The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

Intro

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. The top story today was Walter Mondale's choice of a vice presidential running mate. She is Geraldine Ferraro, the New York congresswoman, the first owman to be so chosen. A new national poll showed Mondale only seven points behind Ronald Reagan. NASA said it will combine two space shuttle flights to recover from the aborted takeoff last month. Jim Lehrer's off tonight; Charlayne Hunter-Gault's in Washington. Charlayne?

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: The Democrats' vice presidential pick takes up much of our hour tonight. We profile Congresswoman Ferraro on her journey from Queens, New York, to St. Paul, Minnesota, en route to San Francisco, California. We hear about the candidate from Washington watcher Norm Ornstein, who's been tracking the fast-rising Ferraro star on Capitol Hill. And we analyze the political fallout with two political pros: Democrat Alan Baron and former Reagan White House director of communications David Gergen. We move from politics to space and hear about NASA's revised schedule for shuttle flights. And we have a documentary report on a backyard tinkerer who is building his own spaceship.Mondale Picks Ferraro

MacNEIL: Whatever else happens in this 1984 presidential election, Walter Mondale and the Democrats made political history today. The presumed Democratic nominee selected a woman as his vice presidential running mate. The choice is Geraldine Ferraro, 48-year-old congresswoman and mother from Queens, New York. This daughter of an Italian immigrant is the first woman to be selected for the ticket of a major presidential contender. Mondale introduced her to a wildly enthusiastic crowd of his supporters at the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul. Correspondent Elizabeth Brackett was there.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT [voice over]: It's a team, one that has never been put together before in American presidential politics, a male and a female. And the female says she is delighted.

Rep. GERALDINE FERRARO, (D) New York: Vice president -- it has such a nice ring to it.

BRACKETT [voice-over]: Strategists for the Mondale campaign insist Ferraro's working-class credentials will outweigh any discomfort Democrats, particularly male bluecollar Democrats, may have in voting for a woman. And it was those working-class credentials that Mondale stressed as he introduced his new running mate.

Vice Pres. WALTER MONDALE: I know what it takes to be a good vice president. I was once one myself. I looked for the best vice president and I found her in Gerry Ferraro. America is not just for some of us. History speaks to us today. Our founders said in the Constitution, "We the people," not just the rich or men or white, but all of us. Our message is that America is for everyone who works hard and contributes to our blessed country. That's what my choice is about. And that's what Gerry's about. The story of her road from the Ferraro home to this moment is really a story of a classic American dream. She's earned her way here today. Like most Americans, she's worked and for everything that she's achieved. She has a strong family life, deep religious convictions, and working Americans of average income will find in her a vice president who knows them and who will fight for them.

BRACKETT [voice-over]: Ferraro stressed her own credentials, but she also praised Mondale for making her the first woman to run on a national ticket.

Rep. FERRARO: I want to thank Fritz Mondale for asking the convention to nominate me as his running mate. This choice says a lot about him, about where the country has come, and about where we want to lead it. Fritz called my road here the classic American dream. He's right. My father came to America from a little town in Italy called Marcianise. Like millions of other immigrants, he loved our country passionately. But what he loved most about it is that in America, anything is possible if you work for it. I grew up among working people, straighforward, solid Americans trying to make ends meet, trying to bring up their families and leave their country a little bit better off than when they moved here and found it. Those are my values too. As recently as Monday, I visited two senior centers in my district before I ran out to San Francisco. My people told me they were worried about Social Security, and they're terrified about what might happen to the Medicare system. I've talked to parents who can't get student loans for their kids, and I know how unemployment has ripped through some of the families in my district, and I know their fears about the future. They love America and support a strong, sensible defense. But they want nothing to do with reckless adventures in Latin America.

When Fritz Mondale asked me to be his running mate he sent a powerful signal about the direction he wants to lead our country. American history is about doors being opened, doors of opportunity for everyone no matter who you are, as long as you're willing to earn it. These last few hours -- these last few hours, I've got to tell you, I've been on the phone talking with friends and supporters around the country. There's an electricity in the air, an excitement, a sense of new possibilities and of pride. My good friend Charlie Rangel, the congressman from Harlem, said to me, "Gerry, my heart is full." So is mine. Fritz Mondale knows what America is really about, and I'm honored to join him in this campaign for the future. Thank you.

MacNEIL: The Ferraro announcement came the same day as a new Washington Post/ABC News poll, which appeared to show that voters thought it would make little difference if a woman runs. Asked, "Suppose a woman runs for vice president with Mondale, will that make you more or less likely to vote for Mondale?," 16% said more likely, 13% said less likely, while 68% said it would make no difference.But the same poll had much better news for Mondale. It showed him trailing Ronald Reagan by only seven percentage points, 51 to 44. Other national polls taken two weeks ago have shown Mondale as much as 19% behind Reagan. Today's poll, however, also showed that Gary Hart will run even more strongly against Reagan, trailing by only 3%, 49 to 46 percent.

Charlayne?

HUNTER-GAULT: Until Geraldine Ferraro became the head of the Democratic Platform Committee, she was not widely known outside the Congress and her own district. She comes from a mixed district in Queens, New York, that includes Forest Hills, a mostly middle-class Jewish and Italian neighborhood that until a few years ago played host to the U.S. Tennis Open. The district also includes Astoria, a neighborhood of mostly Greeks and Italians, some blacks and Hispanics. While Astoria was the model for the television sitcom All in the Family, with its famous character Archie Bunker, Ferraro has said that it was the Edith Bunkers of Queens that sent her to Congress. Ferraro's women's consciousness has always been up front.

Rep. FERRARO: Politics, national politics, is very much a man's game.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: Being a woman in a male-dominated political system, Geraldine Ferraro's road to the top started at the very bottom of the political ladder -- the political clubhouses of Queens. In 1968 [sic] the clubhouse leaders rejected her when she sought their support in her bid to run for the seat of her retiring congressman. James Delaney. Undaunted, the former prosecutor and mother of three not only rallied her husband, a realtor, and other members of her family; she also managed to enlist the support of President Jimmy Carter, who sent his mother, Miss Lillian, to Queens to campaign for her. That effort led to Ferraro becoming the first woman representative from Queens.

In Washington, Ferraro once again started at the bottom, but where it counted. With her district including both LaGuardia and Kennedy airports, she got on public works and transjortation committees. Not only did her work on those committees guarantee her reelection, twice in a row. It also attracted the attention of her congressional colleagues, especially House Speaker Tip O'Neill. O'Neill chose her to introduce the keynote speaker at the 1980 Democratic Convention in New York.

Rep. FERRARO [1980]: It is an honor to give you the honorable Morris K. Udall.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: And she became secretary of the House Caucus. It was also the powerful speaker who helped Ferraro secure a seat on the prestigious Budget Committee. Once there ferraro made a name for herself as being progressive on social programs and an outspoken advocate for women's economic equity.

Rep. FERRARO: Don't think you can vote against this budget and not pay a price with women voters. The budget is a woman's issue, and you're either for women or you're against them.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: Meanwhile, Ferraro was earning the respect of a wide range of her Democratic colleagues and others. Lynn Cutler of the Democratic National Committee put it this way.

LYNN CUTLER, Democratic National Committee: Geraldine's a bridge builder, and I think that that's one of the reasons that people speak very highly of her.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: Ferraro moved with ease into several other prestigious posts, playing a key role in the Hunt Commission, which set the party rules for the 1984 Democratic convention. There was no hesitation when Ferraro asked for and got the position of chair of the Democratic Platform Committee, a job that many had predicted would be tough, especially because of the number of competing interests -- women, blacks, Hart, Jackson -- but Ferraro ran a tight ship.

Rep. FERRARO: We'll be enforcing time limits strictly, five minutes per witness, except for our first two witnesses this morning, and any disruptions of course will be dealt with.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: And once again, her bridge-building skills were tested and found intact. Her impressive performance on the platform committee was just one more reason why Walter Mondale included her in his early list of interviews for the number two spot on the ticket. Even before she got the final nod, Ferraro was beginning to sound like a national candidate.

Rep. FERRARO: The President, always a crowd pleaser, has playedto the grand-stand. The problem is that the reality gap is closing, and four more years of fantasy could actually prove disastrous.

HUNTER-GAULT: For some further insight into Geraldine Ferraro's congressional life and times, we have veteran Congress watcher Norm Ornstein. He's a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute here in Washington.Norm, how is it that Geraldine Ferraro managed to get on such a fast congressional track?

NORMAN ORNSTEIN: Well, I think when she first came here in 1978, which was not a very good year for Democrats overall, she was seen as one of those people who would work with the leadership and would work with the maintream inside Congress. They had a couple of classes filled with bomb throwers, and I think the leadership, and Speaker O'Neill in particular, really saw her, coming as she did from a district that the Democrats didn't think they'd be able to hold after Delaney left, and coming -- running on a touch law-and-order platform as she did, as somebody who was a little bit different. She stood out right from the beginning.

HUNTER-GAULT: And she wasn't a bomb thrower?

Mr. ORNSTEIN: She really wasn't a bomb thrower, and she made it very clear when she arrived that she was going to stick with Jimmy Carter; he was her president, partly, of course, as we saw, because he helped in her campaign. That was unusual. And she made it very clear that she was going to be a team player. And leadership loves team players.

HUNTER-GAULT: Now, tell me about the bomb throwers and where she stood with them? What do you mean, bomb throwers?

Mr. ORNSTEIN: Well, there were a lot of people, I think, and continue to be, who put issue positions ahead of being part of the party team, who were willing to go down with the ship and take the ship down with them, and who are a little bit more flamboyant personally at the expense sometimes of the leadership. And some of these people run against the leadership and run against Congress when they go back home. She made it very clear that she was going to be a partof the Democratic Party team, and that is something that really got her going right from the start, I think.

HUNTER-GAULT' What was it about her that attracted Tip O'Neill's attention?

Mr. ORNSTEIN: I think that there were a number of things. It was that, as we just said. He was looking for people who were going to play on the team on which he's the captain, after all. But also, Gerry Ferraro has from the start been a good, tough, savvy, pragmatic politician. She understands politics. She knows how it's played. She knows it back in her district. She didn't know Congress when she first arrived, but she had an instinct for it. That's what Tip O'Neil was like when he first came to Congress, and I suspect he saw a little bit of those instincts that he had in her.

HUNTER-GAULT: What about her legislative record, her accomplishments?

Mr. ORNSTEIN: Well, you have to look at some slippery standards when you look at the record of a House member especially. There are 435 of them, 260-some majority party members. Not everybody sponsors or is the major pusher of legislation, especially if you're not a committee chairman. She hasn't done badly, however, from the beginning. She got on committees that were related to her district. We have to remember that she didn't get everything that she wanted. She tried after a couple of years in the House to get on the prestigious and powerful Ways and Means Committee and didn't make it. Public Works, as you suggested in the piece, was good for her district that abuts two airports. She got on the Post Office Committee right from the start because she promised her constituents she'd change their zip code, which was a very significant issue back in the district. And then after a little bit of maneuvering she managed to get on the Budget Committee.What she has done is to be an articulate spokesman for the party issues. And one of the things that she's done in particular is to take those women's issues and focus them into the broader national policy issue. She hasn't stood up and said, "I'm for women's issues" per se. She's tried, as we saw, to make them work through the budget, to make them work through foreign policy, the major national issues, and weave the women's focus into those. That's also attracted her to the mainstream and the hierarchy of the party, because it means that there are issues that come together instead of veering off into opposite directions.

HUNTER-GAULT: What about her voting record? I mean what does that tell us about where she stands vis-a-vis liberal, conservative, moderate, etcetera?

Mr. ORNSTEIN: This is a conservative district, Charlayne. It's a district that went very strongly for Ronald Reagan in 1980. Barely --

HUNTER-GAULT: Her Queens --

Mr. ORNSTEIN: Her Queens district. It barely supported Jimmy Carter in 1976. She is much more liberal than the district as a whole, on the whole. She just as an example, has stood for federal funding for abortions. She's a Catholic herself -- it's a very Catholic district in many ways. That hasn't helped. She's been much --

HUNTER-GAULT: Excuse me. But I read she's not in favor of abortion; she's in favor of a woman's right to choose.

Mr. ORNSTEIN: That's right.But that of course -- those are code words to many of the Catholics in the district. But because she was a tough law-and-order prosecutor and because of her style, her personal style, which is very important in these districts and for many members of Congress, of course, outweights any issue positions -- there are an awful lot of liberals in conservative districts and conservatives in liberal districts who manage to survive because they take care of their constituents' needs, the homework, the little pork-barrel things, the zip codes, the airports and so on, and because they present themselves to the district in a way that says, "You can trust me. I may not do everything the way you want it done, but I'll represent your interests." You can see from her speech at the state capital in Minnesota today. She talked about her district, "my people." That's something that is the kind of style that made her so popular that she wracked up three quarters of the votes in what is essentially a pretty conservative district in 1982.

HUNTER-GAULT: One of the things that constantly came up in the last few weeks as her name became more and more prominent, or indeed the name of any woman, was the whole question of experience. Is that a weakness for her, or what's your assessment of her experience for this particular job?

Mr. ORNSTEIN: Well, she clearly doesn't have the foreign policy experience that George Bush has, for example. On the other hand, when you look at the broad range of vice presidential candidates where experience has been an issue in the past -- and we have to remember that it has been a big issue in some campaigns -- she's probably about average. She certainly is on a par, or even better than, say, Spiro Agnew. There's no question, however, that that is going to be an issue. Her lack of foreign policy experience, her lack ofreally top-level committee assignments in the House, with the exception of the Budget Committee for the last couple of years, only six years in a legislative position -- that's going to be used, I'm sure, by the Republican campaigners as a way of getting at the women's issue without getting at it directly.

HUNTER-GAULT: All right. Well, we'll be following it, probably with you at a later time. Thank you very much for being with us, Norm Ornstein. Robin?

MacNEIL: There was also reaction, positive but muted, from Mondale's two rivals for the Democratic nomination, the Reverend Jesse Jackson and Senator Gary Hart. Hart congratulated Mondale on the choice of Ferraro, but insisted that the contest for the presidential nomination was still open.

Sen. GARY HART: I'm not a political analyst; I'm a candidate for president, and I think I'll be the nominee of the party. I think it's a good choice for him if he turns out to be the nominee, but that won't be decided until next Wednesday.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Jesse Jackson watched the announcement at his home in Chicago. He said he'd called for a woman vice presidential candidate from the outset of his own campaign, and Mondale's decision means the question has now become the real direction of the Democratic Party. Jackson added, "I think it's a plus."

[on camera] One Democrat who was surprised by the choice of Congresswoman Ferraro was George McGovern, the party's presidential nominee in 1972. He said he thought Gary Hart was the logical choice because of what McGovern considers to be Hart's vote-getting abilities. But McGovern said he was delighted by the boldness of Mondale's decision.

Sen. GEORGE McGOVERN: If you run against a movie star, as Mondale is about to do, you're at a disadvantage on the side of personal interest and appeal. If the public is bored by this campaign, we're out of the ballgame before it starts. I think Geraldine Ferraro, as the first woman in American history ever to be tapped for the national presidential ticket, is breaking new ground. Mondale is breaking new ground in selecting her. And secondly, she's going to add a genuine note of interest to that ticket. That's perfectly obvious to me just in the last couple of hours of walking around town here -- you pick up the sense of electricity that's in the air.

MacNEIL: President Reagan wouldn't be drawn into a comment on Geraldine Ferraro. All reporters who stopped him on the way to his helicopter could get from Mr. Reagan was the assurance that he looked forward to running against the Democratic ticket.

Pres. RONALD REAGAN: I am looking forward to running against the Democratic ticket. They've made their decision. They've made their decision, and I'm not commenting on what they do; I'm simply saying I'm looking forward to running against that ticket.

MacNEIL: In San Francisco, where Democrats are beginning to gather for the convention next week, we sampled reactions to the Ferraro selection.

Mayor DIANNE FEINSTEIN, San Francisco: I would like to congratulate Fritz Mondale on his choice. I think he did in fact make the bold stroke. I think it will add a spark to the ticket. And I believe that the strategy on which it's forged will bring new voters to the polls, which is going to be a key determination in whether our party has a chance to win in November. For me, I intend to support the ticket, campaign for the ticket, and I will do anything I possibly can to be of help.

CHARLES MANATT, chairman, Democratic National Committee: I think it's a bold stroke of historic proportions. We think it'll increase the overall voter turnout perhaps as much as 4% in the fall, and that will help us win the election.

REPORTER: Why do you think that? There are some people who think it might hurt the ticket a lot.

Mr. MANATT: All of the polling we have, as far as internal polling, shows that many, many people, especially young people, are excited about things new, something bold, and certainly naming Geraldine is a bold and exciting new stroke.

PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY, Stop ERA: She supports the radical feminist agenda: abortion, abortion funding, lesbian rights, ERA, all down the line. And so I'm not supporting anybody with those views.

REPORTER: She's a radical in your opinion?

Ms. SCHLAFLY: I would call it radical feminist.

MacNEIL: Back in Washington. Judy Woodruff has been finding out what professional politicians, both Democrat and Republican, think of the Ferraro choice and the impact it will have on the election. Judy?

JUDY WOODRUFF: Robin, other than Geraldine Ferraro herself, the folks who are probably happiest with today's announcement are the women's groups who had openly urged Mr. Mondale to pick a female running mate. Some in the women's movement had gone so far as to threaten a walkout at the convention if he did not. But today all that was forgotten, and there were only the most positive reactions from movement leaders, like Kathy Wilson of the National Women's Political Caucus, and Judy Goldsmith of the National Organization for Women.

JUDY GOLDSMITH, NOW: The Modale-Ferraro ticket will be the winning ticket in 1984 because women and men who are committed to common-sense human values will organize and work in unprecedented numbers and with an energy and dedication that will invigorate the political process. The infusion of new voters, new campaign workers and new political actists will be massive and unparallelled.

KATHY WILSON, National Women's Political Caucus: I think Mr. Mondale has a real commitient to including women and minorities in this country, and what he has said by making this historic selection of Congresswoman Ferraro, he has said to women, you will be included, you will have a voice, you will help to set the nation's agenda. And I think that he will find that this selection will become a lighting rod of sorts for the political power women are feeling, and I believe that women will reward Walter Mondale with their votes.

WOODRUFF: The reactions were't so friendly from various Republican women, though. Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Dole called the choice "No more than a dramatic move by the Democrats," because in her words "They don't have the hearts and minds of the American people this time around." Betty Rendel, the president of the National Federation of Republican Women, accused Mondale of succumbing to pressure from feminists and said that she doubted Ms. Ferraro would have been chosen if she were a man. However, Kansas Senator Nancy Kassebaum, a Republican, said she felt the Ferraro selection would probably add a little excitement to the campaign. From Mrs. Ferraro's Republican colleagues in the House of Representatives the reactions were pretty predictable, with House Minority Leader Robert Michel saying that her lack of experience could turn out to be a nonplus. We talked today with two Republicans who have served on House committees with Ferraro, Congressman Jim Courter of New Jersey, who served on the Special Committee on Aging, and Congresswoman Lynn Martin of Illinois, who has served on the Budget Committee with her.

Rep. LYNN MARTIN, (R) Illinois: Most Americans -- Republicans, Democrat and independents -- are going to decide in whom they want to trust the nation. And you don't have vice presidents making that decision. It's the presidential nominee. I think everyone will be proud that there's finally a woman on the ticket. There'll be pressure eventually on the Republicans, certainly not to remove George Bush, whose qualifications are incredible and not only -- and are a good comparison to Representative Ferraro's, because there is a difference there. But that women will say, "Good, and boy, I kind of wish I could," but will vote as men will for whom they want to see lead the nation. And I still think it's going to be President Reagan.

Rep. JIM COURTER, (R) New Jersey: I think there is the possibility that some people may perceive this to be pandering by the nominee, apparent nominee on the Democratic side; that he gave in to another interest group, a constituency that's very vocal, very hard working. And that may hurt him rather than helping him, number one. And number two, I admire him for thinking in terms of having a female as his vice presidential candidate, but I very frankly, as much as I like Geraldine Ferraro, think she's not the qualified one. I don't think her qualifications measure up to George Bush's.

WOODRUFF: And now to weigh the political pros and cons of the Ferraro choice, we have joining us Alan Baron, former executive director of the Democratic Party, now editor of the biweekly political newsletter The Baron Report. And David Gergen, former communications director to President Reagan, now associated with the American Enterprise Institute.

Thank you, gentlemen. First of all, does this help or hurt Walter Mondale, Alan Baron?

ALAN BARON: Well, I don't think we know yet. The election's not until November, and between now and November people are going to look at Geraldine Ferraro -- I think look closer at her than they would any other vice presidential candidate. If there's a positive reaction to her, if she comes across as strong and effective and capable, then I think people are going to say Mondale made a good judgment and that will reflect well on him. If she doesn't, if it's a poor reaction, then people will say, well, Mondale just chose her because he yielded to pressure or because he wanted a woman, and that would be a negative reaction. But I don't -- the election's in November, and people haven't watched her answer questions from Judy Woodruff and the other journalists, people haven't seen her under pressure yet, and they're going to watch very closely to see how she responds to pressure.

WOODRUFF: You can't say flatly yes or no, David Gergen, just the fact that she's a woman, whether that's going to be a help or a hindrance to Walter Mondale?

DAVID GERGEN: I think you need to separate the short-term from the long-term effects. It seems to me short term this is going to be a boost for Mr. Mondale. It snaps him out of a slump, a slump that might well have been fatal. It should give him a better convention. It's going to bring a lot more excitement to San Francisco. More people will tune in. I think it'll make it easier for him to deal with Jesse Jackson in San Francisco.

WOODRUFF: Why is that?

Mr. GERGEN: Which part of it?

WOODRUFF: Why the Jesse Jackson?

Mr. GERGEN: Well, one of the issues that was going to be of acute concern in San Francisco was the vote on the minority plank on quotas that Jesse Jackson was sponsoring. And there was a fear in the Mondale camp that a lot of the women would break away and join the Jackson forces in voting for quotas and that they might not be able to beat them on that. It seems to me now there's a better chance that Ferraro can -- Mrs. Ferraro can persuade the women delegates to stick with Mondale and to beat back that quota plank, and I think that would have been real mischief for them in the fall.

WOODRUFF: So we're going to have a harmonious convention?

Mr. GERGEN: I think it's more likely to be a harmonious convention, and it does seem to me that one other important aspect to this short term, as someone said today, it gives Mondale some protective cover for a few days to get his campaign together. His campaign was not in good shape before today. It was in something of a shambles. He did not have a long-term strategy. This gives him a few days, while the press is focusing on the vice presidential choice, he can now begin to reach out to the party pros and figure that out.

WOODRUFF: What about in the South? We hear that a woman, of all places, may not be a help in the South among conservawtives? What do you think, Alan?

Mr. BARON: Well, I don't think that Walter Mondale's going to do real well among Southern conservatives no matter who he would have picked as vice president.

WOODRUFF: You think he's written off the South?

Mr. BARON: I don't think he's written off it. I don't think that Southerners are necessarily -- we have one woman governor, I belive she's governor of Kentucky, and there have been women elected to Congress in the South. I think one problem, in fact, that Mondale's had in the polls is with young people. And the difference in terms of acceptability of a woman president that's been both -- is greater generationally than regionally. I think stereotyping the South is a mistake. I think it's a national issue.

WOODRUFF: Why do you think he picked her?

Mr. BARON: Why do I think he picked her?

WOODRUFF: Yeah. And do you think he was her first choice -- she was his first choice?

Mr. BARON: Well, I think there were probably a couple of people that he might have been more comfortable with -- Cuomo and Bumpers, who took themselves out of it. But I don't know that. Certainly that's in his own mind.But why did he pick her? I think what he had to do was display some vision for the future and get this campaign off the Carter thing, and I think he did that modestly with this, and some courage. And I think aside from the pressure from NOW and all inside Washington, I think the public regards it as kind of a bold move.

WOODRUFF: But don't you think the pressure hurt? I mean just the --

Mr. GERGEN: Yes, I do. I think that there is a distinct minus. He has to pay a price for the kind of process he has gone through here in the last few weeks. Let me say, though. I mentioned the difference between the short term and the long term. I think long term it is much more open to question whether this is the kind of choice that really helps him win the election. A couple of things become apparent. You now have a situation in which the Democrats are going to have a Northeastern liberal running with a Midwestern liberal. It sets up a classic test of liberals on the Democratic side versus the conservatives on the Republican side, and a Frost Belt type strategy versus a Sun Belt stragegy. Both of those would suggest very strongly a Reagan victory in the fall, because both of those -- on both of those counts Reagan is in better shape politically.

WOODRUFF: But she helps with Catholics, with ethnics, is that right, which was going to be --

Mr. GERGEN: Let's wait and see.

Mr. BARON: I'd be very careful. I mean, in the primaries this year --

WOODRUFF: You're not going to jump David, are you?

Mr. BARON: No, no. In the primaries this year we had a Sun Belt senator named Hart who voted with the energy industry, and he swept New England, the most anti-energy-industry consuming area in the country. And he won Ohio. I don't think you can stereotype people yet. I think this may help in California. If she's attractive and strong, if she debates George Bush and looks like a winner, what effect is that going to have on women, particularly in the country?

Mr. GERGEN: Yes, but you would agree, Alan, it does not help in Texas, it does not help in Florida. Those are very key states. I does not help with the white Southern male. I mean let's be clear about it. It may help with some, but --

Mr. BARON: Well, why doesn't it?

Mr. GERGEN: Because a lot of those people are going to -- after they look beyond the question of whether she's male or -- you know, whether the gender of the candidates. I think Mrs. Ferraro is going to be judged on her views, on her background, on her qualifications. And her views are out of step with a lot of white male Southerners in the South. [crosstalk]

WOODRUFF: But those people were going to vote for Reagan anyway, weren't they? I mean weren't those people going to vote for Reagan anyway?

Mr. GERGEN: If you talk about what the ultimate outlook is for the election, would you say that the calculations today are any different than where yesterday in a sense that Reagan would still have to be rated the favorite for the election?

Mr. BARON: Oh, I would say Reagan's rated the favorite for the election. I agree. But I don't think white male Southerners and conservative ones in the South. I don't think -- I don't know who Mondale could have picked. I don't think he could have picked George Wallace and done very well among white male conservative Southerners.

WOODRUFF: I'm curious about something. Last weekend newpspaper headlines. The New York Times and The Washington Post, both had leaks, clear leaks from the Mondale camp that they -- that Geraldine Ferraro's star had fallen. She was too aggressive, she was coming on too strong, she was too political. What happened? Do either of you have some speculation about what's happened in the interim?

Mr. BARON: I think the list got very narrow. I mean I think the choices he was down to were very narrow and I think he wanted to make it before the convention, and Walter Mondale believes the Democrats lost in '68, '72 and '80 because of big convention fights. He didn't want to walk out, he didn't want a big fight. He wanted to get it over with. Then he came down to a list, as I understand it, ended up with Cisneros and Feinstein and Ferraro. And I think Cisneros looked like he didn't have qualifications comparable to the other two, and she had national qualifications, and kind of process by elemination.

Mr. GERGEN: But we also know that Walter Mondale was very unhappy with that story that came out about --

WOODRUFF: But his own people put it out.

Mr. GERGEN: They did. And I think that he was -- there was some anger reported from others in the Mondale camp about that. And I think he called her to apologize. They made up on it. She was obviously not very happy with it. And it's just conceivable that there was a slight sense of compensation here when he made this move. I mean, she was among the finalists, and I think perhaps Mayor Bradley was among the finalists as well. Clearly she had the most support from the delegates coming to the convention and from others.

WOODRUFF: How does Ronald Reagan, how do Reagan and George Bush run against this ticket with a woman on it?

Mr. BARON: I think they run just like David said. They run on her stance, which is, she agrees with Mondale on the issues, and they run on the same issues they ran on before. And like Congresswoman Martin from Illinois said, they run and they say, look, you know -- they're not going to personally attack her. Reagan hasn't personally attacked Mondale. So I don't think that that's an issue. And I don't think they're going to -- certainly not going to attack her because she's a woman. They're going to attack her experience and her qualifications.

WOODRUFF: Is her experience a drawback, the lack of experience?

Mr. BARON: It's a drawback today, because nobody's seen it. But again, the judgment is going to be on performance. If you went into 1980 and said, "Now, do you think a former -- 70-year-old former movie actor who starred in Bedtime for Bonzo at the beginning of 1980 should be president?" People said, "Oh, God no," and Carter won, what, two to one in the initial poll?

Mr. GERGEN: Yes.

Mr. BARON: And then they focused on Reagan, and they're going to focus on Ferraro. So it's going to be up to her. And in effect, Mondale made a judgment that she'll stand up under that scrutiny.

WOODRUFF: You're saying she can win it or lose it for him?

Mr. GERGEN: No, I don't. It is still a race between Reagan and Mondale. That's ultimately the way this is going to be decided.

Mr. BARON: But if she looks good, that raises people's opinion of the person that selected her, Mondale.

Mr. GERGEN: That's right. But I think, coming back to it, I think Alan is absolutely right to say there are some aspects of this we still don't know yet. We're going to have to wait and see. A lot of these early polls are not good indications.

WOODRUFF: But we'll have you both back to pin you down between now and November. David Gergen, Alan Baron, thank you both very much. Robin?

MacNEIL: President Reagan campaigned for a third straight day today as a defender of the environment. He toured the mammoth caves in Bowling Green, Kentucky, then told a convention of campers and hikers that he is upgrading the national parks. He called them the "crown jewels of our American land." He said he'd move quickly and effectively to deal with what he called "the federal government's lagging efforts to protect our environment." Mr. Reagan said he had moved aggressively to clean up toxic wastes, tighten protections against water pollution and pesticides, funded research on acid rain, and financed a billion-dollar refurbishing of the national parks. His claims were immediately challenged by environmental groups. Adrienne Weissman, a spokesman of the Sierra Club, said the speech was "an affront to the intelligence of the American people." She added, "He must think we've been living in a cave while he's waged a three-and-a-half-year war on the environment."

Still to come on the NewHour tonight, a leading space reporter looks at how much the delays will hurt NASA's space shuttle program. And we have a report on some competition for NASA: a man who's building his own private enterprise space shuttle in his backyard.

[Video Postcard -- Coronado State Park, New Mexico]

HUNTER-GAULT: In England the Thatcher government remains locked in a bitter and growing dispute with labor unions. For the last four months coal miners have been on an often violent strike. On Tuesday they were joined by dockworkers. Today the dockworkers voted to expand their strike to all of England's ports. About 70% of Britain's exports are shipped out by sea. Analysts say a prolonged strike could seriously hurt the English economy. Meanwhile, Britain's diplomatic tiff with Nigeria continues. Today Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe said two Nigerian diplomats had been given a week to leave. Howe told Parliament that police evidence links Nigerian diplomats with the attempt to kidnap Umaru Dikko, a former official in Nigeria's civilian government. Dikko was found drugged in a crate on route to a Nigerian jetliner. Authorities in Nigeria have said there was no official involvement in the kidnapping attempt.

And in a decidedly 20th century legal ruling, a French court has turned down a widow's request to be impregnated with her dead husband's frozen sperm. Corinne Parpalaix argued there was a de facto agreement between the couple approving the artificial insemination, but the courts said such an agreement had to be explicit.The husband, a cancer victim, died two days after he was married to Ms. Parpalaix without writing a will.

Robin? NASA Mission Combined

MacNEIL: NSAS's troubles in getting the space shuttle Discovery off the ground last month have forced the space agency to cancel one of this summer's two scheduled flights. NASA said today the first and second flights of the newest shuttle and its fleet will be combined into a single mission scheduled to blast off on August 24th. At a press conference in Washington today, acting associate administrator Jess Moore said this was the only way to a avoid falling permanently behind schedule. In order to combine the two flights, NASA will have to postpone several projects that were supposed to be on the first mission to make room for two commercial satellites from the second. These kinds of delays have raised doubts about the reliability of the shuttle and its ability to attract paying customers. Here to tell us more about the impact of NASA's latest troubles in George Alexander, science reporter for The Los Angeles Times, who's been covering the space program for 24 years. He joines us tonight from Los Angeles.

Mr. Alexander, to put these recent problems into perspective, how many other delays have the shuttles encountered?

GEORGE ALEXANDER: Well, Robin, it depends on what you consider delays. The very firt flight of the shuttle STS-1 back in 1981 was approximately three years, almost four years behind schedule. And other flights down the line have been scheduled for a certain time and then the date has been missed. And the most recent one was Spacelab of last year. That went by its assigned date by about a month.

MacNEIL: So how much trouble is the program in?

Mr. ALEXANDER: Well, I think what NASA's doing with this two-in-one mission at the end of August is sort of like what a gambler does when he begins to lose at poker. Rather than go home with no money, he begins doubling up his bets in the hopes of recouping some of his losses. I think that's what NASA is trying to do. It is a calculated gamble, this August 24th mission.

MacNEIL: You've observed the space mission for many years. Putting two missions into one, will that increase the risks of things going wrong?

Mr. ALEXANDER: No, not necessarily. It means an awful workload, though, for the crew of Henry Hartsfield. They are really going to be quite busy every moment that they're up there. But I don't think it necessarily increases the risk to them individually. What I meant by risk was NASA is trying to demonstrate to a wide population of potential users that this shuttle program is a reliable and dependable transportation system. And if they make some kind of an additional slip or a goof and fails to deliver this rather large mission now that they've bit off for themselves, I think they're going to be still in more trouble, deeper trouble.

MacNEIL: Well, now, who are these customers that they are trying to reassure today, and why are they worried about them?

Mr. ALEXANDER: Well, the biggest potential source of commercial bookers are the communications satellites people. Communications satellites have proved to be a bonanza. And there are more than 300, I think, now scheduled to be flown aboard the shuttle in the next 10 years. And you have other people like McDonnell Douglas, who want to put up an automated laboratory to grow pharmaceuticals in the certain conditions of weightlessness where you can -- you have high purity and a lot of control over your environment. These are people that NASA wants to lure into the cavernous bay of the shuttle, and they're the ones, of course, who are uneasy about putting all their eggs in an uncertain basket.

MacNEIL: Now, do those same potential customers have easy options elsewhere? Can they go elsewhere?

Mr. ALEXANDER: Some of them can. The communications satellite people can go to the Atlas Centaur, the Delta launch rocket, the Ariane. The French are very aggressively marketing the Ariane launch vehicle.

MacNEIL: So is there a danger that if NASA doesn't have some regular successes now with the shuttle and get over these problems, that it will start losing customers?

Mr. ALEXANDER: Oh, I think that's a very clear possibility. The Defense Department has already begun to back away from the shuttle. They were never a very enthusiastic partner to begin with, and now they're talking about developing a so-called family of expendable launch vehicles -- it's used once, throw away. And of course if they do fly some of their satellites on those ELVs, those are missions that are denied the shuttle.

MacNEIL: Sorry, what's an ELV?

Mr. ALEXANDER: Expendable launch vehicle.

MacNEIL: Oh, I see. And if they start to do that, you were saying -- I interrupted you, I'm sorry.

Mr. ALEXANDER: If they do that, those are missions that are lost to the shuttle, and it just begins to acquire the stigma of being sort of a space-born Edsel, which of course the space agency wants to avoid at all possible costs. It's actually a beautiful system, just extremely complex. More complex, I think, than its builders anticipated. And they did anticipate it being complex.

MacNEIL: But it has fallen quite far short of the early promise, has it not? Tell us about that.

Mr. ALEXANDER: Well, at one time NASA was talking about flying -- once they had all four shuttle orbiters in hand, flying as often as once every week or every other week. And they realized, oh, even before the first one flew that that was too ambitious a schedule. Now they're talking about flying between 10 and 18 a year, and even that now is going by the boards.There have been 10 flights this year. Now it looks like it might be more like four or five. The so-called turnaround time where you get the shuttle back from the mission and you refurbish it and you check it out and you reload it and you put the new satellites in, that was at one time to have been a span of time of six weeks. It's now running -- I think the closest they've done is -- the shortest time is three months. And they're trying to get it down now to somewhere like two and a half months. But that's still quite a bit more time than they had anticipated.

MacNEIL: Should we be looking charitably at this, just as a case of teething troubles in a very complicated thing, or are there already warning signal that there are too many complications setting in?

Mr. ALEXANDER: Well, that's an awfully good question, and I think this year and next year will give us the answer. One friend of mine in the space agency said that right now they're going around cannibalizing one shuttle for parts to fly the one that's on the pad at the moment. He said it's sort of like being a Studebaker owner, having a littlle club where you swap parts in order to keep one Studebaker on the road. If NASA doesn't get these problems quenched by next year, then I think the shuttle may not be quite the moneymaker and the delivery system that they had anticipated.

MacNEIL: Does that mean the end of the shuttle system?

Mr. ALEXANDER: No. No, but I think if that happens it might mean that the shuttle would become pretty much of a government vehicle. Not quite like the nucler freighter that the Transportation Department had a few years ago, but it would sort of have that reduced status. Not quite the commercial vehicle that NASA had hoped it to be.

MacNEIL: Well, George Alexander, thank you for joining us.

Mr. ALEXANDER: Thank you. Backyard Tinerer

MacNEIL: And finally tonight, if NASA is really worried about competition in space, then it should know about a man named Robert Truax. With little more than a wrench and a blowtorch, he's hoping to beat NASA at its own game.

[voice-over] On a quiet residential street in Saratoga, California, Robert Truax is working on a project in his backyard that his neighbors can't help but notice. Just around the bend from his driveway he's building arocketship. For Truax, building rocketships isn't just a hobby; it's a serious business venture which he calls Project Private Enterprise. And he's perfectly serious when he says he hopes to build a working space shuttle that will ultimately rival NASA's, going up into space and returning home again safely. Like the government's, Truax wants his space shuttle to be reusable.

ROBERT C. TRUAX, Truax Engineering: I believe that we can come up with a vehicle that is much chepaer to operate, will carry more payload for less liftoff weight, and be much simpler.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: At 66, Truax has been working on his budget spaceship for 10 years, six of them full time. By doing things a bit differently and avoiding what he calls government waste, Truax believes he can build a shuttle for just $1.5 million, a fraction of NASA's multbillion-dollar budget. And he's determined to prove it.

Mr. TRUAX: There's an old saying, a little poverty doth sharpen the wit. Well, we got lots of poverty, and I don't know whether we have a lot of wit or not, but we have very many innovative solutions, let's say. I have been in this racket since about 1937. That's the date when I made my first engineering measurement on a rocket. So I pretty well understand how to build rockets.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Truax has been working with rockets for almost half a century, including 40 years with the military, where he helped develop the Thor missile, and a brief stint with a private aerospace firm, Aerojet General in southern California. And even though he's retired, he shows no sign of losing interest in space.

Mr. TRUAX: I work, eat, sleep, live rocketry. And I believe the destiny of the human race is out in space. Our earth is a very, very tiny portion of what there is.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: How do you begin to build a spaceship in your backyard?One trick according to Truax is to buy the parts at bargain-basement prices.

Mr. TRUAX: We are not too proud to use a part that has been used before. The engines four our Enterprise rocket are surplus Atlas Verney engines. We buy them for $125 apiece compared with about $75,000 apiece, which is the last price I heard quoted for new hardware.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Truax picks up much of his equipment from government surplus, parts that were built but for one reason or another never used. He bought three of the four guidance systems that the Air Force ordered for its X-15 fighter planes. He later discarded them, but they only cost him about $100 compared to $25 million in development costs for the military.

Mr. TRUAX: The nose cone itself is actually the tail cone from an old aircraft fuel tank.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Truax is actually building not one but three rockets, each in varying stages of completion. Eventually he hopes they will do everything NASA's shuttles do, such as launching satellites or conducting experiments for paying customers. He thinks he can compete by charging rock-bottom cargo prices -- only $100 a pound compared to a thousand at NASA. But for now the money's going out, not coming in.

Mr. TRUAX: I've got all my life savings in it. To date we have spent about $600,000 on the project. A group of Chicago real estate people put in about a quarter-million dollars. Our current budget is so small that we have to rely almost entirely on volunteers. We try to stay away from all the frills. If a person can get from here to there in a beat-up old Chevy, that's what we use, and that's what I got.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: One of those volunteers will be Truax's first astronaut. At 26, Fell Peters hopes to become the youngest man in space.

FELL PETERS, astronaut candidate: I was brought up on Project Mercury and Gemini, Apollo, and I thought that's something I want to do eventually. And this is a perfect way of doing it, too.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Peters doesn't seem worried by the prospect of going up in a homemade rocket.

Mr. PETERS: I could get knocked off, but Bob is an awfully good engineer.

MacNEIL [voce-over]: There will of course be a number of unmanned test flights first. But when Truax says all systems are go, the astronaut will squeeze himself into a capsule that's too small to let him wear a space suit. Truax plans to launch his ship, the Enterprise, from a barge anchored off the California coast. The first manned flight will go up 65 miles, just past the threshold of space, and return to earth all in less than 15 minutes. So short a time that he won't even have a formal life-support system.

Mr. TRUAX: His life-support system is a deep breath. Actually we have had a man spend 30 minutes in the capsule without any additional oxygen or other life-support equipment, and he survived without even turning slightly green.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Most aerospace professionals have mixed feelings about Truax's unconventional methods.

Dr. J. J. RODDEN, Lockheeed: I think he's a brilliant nut.

ALBERT GARDNER, former Lockheed executive: I'd put him a lot further to the brilliant side.

Mr. TRUAX: There are many people in NASA that think that what I'm doing is the right way to go. There's a lot of them that think that I'm crazy. I'm used to that.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Albert Gardner was assistant to four presidents of the Lockheed missiles and space company before he retired.

Mr. GARDNER: I think you will find a lot of people who, if not ridiculing him, would consider that he's a garage tinkerer. I prefer to think that he's more than a garage tinkerer. Whether he can ever succeed in his grand notion of building almost a cheap version of a very complicated device, I don't know. I think he'll succeed in stages. His current stage as I understand it is to put a man in what we call a suborbital ballistic trajectory. One can certainly do that. I'm not certain I want it to be my son who's riding in that thing.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Dr. Jack Rodden is in charge of Lockheed's space telescope project.

Dr. RODDEN: He's a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.You know, by and large that's not a group of flakes. I'd say he's a person of solid substance, but I think he's going a little bit far on this one. We like to think in aerospace that there's some requirement for all the testing and the procedures and the parts controls and what have you. And I'd be hard put to do that in a garage environment. But then maybe he can. He's a very clever guy.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Truax doesn't always confine his testing to his garage. This simulation was conducted in a nearby harbor to prove that his rocket could land in the ocean and be recovered without damage to his delicate instrumentation. NASA abandoned water landings when it introduced its own shuttle that could land like an airplane. But for Truax the water landing is central to his theory.

Mr. TRUAX: Requiring a space-launched vehicle to be able to land like an airplane makes about as much sense as t would have made in the old days to require that an airplane be able to land at a railroad station. There were a lot of good arguments for it. Lots of long straight stretches of track, you know. You could have brought your airplane down and pulled right up to the existing station. And the ticket system was all in place. But you can see, it would have been a horrible mistake to have adopted such a philosophy.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: His $125 surplus engines have been thoroughly tested as well.

Mr. GARDENER: He's truly a pioneer in rocketry.

Dr. RODDEN: He's taking his talents and driving them to the utmost.

Mr. GARDNER: I'm kind of glad we have people like Bob who will tinker away and take on the windmills. And I've known others like him, and I think they've added a lot to our technology. Any success he has is certainly going to spur the really big programs into trying to do better.

Mr. TRUAX: NASA should be cheering me on and everybody else who thinks they have a better way of doing it. We've always liked to explore and there's something innate I think in human nature that makes us want to try to get by out there. Ninety-nine percent of all matter in the universe, and that's much too low, is out there. Not here. It is the only frontier that's left to us. If I can get this cost down by an order of magnitude, then I'll see more of it.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: At 66, an age when most people are thinking about Social Security, Bob Truax has put his money where his mind is, and his mind is far far beyond the clouds.

Charlayne?

HUNTER-GAULT: And finally, a recap of today's top stories. The big news of the day is Walter Mondale's selection of New York Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro to be his vice presidential running mate. As expected, most Democratssupported the choice. Gary Hart called the Ferraro pick a significant advance for women. Jesse Jackson said Mondale's decision was a courageous and exciting move.

President Reagan spent the day in Kentucky, where he praised his administration's environmental record.

Overseas, Britain has asked two Nigerian diplomats to leave the country in the aftermath of the Dikko kidnapping.

Meanwhile, English dockworkers have turned up the heat in their fight against the Thatcher government.

NASA says it's going to send a new shuttle, Discovery, up in August for its first flight.

And finally, the old Boy Scoutt motto, "Be Prepared," seems to have been adopted by the British Olympic Equestrian team. They'll be bringing oxygen tanks and masks to the Los Angeles Olympics just in case the smog is too much for the team's horses.

Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: Good night, Charlayne. That's the NewsHour tonight.We'll be back tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.