informed by the end of that war. It worked in my school. Not one person in my school was hit by an atomic weapon, but the fact of the matter was that the whole culture changed and changed right until the Cold War came to an end.

MR. MAC NEIL: Interestingly, when we talked to you all before about this, several of you said more or less in the same way World War II changed this country enormously, I mean, into a global power for one thing, but also it produced the generation out of the victorious generation of World War II, it produced the generation which has gone about tearing down and destroying many American institutions since--I think it was--you were one of those who said that, Roger.

MR. ROSENBLATT: It is the most interesting thing. I think it had to do with almost with the physical aspect of the explosion, itself, to see how much could be destroyed how quickly, because if there's anything that characterizes the baby boomers, it's--

MR. MAC NEIL: Baby boomers are those who were born of the freshly returned heroes, newly married, living in their new suburbs, and living the greatest expression materialistically of the American dream that had ever been.

MR. ROSENBLATT: Exactly, but I just wanted to finish one thought, Richard, that the--what--we saw the fruit of the baby boom really in the 60's, where no institution was to be trusted, including the universities in which most of the boomers were placed there. The government wasn't to be trusted. The presidency wasn't to be trusted. Businesses are not to be trusted. And, in fact, since that time, most of these great institutions have to one degree or another come apart.

MR. MAC NEIL: Anne, do you have a comment on that, that the children of the victors of World War II are the children who have in one way or another been tearing the institutions of this country apart or remaking them in some way?

MS. FLEMING: Yes. I'm clearly one of those children that was born in one of those suburbs, Robin. I am a baby boomer. But I think-- I disagree with Roger a little bit about this--I think a lot of what happened was something I was referring to earlier, was that the fathers that came home looking very heroic on one level they moved into our households, they bumped the moms back out of the work force and into those houses. In many ways, we're products, certainly as women, of a "father knows best" mentality that those men came back with that set up a later rebellion that I think, in fact, certainly for women was very healthy. It's a direct legacy or the direct legacy or beginning I would say of the women's movement that followed, of which I'm certainly a product, so I don't see it as all destructive. I also think we have to remember that those fathers and father figures were the ones that turned around and tried to fight, let's say Vietnam with that same mentality. There were clear cut good guys and bad guys. When that turned out not to be true, I think there was a great deal of dissatisfaction and unhappiness among those of us who were their children and, indeed, we did take to the streets I think in large measure to help stop a war, so I don't see it all as destruction. I think a lot of what it set in motion was very positive.

MR. MAC NEIL: Richard, what do you see as the difference between the generation that fought World War II and the generation that followed your generation?

MR. RODRIGUEZ: It might be a matter of family secrets. I've always been of the opinion that there are secrets about the Second World War that we don't--we don't know yet. I have a friend whose father, a World War II veteran, came home, and she remembers him screaming at night with nightmares. We all know that the veterans of the First World War were shell shocked by the experience. We all know that the Vietnam vet wasdevastated by the experience.

MR. MAC NEIL: It was called battle fatigue in the Second World War.

MR. RODRIGUEZ: That's right. But these heroes who came back in the Second World War were supposed to be so well adjusted and so forth and so on. Well, they also--you know, they were, as Jim was saying, they were these restless men who moved out to California. The fierceness of their optimism--there is something else too--in what Anne was saying about the woman's movement, I would argue that the black civil rights movement owes a lot of its energy to the end of the Second World War in that it made impossible the kind of segregated society of, of the pre-war years. It certainly is the case with Hispanics, that, that the war was both the assimilating factor to get Hispanics assimilated to the general society, but what that means is that you get people who are suddenly unwilling to go back to--come back from a war to go back to a situation that was pre-war.

MR. MAC NEIL: All right.

MR. PAGE: Not just the end of the war, but the war, itself. Black units in the war, the first black aviation unit, the Tuskegee airmen, Asian units, including Japanese-Americans, fighting primarily in Europe, even though their families were incarcerated in these camps back in California and, and all the way to Kansas, all along the West and Southwest--minorities had a--a choice. The NAACP adopted this, this war on two fronts strategy: Fight for equal rights back home and fight against Nazism abroad. And so that choice was made, and I think, Richard, definitely that led to Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers and that same year, Harry Truman desegregated the army with his order, the Korean War you had desegregation in fact, and that got--

MR. MAC NEIL: And Brown Vs. Board of Education came in the early 50's, '54.

MR. PAGE: '54, right, can't forget that.

MR. ROSENBLATT: Interesting thing, and that wasn't the work of the baby boomers.

MR. PAGE: No.

MR. ROSENBLATT: That was the work of the generation that came out of World War II.

MR. PAGE: That's absolutely right. I want to say something nice for World War II. That is one thing. Another thing is the creation of the suburbs. The creation of the suburbs really came about--I'm willing to argue--from the Cold War, because Dwight Eisenhower and various others started the federal highway program that, that really helped to build the suburbs, because they wanted to spread the population out in case of nuclear attack. But World War II--

MR. MAC NEIL: But also Detroit had huge capacity from wartime production which immediately everybody wanted to convert into, into automobiles.

MR. PAGE: Automobiles, right, so that ended the rails in this country. I mean, there were a lot of things going on at once, but World War II did certainly--it ended the Great Depression, let us remember. FDR tried, but it was really World War II ended the Depression, and that GI Bill gave us the most educated population in our history, and perhaps the world--

MR. MAC NEIL: I was astonished to hear--excuse me--on the question of ending the Depression, I was astonished to learn from a friend of mine who was--who enlisted in World War II, and he came from a comfortable life in New York City, and in his basic training camp, he ran into scores of young men, particularly from Appalachia, who were being better fed by the army than they'd ever been fed in their life, who arrived hungry.

MR. PAGE: Right, right.

MR. RODRIGUEZ: The cliche I have heard all my life growing up in California after the war was, was what a remarkable time it was in American history that we were all so close together in common purpose and so forth and so on, forget the fact that the Japanese- Americans were incarcerated; forget the fact that the--the South was still segregated--but we were all Americans together and so forth and so on. The curious thing is that once the war was over, of course, there was this enormous energy in the country for the suburban house which is separate, for the fence, for the car, rather than the bus, because I want to be alone. The war in some way gave birth to some individualism which I believe in the 1940's was already the precursor of something that happened 20 years later.

MR. FISHER: I think change was, as you say, the cars and the tract homes that started not because of interstate highways, because the GI Bill, but there's a lot of people that came out of the war, and the old saying, and this goes back to the Civil War- -once you've put the button "U.S." on a black man's uniform, you could never deny him the fact of, of citizenship. That little brass button saying "U.S." meant everything.

MR. MAC NEIL: And on an American Jew.

MR. FISHER: On an American Jew.

MR. MAC NEIL: Or an Italian or--

MR. FISHER: Hispanic.

MR. MAC NEIL: And all the little rainbow coalition--only it wasn't called that--it was in all the World War II movies, which platoon--each squad had to have its second. So--

MR. PAGE: It's also the great American paradigm, you know. Anne mentioned earlier about women, and, and being pushed off the jobs they had during the war. All the women I talked to--my mother included--were more than happy to leave those jobs. I know there were a lot who weren't so happy, but the ideal was very common in the country at that time to, to normalize America. What does that mean? That means get women out of the work place and, and into the home. What's happened today, with the boomers since 1960? The working woman has become the norm, not the exception. And now with the decline of industrial America, we're finding a lot of working class households, the woman is making more money than the man. The paradigm is changing. We've got to get ready for a new century.

MR. MAC NEIL: Anne, Anne, I'd like to ask you something. In your hometown paper, they did a story on what veterans of World War II think now, and they quote William Manchester, the best-selling author and who was a Marine who fought in the Pacific. He said, "I don't love this country that much; there's too much of it from which I feel alienated. It's not the America I knew. I don't dislike it; I just don't feel like I could lay down my life for it." What--how does that strike you, to hear a--one of the heroes- -and there are other people in the article quoted in a similar vein--

MS. FLEMING: I've heard plenty of people say that.

MR. MAC NEIL: "I feel as though I'm living in an alien country," another Marine called Eugene Sledge, who later became a college professor, says.

MS. FLEMING: Yeah. You know, I have empathy for that. I've even heard sentiments like that among my parents and their parents' friends. It was something I had talked about earlier--the sense that it was a more united country, that they were fighting an enemy in common, that it was a more cohesive, much less messy country than it became, and I have to tell you I have empathy for it, but it's certainly not sentiments I share. I am a product of the mess, as it were, that followed that war, the end of that war--all of the things that everybody on this panel's been talking about, the civil rights movement, the women's movement, the--in some ways the fragmentation of the society, which on some--in some ways is healthy. I have great empathy for the people that fought that war and had a more simple view of the country, as the country had of itself. I'm not sure how honest that was even then, but I--I am a direct product of the mess and grateful for it, and you know, in some ways, I suppose it makes me sad to hear somebody like Manchester say that and not be able to embrace all of the things that, that have fallen out.

MR. MAC NEIL: How do you feel--sorry, Anne--how do you feel, Jim Fisher, about Manchester's point?

MR. FISHER: Disappointment. I think it's a dumb thing to say, because in this country, everybody says, well, we were really united in World War II, but if you look through American history, probably no time since the revolution up to World War II were we as united. Go back to World War I, we were throwing German Americans in jail faster than we were throwing Japanese Americans in jail. I mean, it's--that's the saddest history, if you really look at World War I.

MR. RODRIGUEZ: In the 30's, in Depression years, you could have heard a lot of Americans sound like Manchester too. I mean, it's not a new thing to say about America.

MR. FISHER: We rebuild this country--we start over

MR. RODRIGUEZ: Exactly.

MR. FISHER: --we tear it down--

MR. RODRIGUEZ: Exactly.

MR. FISHER: --we rebuild it. Maybe we weren't as diverse as we are now. Maybe a lot of people don't like that. But I mean, it's a marvelous tapestry to look at even today.

MR. MAC NEIL: Roger.

MR. ROSENBLATT: I think it's true, although I think Manchester clearly earned his right to his view now. If his generation doesn't recognize the country, neither do the baby boomers, the first wave of whom are turning 50 next year, recognize the country into which they were born.

MR. MAC NEIL: Even in your time.

MR. ROSENBLATT: In my time as well. I'm four years shy of being a baby boomer, so I can speak with some authority, Anne, about the older generation.

MS. FLEMING: Thank you. Thank you, Roger. I appreciate that.

MR. ROSENBLATT: But the--the truth and maybe the beauty of the country is that no succeeding generation would recognize it looking back after a time. That's the way we're built. We're built not to recognize what we were on the assumption that we can be better than we were and something different. But we're--we're certainly in a mess now.

MR. MAC NEIL: Should--then should young Americans--younger than all of us--who are the two generations removed from the war--should they look back on the--on the people who fought the Second World War as heroes?

MS. FLEMING: Oh, sure. I don't think you can take that away.

MR. MAC NEIL: Heroic Americans? Heroic breed?

MS. FLEMING: Heroic breed, no. Heroes, yes. I don't think you can say it's a heroic breed. What I do think, though, that we've all pointed out is that maybe even discussions like this are arbitrary in the sense that we try to get our hands on a particular time or a particular event, maybe what we're all saying is it is evolutionary, that this is a piece of our history, and in that sense, I certainly think the two generations down the road that you're talking about, God willing, would study this history as they would study Vietnam, as they would get some sense of the flow that has given birth to them and to the country as they now know it.

MR. MAC NEIL: Well, Anne and gentlemen, thank you all very much. ESSAY - AN AMERICAN HERO

MS. FARNSWORTH: Finally tonight, essayist Roger Rosenblatt returns with a tribute to baseball legend Mickey Mantle. Mantle lost his fight with cancer yesterday. He was 63 years old.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: What a player he was. In terms of ability, he had everything baseball requires--speed, timing, and power. One tends to forget Mantle's speed, because he was hobbled for most of his career. It would take hours to tape him up before a game. Those brittle knees, he hauled them as he ran. When he swung and missed, one could feel the wrenching in the grandstands. Yet, taped or not, he could still run from home to first faster than any player of his time. His sense of timing was so sharp it made his speed unnecessary. He never lunged for a ball in center field, because he always knew where it would be when he arrived. He was off to the spot at the crack of the bat. As for his power, well, one can count the 585 feet the ball traveled in Washington, or point to the right field lights atop Yankee Stadium, as people still do, and recall how the lights once prevented a Mantle shot from exiting the stadium. No one but he ever came close to doing that. Oh, he could also play in field. He was an in-fielder when he first came up to the majors, and he could pitch, yes, pitch. I used to watch him fooling around during warm-ups, throwing stuff, sliders and curves good as any pitcher. Those remarkable gifts were part of who Mantle was, the part one saw, and he rose to what one saw. He rose to become an American myth. Who did not speak of his Oklahoma upbringing? Who did not know that he killed his knees playing high school football? Who did not know that his father sort of created him from boyhood, perhaps against his will, teaching Mantle to switch hit. His appearance was mainly wheat field, but with a temper that made him more attractive in the long run. He grew up from a petulant kid who kicked the water cooler when he made out to a warrior suffering without complaint, and he grew up inside of everybody, which was a sign of character too. Mantle would never have been so beloved had he not deserved love. In the past few months, Mickey Mantle seemed to be wondering if his life was merely a life lost to an addiction. This, of course, was before the cancer was detected, and the illness that resulted from his alcoholism focused one's attention on his addiction, Mantle's attention too. Yet, he was not a flailing alcoholic who was also a baseball player. He was a bright, sunny, generous place in American sports, who, like everyone else, had dark and terrible rooms in his house. In an interview with him in March, NBC's Bob Costas reminded him of how extraordinary a player he was and how his existence gave pleasure to people everywhere.

BOB COSTAS: Did you ever say to yourself, "Wait a minute, I'm one of the best ball players of all time, people seem to love me, why don't I feel better?"

MICKEY MANTLE: Maybe, maybe I do in the back of my mind feel like I've let everybody down in some way or other.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Never, Mick. I'm Roger Rosenblatt. RECAP

MR. MAC NEIL: Again, the major stories of this Monday, the three major airports in the New York City area were under tightened security following reports of terrorist threats from Middle Eastern extremists, and the Indian government refused to meet the demands of Kashmiri separatists holding four Western hostages. A fifth hostage was murdered by the kidnappers and his body found yesterday. Good night, Elizabeth.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Good night, Robin. We'll be back tomorrow night. I'm Elizabeth Farnsworth. Thank you and good night.