The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight the Israeli war against Hezbollah, two former U.S. diplomats offer analysis [Focus - Combat Zone]; a Superfund update, Spencer Michels reports from California [Update - Cleaning Up]; the importance of the vice presidential choice [Focus - Dole - Running Mates] as seen by NewsHour regulars Doris Kearns Goodwin, Michael Beschloss, and Haynes Johnson, plus magazine editor Bill Kristol; and a conversation with Jack Miles, winner of a Pulitzer Prize for his book God: A Biography [Finally - Pulitzer Winner]. It all follows our summary of the news this Tuesday. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: President Clinton arrived in Tokyo today for a three- day state visit. The President and First Lady were met by Japanese Prime Minister Hashimoto. Regional security is expected to be the main topic of their talks. Thousands of demonstrators protested in a Tokyo park. They wanted an end to the U.S. military presence in Japan. Late yesterday, the President made a brief stop in South Korea. At a news conference, Mr. Clinton and South Korean President Kim Young Sam invited North Korea and China to participate in peace talks. The President said the new accord could replace the armistice agreement that ended the Korean War in 1953.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: It has been 43 years since the armistice was signed. There have been tensions ever since. North Korea's recent incursions into the joint security area reminds us again that peace on the peninsula is fragile.

MR. LEHRER: North Korea recently announced it would no longer recognize the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas. In the Middle East today, Israeli raids into Lebanon killed four people, injured twelve. Helicopter gunships struck a Palestinian settlement in Southern Lebanon. It was the first attack on a Palestinian target since Israel began its offensive against Hezbollah rebels in Lebanon last week. And in Beirut, Israeli aircraft bombarded the capital for a sixth time. From the Lebanese side, rebels fired a barrage of rockets into Northern Israel. Israeli army radio reported damage but no casualties. The United States and France are both trying to broker peace talks. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. In Liberia, militias launched a mortar assault on a barracks holding thousands of rebels and their civilian hostages. Throughout the capital city of Monrovia, armed gangs of bandits are roaming the streets. All of the shops and offices there were reported to have been looted. Many were completely destroyed. More than 60,000 Liberians have been left homeless by the violence which began just over a week ago. There have thus far been no accurate accounts of dead and wounded. In this country, black box recorders will be installed on all military passenger jets. Defense Sec. Perry issued that order today in Washington. It follows the plane crash in Croatia that killed Commerce Sec. Ron Brown and 34 others. Brown's plane, a military version of the Boeing 737, carried no equipment to track flight data. In a letter to commanders, Perry said the black boxes should be installed as soon as possible. The Senate today declined to extend the life of its Whitewater Committee. Sixty votes were required. Only 51 were cast in favor. The mandate of the special Whitewater Committee expired in February. Committee Chairman Alfonse D'Amato said after the vote that he would ask the Banking Committee to take up the investigation. He also chairs that committee. At a news conference, D'Amato denied political motivations.

SEN. ALFONSE D'AMATO, Chairman, Banking Committee: In this kind of situation, there will be those who say this is nothing more than politics. Well, that's unfortunate, but the fact of the matter is this is our system, and our system is designed to give Congress the ability and the authority and the obligation to ascertain the facts. That's what I want to do, and I will do it as expeditiously as we can.

MR. LEHRER: Senate Minority Leader Daschle said the decision to move the Whitewater investigation to the Banking Committee was an unfortunate turn of events. He called the investigation a political witch hunt. In Texas today, a key power station failed, leaving large areas of the Southwest without electricity. Hundreds of thousands of people did without lights, computers, and other machines. Some of the worst problems were caused by the failure of traffic lights. Police were called to direct traffic and keep streets clear. Power returned later in the day to many communities in West Texas, Eastern New Mexico, Southwestern Kansas, and parts of the Oklahoma Panhandle. In economic news today, the Federal Reserve reported U.S. industrial production fell by 1/2 of 1 percent in March. The figure reflects output from the nation's utilities, factories, and mines. The recent 18-day strike at General Motors was blamed for the drop. The Chrysler Corporation set a record for first quarter earnings. The No. 3 automaker earned slightly more than $1 billion between January and March, double its performance one year ago. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the Middle East fight, a Superfund update, choosing a running mate, and another Pulitzer Prize winner. FOCUS - COMBAT ZONE

MR. LEHRER: This was day six of the bombing and rocketing back and forth across the Lebanon-Israeli border. Our coverage begins with two reports on the fighting, first from Northern Israel, Robert Moore of Independent Television News.

ROBERT MOORE, ITN: Israeli warplanes have kept up their attacks on South Lebanon, hitting suspected Hezbollah targets around the city of Tyre. Most of the local population has fled North. Those left behind have been seeking shelter at UN posts in the area. But the scope of the Israeli air strike has been widened. It included a pre-dawn missile attack on a refugee camp in Sidon, where a Palestinian faction supporting Hezbollah is based. [sirens] But the Shiite militants have been responding. Volleys of rockets fell into Northern Israel's main town, causing extensive damage. More of the missiles could be seen exploding on a mountain ridge just short of their target. The only time that Israeli gunners did not respond was during a two-minute pause this morning when sirens throughout Israel signaled Holocaust Memorial Day. Moments later, they were preparing to fire again, commanders saying their assault on Hezbollah is going according to plan.

ALEX THOMPSON, ITN: Israeli control of Lebanese air space is total. Jets screamed over the southern city of Tyre this morning on bombing runs, averaging over 200 missions every day. At sea, their patrol vessels pass close to the shore. A missile fired into the warren-like streets Einohollah, a densely populated district of Sidon, home to 80,000 Palestinians. Local police said the Israelis were targeting the house of a PLO leader, but a woman and two other men were seriously wounded, the first time Palestinians have been attacked in this war. [sirens] Beirut this afternoon after another air raid designed to kill Hezbollah guerrillas. Instead, a two-year-old girl lies dying of her injuries in hospital. Five air raids in Beirut in six days, the Palestinians have now been targeted and the economic damage after the bombing of the city's electricity supply is now being assessed.

MOUHIB ITANI, Lebanon Electricity: Well, it is obvious. The Israeli attentions are to destroy the infrastructure of this country. This is not the first time they do it. They have been doing it, and they have a habit of doing it, so we know that. Unfortunately, we have to live with it. That's all.

ALEX THOMPSON: At Beirut's foreign ministry, constant activity as an American deal is emerging. Lebanon and Syria must disarm Hezbollah and guarantee the security of Northern Israel. Israel must cease bombardment, divide the peace talks, and express the willingness to end its occupation of parts of Lebanon after nine months of peace.

RICHARD JONES, U.S. Ambassador, Lebanon: We're working as hard and as fast as we can to put this behind us and to move forward so that we can have a comprehensive just, lasting peace in the entire region, so that people on all sides of the border can live in peace and security.

ALEX THOMPSON: But the French and Syrians are central to any deal. France's foreign minister, Yves De Charet, had talks with President Assad in Damascus this afternoon. The Syrians said the United States can't be an honest broker because of its pro-Israeli stance. The French are also far from optimistic.

MR. LEHRER: Now two views of what it might take to end this outbreak of violence. William Brown was United States Ambassador to Israel in 1993 when the last major incident occurred between Israel and Lebanon. Edward Djerejian is a former ambassador to Israel and to Syria and was Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs in the Bush administration. He's now director of the Baker Institute for Foreign Policy at Rice University in Houston. Amb. Brown, do you agree with what that--how that--what that reporter said at the end, that the--that the Syrians believed the United States cannot be an honest broker in this?

WILLIAM BROWN, Former State Department Official: Well, I don't know the specific Syrian source for that, but no, I don't believe it. We've demonstrated through the years that we exercise a very, very significant influence on all the players there, and surely, the Syrian President Assad is keenly aware of that. Disappointed with us he may be, but I think he recognizes our influence on the situation.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. Amb. Djerejian, what is, what is driving this, this particular confrontation at this particular time in your opinion?

EDWARD DJEREJIAN, Director, Baker Institute: Well, Jim, I think we have to put this in a broader context beyond today's headlines. I think there are three factors. One is the retaliatory cycle, the Hezbollah attacks and the Israeli military response, based on very important security calculations. The second factor is the lack of progress in the Israeli-Syrian peace negotiations. This current lull, the suspension of the talks that make the situation on the ground much more liable for acts of violence and terrorism, and affect the whole political situation in, in individual countries and certainly in the region, and third, I think electoral considerations in Israel, itself. There will be elections at the end of May for the prime ministership, and again the Israeli government has to look strong on security issues, indeed, because of the cumulative impact of Hamas acts of terrorism in Israel, the number of people who have been killed, and then Hezbollah's attacks on Northern Israel. So Shimon Peres's government cannot look weak in the face of this accumulation of acts of violence.

MR. LEHRER: Amb. Brown, would you agree with those three reasons?

AMB. BROWN: I certainly would. I, as you may be aware, had--I was on the ground in 1981-82, as we saw Kiryat Shemona and the Northern Israeli towns bombarded with Katyushas. They were Palestinian. They were Arafat's Katyushas. And there was a massive--

MR. LEHRER: Which is a rocket, right?

AMB. BROWN: That's right. And it was a massive demand that the government act. It did. The results were tragic in terms of the large scale invasion of Lebanon up to and including Beirut. But the rockets stopped at least at that time. Amb. Djerejian and I worked the problem back in 1993. And it was demonstrated there that the Syrian government could and did finally come in and put a stop to it with its very, very strong influence in--

MR. LEHRER: Is there any doubt they could do it again if they wanted to right now?

AMB. BROWN: The question arises back then three years ago they could and they did, the question arises in my mind whether in the interim, Jim, Hezbollah has grown so strong playing on nationalism and on Shiite brand of Islam, acting at the direction, in my view, of Iran-supported and backed in so many ways by Iran. The question in my mind is whether Hezbollah has now so entrenched itself in South Lebanon that it can act almost defiantly. Back then there was no question when the Syrians finally made their decision to put a stop to it. Until now, in my view, it's been an acquiescence in, an unfortunate acquiescence in Hezbollah activity. Certainly, in my view, Syria exercises great influence, but it make take longer than it took them.

MR. LEHRER: How do you read that, Amb. Djerejian, about whether or not Syria can stop this or not?

AMB. DJEREJIAN: I think Syria has major influence on the ground in Lebanon and influence in terms of Hezbollah certainly based on its relations with Iran, and I think that the diplomacy that's being undertaken now, the crisis diplomacy to get the situation back to what I would call a status quo ante, depends a lot on the decision-making in Damascus. I don't think it's an accident that the reports that the Iranian foreign minister has been visiting the leaders in Syria. There have been strong consultations between Prime Minister Hariri of Lebanon and with the Syrian government. So, indeed, Syria plays a central role, and I think perhaps the, the objective now of these diplomatic efforts is to one, cease-- stop the fighting, stop the acts of violence; two, to go back to the status that was negotiated, as Bill mentioned, in 1993, which is really to limit attacks to the security zone and not against Israel proper, against the communities and the targets of Northern Israel, and to avoid the targeting of civilians. Indeed, if one can get an agreement, at least on that basis, I think there will be some progress made, but, again, one has to question exactly what Israel's objectives are. Would that be enough? What has this latest Israeli military retaliation done to the considerations and the calculations of the leaders in Damascus and Lebanon? But certainly I think at a minimum we have to get back to the 19--what was negotiated in 1993.

MR. LEHRER: Amb. Brown, you diplomats have always said there is never peace until it's in the interests of both parties. Is it in the interest of both parties? Does Hezbollah have a reason to stop this? Does Syria have a reason to stop this? Does Israel have a reason to stop this right now?

AMB. BROWN: Certainly, Israel has a reason to stop it. I believe that Syria has very good reason to stop it if it wants a renewal of the peace process and ultimately the Golan Heights, which is crucial from the viewpoint of Assad and the Syrian leadership.

MR. LEHRER: While this is going on, there is certainly not going to be any renewal of any peace talks that would lead to Israel giving up the Golan Heights.

AMB. BROWN: Even without this, of course, the Israeli election of itself sort of cooled that. I'm sure that the Israelis would want to re-engage--certainly the Paris government would want to re- engage afterward, however, it's not just these two players of course. It's Hezbollah and there you get a Shiite and ultimately to no small degree an Iranian agenda, to say nothing of the poor Lebanese government, weak, divided, dealing with splits among Christians and Muslims on the one hand, within the Muslim communities between Sunis and Shiite militants on the other. So it's a rather complex quagmire here.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. Well, Amb. Djerejian, go back to the Israeli- -to the Israeli part of this equation. There--as all the reports say, a reporter just repeated it, they have air superiority, they pretty well can do what they want to do militarily. What is pushing them to end this, if anything?

AMB. DJEREJIAN: Well, they would--I think the Israelis need to have, again, another agreement, strong assurances that Hezbollah will be reined in along the parameters of the '93 agreement.

MR. LEHRER: Because of the--excuse me--because based on what you said earlier, without that, Prime Minister Peres couldn't accept anything even if he wanted to, because of the electoral situation?

AMB. DJEREJIAN: Absolutely. I mean, security, the whole issue in Israel now is peace with security. And the focus is turned really a bit away from peace to security in the wakes of all these acts of violence in Israel from Hamas and from Hezbollah. So the, the Labor Government in Israel has to show itself to be able to respond to the real security needs of the Israeli people, so that is what is driving the Israeli government. On the other hand, unfortunately, when you don't have the peace process making progress, the process, itself, becomes more susceptible to what I call the least common denominator on the ground, the people who have a stake in promoting violence and terrorism to subvert the peace process, and unfortunately, we're seeing that now. There's a lot of deja vu in this because we've seen it in the past, we've seen it in 1993, and the important thing is to establish an arrangement that will hold on the ground and get on with the Arab- Israeli peace process, and especially the Israeli-Syrian negotiations because there will be no progress on the Israeli-Lebanese negotiations unless there is parallel progress in the Syrian track. I, for myself, thought it was a mistake for the Israeli-Syrian negotiations to be suspended. There were very good political reasons for doing that--

MR. LEHRER: Well, that was--

AMB. DJEREJIAN: --Israel--

MR. LEHRER: That was a result of the suicide bombings in Israel.

AMB. DJEREJIAN: That's correct. In that instance, it was the Hamas--

MR. LEHRER: Hamas.

AMB. DJEREJIAN: --bombings. But I thought it was a mistake to suspend those because we have to--the Arab-Israeli peace process, and I've said this before on your program, Jim, has always been a race between violence and terrorism on the ground and substantive forward movement in the negotiations themselves. And we must not allow the terrorists and the least common denominators to subvert that process.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Amb. Brown, based on what you know about this similar deja vu situation that Amb. Djerejian just spoke of, that you spoke of earlier, and what you know is going on there now, is there any reason to believe that this thing could be resolved sooner rather than later?

AMB. BROWN: I think it'll take time. It may take more time than it took in 1993.

MR. LEHRER: Like what? Weeks? Months? This might--we might continue this for a matter of weeks or months?

AMB. BROWN: There are dedicated rejectionists, dedicated fanatics that are involved on this on the Hezbollah side, and whereas in 1993 we emerged from it rather sooner, it may take a bit longer this time for the pain level to radiate out, an unfortunate way of putting it, for the more decisive kind of intervention that we surely need from Damascus.

MR. LEHRER: Do you agree, Amb. Djerejian?

AMB. DJEREJIAN: Well, I don't know how much time it's going to take. The main point here is that this situation can get out of control and Israel obviously remembers its experience in Lebanon in '82, and also in the '93 period. We do not want the situation in Lebanon to grow into a larger crisis, and, therefore, I think there has to be some crisis management now limiting the scope--

MR. LEHRER: All right.

AMB. DJEREJIAN: --of the activities and getting, getting the parties to come to an agreement on security in Southern Lebanon and Northern Israel and getting on with this peace process.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Gentlemen, thank you both very much. We'll see what happens. UPDATE - CLEANING UP?

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, a Superfund update, choosing a vice president, and a Pulitzer Prize conversation. Spencer Michels has the Superfund story.

SPENCER MICHELS: Mining for gold more than a century ago was what built the little town of Sutter Creek in California's motherload. Despite its old time facade, this town is embroiled in a modern battle over what the gold miners left behind--arsenic, commonly known as a poison, and the role of the Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund. That's the federal program designed to clean up hazardous waste and spills of toxic substances which have been designated threats to public health. Superfund passed by Congress in 1980 depends for its clean-up money mostly on a tax from the chemical and petroleum industries, source of much pollution. That tax expired at the end of last year. The money will run out in a year or so. If the tax is to be reinstated and the Fund reauthorized, Republicans in Congress insist Superfund must be reformed or changed. The controversy that began at this mine head at Sutter Creek's Center Eureka Mine casts light on the fight in Congress over Superfund. Beginning in 1858 at Sutter Creek, miners sank tunnels a mile into the earth and dislodged rock. For a century, they sent that rock to the surface, where it was pulverized and the gold removed. What was left over were tailings. Some remained near the mine, and some flowed down flumes and creeks to sites like this, where they remain. EPA Coordinator Brad Shipley has collected some.

BRAD SHIPLEY, EPA Site Coordinator: It's a very fine, flour-like powder. That's what these tailings are. It's processed ore. In concentrated tailings, you have three hundred to seven hundred parts per million of arsenic consistently. So it's very mobile. A very small particle can be moved in the wind, or very easily transported in water and runoff.

MR. MICHELS: A few years ago, developers with all the proper permits began construction of a 40-home subdivision in a spot where the mine operators had left a pile of tailings. But after a complaint from a worker, the state and then the federal EPA arrived to test the area for arsenic. They documented their activities on videotape. Superfund's acting regional director, Keith Takata.

KEITH TAKATA, Superfund Official: We know that at the levels of arsenic we have at this site if people are continued to be exposed to it, there will be health effects, and the health effects of arsenic are things like cancer, reproductive effects that don't show up for years down the road.

MR. MICHELS: Superfund called the Mesa De Oro subdivision and emergency response site, a designation that bypasses the lengthy procedures at locations on the more well-known national priorities list of 1300 Superfund sites.

BRAD SHIPLEY: To me, this site is a perfect example of how we're doing things a lot differently than we used to. We came in here a couple of years ago. We did some sampling, and then we went right to the clean-up stage without a lot of study.

MR. MICHELS: Construction of new homes was halted, and the EPA began removing and then replacing a foot or two of soil both on the 12-acre Mesa and in the yards of the homes below. They shored up the sloped sides of the Mesa, using a plastic webbed soil container.

BRAD SHIPLEY: The point here is we're trying to contain the tailings, prevent them from migrating into the yard. We're also trying to prevent direct contact, so we're containing the contaminant and preventing exposure.

MR. MICHELS: But these residents and businessmen say that is unnecessary because there is no danger. They question the whole process of the Superfund's involvement at Sutter Creek.

GEORGE WHEELDON, Geologist: So the EPA is coming in and saying the sky is falling but yet the facts and the background indicates that this evidence is not there.

MR. MICHELS: Geologist George Wheeldon says the arsenic from the mine is in a form, arsenopyrite, that is not dangerous, not absorbed into the body.

GEORGE WHEELDON: They've tested the people that live at Mesa De Oro, and they've tested urine and arsenic and levels in their hair, and they come up with absolutely nothing.

MR. MICHELS: To point out just how safe the local arsenic is, Wheeldon wears a ring containing gold and arsenopyrite, common substances in the motherload.

GEORGE WHEELDON: Are we going to put a "for sale" sign on the total motherload a couple of miles wide for a hundred and twenty miles long, depress property values, and, and destroy people's lives and homes for a problem that doesn't appear to be there?

BRAD SHIPLEY: Show me one article that says these, the arsenic in these tailings is safe. Show me one article that says arsenopyrite is not hazardous. I have an open mind. I try to look at that material, and I haven't seen anything that's safe.

MR. MICHELS: The family that lives in this house next to the Mesa does not feel safe. The EPA found arsenic dust in their vacuum cleaner bags and arsenic in the yard. The government arranged for soil and plant removal around the house. Roberta Hughes, mother of two children, says she's thankful for the work.

ROBERTA HUGHES, Sutter Creek Resident: Arsenic is a known human carcinogen, and if we're exposed to it over many, many years, it could contribute to some of us getting cancer. And I don't think that's a risk that we should have to be exposed to.

MR. MICHELS: The EPA agreed and paid for part of the $5 million project to clean up the whole area. Nearly half the money came from a company, Allied Signal, that had bought the mine site long after it ceased producing gold. And developers of the homes were told they too would have to contribute to the clean-up. Although some Congressmen want to change that liability policy, the EPA defends it.

KEITH TAKATA: What Congress did in the original law was pass liability provisions that made people who actually caused the pollution responsible for cleaning it up.

MR. MICHELS: Of course, some of the people who caused the problem here have been dead maybe, maybe 50 years.

KEITH TAKATA: But these are the successor companies of the companies that actually caused the problem. And when they purchased those companies, they purchased both the assets and the liabilities of that company.

MR. MICHELS: According to EPA's critics, such a policy penalizes the innocent. Mike Sweeney heads up a new gold mining company near Sutter Creek.

MIKE SWEENEY, Gold Mine Operator: The EPA has the authority under the Superfund Act to be able to take, come in and tell you that you've got to clean up a problem that you didn't create. It could have happened a hundred years ago, but because you are in the chain of title to that piece of property, and it doesn't matter who is in the chain of title, it's whoever has the deepest pocket is the one that's going to pay for it.

KEITH TAKATA: And the question is how do you get it cleaned up? You can use all government funds to do it and then you wouldn't have the whole idea of liability and going after people, but then you'd have a huge cost to government.

MR. MICHELS: Developers at Mesa De Oro say the Superfund law has cost them a fortune.

AL KAPLAN, Developer: The total at our expense, we have already paid out $200,000 in cash for material and dump trucks and all that that we had to do to put this dirt around the, around the buildings.

SHELDON THOMPSON, Developer: I'm broke because I took all my assets and borrowed against my assets to build houses, and I can't sell the houses. I can't do anything with the houses.

MR. MICHELS: The EPA says the developers should have done studies to detect the arsenic before building.

BRAD SHIPLEY: Those people that are the detractors are mining interests. They're also the developers that ramrodded this through the city government in the first place.

MR. MICHELS: Paying for the clean-up here and in Superfund sites across the country has provoked a slew of lawsuits that have delayed the work.

MIKE SWEENEY: Most of the money that's been spent on the Superfund has been spent on attorneys and consultants doing studies and not actually doing physical clean-up.

MR. MICHELS: The EPA says Superfund money is spent only on clean- up. Money for lawyers does not come from the Superfund, itself. Still, congressional Republicans want mandatory arbitration instead of lawsuits. The EPA says the Republicans also want to absolve some companies from liability if they polluted before 1987. And some Congressmen want to lessen the amount of clean-up needed. But even if those changes occur, a broader criticism remains in Congress and here in Sutter Creek. Bill Briner writes a column for the local newspaper.

WILLIAM BRINER, Columnist: And it's very frightening when you see the arrogance of these folks. These--you know, the government used to be public servants. And now they've taken over the mantle of public masters. And that is terrifying. They have yet to respond to anyone. They're not accountable to anyone, and they've just thrown away several million dollars on a problem that does not exist and they've bankrupted people for no reason whatsoever.

MR. MICHELS: While EPA officials dismiss that as rhetoric, they do admit that nationwide reform of some Superfund practices is needed and has already begun. They say they've tried to ease up on property owners, and they've tried to speed up the clean-up of 1300 Superfund sites. But such work, they explained, is complicated, expensive, and necessary.

KEITH TAKATA: You talk to communities that we've worked with, nearby sites that we've cleaned up with, you know, ask them for intrusive, and I think the answer they'll tell you is that they're glad we're here, and we still have that kind of a program.

MR. MICHELS: At Sutter Creek, the clean-up of arsenic-laden tailings continues. EPA considers the project a success. Critics call it a fiasco. Nationally, Congress is wrestling with the same issues as it tries to shape a new Superfund law. FOCUS - DOLE - RUNNING MATES

MR. LEHRER: Now a look at a familiar political parlor game, guessing who the presidential candidate will select as hisrunning mate. Margaret Warner recently recorded this discussion.

MS. WARNER: The Republicans have chosen their Presidential nominee, Sen. Robert Dole, far earlier than usual for the out-of- power party, and that has caused speculation about his possible running mate to start far earlier as well.

SEN. ROBERT DOLE: I'm so confident I'm going to declare right now that I am the nominee.

MS. WARNER: Even before Majority Leader Dole sewed up his party's nomination last month, party prognosticators were speculating that retired Gen. Colin Powell would be an ideal vice presidential choice.

GEN. COLIN POWELL: I will remain in private life and seek other ways to serve.

MS. WARNER: But Powell declared he's no more interested in running for vice president this year than he was in running for president. Another favorite of the pundits, New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, said she didn't want the job either. Two weeks ago, Whitman telephoned Dole to say she'd rather remain governor for now. But Sen. Dole has many other options and categories to choose from. There are former rivals for the nomination like Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander. There are fellow Senators like Arizona Republican John McCain. The hottest speculation, however, centers on four popular Midwestern governors. They've all made names for themselves on education and welfare reform, and they've all won reelection by large margins. They are: Governor Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin, Governor John Engler of Michigan, Ohio Governor George Voinovich, and Illinois Governor Jim Edgar. Senator Dole isn't saying anything, not publicly at least. He hasn't said what he's looking for in a vice president. He hasn't even said how he'll go about choosing his running mate. Will he make his short list public, as Democrat Walter Mondale did in a series of candidate interviews in the summer of 1984? Or will he spring his choice on his advisers and the voters on the eve of the convention, as George Bush did in 1988? Here to talk about the history of selecting vice presidents are three NewsHour regulars: Presidential Historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Michael Beschloss, and Journalist and Author Haynes Johnson. They are joined tonight by Bill Kristol. He was chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle and is now editor and publisher of the "Weekly Standard." Welcome, all of you. Michael, how traditionally historically have vice presidents been chosen?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS, Presidential Historian: Well, originally the Constitution at the very beginning said that the vice president is the person who gets the second largest number of electoral votes. That was terrific with George Washington and John Adams, but as time went on, they began to see that this could cause some real problems. For instance, in our century, you could have had George McGovern serving as Richard Nixon's vice president or George Bush serving as vice president to Bill Clinton, which is an experience, I think, he would not have enjoyed, so, therefore, in 1804, you had the 12th Amendment to the Constitution that said that you have separate ballots and parties began nominating tickets, but in a way it didn't quite correct the problem because even inside a party you would have a presidential candidate choosing a vice- presidential candidate to unite the party perhaps of a different ideology and that would create situations such as 1850, Zachary Taylor died, his vice president, Millard Fillmore, succeeded, Fillmore was anti-slavery, and that caused the course of history to change and the death of Taylor was able to change the fate of the nation in a way that the founders I think would not have liked to see.

MS. WARNER: So when did the Presidential candidates, Haynes, start really hand-picking their own vice presidential running mates?

HAYNES JOHNSON, Journalist/Author: They've been doing it all this century. As a matter of fact, if you look back at the process, it is now, from what Michael says, it is now balancing the ticket. And supposedly, the office doesn't mean much, which is not true. Nine times out of forty-one men who sat in the White House, we've had successions in the presidency, four killed and so forth. So it does matter who is picked, and the classic example, I think, in recent times is Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. You balance a ticket. You have strong rivals. You have Massachusetts, and you need the Southern state, in this case Texas. Kennedy would not have won had he not chosen in that smoke-filled room up in the hotel with Sam Rayburn and got the call that he picked Lyndon Johnson, who was his strongest rival, and they were bitter enemies too, but it balanced the ticket, and it made electoral politics work.

MS. WARNER: Doris, FDR, Franklin Roosevelt, wasn't it 1940 that he really took a strong hand, himself, in choosing his own running mate? How did that happen?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN, Presidential Historian: That's right. In fact, up until 1940, even though the Presidents had a say in who their vice president would be, party leaders were so much more dominant that they could really choose how to balance a presidential and a vice-presidential ticket. For example, in '32, they picked Garner as a balance for Roosevelt, but in 1940, Roosevelt absolutely wanted Henry Wallace as his vice president. The party leader absolutely did not want him, and Roosevelt was so clear about it that he said he would not accept the Presidential nomination unless Wallace were made vice president. So he forced that choice on the convention. And from that point on, that was really a President taking complete control of the process. It has been hand picked. And I agree with Haynes. I think the one huge example of where we can't say the vice presidency doesn't matter is Lyndon Johnson in 1960. He had that great whistle stop tour through Dixie where he had "Yellow Rose of Texas" blaring from the end of the train and it was called by the reporters the "Corn Pone Special." But it made a difference. In fact, when I knew Johnson, he used to love to replay the videos of his train trip through the South and say, "I won that election for John F. Kennedy."

MR. JOHNSON: He did.

MS. GOODWIN: That he did.

MS. WARNER: Bill Kristol, are there other examples where the vice presidential choice made a difference positively or negatively?

WILLIAM KRISTOL, The Weekly Standard: Well, there may be at some point in this century. I, I actually think 1960 is the exception that proves the rule that the vice presidential choice does not actually matter much usually in an election. I mean, I have an interest in promoting the importance of the vice presidency. I worked for a vice president for, for four years, but, you know, Dan Quayle ran a miserable vice presidential campaign in 1988, and was the subject perhaps also of some bad luck and all that. Bush won easily. Quayle ran a pretty good vice presidential campaign in '92; Bush lost badly. It's pretty hard to make the case if the vice president made a difference I think in the fate of the ticket, with the probable exception in 1960.

MS. WARNER: Michael.

MR. BESCHLOSS: I think another exception might be 1976. Gerald Ford lost that election very narrowly, but if you talk to Ford today, he makes the point that Bob Dole helped him in farm states in which Gerald Ford was weak, and I think if Ford had won that year and it was very close, we might look back, oddly enough, at 1976 as a case where the vice president might have made a difference.

MS. WARNER: Do you think, though, it made a difference any other way, Haynes? Do you think, as some believe, Dole actually hurt Ford?

MR. JOHNSON: Yes, I do think so. I remember, Doris was recalling her experience with Lyndon Johnson, and I remember being on a debate with Vice Presidential Candidate Dole when he got very bitter and talked about Democratic wars, and I think that really hurt, and, and it created an impression that lasts to this day that he is trying to disamuse himself with, too angry, too hot, bitter.

MR. KRISTOL: Democrat wars.

MR. JOHNSON: Democrat, oh, yes.

MR. KRISTOL: Bob Dole never says Democratic.

MR. JOHNSON: Forgive me, please.

MS. WARNER: That was a mistake, right?

MR. KRISTOL: He uses that line--particularly effective--

MR. JOHNSON: Excuse me. They were Democrat wars.

MR. BESCHLOSS: Although Ford insists today that he helped him so much in the farm states that that even outweighed that.

MS. WARNER: Really? So, Doris, what historically again have been the criteria by which these Presidential candidates choose them, and are they changing? Have they changed at all?

MS. GOODWIN: Well, I think historically always the Presidents are going to say the main criteria I look at is someone who can succeed me in the Presidency, I want someone qualified to step into this office on day one. They always say that, and they hardly ever mean it. The main thing they're looking for is who's going to help me get elected, and I think that has shifted somewhat over time. In the past, region, ideology, sort of factional parts of the party were the things that were most important, and I think in today's media age, that's less important. You never would have had a small state candidate like Muskie chosen as vice president until the media made him a national figure, so you could afford to have that kind of choice, and now with so much attention on the character of the Presidency, it seems that we look for qualities, does this person have foreign policy experience, does this person have patriotic appeal, is this person a hero, and how will he balance out the sort of missing parts of the character of the Presidency because of the way we hone in on that? So I think it's always going to be what that candidate thinks is going to make him win the election, and then he'll worry about who's going to succeed him after he's dead, he's buried. He doesn't have to worry about it.

MS. WARNER: You're nodding, Haynes.

MR. JOHNSON: Well, no, I was thinking the other side of this, we haven't talked about it, and that's the attempt to reach out, have a breathtakingly different kind of choice, that the public say wow, that's great. Geraldine Ferraro was an example of that. The expectation cynically or internally was that this would solidify the "woman" vote, as if there is a monolithic vote, which there is not, and, and it didn't work, so that doesn't always play. You had the same thing with Mr. Powell, Gen. Powell this year. Bill can speak to that very well, that a black man could unify America, and maybe that's right, but we'll see.

MS. WARNER: We never got a chance to see.

MR. KRISTOL: Well, we may get a chance to see. Who knows? But Powell is very unusual in the sense that he actually in polls moves 4, or 5, 6 percentage points from Clinton to Dole apparently. Now, maybe that won't hold up in a real campaign, but it's the only instance I know of where any person added to a ticket moves any significant number of national votes.

MS. WARNER: Well, do you think the criteria have shifted significantly, and what--as Doris was saying? I mean, the television age, it's changed the criteria.

MR. KRISTOL: Well, it has, though there may be a mistake in a way. The Presidents--Presidential candidates may be over-thinking this, because when you really look hard at data, this--the implications are that the one thing a vice-presidential candidate can do is perhaps bring you a state. Johnson helped not because he was some wonderful national figure, but because he brought Texas, and maybe he helped in the South in general. And obviously, Dole is going to be thinking hard about that this year. There's a case for someone like John McCain, because he's a war hero, and it gives you a character issue against Clinton and all that, but I think most political pros at least would say, well, that's all very nice in theory, but there's really no evidence that the VP candidate moves votes nationally. What you can do is perhaps get a governor who's popular in his state and move a couple of percentage points in a big swing state. So I think for all the talk, I mean, Muskie was a sort of good pick, the press loved it, didn't help in 1968 much. In fact, all the kind of unusual picks, Ferraro in '84, it didn't help at all, and there really is a case for making a more conventional pick, I suspect.

MS. GOODWIN: In fact, if I could add, I remember Lyndon Johnson analyzing that '68 election, and he said if Humphrey had chosen somebody from a big state, given how close the election was, he might have won the election, that it was a mistake to go for someone without that electoral pull. On the other hand, Earl Warren, the most popular governor of California in 1948 was chosen by Dewey, and they still didn't win. So you can never really be sure the guy's going to carry your state.

MS. WARNER: Well, if you look at 1992, Bill Clinton, small state Southern governor, chose Al Gore, same age, same region, same gender, same race. I mean, how do you explain that, Michael?

MR. BESCHLOSS: It strengthened Clinton in the--it showed that he was willing to pick someone who was of similar stature in his party and I think brought more stature to that ticket than if he had chosen perhaps some much more junior figure. I think another thing of the Clinton-Gore--that Clinton's selection of Gore suggests is, is that Presidents are a little bit more sensitive nowadays to the fact that many vice presidents become President, and they're very sensitive to the fact, I think, that if you have a vice president who disagrees a lot with the Presidential candidate, that can suggest that you can have a situation like 1850, or as Doris was suggesting 1944. If Henry Wallace had been renominated for vice president and been elected in '44, Wallace would have been President at the beginning of the Cold War. Wallace was not terribly anti-Soviet. The whole history of the world could have been very different. That's one reason why a President or Presidential candidate should pay an awful lot of attention to the fact that if his vice president succeeds, there should be some consistency in policy.

MS. WARNER: Now, it's often said that this choice is the first big choice that the country watches the Presidential candidate make, but Haynes, doesn't it--I mean, historically, hasn't it revealed a lot, do youthink, who, whom they choose, has it revealed a lot about the Presidential candidates, or not?

MR. JOHNSON: As we said here, the choice usually doesn't matter that much in terms of the election. It certainly matters in terms of history. Harry Truman as President is a historic figure now. The fact that he happened to be picked the way he was made a difference. Lyndon Johnson certainly made a difference in terms of for better or worse in that terrible decade of the '60s, for great and other terrible reasons. So I think it can, but it doesn't really matter for the electorate, as much as maybe it should.

MS. GOODWIN: But on the other hand, I think you do see the way a person makes a choice. For example, when McGovern chose Eagleton and then the whole problem came out with Eagleton having submitted to shock tests and then McGovern said I'd back him 1000 percent and then he said, well, no, I guess he's not going to be my vice- presidential choice, that first big decision that McGovern made as potential President was incoherent, was chaotic, and then was indecisive, and I think it showed that you had to be worried about him, not only about his vice-presidential choice.

MR. JOHNSON: Let me just--

MR. KRISTOL: Doris is right on that. I think in '84 Mondale was hurt badly by the appearance of tailoring to all the interest groups and then picking--

MR. JOHNSON: That's right.

MR. KRISTOL: --Ferraro, and I think one thing that helped Clinton a lot in '92, and I remember this since I was working for Quayle at the time, it was less the pick of Gore, although he was regarded as a substantial guy and all that, but the way it was done. It was rolled out beautifully the Thursday before the convention, very nice photos. They went into the convention with some momentum, some press interest. It was just, it was sort of well managed, and one had the sense, especially after Clinton's incredibly rocky primary campaign, that this was sort of a professional, mature operation. And I do think that sort of spills over in a hard to define way into people's image of the candidate, himself.

MS. WARNER: That's interesting. So if you were following that sort of model or blueprint just in terms of what it says about the candidate, how should Bob Dole handle this, not who should he choose, but how do you think he should handle it?

MR. KRISTOL: Well, I just think you have a pretty good model in 1992. It seems to work well to not let it go till the actual convention and the chaos of the convention, which was the Bush- Quayle choice in '88, or the McGovern-Eagleton, you know, et cetera, choice, Sgt. Shriver--choice in '72. I think you do want to do it ahead of the convention. I think the choice Dole faces, given that he may be sort of dead in the water for the next three months, no news, messy legislative agenda that he's stuck with on Capitol Hill, will he want to make the choice even earlier than a week before the convention to try to frame the general election debate even earlier, but I do think the one thing we learned probably from '88 is don't want till the actual convention week.

MR. BESCHLOSS: I might say we have even on the NewsHour lamented a lot this very front-loaded primary system, and it had a lot of defects. One very good thing is that we may for the first time have this great breathing space in which a Presidential candidate, Bob Dole, can take the proper amount of time to do this in the kind of way that Bill is suggesting.

MS. GOODWIN: Well, you know, the interesting thing is that in the past it seems that the Democrats learned from theEagleton fiasco that they would make the selection a rather open process. From every point there on the Democrats have had extensive background checks. They've had the candidates come in for public interviews with the nominee of the Presidency, whereas, the Republicans have said and Bush himself said it's a demeaning thing to do that, I don't want to bring people to see me in Kennebunkport, and then have to turn them away if I don't choose them. But I think Dole would be well advised to, to listen to what had happened to the Democrats. And I hear what Bill's saying, and I think it'll just show a more professional and a willingness to say this is a really critical decision.

MR. JOHNSON: Yeah. And I think the public--I think what Doris and Bill are both saying makes a difference in the impression that the public forms about how this person is presiding over his responsibility of being President of the United States, and that, that's an impression, and it's the way it's done. You shouldn't play games with it. I think that's the lesson.

MR. KRISTOL: Well, and with Dole not to be, you know, to put one's finger on a sore point there, he is 72, will soon be 73 years old, and I--

MR. JOHNSON: Right.

MR. KRISTOL: --do think, therefore, the attention--normally it's just a courtesy, oh, he may succeed the President, and, of course, terrible things happen, assassinations, what not, but most of the time one assumes, no, that won't happen. One obviously hopes if Dole is elected, he'll serve out his one or two terms, and the odds are that he will, but I think with a 73 year old running for President, there really will be an interest in the vice-presidential selection different than there was in all the previous cases we've discussed.

MS. WARNER: Great. Thank you all very much.

MR. BESCHLOSS: Thank you.

MS. GOODWIN: Thank you. FINALLY - PULITZER WINNER

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight, to another of our interviews with the winners of the 1996 Pulitzer Prizes in the arts and to Elizabeth Farnsworth.

MS. FARNSWORTH: This year, the biography that won the Pulitzer Prize featured an unusual subject: God. Jack Miles is the author. He's a former Jesuit, who studied at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. For seven years, he was also the "Los Angeles" Times literary editor. He is now a columnist for that newspaper and director of the Humanity Center at the Claremont Graduate School in California. Thank you for being with us, Mr. Miles, and congratulations!

JACK MILES, Biographer: [Raleigh] My pleasure, Ms. Farnsworth.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What made you decide to write a biography of God?

JACK MILES: Well, I don't wish to be naive. One can't write at book-length about God and not be involved in religion in some way, but my goal wasn't to solve anyone's religious problem, even my own, but to do something about a great religious--rather, great literary masterpiece, the Bible, that seemed to me to have lost its protagonist, its hero. We had a simplified picture of God in our mind, and I was trying to restore some of its complexity.

MS. FARNSWORTH: So you're looking at him as a literary character, as if it were Hamlet?

JACK MILES: That's right. And not as the object of religious belief. I'm interested in God on the page and not God off the page, as I sometimes like to put it. And in tracing his development, not from birth to death, because He wasn't born, He doesn't die, but from His first words to His last words, from His first actions to His last actions, a story can be told, and, uh, and the surprise is that there is a conflict in development in growth.

MS. FARNSWORTH: You write that God learns and changes as the Bible goes along. Would you read something about that? There's a passage at the bottom of page 86.

JACK MILES: Sure. "As for the concrete particulars of what God wants mankind to be, this He only discovers as He goes along. His manner is always supremely confident, but He does not announce or seem even to know all His plans in detail or in advance. Again and again, God is displeased with man, but often enough, it seems that He discovers only in and through His anger just what pleases Him. To change the analogy slightly, He's like a director whose actors never seem to get it right and who is, as a result, often angry, but who doesn't, Himself, always know beforehand what getting it right will be. When the actors get it wrong, He too gets it wrong until finally they get it more or less right and He calms down enough to admit. Getting it right is in the Bible, not just a matter of mankind's observing the law of God. At this point in the story, the law has not even been given. It is rather and much more broadly a matter of mankind's becoming the image of God. That quest arising from the protagonist's whole stated motive drives the only real plot the Bible can be said to have.

MS. FARNSWORTH: And Mr. Miles, you also say that God has many personalities; the Lord God is at war with Himself, but His war is our own. What do you mean by that?

JACK MILES: Well, I mean that ancient Israel, originally a nomadic nation, encountered the religions and the Gods of many other peoples and as it concluded that there was only one real God, it took all the personality content that had ever fascinated it and combined it in, in this one amalgamated personality. Now, that personality necessarily because those parts didn't fit perfectly together has on the page a kind of conflict. But for centuries, Jews and Christians and even unbelievers through exposure to this work as literature have been exposed to that character and to His conflict. In this way, we, ourselves, have, have developed an attachment to a kind of romantic picture of what the human personality should be. We think it should have some conflict. There should be more than one person in there in a way, a conversation going on.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Do you think that what we learn about ourselves in learning about God in the way that you've portrayed Him in this biography?

JACK MILES: I think we can. The, the--what's shocking about God, if you skip nothing, if you read everything that is there on the page, even the unedifying parts, is that He is a destroyer, as well as a creator. And by pausing long enough to let that sink in, I think we can put ourselves in touch with the fact that, that we too have our dark side. All of us do. We are all capable of, of destroying, as well as creating.

MS. FARNSWORTH: You write a lot about Job, the Book of Job, and in the Hebrew Bible, Job, I think, comes closer to the end than in the Christian Bible. You say that God never speaks again after the Book of Job in this order of the Bible. Why? What happens in Job?

JACK MILES: Well, in the Book of Job, God, Himself, succumbs to a temptation by Satan. He agrees to allow Satan to torture an innocent man. The torturer is a pretty severe symbol of evil, after all, and He allows this to go on, not anticipating that, that Job will ask Him for an explanation, but Job does again and again. Some of Job's friends rebuke Job and say that he shouldn't ask for an explanation. In the end, God, Himself, rebukes Job and says that no oneshould challenge someone as powerful as, as God knows Himself to be. But as I read Job's final speech, he doesn't back down, and after that, God says that Job's friends have spoken wrongly of God, and Job, himself, has spoken correctly. This means, I believe, that Job has shown God who He is. He has shown God that He is a mixture of destruction and creation. And having discovered that about Himself, we might say God got what He was after when He created the human being in his own image. He now has, has found a human being who, who shows him perfectly who He really is.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Well, Mr. Miles, thank you and congratulations again.

JACK MILES: Thank you so much, Ms. Farnsworth. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Tuesday, President Clinton arrived in Tokyo for a three-day state visit. In the Middle East, Israeli raids into Lebanon killed four more people. Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon fired rockets back into Northern Israel. We'll see you tomorrow night with a Newsmaker interview with Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, among other things. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.