The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, a Ray Suarez look at the new report about race in the U.S. military, a Margaret Warner interview with Republican Presidential Candidate Gary Bauer, and three Thanksgiving eve takes on American food: Spencer Michels reports, Elizabeth Farnsworth runs a discussion, and Robert Pinsky recites some poetry. It all follows our summary of the news this Wednesday.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: The U.S. economy did better than expected in the third quarter, the Commerce Department reported today. The Gross Domestic Product rose at an annual rate of 5.5 percent, the largest growth spurt since last year. Strong consumer spending contributed to the increase. On Wall Street, the NASDAQ Index continued its record rise. It was up 77 points at 3420. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 12 points at 11,008. President Clinton said the numbers reflected some things Americans should be grateful for this Thanksgiving.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Today we count among our national blessings a time of unprecedented prosperity with expanding economy, low rates of poverty and unemployment among our people, limitless opportunities for our children in the future. We also know, as we celebrate our blessings, that there are still too many people who are hungry at this holiday season, both beyond our borders around the world and, sadly, even here in the United States. That's why it's so important that we not only give thanks but also give back to our communities.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Clinton spoke at the White House before proceeding with the holiday ritual of pardoning a turkey. He spared the life of a 60-pound bird named Harry presented to him in the Rose Garden. The turkey will spend the rest of his life at a Virginia petting zoo. Commuting the turkey's dinner- table sentence began with President Truman in 1947. The presenters said that's why this bird was named Harry. And speaking of Thanksgiving, today is the most heavily- traveled day of the year. Airlines were expected to serve some 20 million passengers over the four-day weekend. 28 million people were to travel by car to holiday destinations, with millions more on trains and buses. An Egyptian transportation official said today an explosion caused the crash of EgyptAir Flight 990. It's the first time any government official has raised that possibility. General Issam Ahmed is the head of the country's flight training program. He said the voice and data recorders located in the tail of the plane were damaged, indicating the tail had been subjected to a blast from the inside or outside. American investigators have so far ruled out an explosion, mechanical failure, or weather as causes of the Boeing 767 crash. All 217 people aboard were killed. The Clinton administration expressed confidence in the outcome of international trade talks next week. Trade ministers of the 135 members of the World Trade Organization will gather in Seattle for four days. U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky said today the meeting would be successful because failure is not an option. Secretary of State Albright said the talks would not be hampered because more world leaders were not planning to attend.

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: We are looking forward to a very important and useful conference in Seattle. We have... the President is fully committed to an agenda which allows us to move forward with very important WTO initiatives in the next round. And negotiations having going on, but obviously, negotiations will continue. We have found, in WTO negotiations, generally that there are lots of valleys and peaks and the President is committed to having a very robust and good session in Seattle.

JIM LEHRER: The purpose of the Seattle meet something to launch with a new round of negotiations to reduce tariffs and other barriers to open trade. Prime minister Putin said Russia was moving steadily toward its military objective in Chechnya, to destroy the Islamic militants he describes as terrorists. We have this report from Mark Webster of Independent Television News. (Gunfire)

MARK WEBSTER, ITN: Firing at anything suspicious, these Russian soldiers said they had been warned that the Chechen rebels were reinforcing their positions, ready for a final showdown. Dug in near the Chechen border, the men said they'd been on duty for 45 days. Though they're officially forbidden to talk to the media, they told me in conversation that they'd been involved in heavy fighting in the village of Samardski. That's now firmly in Russian hands. We traveled with them into Chechnya on their armored personnel carrier to the village of Sanovotsk, which has also been the scene of fighting. Until just a few days ago, here inside Chechnya, these Russian soldiers say there was a heavy rebel presence. Following that, there was an extensive bombing campaign, and they said after some fighting, the rebels withdrew. Now, according to them, they've cleansed the area completely. Driving down empty streets, almost all the villagers fled to neighboring Ingushetia once the bombing started. The village is now deserted, its market stalls abandoned, and the signs of damage left by Russian shells and rockets are everywhere. Conditions for the soldiers in the cold, mud-covered landscape are far from ideal, but these troops believe that once the bombing's done its job, they can win this war.

JIM LEHRER: And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to racial tensions in the military, Republican Candidate Bauer, and a report, a discussion, and a poem about food.

SERIES - ONE ON ONE

JIM LEHRER: The fourth in our series of interviewswith Presidential candidates. Margaret Warner has that.

MARGARET WARNER: Gary Bauer is a lifelong Republican who served in Ronald Reagan's administration but has never held elective office. Earlier this year he took a leave of absence from being president of the Family Research Council, a social conservative advocacy group that he founded more than 10 years ago. He's 53 years old, a graduate of Georgetown College in Kentucky and Georgetown University Law School in Washington, DC. In the Reagan administration he served as an undersecretary in the Department of Education and later as director of the White House Office of Public Policy.

Welcome, Mr. Bauer.

GARY BAUER, Republican Presidential Candidate: Hi, Margaret. How are you?

MARGARET WARNER: Fine. When you announced for President in April, you said there is something wrong with America, and you decried what you called a virtue deficit.

GARY BAUER: Right.

MARGARET WARNER: Explain that. Is that what's driving this candidacy of yours?

GARY BAUER: Well, it's certainly a big factor in what I'm trying to do. Margaret, the polling data shows that about 2/3 of the American people think that the crisis facing the country is not economic, it's not military, or that we've got important things to do in both of those areas, but it really is a crisis of values. It's opening up the paper and seeing the stories about school shootings. It's stories of newborn babies in trashcans, a story out of Jasper, Texas, the black man being pulled to his death behind a pickup truck. And these are serious problems that all relate to values, and I think a Presidential campaign, if it's worth anything, ought to be at least in part a discussion about those things.

MARGARET WARNER: Where did you get this, this notion or this idea that politics or political life could be used to advance moral or social issues like this?

GARY BAUER: Well, I'm not sure I'd put it exactly that way. I guess the original idea where I got it is from our founding fathers. They said that only virtuous people could remain free, and the whole system of limited government they gave us was built on the idea that we would restrain ourselves and we would need a big government to do it. But my early involvement in politics and government was back in Newport, Kentucky, where I grew up in the 50s and 60s. It was a town controlled by organized crime. Everybody from the mayor to the police department were on the take. And I saw firsthand and those neighborhoods with the pressure of families, unsafe streets, schools that weren't working, unresponsive political leadership.

MARGARET WARNER: It was called "Sin City," was it not, even by Time Magazine?

GARY BAUER: That's right. It was an infamous place for its time.

MARGARET WARNER: Gambling, prostitution.

GARY BAUER: Well, it's interesting, because there was open gambling in Newport, including very large casinos, at a time when the rest of America had concluded that gambling was a social ill. Newport doesn't have gambling today. Ironically, the rest of the country has bought into the casinos, but, no, I certainly think that my views on some of these issues were molded there, and I would also have to say, Margaret, that my views about what the Republican Party ought to be saying about government generally and economics were also molded there. My father was a janitor, part-time truck driver. His paycheck lasted till Thursday. The bills lasted till Friday. And I do believe - and one of the points in my campaign is that I think my party has got to be more the party of Main Street, and the averageguy, rather than the big corporate sweeps.

MARGARET WARNER: But you got involved even - you were still a high school student.

GARY BAUER: Yes.

MARGARET WARNER: And trying to clean up your town.

GARY BAUER: A group of businessmen and pastors got together in that area in northern Kentucky. They felt that enough was enough. There were just really horrible things happening in the town. And I was moved to be involved with that. I was seeing some of these problems firsthand in my own family. My own father was a alcoholic. I saw him and other men on the street get off work on Friday and not make it home with their paychecks because of the various problems in Newport. And so at a very early age, I did feel that calling to get involved in government and politics.

MARGARET WARNER: So was the most import thing? If you had to choose one thing that you think, as president, you could do to correct what's wrong with America, to use your phrase -- this virtue deficit, or this moral crisis?

GARY BAUER: Right.. Well, I'm not sure it lends itself to one thing. I certainly think that the presidency and the White House has a certain degree of moral authority, or at least it used to. If the issue was civil rights, for example, that was a moral appeal that presidents made from the Oval Office. The issue about how we help the poor was ultimately an argument about values, about our obligations to each other. And I think there are a lot of issues today, the breakdown of the family, making our schools safer, figuring out a way to teach our children, children with the greatest economic benefits of anybody in the world, the key values that they have to learn in order to be self-governing citizens. And so as President, would I devote myself to those things. It's also a major plank in my platform, obviously, to increase the definition of the American family to include our unborn children. I think that's a deep moral issue that government has made a big mistake on. It's taken a whole class of Americans and said that they're not part of the American family.

MARGARET WARNER: Your first television ads are coming out on Friday and one of them is about abortion.

GARY BAUER: Yes. It is. I know it's an issue that causes all kinds of emotional feelings, but I think we've only made this mistake twice. The first time was in the Dread Scott case when we said to black men and women, slaves, that they had no rights that the rest of us were bound to respect. And we look back on it now and we're astonished that the Supreme Court of the United States could have ever made such a decision. I think 26 years ago they did something comparable when they said that an unborn child really has no constitutional protection. And I think it's going to stick in our throat until we get it right, and I'm willing to debate it in this campaign, unlike a lot of other politicians who say it's a matter of changing hearts and minds but then they run for the tall grass. They never talk about it. How do they expect to change hearts and minds?

MARGARET WARNER: But now your three leading Republican opponents, Governor Bush, Senator McCain, Steve Forbes, they all generally espouse these positions, they're all pro-life. What sets you apart? Why would voters choose you?

GARY BAUER: Well, there are some big differences here. Governor Bush says he's pro-life, and then the next word is "but, "and then every word after that is an explanation about why he really won't do anything about it. He's not even willing to agree to appoint pro-life justices. That will be a criteria for me. I won't put any bigots on the court and I won't put anybody on the court that thinks our unborn children aren't part of the American family. Senator McCain has got a pro-life voting record but he said the other day that he thought it would be a problem if "Roe Versus Wade" was overturned. I think it would be one of the best days in America. And as far as Steve Forbes, I don't know-- a record ought to count for something. Steve's campaign just three years ago had a very different take on these sorts of issues, and it appears that now he's had some sort of road to Damascus experience, but I would hope that voters would look at a record. When you look at my record, whether it was keeping the platform of the Republican Party pro-life in 1996, whether it was fighting to get Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court, I was head of his... the national citizens' campaign to do that...or whether it's just going around the country and raising money for crisis pregnancy centers, I think I've got a credible record that other candidates don't have on that particular issue.

MARGARET WARNER: Do you think enough voters, though, want, in their President someone like yourself with this kind of focus, even if they admire it, do you think there are enough voters that really want that as the central focus of their President?

GARY BAUER: Well, I don't think there are that many voters that would make me President on one issue. But I do believe, on the overall point of this campaign, that America's got to get back to the idea that virtue ought to govern our freedom. Whether it's our foreign policy-- you know, there was a story just before we started talking on China-- look, is our foreign policy going to be driven by the desire of a bunch of big corporations to get the pot at the end of the rainbow in China, or is it going to be built on our most deeply held values found in the Declaration of Independence, where it says "all men are created equal, endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights." The Reagan foreign policy was built on human rights and our own national security. And the last ten years we've had a foreign policy built on money and trade. That's not worthy of the American people. So I think Americans are ready for a campaign that in each of these areas, dealing with the poor, racial reconciliation, welcoming our children in the world, having a foreign policy that we can be proud of, all those have a coherent theme of that moral idea that was there at the founding of America.

MARGARET WARNER: I hate to bring up polls, but...

GARY BAUER: That's okay.

MARGARET WARNER: ...You've been in Iowa and New Hampshire a lot.

GARY BAUER: Right.

MARGARET WARNER: And the latest polls from there, in Iowa, the last two show you, one's at 6 (percent), one's at 9 percent and New Hampshire at 1 percent. Now, these voters have seen a lot of you and the other candidates. I'm not asking, gee, could you win from this but...

GARY BAUER: Right.

MARGARET WARNER: ...what does it, again, tell you about the strength of that message or the appeal of your message?

GARY BAUER: Oh, I don't think those polls tell me very much. I mean I'm still being introduced to the American people. We're going to have a series of debates, and I think with each one, my message is going to have the opportunity to get more traction. The reason those polls don't matter, Margaret, is all during these last seven months, there were all sorts of people ahead of me in those polls, and they've dropped out because they couldn't get any traction in the campaign. Dan Quayle, Senator Bob Smith, good people, Elizabeth Dole, they just couldn't put together the organization. We've got an incredible grass-roots organization, we're actually going up in New Hampshire, we're near 10 percent in Iowa, we've been winning straw polls. I just got the endorsement of the biggest conservative group in California. And let me tell you something I'm most proud of. My candidacy has the largest percentage of female supporters. And I don't think it's because of my debonair good looks. I think it's because of my emphasis on values and on issues related to family and the sanctity of life, and I think it's going to resonate with people.

MARGARET WARNER: So what's the plausible scenario for you winning this nomination?

GARY BAUER: Well, with each passing week, this field gets smaller. There were about 13 of us. Now there are six. In a national poll yesterday, I was basically tied for third place. I think the scenario here is that I have a chance to do well in the early states, Louisiana, Iowa and New Hampshire. I believe we will do well. And I then I think we get the national exposure that we need. It's been done like this many times in recent years, and I think we've got a chance to do it again.

MARGARET WARNER: Let me go back to something we were talking about a little earlier, which is being in public life and trying to achieve these kinds of goals.

GARY BAUER: Right.

MARGARET WARNER: There are, as you know, many members now of the social conservative movement who themselves are questioning it, people like Cal Thomas, the conservative commentator, the Reverend James Dobson, who has been very close, in fact, to your former organization, said something... he said he thought politics is highly overrated in terms of actually helping people, and he said he thought that really he's decided that the right kind of legislation follows a moral consensus. It can't go the other way around. In other words, that politics isn't the way to go. You've got to start and just do it from the ground up.

GARY BAUER: Right. I'm not sure. You may be confusing Reverend Dobson from Michigan that wrote the book with Cal Thomas.

MARGARET WARNER: That's Ed Dobson. No.

GARY BAUER: Okay. It doesn't sound like a quote from Jim Dobson, but I don't think politics can ever be overrated in a free society. Look, a President puts Justices on the Supreme Court. The next President may appoint two or three. That will have an incredible impact on what kind of culture and society we have. America was built by people in church on Sunday, at work on Monday, and in the voting booth on Tuesday. And I think all the major issues we're facing, whether it's what's happening to our kids, our obligations to the poor, racial reconciliation, those are all at the end of the day very moral matters that we must have a moral debate about. And the way we do that in America is in the democratic process. We debate these things, we try to reach a consensus, and then we use government to governor ourselves with those values in mind.

MARGARET WARNER: If you don't win the nomination, if you don't win the presidency, would you regard it nonetheless as a victory if you emerged as essentially the acknowledged leader of the social conservative movement? The economists' phrase for it was "the Jesse Jackson of the right." Would you regard that as a victory?

GARY BAUER: Can I pick another phrase than the Jesse Jackson phrase?

MARGARET WARNER: Pick your own.

GARY BAUER: Look, I don't know what the future will hold. I want to make it clear, though, that I didn't get in this to emerge as a spokesman or to make a point. I could have bought a newspaper ad and made a point. This is, as you know, Margaret, a very difficult thing to do. I'm on the road all the time. I'm in this because I believe my party needs to remember what Ronald Reagan taught us about how to be the governing party of the United States. And that is to not walk around with our finger up in the air trying to figure out which way the wind's blowing but to put out for the American people a coherent program. And I'm doing that on China, I've got a pro family flat tax, the right-to-life issue. We think we're going to go all the way and get the nomination.

MARGARET WARNER: All right, well, thanks Gary Bauer very much.

GARY BAUER: Thank you. Have a good Thanksgiving.

FOCUS - AMERICAN HERITAGE

JIM LEHRER: Now, on this eve of Thanksgiving, a look at the American way with food. Spencer Michels begins.

SPENCER MICHELS: From the outside, it is a modest restaurant on a busy street in Berkeley, California. But food writers say that for more than 28 years, Chez Panisse has had a major role in changing how America eats and thinks about eating. This establishment is a temple to fresh, mostly organic, good tasting, ripe ingredients. Every afternoon, the cooks get together with the chef to discuss the night's menu, innovating and modifying recipes as they peel the skin from the hundreds of cloves of garlic.

SPOKESMAN: I guess I'll probably do that wrap-slice thing, where you saut ...

SPENCER MICHELS: Chez Panisse, along with an increasing number of restaurants in the nation, has pushed American cuisine into the big leagues, rivals of the gourmet emporiums in France and Italy and the Far East. The founder of the restaurant is Alice Waters, who has crusaded from this pulpit in favor of fresh food, simply and well- prepared, and served to families eating together, a practice Waters says is becoming increasingly rare. She has appropriated parts of her craft from France, the Mediterranean, from Chinese markets in the neighborhood, and of course, from California.

SPENCER MICHELS: So here it is, November, almost Thanksgiving. What's really in season around here? What have we got here?

ALICE WATERS, Chef/Owner, Chez Panisse: Well, these beautiful Savoy cabbages are in season, and it's the farmers who are interested in these varieties, these antique varieties of fruits and vegetables that kind of disappeared, because we were more interested in ship-ability than we were in flavor. I got this yesterday at the farmer's market, in Berkeley.

SPENCER MICHELS: And this is?

ALICE WATERS: This is a brussel sprout. And I'm not even sure people know how these are grown anymore.

SPENCER MICHELS: I never saw one of these before. This is a stalk?

ALICE WATERS: A stalk of brussel sprouts, and you just pick them off like that.

SPENCER MICHELS: Do you like brussel sprouts?

ALICE WATERS: I didn't, but now I do. I never knew about fresh brussel sprouts.

SPENCER MICHELS: What is the cuisine you prepare here? What do you call it?

ALICE WATERS: Well, I am certainly inspired by the Mediterranean, because we have very similar weather. But it has Asian influences and Mexican influences. Essentially, it's food that comes from the market that day.

SPENCER MICHELS: And across the country, in a cold climate, is there anything fresh that you can buy?

ALICE WATERS: In Wisconsin, there's a restaurant there that cooks exactly the way we do, exactly. But they have a root cellar in the winter, and they dry some of the vegetables, but they buy them all from organic farmers nearby. When you buy food from people who are taking care of the land, then you're... you're supporting somebody who's thinking about the future, and supporting somebody who's conserving our natural resources.

SPENCER MICHELS: The main thing you're talking about is freshness in food, integrity of food. Why is that sort of revolutionary?

ALICE WATERS: I think it's revolutionary because we've gotten so far away from a certain understanding about food in one's life. And I... I think it kind of got lost in the 1950's, with the deep freeze, and the transportation, and the television that came in. And we forgot that food is about nourishment, and food is about agriculture, and food is about coming to the table. It's about culture. I heard that 85 percent of the kids in this country don't have one meal with their family, and so we're seeing a real breakdown of our culture, because it's at the table that we become civilized. It's where we communicate, and we need to bring people back to the table in a delicious way.

SPENCER MICHELS: Waters is practicing what she preaches. She is closing Chez Panisse for Thanksgiving, and will have her holiday dinner in Rhode Island, with family and friends.

JIM LEHRER: And to Elizabeth Farnsworth in San Francisco.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And for the next course, we turn to molly O'Neill, a columnist for the "New York Times" and author of "The New York Cookbook;" Lynne Rossetto Kasper, host of a national weekly radio show about food, and author of "The Italian Country Table," among other cookbooks; and Rick Bayless, owner of the Frontera Grill in Chicago and author of "Rick Bayless' Mexican Kitchen." Thanks for being with us.

Molly O'Neill, do you think that the changes that Alice Waters and others have made in American cooking-- the use of the very fresh ingredients, mostly organic-- has that changed the way Thanksgiving is cooked around the country?

MOLLY O'NEILL, The New York Times: I'm not so sure, to tell you the truth. I think Thanksgiving is America's most traditional meal, and I think in certain pockets certainly, food has gotten better across the board. But Thanksgiving dinner is one of those things that families don't really want to touch. They want... the whole mythology is about doing as your forefathers did. Now, we could make an argument that our forefathers cooked organic, but I'm not sure that that's translating to the sweet potatoes that'll be on the table today.

MARGARET WARNER: Rick Bayless, do you agree with that?

RICK BAYLESS, Chef, Frontera Grill: Well, I actually think that there is a change happening. And I look at the way that I cook my Thanksgiving dinner, and yes, it pays great homage to my forefathers, especially to my grandmother, who taught me to prepare that meal. But we use fresh sage and fresh thyme in it, we grind our pepper fresh. And my grandmother didn't do that when I was growing up in the 50's. So I think there is some change happening.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And what do you think, Lynne?

LYNNE ROSSETTO KASPER, Food Writer: I disagree with both of you. Or let me put it this way: I think there's another dimension to this. I think more and more what we're seeing is food on the Thanksgiving table that's not been made by the hands or not been prepared by the hands of the people sitting around the table. I mean, I'm thinking about how many people are ordering Thanksgiving from the Internet, how many people are using packaged, canned. And I agree with both of you about this idea that it is our tradition, and we always have traditional foods. But I'm concerned about how we're pulling away. A segment of the population has become very aware of where our food comes from, and we have an incredible abundance available. But we're so busy, everyone says they don't have time to cook.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And Lynne Rossetto Kasper, staying with you, how do you explain this, this sort of passion for food in some circles, and all kinds of emphasis on organic food, and the emphasis on health in the culture, and yet many of us eat a lot from takeout places?

LYNNE ROSSETTO KASPER: Well, this is the irony, Elizabeth, I think, that at a time in our history when we're more concerned about our personal health probably than at any other time, we have given over the nourishment of our bodies to industry, I mean to people who we don't know, and people whose motive is profit. Now, profit's not a bad thing. That's what companies are about. But when I eat, I want to eat food that I know I've prepared, or that people I trust and know care about me have prepared. And I think part of it is we're still working out how to deal with what the technical revolution has done to our lives. I've spent about six years in Italian homes researching Italian country food, and there's something very striking to me, that I can't imagine an Italian soccer coach or an Italian dance teacher scheduling a practice during dinner hour. It would never happen. No one would show up. Yet most of my friends are ferrying their kids all over every single evening. As Alice said earlier, most children never sit down with their families. I think we're just learning how to straighten out the priorities. We're working it out as we go.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Molly O'Neill, what's your take on that?

MOLLY O'NEILL: Well, I'm really interested in what Lynne has to say. I mean, I know that there's been an increase in catered Thanksgiving meals, but my own experience is that because families have gotten thrown apart, and people live all over the place, what ends up happening is that Thanksgiving becomes a reunion time. And I'm seeing in my own life a lot more potluck, with various members of the family bringing single dishes, instead of the onus-- or the glory-- of the entire meal being laid to rest on one set of hands. I think absolutely it's harder to get a family together. When people say that they don't have time to cook, what I've found in my own reporting is that Americans don't have any less time, if you put all the time together. But what we don't have as much of are long pieces of time. And we haven't adapted our cooking to cooking in shorter intervals, maybe doing a little bit one night and a little bit more the next night, so that you can put together a glorious family meal.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Rick Bayless, let's talk more generally for a minute about American cuisine. How would you define American cuisine?

RICK BAYLESS: Oh, it's that real melting pot, you know? It's... we've always considered ourselves a melting pot nation, but we're certainly seeing it as American cuisine is emerging in a new way. I think basically back during that world war ii time, we lost our roots, we stopped understanding what it really means to have a regional cuisine that's right there in the ground, and we started all eating pretty much the same way. But then back in the 1960's and 1970's, I think we began to get the sense that that wasn't very satisfying, and so now we've got a new American cuisine emerging, and it's really, really taking from all the different cultures that are there. And so we think nothing at all, like at my Thanksgiving dinner, of pouring a beautiful balsamic vinegar over the green beans. Now, it's not the mushroom green bean casserole that my grandmother always made, but it's something that I learned about when I went on a trip. And I was reinforced by some of my chef friends who taught me the glories of that balsamic. So I think that this is the kind of thing that we're weaving in now, and that's American cuisine. It takes sort of the best of a lot of traditions and it weaves it in, though I would definitely say that American cooks cook differently than the cooks in those... the country of origin for those inspirations.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Lynne Rossetto Kasper, how would you define American cuisine?

LYNNE ROSSETTO KASPER: I think it's, as Rick said, it's evolving. And I think one of the great differences is that in older cultures-- Europe, Asia, the South Americas, Central America, even-- your food and what you eat is part of who you are. But the reason for that is that those cultures have behind them thousands of years of agriculture, where people were living from their own land. They were growing their own food, and what they ate truly was who they were. So when the industrial revolution came along, for most of those cultures, it was kind of a blip on the screen. That deep identity with, as a civilized person, you eat in a certain way, was still there. But we were the new kids on the block. We came from that heritage, but we were very new when the industrial revolution came along. We didn't have that deep sense of a tie to the land. So we embraced the technological-- you know, the science. Think of what the Home Ec Movement did to food. Think of our love of new, of big, of made by industry. So part of this is that we're working through that, and I think we're developing a very different definition of what a cuisine is. I think whereas you define a cuisine in an older culture as being what the people in that culture identify themselves by, we are this great combination of peoples, and our identity is going to be much more complicated. Our food is much more complicated. Rick, who's an expert in Mexican food, comes from Oklahoma, and is putting balsamic vinegar on his green beans. But that's us.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Go ahead, sorry.

LYNNE ROSSETTO KASPER: We're the great students.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And, Molly O'Neill, do you think that American cuisine has joined the big leagues?

MOLLY O'NEILL: American cuisine has definitely joined the big leagues. But I'm not so sure that it's as much about food as it is about the economics of it all. New York has become the new Paris. Is that because we have some fantastic chefs working in New York? Absolutely. But it's also because it's become tremendously difficult, because of various tax reasons, to run a great restaurant in Paris, particularly, but throughout France. I have to sort of take a longer view. I agree we're in the process of minting an incredible cuisine. Right now, we're in the world spotlight. But that's... it's not the first time that's happened in our American history, that at the turn of the last century, New York City was a dining destination, and we were importing chefs right and left to Delmonico's, to a number of the traditional restaurants. And it seems to ride in waves. Times of affluence give us the time or the energy to think about what we eat, and to identify food as a potentially upwardly mobile tool. And I feel that that's going on as much as anything else.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: All right. We have very little time left, but I want each of you, starting with you, Rick Bayless, to tell me what you're adding to the menu tomorrow besides, in your case, Rick, the green beans with the balsamic vinegar. Very briefly, because I want each of you to tell me.

RICK BAYLESS: It's going to be a relish that's made out of cranberries and hechima, because I do Mexican food, with a little bit of orange and a little bit of dried red chili in it.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Oh, yummy. Lynne Rossetto Kasper, what are you...

LYNNE ROSSETTO KASPER: Well, I'm adding a 16th- century sweet pizza. It's pears with rosemary and basil and black pepper and a bit of sugar. And it's from the 16th century, from Tuscany.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Oh, it sounds great. Molly O'Neill?

MOLLY O'NEILL: I'm making a toasted curry pumpkin soup with chili roasted pumpkin seeds.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Oh, my mouth is watering. Thank you all very much. Happy Thanksgiving.

MOLLY O'NEILL: Happy Thanksgiving.

LYNNE ROSSETTO KASPER: Happy Thanksgiving.

RICK BAYLESS: Happy Thanksgiving.

FOCUS

JIM LEHRER: We had planned to bring you a segment on race in the military, but one of our guests was unable to make it to a studio in New Orleans in time. We will reschedule that segment. Instead, two other stories, first one on trade. U.S. officials were hopeful today about next week's meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle. But trade officials meeting in Geneva yesterday were unable to even agree on an agenda for negotiations. In the meantime, Seattle itself is preparing and debating. Mike James of KCTS Seattle reports.

MIKE JAMES: Washington is the most trade-dependent state in the country...from apples to Boeing airplanes, $34 billion worth of exports ship out of the state every year. That's one reason why the World Trade Organization is meeting in the port city of Seattle next week. But even here, in a place where one out of every four jobs is tied to trade, the WTO is a target.

RON JUDD: What are we saying, that we don't care about workers, we're saying that we don't care about environmental protection. We're saying that we don't care about community standards.

MIKE JAMES: The man debating on the phone is Ron Judd, head of the King County Labor Council. He knows that 40 percent of his union members locally get work and paychecks from two-way trade. But Judd is also convinced that in the WTO system, there's not enough protection for labor rights.

RON JUDD: The trading system has got to be about more than reducing the costs of the production of goods or services -- and more than about profits. People ought to be able to share in the wealth that's being generated on this planet. And it's not happening.

MIKE JAMES: Labor will send that message in a massive union march through the streets of this trading city on the first full day of WTO next Tuesday. As many as 50,000 protesters are expected, and not from labor alone.

SPOKESMAN: What is this thing and why are we... you know, why are all those protesters coming together?

MIKE JAMES: Two months ago, dozens of political activists from all around the world gathered on a farm north of Seattle to work on signs, stunts and anti-WTO strategy. They see the WTO Ministerial Conference as an irresistible target, a place to make the argument that globalization and trade are undermining environmental protections and human rights everywhere.

SPOKESPERSON: We're here to tell you why the WTO doesn't make trade clean, green and fair.

MIKE JAMES: The Sierra Club and other mainstream environmental groups will also join labor on that march through the city. Just as unions want the right to organize and the right to work for better wages, written in to WTO trade rules, the Greens want rules to protect the environment. WTO now, they argue, doesn't care how goods are produced.

SPOKESMAN: This is a rolling duffel, this is like a real soft...

MIKE JAMES: On the other side is Skip Kotkins of Skyway Luggage, who makes his living in international trade. Skyway products manufactured in Chinese and Taiwanese factories are shipped from this Seattle area warehouse to stores all over the country. Kotkins thinks labor is dead wrong.

SKIP KOTKINS: If I wanted to think of the single thing that would most impede, impede the advancement of environmental standards and labor standards in other countries to mandate that they must meet our standards now, nothing could slow it down faster.

MIKE JAMES: In a Central Washington fruit warehouse, apple buyer Todd Fryhover sees the WTO meeting as a critical chance to open new export markets. Agriculture is on the negotiating table in this round of talks at a time when Washington growers are shut out of countries and pay heavy tariffs in places like China and Israel.

TODD FRYHOVER, Apple Shipper: It is almost at a dire need right now. We need to export more fruits to have more access to keep our growers afloat and keep them economically feasible.

MIKE JAMES: No one in this local debate denies that globalization is reality now, it's clear that an economic meltdown across the Pacific and Asia can destroy an apple market and put growers this state out of business. But as next week's WTO meeting gets closer, people in this trading state see very different pictures of the future.

MAN: Pointed out -

MIKE JAMES: In a local union hall, Boeing workers, the machinists who build the planes sold around the world, talk about WTO. They see their jobs in peril.

RONNIE BEHNKE, Boeing Machinist: I work in fab division in Auburn, and I see a lot of our jobs going to Korea, to Mexico and my fellow workers getting laid off. And it's... You know, they can get labor there way cheaper.

MIKE JAMES: In his luggage warehouse, Skip Kotkins sees a different version, not jobs moving from one country to another but new jobs building up other countries economically and eventually improving labor and environmental conditions around the world. These are powerfully different visions, all competing for space at the WTO table next week -- in a city where global trade will support directly and indirectly one out of three jobs by the year 2005. So perhaps it is fitting as one local paper put it this week, that Seattle, of all places, provides the ring for a world trade wrestling match.

FOCUS - MUSLIMS IN AMERICA

JIM LEHRER: Now another report from the West Coast. The aftermath of the EgyptAir crash has highlighted a problem Arab Americans and Muslims have complained about for years- -their voices are often ignored or misunderstood-- by American policy makers. Jeffrey Kaye of KCET-Los Angeles reports.

SALAMO MORIARTYI: Now, I also want you to have a straight line.

JEFFREY KAYE: 38-year-old Salam Al-Marayati has lived in the United States since 1965 after he left Iraq with his parents. When he is not coaching his two sons' basketball team, he is representing his community as executive director of the Los Angeles Muslim Public Affairs Council. Al-Marayati is also a member of the city's human relations committee and is active nationally in interfaith and intercultural forums. But this summer when Congressman Richard Gephardt, the House Minority Leader appointed Al-Marayati to the ten-member National Commission on Terrorism, some Jewish organizations tried to block the nomination. Rabbi James Rudin of the American Jewish Committee, suggested Al-Marayati condoned terrorism.

RABBI JAMES RUDIN, American Jewish Committee: Basically his position on terrorism is quite different and his understanding of terrorism, his definition of terrorism is so different from the United States Government's position, that it was, in our judgment, that he should not serve on this commission.

JEFFREY KAYE: The Zionist Organization of America, the ZOA, called Al-Marayati an extremist and circulated lists of what they said were his pro-terrorism and anti-Israel statements. Morton Klein is ZOA president.

MORTON KLEIN, President, Zionist Organization of America: We opposed Al-Marayati because of his long record over many, many years of rationalizing and justifying terrorism. Instead, he blames Israel. That is not criticism. That is really enormous animosity towards Israel that goes really beyond the pale.

JEFFREY KAYE: The ZOA criticized Al-Marayati for, among other things, his position on Hezbollah, which has fought Israeli troops occupying southern Lebanon. Al-Marayati justifies Hezbollah's military actions.

SALAM AL-MARAYATI, Muslim Public Affairs Council: If the Lebanese people are resisting Israeli intransigence on Lebanese soil, then that is the right of resistance and they have the right to target Israeli soldiers in this conflict. That is not terrorism. That is a legitimate resistance. That could be called liberation movement, that could be called anything, but it's not terrorism.

JEFFREY KAYE: Supporters of Al-Marayati - Muslims and Jews -- rallied to his defense but to no avail. Gephardt rescinded the appointment, saying it would take too long for Al-Marayati to obtain a security clearance. Gephardt replaced Al-Marayati with a Lebanese-American Christian, Juliet Kayam, who has a security clearance and who has not been publicly critical of Israel. Congressman Gephardt declined to be interviewed for this story, but many Muslim and Arab-American activists say they weren't surprised by his withdrawal of the Al-Marayati nomination. They feel Al-Marayati was the victim of an unfair litmus test, which they say often excludes them from the political process.

Hussein Ibish of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, sees the Al-Marayati case as part of a disturbing pattern.

HUSSEIN IBISH, American -Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee: The frame of that litmus test appears to be that pro-Israel organizations in the United States will judge whether Arab American and American Muslim appointees have been critical of Israel or not. And if they have been critical of Israel policies and policies of the State of Israel, then they will be, in many cases, judged unfit for office by those groups and the unfortunate precedence set in the Al-Marayati case that senior politicians, like Representative Gephardt, may go along with this.

JEFFREY KAYE: Two other Arab and Muslim American appointees have also faced similar protests recently. One was Dr. Laila Al-Marayati, Salam Al-Marayati 's wife. In May, when President Clinton appointed her to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, the Zionist Organization of America called for her removal. As president of the Muslim Women's League, she had been critical of Israel.

DR. LAILA AL-MARAYATI: I think what we're seeing is an unwillingness to listen to an opposite point of view. It's easy to have conversations with people that one agrees with and it's difficult to sit and listen to somebody who has a different opinion. But unless we can do that, we will never get any closer to understanding each other.

JEFFREY KAYE: Despite the opposition to her appointment, Laila Al-Marayati remains on the commission. Another critic of Israel, attorney Joseph Zagbi also came under attack by pro-Israel groups after getting a State Department job. Zagbi, who is of Lebanese ancestry, later resigned. Jewish leaders say their opposition to individual appointments has been on the basis of politics, not ethnicity or religion.

RABBI JAMES RUDIN: It's not based on whether one is a an Arab or Muslim or Jew or a Christian. It depends on the person case by case, individual by individual. There is no litmus test.

JEFFREY KAYE: The controversial appointments have enlivened the debate over whose views should be heard in the shaping of U.S. MidEast policy. There are about six million Muslims in the U.S., many of them of Arab descent and approximately six million Jews. But unlike the comparatively influential Jewish community, Muslims and Arab Americans have been virtually excluded from policy-making circles, particularly, says Hussein Ibish, if they are critical of Israel.

HUSSEIN IBISH: There's no Arab American who's involved in making policy on the Middle East peace process. So we find this is, you know, not a basis for sound policy. We think that it ought to be inclusive. But what you're seeing is the defense of a monologue, of a monopoly of discourse, which leads to a one-sided policy that's not healthy.

JEFFREY KAYE: The substance of the conflict often debated in public forums, is decades old. In a recent TV appearance, Al-Marayati and the ZOA's Morton Klein debated familiar issues, the nature of terrorism and the state of Israel.

SALAM AL-MARAYATI: I accept Israel's existence.

MORTON KLEIN: Do you support its existence?

SALAM AL-MARAYATI: I accept its existence. Do you support...

MORTON KLEIN: Well, you signed a document that side it should not exist. Do you repudiate this signature?

SALAM AL-MARAYATI: I accept its existence.

JEFFREY KAYE: Fundamental differences are also reflected in responses to violence on the part of Israel and by Arabs. For instance, in March, 1997, the military wing of Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement, claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb in Israel. It killed three people and wounded forty-eight. A statement from Al-Marayati's Public Affairs Council mourned the loss of innocent lives. At the same time it denounced Israel for bombing refugee camps in Lebanon. On the subject of terrorism it said: "Because the Palestinian people have no avenues to redress their grievances, some of them have been pushed beyond the margins of society and have adopted violent reactions to express their despair and suffering."

MORTON KLEIN: Would anybody be trying to explain the murder of poor people in America murdering other Americans by saying, "well, they're desperate because they're so poor?" No. We would say this is abominable and outrageous and nothing justifies murder.

SALAM AL-MARAYATI: We have taken an unequivocal consistent stand against all acts of terrorism, regardless of the background ethnically or religiously of the perpetrator or the victim. And so when a Muslim commits an act of terrorism, we stand very loudly and clearly against that Muslim that committed that act of violence. When a Jew commits it, we expect the same from the Jewish community.

JEFFREY KAYE: Al-Marayati also says the U.S. should consider sanctions against Israel for its mistreatment of Palestinians. Such opinions critical of Israel should be taken seriously by U.S. policymakers, say prominent Arab Americans and Muslims. But the American Jewish Committee's Rabbi Rudin say it's not just a matter of honest policy differences. He says the appointees he opposed did not meet basic criteria for sensitive government jobs.

RABBI JAMES RUDIN: Were they qualified? Did they have the expertise? Did they have the experience? Did they reflect the policies of the government that was appointing them to these positions? And therefore, we opposed them.

JEFFREY KAYE: The voices of Muslim and Arab American critics of Israel are beginning to be heard. Recently Salam and other Arab Americans went to the White House for a closed-door meeting with National Security Advisor Samuel Berger. Al-Marayati says American Muslims should not be seen simply as dissidents. He says they understand the causes of MidEast violence and says had he be allowed to serve on the terrorism commission, he would have advocated a strategy to isolate terrorists politically.

SALAM AL-MARAYATI: Usually Islam is stigmatized as the religion that condones terrorism. So if we were able to make that distinction that Islam is against terrorism, that these extremists are really a fringe element of the Muslim community, we would then take away the religious validation of these extremists.

JEFFREY KAYE: Ironically, the controversy over the Al-Marayati appointment has actually led to increased dialogue between Muslims and liberal Jews. After Al-Marayati's appointment was rescinded, liberal Jewish leaders in Los Angeles came to his defense. They argued that other Jewish organizations were narrow-minded.

RABBI LEONARD BEERMAN: Salam Al-Marayati is a very forceful and faithful proponent of the Muslim cause. I do not agree with everything that he said over the years, but he has... he certainly has wanted his people to have a more honorable and more dignified place in the American mind.

RABBI HARVEY FIELDS: We need to be talking to them. We need to be in dialogue with them. And therefore, I was deeply disturbed and upset with what had happened in terms of this appointment.

JEFFREY KAYE: Jewish support for Al-Marayati reflects a change of attitude among American Jews, who are more openly critical of Israel than in the past. Recently in San Francisco, Al-Marayati found a warm reception from liberal Jews.

SPOKESMAN: At least some of the Jewish organizational structure sees what has been their reality for a whole generation as crumbling, it's no longer there. And I think it is a very exciting time for educational work.

SALAM AL-MARAYATI: We have allowed others, and would I define them as the extremists, to dictate the agenda on us. And that's why Muslims and Jews have had this apprehension in America.

JEFFREY KAYE: Participants at this meeting reason that if opposing sides in the Middle East could work together, so could Jews and Muslims in the United States.

FINALLY - FOOD FOR THOGHT

JIM LEHRER: And before we go this Thanksgiving eve, some more words on food plus the power of memory from NewsHour contributor Robert Pinsky, the Poet Laureate of the United States.

ROBERT PINSKY: It's striking how completely Thanksgiving is devoted to food. Eating is not just part of the holiday, it is the center of the holiday. This is not to say that the holiday is trivial or gross: Food, of course, can be a powerful emotional force, one of the deepest emotional forces. That truism gets new power in Mark Strand's poem, "A Pot Roast." Though the poem is not about turkey, it's about pot roast, it gives a proper, seasonal reminder of how meaningful food can be.

Pot roast

I gaze upon the roast,

that is sliced and laid out on my plate and over it I spoon the juices of carrot and onion. And for once I do not regret The passage of time. I sit by a window

that looks

on the soot-stained brick of buildings

and do not care that I see

no living thing -- not a bird,

not a branch in bloom,

not a soul moving

in the rooms

behind the dark panes.

These days when there is little

to love or to praise

one could do worse

than yield

to the power of food.

So I bend

to inhale

the steam that rises

from my plate, and I think

of the first time

I tasted a roast

like this.

It was years ago

in Seabright,

Nova Scotia;

y mother leaned

over my dish and filled it

and when I finished

filled it again.

I remember the gravy,

its odor of garlic and celery,

and sopping it up

with pieces of bread.

And now

I taste it again.

The meat of memory.

The meat of no change.

I raise my fork in praise,

and I eat.

I wish you a comforting and memorable Thanksgiving.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: We'll see you on line and again here tomorrow evening. And I also wish you a great Thanksgiving. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.