The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. I'm Robert MacNeil in New York.

MR. MUDD: And I'm Roger Mudd in Washington. After the News Summary, the issues behind the tug of war over President Clinton's choice to head the Justice Department's civil rights division. Then David Gergen's new role at the White House, and finally a Newsmaker interview with Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: President Clinton said today he expected to work out differences with Senators who want to change his economic package. They've balked at his energy tax and called for more spending cuts. Mr. Clinton said he thought the general direction of his plan was right, but he would try to improve it when the Senate returns to work next week. He said he was not disturbed by recent public opinion polls that showed his job approval ratings are down. He spoke during an Oval Office photo session this morning.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, these things go up and down. I mean, the American people want something done about the deficit but very often don't want to, you know, then their coverage gets negative, because the pain of it, something no one wants to face. I think what I have to do here is do more of what I did yesterday, force, force full coverage. What's happened in our country is that there's only been discussion about the tax increases in the budget plan. So no Americans really know very much about all the budget cuts that are in there and all the tax incentives that are in there for investment for new jobs. When they know the whole thing and also when the middle class knows how small the burden is on them, then the support for the program and for the administration goes way up.

MR. MacNeil: Also today, the President denied reports that he would delay the release of his health care reform proposals. But he said he had not reached any final conclusions and his aides were still working on the plan. He said he wanted to get the economic plan through the Senate first and then deal with health care when Congress and the American people can focus on it. On another matter, Mr. Clinton said he would re-examine his choice for the Justice Department's top civil rights post. Attorney Lani Guinier has been criticized by conservatives for her writings on civil rights. The President said some of the criticism has been unfair, but he said he did not agree with all her positions and he would discuss the matter with Senate leaders. We'll have more on that story after the News Summary. Roger.

MR. MUDD: The government's main gauge for predicting future economic activity edged up only .1 percent in April. The index of leading indicators had fallen a full percent in March. The index surveys a broad range of economic activity. Another report showed that new home sales jumped 22.7 percent in April to the highest level in 1986. Analysts said severe weather had suppressed sales earlier in the year.

MR. MacNeil: An educational foundation today released a survey on sexual harassment in public schools. It said that four out of five students, both boys and girl, in the eighth to eleventh grades have experienced some form of harassment. Harassment was broadly defined from spreading rumors about sexual behavior to physical assaults. The survey was answered by 1600 students in 79 schools. It showed that 79 percent of the harassers were other students, while 18 percent were teachers or school employees. The survey was conducted for the American Association of University Women. The group's president spoke at a Washington news conference.

SPOKESPERSON: America's schools are experiencing a sexual harassment epidemic. Every day students are targets of sexual harassment in hostile hallways and classrooms. And every day, sexual harassment denies millions of children the educational environment they need to succeed.

MR. MacNeil: The report said 23 percent of students who have experienced harassment tell no one about it. The death toll from a mystery illness afflicting mainly Navajo Indians rose to 13 today. Health officials said an April death in Arizona had been attributed to the unexplained respiratory disease. Nearly all the victims had lived in or near an Indian reservation spanning New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. Officials from the Centers for Disease Control are working with local health officials to find the cause believed to be some type of virus.

MR. MUDD: Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney said it was unfair to expect President Clinton to produce an American solution to the crisis in Bosnia. But he said the U.S. would command greater authority with its European allies if it committed ground troops to U.N. peacekeeping efforts. He spoke after meeting with President Clinton at the White House. We'll have a Newsmaker interview with the prime minister later in the program. The United Nations suspended relief flights to Sarajevo today after a U.S. plane was hit by gunfire. Snipers also wounded four French U.N. peacekeepers in the city. There were also reports that Serbs had launched a major offensive on Gorazde, one of the few Muslim enclaves in the country. The Yugoslav capital, Belgrade, was quiet today after a rare night of ferocious anti-government unrest. Peter Sharpe of Independent Television News reports.

PETER SHARPE: There was no single cause for this violence, the worst seen in Belgrade in many months. The sacking yesterday of the federal president, Dobrica Chausic, the beating of the leading opposition MP, and the worsening economic climate all combined to drive thousands of demonstrators on to the streets. Earlier, the crowds had surrounded parliament, following the president's dismissal, to protest against the beating in the chamber of an opposition MP. He was carried unconscious from the building, and that was more than enough for the leader of the main opposition party, Vuk Draskovic, to call his supporters out on to the streets. Throughout the night, the demonstrators opposed the hard-line rule of Slobodan Milosevic, clashed with police, taunting them with chants of "red bandits." Thirty-two people were injured in the street fighting that lasted well over after midnight. This morning, as Belgrade tided up, it was reported that the opposition leader, Vuk Draskovic, had been beaten by police after being arrested at his party headquarters here late last night. He's now seriously ill in hospital.

MR. MUDD: The official government news agency said a policeman died from injuries suffered in the protests. Officials from North Korea and the U.S. met in New York today on North Korea's decision to withdraw from the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. The U.S. is expected to offer inducements to get North Korea to reverse its decision. Fears of an Asian arms race were raised when North Korea announced it would pull out of the treaty on June 12th. The director of the CIA recently said North Korea had enough nuclear material for at least one bomb.

MR. MacNeil: Police in Rome defused a bomb today near the offices of the Italian prime minister. The bomb was in a car parked outside the building. It was discovered less than a week after another bomb exploded outside the Ufitsi Gallery in Florence, killing five people. That and a car bomb a month ago have been blamed on the Mafia retaliating for the police crackdown on its top bosses. That's our summary of the news. Now it's on to the Lani Guinier controversy, former presidential aides on the Clinton White House, and Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. FOCUS - POLITICALLY CORRECT?

MR. MacNeil: We focus first tonight on the latest political eruption in Washington, the battle over President Clinton's choice to be the nation's chief civil rights law enforcer. Charlayne Hunter-Gault has the story.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: One day after Lani Guinier's name was placed in nomination, critics went on the attack, their main complaint that her thinking on civil rights was out of the mainstream. An opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal dubbed her a "quota queen" for favoring so-called "race-based solutions" to civil rights problems. In the two months since Guinier was nominated, the controversy has spread from op-ed pages to the Senate, where some key Democratic Senators, including judiciary chairman Joseph Biden, have signalled their concern over Guinier. Much of the attack has been focused on the scholarly writings of the 43 year old University of Pennsylvania law professor and former NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund attorney. Today, President Clinton, a former Yale Law School classmate and member of Guinier's wedding party in 1986, was asked about her nomination.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I want to reaffirm two positive things about her: One is, everyone concedes she is a first rate civil rights lawyer, and no real civil rights lawyer has held that position before, someone who'd made a career of it. Secondly, I think any reasonable reading of her writings would lead someone to conclude that a lot of the, the attacks cannot be supported by a fair reading of the writings. And that's not to say that I agree with everything in the writings. I don't. But I think that a lot of what has been said is not accurate. On the other hand, I have to take into account where the Senate is, and I will be doing that and talking to them, but I think until I do that, I should have nothing else to say.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Late this afternoon, Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Democratic member of the Judiciary Committee, said Mr. Clinton should have another choice ready if he finds in talking to the Senators that Ms. Guinier's chances for confirmation are slim. But civil rights leaders, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the new head of the NAACP, the Rev. Ben Chavis, urged Mr. Clinton to stick by Ms. Guinier. For two different views now on Lani Guinier's legal philosophy and the viability of her nomination, we turn to James Coleman, a professor at Duke Law School and a close associate and supporter of Ms. Guinier. He joins us from Raleigh, North Carolina. Clinton Bolick is the litigation director for the Institute for Justice, a conservative legal think tank in Washington. Mr. Bolick, a former Reagan Justice Department official, led the charge against the Guinier nomination. Mr. Bolick, what makes you think that Lani Guinier is not fit for the job of head of the civil rights division of the Justice Department?

MR. BOLICK: Well, anyone who reads Lani Guinier's writings, which we have made very widely available in their verbatim form, cannot help but gain a sense of the pervasiveness of the racial prism through which she views virtually every issue. She has called for breathtakingly radical changes in the voting rights laws to ensure not only proportionate representation in legislatures but proportional representative, proportional outcomes inthe legislative process. She's called for racial quotas in judicial selection. She has called into account the authenticity of certain black representatives. She is at the outer edges of the radical fringe in legal academia today, and that's why not only conservatives but moderates and many liberals have come out against Lani Guinier. Her writings are her worst enemy.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Can you give me a specific example on any of that laundry list of things you just cited that you think is the most egregious or that the public can easily understand. Let's put it that way.

MR. BOLICK: Well, she has argued, for example, that any legislature that does not have proportionate legislative outcome, in other words, a minority block does not enact legislation at the same rate as the majority within the legislature, that that's a violation of the Voting Rights Act and that majority rule within the legislature should be set aside in favor of processes that would allow a minority block to actually enact legislation without a majority vote. She's criticized what she contemptuously calls "simple minded notions of majority rule."

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: In other words, that the minority would have a veto or --

MR. BOLICK: More than a veto, an actual ability to enact legislation even if a majority is opposed to it through what she calls cumulative voting within the legislature. I know this sounds very radical and very different, and that is precisely because she is the first that I've ever heard put forward such a radical view. It really calls into account, and she explicitly calls into account the majority rule premise on which our democratic society is based.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: All right. Mr. Coleman, you think Lani Guinier is fit to head the Justice Department's civil rights division, right?

MR. COLEMAN: Well, that's correct, and I don't really take what Mr. Bolick says as indicating that he doesn't think she's fit. I don't think anybody questions Lani's qualifications to head the civil rights division. She's one of the most brilliant lawyers ever nominated to head the division. What's happened here is that people like Mr. Bolick have distorted what Lani has written, have treated it like it's a comic book, with the simple analyses that have caused people on the Hill apparently to be concerned. But I don't think there's any question about Lani's qualifications to head the civil rights division.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What about his argument, and you heard the example he cited, that she's out on some -- I'm paraphrasing -- but radical fringe, not in the mainstream of, of legal thought, and that her writings are her worst enemy in this instance?

MR. COLEMAN: Well, what Mr. Bolick has done is to create the civil rights Frankenstein which then he pokes holes in. Lani has not proposed anything that is out of the mainstream, or that has not been tried in other instances by states and local governments in this country.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What about the example that he gave, can you speak to that?

MR. COLEMAN: Well, he suggests that Lani is arguing that all legislators are to be subject to some minority veto. In fact, what Lani is talking about are extreme cases of racial discrimination by local government officials that exclude black elected officials from participating in the governing process. And she said that in those circumstances, in extreme cases where that happens time after time after time, that something ought to be done in order to ensure that black elected officials can carry out their constitutional duties to participate in the governing process.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And his argument that that something ought to be a -- empower the minority officials with a veto and a, an outcome that they favor is wrong?

MR. COLEMAN: That's exactly right. Lani has never argued that legislatures ought to be required to enact legislation simply because it's supported by minority elected officials. What she's argued is that minority elected officials ought to have an opportunity to have legislation that they favor considered on the merits. And when legislators, white legislators prevent that from happening, she says that there ought to be mechanisms, procedural mechanisms that are used to, to prevent their exclusion.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What's wrong with that, Mr. Bolick?

MR. BOLICK: Robin, something very incredible --

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Charlayne.

MR. BOLICK: Something very incredible is going on here, and that is that the other side is accusing us of distorting her writings. We've been passing out her writings. We've been saying, please read these, please read these.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: All right, but he --

MR. BOLICK: It's the other side that has been rewriting them.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Okay. Excuse me, but he just specifically said that the analysis of the writing that you cited was incorrect and distorted. Let's stick with that example for the moment.

MR. BOLICK: Well, I would say, look at her articles, and what you will see is that she sets up as a Voting Rights Act violation, and that's what she would be in charge of enforcing as assistant attorney general. She says that is a violation if a minority bloc within a legislature is not successful in enacting a proportional share of legislation, then the procedures of majority rule within that legislature must be modified so that they can enact what she calls a fair share of legislative outcomes. These are her words. They're not mine. And the problem that Prof. Coleman and other defenders of Lani Guinier are having is that they are having to rewrite her writings to make them more palatable. I would put the test in those who have read her writings, the New Republic, the Baltimore Sun, Stuart Taylor of Legal Times, all of these liberal to moderate individuals and publications have concluded based on her writings that she is way outside the mainstream on civil rights issues.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Coleman, are you rewriting Ms. Guinier's work, and is she, in fact, way outside the mainstream?

MR. COLEMAN: Actually, all I'm trying to do is to get people like Mr. Bolick to focus on what it is that she's actually written and focus on the problem that she's addressed in her writing. One of the things that's interesting, and I think you just saw it, is that he avoids altogether discussing the problems that she is concerned about and that the proposals that she discussed are directed at trying to correct. Instead, what he does is to talk generally about proposals that are discussed in her writing as if what Lani is proposing is to restructure American government, and she's not. We're talking about some very extreme cases in isolated areas where the majority of a local legislature excludes the black elected officials from participating.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Bolick, let me go back to you. Earlier, Mr. Coleman said that I was a little bit mis-stating what you had said, although you criticized her positions, you did not say she wasn't fit to head the civil rights division. Do you have a position on that specifically?

MR. BOLICK: There's no question that she's qualified. She's very capable. What the problem is, is that she is capable of, in fact, implementing a very, very profoundly radical agenda.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And what's wrong with that?

MR. BOLICK: What's wrong with that is that it is so far outside the mainstream of civil rights thinking and that it's outside the thinking of the laws as they are written. The Supreme Court, for example, has explicitly rejected the view that the Voting Rights Act applies at all to legislative, to the legislative arena, and another point is that Bill Clinton when he ran for president explicitly said during the campaign that he supported equality of opportunity, not equality of results.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But he also --

MR. BOLICK: Lani Guinier has embraced that very standard that Clinton, himself, explicitly repudiated, so I think he's broken his bond with the American people by appointing Lani Guinier.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, he said he didn't agree with every position that he [she] took but he stood by her. Mr. Coleman, what about Mr. Bolick's position that liberals, moderates and not only conservatives but some liberals and some moderates are finding Lani Guinier unacceptable for this position?

MR. COLEMAN: Well, it's, it's consistent with what Mr. Bolick has done here. Now, for example, the case that he talks about in which the Supreme Court rejected an approach that has been suggested by Prof. Guinier is a case in which the Bush administration argued the position. This is the position that the Bush administration took in the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the Voting Rights Act ought to apply to prevent a local Board of Commissioners from excluding a black elected commissioner from participating in the business of the commission. That was the Bush administration that took that position. Now there are other instances in which proposals that Lani has discussed in her writing have been adopted. Minority veto, for example, is essentially what, what the Republicans use in the Senate under Senate Rule 22 to frustrate legislation that they don't like that the Democrats propose.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Bolick, how much of this is -- I mean, how liberal can an official in this position be after 12 years of a conservative Justice Department that has endorsed most of the limitations that civil rights activists fought against? I mean, is that what this is all about?

MR. BOLICK: Having worked in the Justice Department, I can tell you that the assistant attorney general has dramatic discretionary authority. If you put Lani Guinier in this position, she will be able to coerce and litigate without very much oversight by other officials in the administration, and she will have over 200 lawyers at her disposal to implement this agenda. I think that the, the racial landscape in this country is now really at a, at a crossroads. We can either move towards common ground, which my organization, the Institute for Justice, is very active in promoting, or we can fan the flames of racial division by pushing quotas, busing, and so forth. Unfortunately, it looks like the Clinton administration at least for now has decided to go down the road already traveled, and I find that very, very regrettable.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Coleman, where is -- I mean, the President has somewhat equivocated -- but I mean where is Lani -- are Lani Guinier's champions? You heard Sen. Leahy today signal that the President ought to start looking for somebody else.

MR. COLEMAN: Well, let me just, let me just respond to one thing that Clint Bolick said before I answer that, and that is he suggests that he's somehow in the mainstream. He has spent 12years of the Reagan and Bush administration trying to undermine the civil rights statutes that the civil rights division enforces. So I don't think he -- based on his experience -- can say what it is that the assistant attorney general for civil rights has the authority to do since they didn't use it to enforce civil rights.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Should the president expend his political capital on this one, Mr. Coleman?

MR. COLEMAN: Well, I think he should, because I think it's important as the president said that Lani Guinier not be judged on the distortions of what she's written. This is a brilliant lawyer who deserves an opportunity to appear before the committee and to make her case.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Bolick, what happens if the President sticks with Lani Guinier?

MR. BOLICK: You will have four years of a lightning rod in this position, and I think that he will either lose face now or expend tremendous political capital later on. I really hope for the country's sake that he withdraws this nomination.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Quickly, Mr. Bolick -- Mr. Coleman, what happens if he sticks?

MR. COLEMAN: Well, I don't think anything will happen. I think - -

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: All right. What happens if he dumps?

MR. COLEMAN: If he doesn't stick -- well, I'm assuming that he is going to stick and that Lani is going to appear before the committee, and I think that she will convince these Senators that she has been misbetrayed, and she will be confirmed.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: All right. Well, Mr. Coleman and Mr. Bolick, we'll wait and see what happens. Thank you.

MR. MacNeil: Still ahead on the NewsHour, ex-presidential aides look at the Clinton White House, and a Newsmaker interview with Canada's prime minister. FOCUS - ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN

MR. MUDD: Next, former White House insiders assess President Clinton's latest political twists and turns, including his appointment of David Gergen. Last Saturday, Mr. Clinton caught Washington's wise men and wise women flat footed and almost tongue tied by picking Gergen, a Nixon, Ford, Reagan Republican, as his new communications counselor. The unorthodox appointment set off tremors inside the White House and sent shock waves rolling up Pennsylvania Avenue toward Capitol Hill. We get the perspectives now of four top aides in previous administrations. First, the Democrats. George Christian was Lyndon Johnson's press secretary from 1966 to 1969. He's now a political consultant in Austin, Texas. Jody Powell was Jimmy Carter's press secretary. He's now chairman of a Washington public relations firm. Republican Martin Anderson was Ronald Reagan's first domestic policy adviser. He joins us from Palo Alto, California, where he's a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. And Ken Duberstein was Ronald Reagan's last chief of staff. He's now a Washington lobbyist. Mr. Duberstein, even though David Gergen doesn't start to work until tomorrow morning, are we now seeing the effect of his influence, pushing toward the center, distancing himself from Lani Guinier, sending out a signal that the health care plan may be put off until August, September?

MR. DUBERSTEIN: I think the appointment of David Gergen was a very bold move and a good move by President Clinton. I think David was convinced that, in fact, President Clinton wanted to move to the center all along. Remember, this is not a shotgun wedding. David Gergen and President Clinton have known each other for about 10 years. They've exchanged correspondence. They've communicated on the phone. So I think what David is convinced of is that President Clinton has said over the last several weeks, I really want to get back to being a new Democrat, not a New Deal Democrat. And he wants David to help him shape that message, not necessarily, not necessarily to determine policy.

MR. MUDD: You don't think that, that one of David Gergen's policies for coming to work for Bill Clinton was that Bill Clinton move to the center?

MR. DUBERSTEIN: No. I think the predicate was that Bill Clinton and Mack McLarty undoubtedly convinced, persuaded David Gergen that, in fact, Bill Clinton the first few months was a different Bill Clinton from the campaign and from where Bill Clinton felt that he -- or feels that he wants to lead the country. I think that's what persuaded David Gergen.

MR. MUDD: Jody Powell, what's your opinion of, of Gergen's role and influence in the White House to come?

MR. POWELL: I don't think -- let me say that I agree very much with what Ken has had to say here. I think it is a good move. I think it'll be helpful to the, to the administration. I have regard for, for David Gergen. I really don't think that what we were seeing here with regard to this nomination or with regard to the health care plan as a result of David Gergen. I think it is a result of getting control of some things there, primarily from the chief of staff's office, to make some things happen. In the case of this nomination, I think we're looking at something that we see often in Washington in which, in which an administration concludes that a nomination is not viable for whatever reason and they provide an opportunity for the nominee to do the right thing, if you will, and the expectation is that this lady will do the right thing. She may be, and I expect is a very fine lady, but politically speaking it makes no sense for them to go forward and waste capital on, on this particular issue.

MR. MUDD: So Gergen, even though he may have a magic wand, has not yet waved it as far as you can tell?

MR. POWELL: It's not -- that's not my expectation that, or not my understanding that these things are the result of David, or that he has a magic wand, and I, I don't think even David would claim to have a magic wand.

MR. MUDD: Let me ask Martin Anderson in Palo Alto for your assessment of David Gergen. You were in, in Reagan One, weren't you?

MR. ANDERSON: Yes.

MR. MUDD: The first Reagan administration.

MR. ANDERSON: Yes.

MR. MUDD: And you knew Gergen. What did you think of him then, and what do you think of him now?

MR. ANDERSON: Well, I worked with David a couple of years in the presidential campaign and then the first few years of the Reagan White House. I would say that I think that David brings some very interesting skills to the Clinton White House. We forget sometimes that there are so many things going on and that no president can keep up with everything, and in those areas, staffers are important. For example, David Gergen has got a streak of decency. I think that if he had been sitting in those meetings a couple of weeks ago when someone said, look, let's get rid of seven people on the White House travel office staff, he'd be the first one to say, wait a minute, are they all guilty? Let's be slow, be careful. That's a viable thing to have in a top staff member. Second thing. I think David has a healthy respect for the truth and realizes in the White House staff especially you've got to be extremely careful to be accurate, to not misrepresent, and never, never lie. And I would argue that a great deal of problems that Clinton's been having, for example, with his economic program, the spending cuts never have been grossly misrepresented. Most of them take place in the second term, 1997/'98. In fact, 98 percent of his net spending cuts take place in his second term if he gets re-elected. David's got to stop that kind of business. He has a legitimate program we can argue about, and I happen to disagree with it, but that's the argument with the program, not the misrepresentation of the program.

MR. MUDD: Mr. Anderson, in today's edition of the Washington Times, you are quoted as saying in the early days the people who gave the best strategic advice to Reagan were Ed Meese, Michael Deaver, and Jim Baker, not Gergen. What was the matter with Gergen?

MR. ANDERSON: Well, no, Gergen was doing a good job, but remember, there was a trend break. Michael Deaver was the impresario at that time. David Gergen was helpful, but he was not making basic PR strategy and communication strategy. He was helping implement it; he advised on it; and the meetings that I was in his judgments were very sound. But, you know, if you really wanted the real thing, you should go to Michael Deaver.

MR. MUDD: Let me ask George Christian in Austin, do you think that David Gergen can cure whatever it is ails Bill Clinton?

MR. CHRISTIAN: Well, the story's already going around, Roger, that his phone number in the White House is 911. But he -- his first objective, I would assume, is to get a handle on White House press relations. Many presidents come into office and go into the castle and pull up the drawbridge and hope they've kept the press out, but the fact is, the press is there, it's inside, has to be dealt with. You cannot snub the White House press. I don't care how much you want to. That's got to be taken care of. Every centrist Republican president, i.e. George Bush, finds himself being tugged on by the right, and centrist Democratic presidents find themselves being tugged on by the left, and President Clinton obviously is being tugged on by the left. The appointment of David Gergen, who I believe to be an outstanding public servant, is to try to offset that, but I do believe, as Marty said, that the press relations and the message that the President delivers should be the first priorities for David Gergen.

MR. MUDD: Do you agree with that, Mr. Duberstein, that it's a matter of press and communications, in effect, shadow and not substance?

MR. DUBERSTEIN: I think that David very much is going to be a reality therapist in this White House. He is the one who I think can be expected to walk in and say, no, or not now, or not ever, or not this way, or I disagree, without being disagreeable with the President. I think he needs very much to help Clinton and the White House staff shape the message. But David is not your policy guru. He is not the person who owns the policy bazaar that's running in the White House. He is the one who's going to help shape the message and work with the press. He has the credibility with the press. He has been in several White Houses. He's the wise old hand, the wise experienced Washington insider who I think is going to save the White House and to the President and to the White House staff -- well, you have to look at it this way. You need to think about how it's going to play. You've got to think about what it really is going to be perceived as out in the country. And I think David is uniquely, if not uncommonly prepared to do that.

MR. MUDD: But, Mr. Powell, the President has been in office four months. Do you get divorced from reality that quickly when you're in the White House?

MR. POWELL: I'm not sure it's a total case of divorce from reality. I think the reality of the White House is so different from anything else on the face of this earth, and thank God it is - - most people shouldn't have to live that way -- that it's very hard to be prepared for it. I certainly was not. Ken may have been there but it is not like working in a corporation. It's not like anything you've ever seen before, and these things tend to overwhelm you. Marty said something I thought was interesting about David and the firing of those folks in the travel office. I'm sure David would have said, no, wait a minute. Not only that, but there are a lot of people in that White House now who would have said no, wait a minute, if they had known that it was about to happen before it happened. And let me say a word too in defense of the communications operation, the press office there, that those of us who have been there, George for one, certainly know that a lot of times you get sent out defend things that you may have doubts about, yourself, that you don't know why they did it. Certainly in that particular case I think that's what happened, but you have to go out there and do the best job you can until you can try to figure out what to do about it. You can't walk out to the press and say, look, to tell you the honest to God truth, I have some real doubts about this thing, myself, and before I say anything to defend the decision, I'd like to go back and find out exactly what went on. Now you may be thinking that, but what you've got to do is deal with what gets, what gets, what gets served out to you.

MR. MUDD: You wouldn't dare do that in front of the press?

MR. POWELL: No.

MR. MUDD: It would be refreshing though, wouldn't it?

MR. POWELL: Well, but you're not there to make yourself look good. You're not there to carry water for yourself. You're there to do the best job you can for the President. If there was a time when that might serve the President best, fine, but just to make the press secretary feel a little bit better, you don't do that.

MR. MUDD: George Christian, during the Johnson era, did you ever call in any red hot Republicans to help you out of a jam? It would have been unthinkable under the Johnson era.

MR. CHRISTIAN: I was very fortunate, myself, to have a close relationship with Jim Hagerty, who had been President Eisenhower's press secretary, and it was not out of the question that President Johnson would not bring in Republicans, either as wise counselors or actually to observe some of the routine operations. I think what presidents have to do, particularly at this point in President Clinton's term, for example, is protect themselves and be protected from being subjects of ridicule, and really that's where President Clinton has had a major problem. We've had other cases obviously. You don't -- a President shouldn't show their scars in public, and they probably shouldn't beat on killer rabbits with row boat oars, Jody, but things like that happen. But when you become the target of ridicule on the humor shows and in the editorial cartoons, I think the, the presidency as an institution suffers, and David Gergen could contribute an awful lot if he could just diminish this sort of thing.

MR. MUDD: Martin Anderson in Palo Alto, do you think the Gergen appointment further confuses what the public thinks Bill Clinton stands for, if after four months he's had to lean on a Republican to get him out of trouble?

MR. ANDERSON: Yeah. One of the little jokes Republicans have these days when they run into an old Democratic friend, they say, well, you finally put one of us in there. Let me say there a couple of things I think you ought to look at. I think that David Gergen is facing a very daunting task. First of all, the precedence for this sort of action and that -- the last time I can think of is 1969, when President Nixon brought in Daniel Patrick Moynihan on the White House staff, and, if I remember, from January to August of 1969, we wasted a lot of time fighting each other. And I think someone ought to speak very -- perhaps the President should talk to members of his own staff, because I was just sitting here, thinking if in 1981, after President Reagan was elected, was in office for four months, he had brought in Jody Powell and made him counselor in charge of all communications, there are some of us who might have resented that a little bit. And I think that David Gergen is going to have to watch his back.

MR. MUDD: Watch his back. You mean --

MR. ANDERSON: Within the White House staff.

MR. MUDD: -- so the question is why would, why would all those new Democrats down there jump when he says jump?

MR. ANDERSON: Well, see, one of the things that I -- I mean, that people don't realize is that a person in Gergen's position is highly dependent on cooperation from other members of the White House staff, the kinds of information they give him, most importantly, the kinds of information they may not give him, the meetings he does not get invited to. So unless he gets full cooperation and everyone has President Clinton's viewpoint in mind and what's good for the country, he may be in for a very difficult time.

MR. MUDD: Mr. Duberstein, how could, how could a Republican such as David Gergen fit into a Democratic atmosphere --

MR. DUBERSTEIN: First of all --

MR. MUDD: -- White House?

MR. DUBERSTEIN: -- Roger, I think what motivated David is that he was concerned as he's expressed in some of his columns that America and the world couldn't afford three and a half years of a failed presidency. And he thought that if he had the opportunity which he now has that he could help Bill Clinton shape the message and perhaps straighten out the ship of state. No, he doesn't expect to be a panacea, but he needs to carry the President's message. Nobody suggests that when you join the White House staff that you should have a political or philosophical agenda of your own. You're there to help the President get his agenda adopted. And if Gergen feels comfortable, as he evidently does, with much of the Clinton program, then that's what he's going to try to shape, and that's what he's going to try to help the President sell. And he's going to walk down the hall thirty or forty paces, walk into the Oval Office, and give the President his best counsel. I think that's pretty admirable to do if the alternative is a failed presidency.

MR. MUDD: Mr. Powell, there's been a lot of talk about what David Gergen has got to do. What's Bill Clinton got to do?

MR. POWELL: Well, I think, I think one of the things that we may have, have created the impression which is not accurate is that the process that is going on in the White House started and stopped with David Gergen. I don't think that is the case. I think what you are seeing here is a president and his chief of staff and others there deciding they need to get a grip on some things, which they did, and taking a series of steps to do that. I don't think David - - he wasn't the first up, nor do I think he'll be the last up. Understand what Marty's saying about watching his back, but there's a fairly easy way to take care of that, and I think it's probably been done, is that clearly this man has the president's ear and the president's confidence. That provides you with a great deal of armor on your back if you know how to use it, and I suspect that, that Mr. Gergen does. The other thing I would emphasize which Ken said before is that I really do think there is a very wide area of consensus and common thinking on philosophy and ideology between David Gergen and Bill Clinton. Clearly, they do too, and if you look back at Bill Clinton's record, he clearly is a moderate, centrist sort of Democrat, and the impression that he's not, which is clearly there, I think has largely been a communications problem over the past, the past four months.

MR. MUDD: Good. Well, thank you. Thank you, Misters Powell, Duberstein, Christian, and Anderson. NEWSMAKER

MR. MacNeil: Finally tonight, a Newsmaker interview with the outgoing prime minister of Canada, Brian Mulroney. He's had that job since 1984 and been a close political friend to Ronald Reagan and George Bush whose conservative philosophy he shared and tried to spread in Canada. The prime minister's Conservative Party will choose a successor later this month. This morning, Mr. Mulroney paid what was officially a farewell call on President Clinton, but there were major issues on their agenda, including the North American Free Trade Agreement, and Bosnia. I talked with the prime minister this afternoon.

MR. MacNeil: Prime Minister Mulroney, thank you for joining us. I was interested in your remark today that putting U.S. ground troops into Bosnia would give Washington greater authority in Europe. How would that work?

PRIME MINISTER MULRONEY: Well, in the minds of the Europeans, Robin, when I was there a few weeks ago, a lot of the European leaders seemed to think that this would indicate a greater degree of commitment by the United States, thereby legitimizing perhaps an upgrading of intensity via a new U.N. security resolution. This is not a view that Canada holds. We think the United States doesn't require that legitimacy. It already has it, but obviously, the placing of ground troops in the former Yugoslavia, as Canada, France, Britain has done, would not be unhelpful at all.

MR. MacNeil: Yesterday Sec. of State Christopher was on this program and he said the U.S. had less leverage in this case with Europe, because it had chosen the multilateral route and was not trying to insist on its own view. Do you see this as, as something new or very particular in this case, or a sign of the way the world is going to be?

PRIME MINISTER MULRONEY: Oh, I think that Sec. Christopher is right. There is -- I'm somewhat intrigued by some American commentators saying that President Clinton will deliver for us an American solution to the war in the Balkans. There's no such thing. There is no American solution to this. There is either a concerted United Nations solution, the beginnings of a solution, or there is none at all. This is not a question of expelling an aggressor from a given piece of territory. This is a question of coming between and/or among murderous factions, murderous factions in a civil war that has really in many ways been going on for centuries. And so it is unfair to try and exact an American solution when there is, none is possible. And I don't think that represents a fundamental change in American policy. There has to be the European endorsement of what takes place, particularly via the U.N. Security Council, or I don't think the U.S. would be well advised to, to always go it alone.

MR. MacNeil: Well, if there had been U.S. troops on the ground, would the Europeans and you have endorsed the American idea which you oppose, as I understand it, of lifting the arms embargo on the Bosnians? Would U.S. troops have made a difference in resistance to that idea?

PRIME MINISTER MULRONEY: I think that that idea brought before the U.N. Security Council could have been completely defensible. It's not a point of view that we share. Our opposition, Robin, was not based on that. Our opposition was based on the fact that we already have some thousands of men there, and had this been construed as a hostile act by one of the proponents, then hostages would have been taken and Canadian lives and British lives and Spanish lives and so on could have been immediately compromised. This would have been unwise. The way to do it is to take, to go to the U.N. Security Council for a secondary -- I'm sorry -- a second and a separate resolution. I think that if the United States decided to do that in any event that it would meet with significant support.

MR. MacNeil: Even now?

PRIME MINISTER MULRONEY: Even now.

MR. MacNeil: As things stand now, with the Bosnian Serbs continuing to attack the Muslims, what is the solution right now, do you think?

PRIME MINISTER MULRONEY: Well, if the objective of the exercise is to stop people from murdering and raping their neighbors, then the only way to do it realistically is to put in enough ground troops under a peacekeeping mandate of the United Nations to keep them apart long enough for them to come to some degree to their senses. What someone said to me today, Robin, you know, well, do you think the Americans or the Europeans are more responsible for this? The answer is they're not responsible at all. Those with responsibility are the architects of this disaster, namely the Bosnian Serbs, the Muslims and the Croats, with varying degrees of responsibility. The Americans are not responsible. The Canadians are not responsible, nor are the British. We are in there trying to help, and so the primary responsibility must rest with those who have initiated this horrible series of violent murderous, criminal acts.

MR. MacNeil: You mentioned today one of the possibilities was requiring a, going to the U.N. and requiring a withdrawal to the borders that were in existence when Bosnia was accepted by the United Nations as a member. Given the Serbian intransigence, wouldn't that require using force to get them to retreat to those lines?

PRIME MINISTER MULRONEY: I was asked, Robin, whether there were any brilliant ideas, and I said, no, I wasn't aware of any and we didn't have any but that I thought in respect to the new beginning for the United Nations Security Council might be centered around a new resolution perhaps initiated by the United States on behalf of the members of the P-5, saying in regard to the integrity of the United Nations, itself, we recognize Bosnia Herzegovina over a year ago, here were the borders on that day, we want recognition of those borders, followed by a, perhaps a new mandate from the U.N. Security Council, followed by a greater placement of larger numbers of U.N. peacekeepers in there. That might be the beginnings, might be the beginnings of perhaps a new solution that could lead to a longer-term peace plan a la Vance-Owen, perhaps not. It is an idea, and it's not a perfect solution.

MR. MacNeil: Let's talk about the North American Free Trade area for a moment. Regarding the side agreements that President Clinton campaigned on to make the trade agreement palatable to environmental and labor interests here, what would cause Canada to reject such side agreements?

PRIME MINISTER MULRONEY: Well, if any side agreement vitiated the effectiveness of the principal agreement or impinged on our sovereignty or the sovereignty of Mexico or the United States.

MR. MacNeil: How would they do that? How would they impinge on sovereignty?

PRIME MINISTER MULRONEY: Well, for example, if trade sanctions were, were encouraged in side arrangements, and the ultimate objective of a trade sanction is to penalize one of your partners, the principal objective of a free trade agreement is to resolve disputes through an independent dispute settlement mechanism. Well, if you initiated trade sanctions against one of your trading partners with whom you had signed a free trade agreement and the effect of that is to vitiate the, the independent dispute settlement mechanism, you just destroyed the, the principal reason for negotiating a free trade agreement in the first place. This is the kind of thing that we would find unacceptable, but I'm sure that we will be able to find good compromise with President Clinton and the president of Mexico.

MR. MacNeil: Your addressing the suggestion that to make such side agreements enforceable now that sanctions be part of a separate enforcement mechanism, are you?

PRIME MINISTER MULRONEY: Well, but they run, the whole concept, Robin, runs counter.

MR. MacNeil: But that's why you raise the issue, is it, because some people are suggesting that how do you put teeth into those side agreements, and there would have to be trade sanctions built in as teeth, is that what you're objecting to?

PRIME MINISTER MULRONEY: Well, if you want to see how free trade operates, look at the Canada/United States Free Trade Agreement. We signed it four years ago. We were then hit by a recession, both countries. And in the midst of a recession, your trade, your exports to Canada have increased approximately 25 percent. Our exports to the United States have increased by approximately 25 percent. And that increase in American exports to Canada has created 1.4 million new jobs in the United States. Now surely there is a classic illustration of what happens to two countries when they engage in thoughtful free trade. It means that you create new pools of wealth on both sides. What we're suggesting is the extension of this fundamental concept to Mexico. Mexico is saying something very simple. Salinas is saying, look, I don't want foreign aid, and I don't want handouts, I want a hand up. Would you allow me as a developing country to trade into your market? Then you hear, which seems to me the pretty mature thing to do, then you hear from some people, ah, we can't do that, because wage rates in Mexico are much lower than those in Canada and the United States, and everybody's going to move to Mexico. Somebody called it the great sucking sound of all of the businesses in the United States moving.

MR. MacNeil: Ross Perot called it that.

PRIME MINISTER MULRONEY: Did he?

MR. MacNeil: Yeah.

PRIME MINISTER MULRONEY: Moving to Mexico. Well, Robin, if wage rates were the only criterion, Haiti would be the manufacturing capital of the world. Their per capita income is $350 a year. Ours, yours and mine, is about $21,350. So obviously, this is a fallacious argument. It doesn't hold any water, because wage rates are one component of very many that enter into the concept of competitiveness.

MR. MacNeil: So come back to the point of sanctions and the side agreements, if sanctions were made part of the side agreements, that would be a deal breaker for Canada, would it?

PRIME MINISTER MULRONEY: Well, it is inconsistent to us or inconceivable to us that anybody who believes in free trade would propose side agreements, the effect of which would be the vitiation of free trade.

MR. MacNeil: You mentioned Haiti. You said today it would have to be decided pretty soon whether this travesty would go on, or whether it would, the OAS states, Canada, the U.S. and the others, would, would have to insist on the restoration of President Aristide, and you said, deploy some assets, by which you mean sending troops.

PRIME MINISTER MULRONEY: Well, I find it passing strange that people are suggesting deployment of military forces, American military forces in Bosnia, where we've got an enormous tragedy going on right here in our own hemisphere in Haiti, where democracy has been extinguished, there's been loss of life. The only duly elected president in 200 years has been overthrown, and it's right in our own backyard, and we haven't restored him yet after two years. All I'm saying is that Canada, Venezuela, the United States, and France could initiate a very simple and able blockade of that, of the island, and simply demand a respect for the United Nations resolutions in the OAS action. That's all. And it would be a matter of very little time I think before you'd find compliance. We may have to use that kind of influence there, and I think it's appropriate. We can't let President Aristide hang out indefinitely while the military are illegally usurping constitutional rights on an island in this hemisphere right off the coast of Florida.

MR. MacNeil: On Mr. Clinton, himself, you said a couple of times today that it's nonsense to suggest that his presidency is broken, that he's going down the tubes four months after he took over. As an observer of the American scene, why do you think there's been such, so much negative comments so soon?

PRIME MINISTER MULRONEY: Well, I referred, Robin, to what can only be described here as a quaint American custom where you elect a president for four years, and then you decide after a hundred days whether he's dead or alive. This is pretty silly stuff. Nobody can resolve the problems confronting a great nation in a hundred days, and I understand the tradition from Roosevelt and so on, and everybody appears to be measured by this, this standard, but it's not a helpful thing to do. The problems of the United States and the problems of Canada, the UK and others, are problems so complex and intractable that they require mature judgment and strong leadership over an extended period of time. Give the guy a break. He just started. Let him see what he can do over a period of time, and the beauty of a democracy is you throw us in, or you throw us out after a period of time. That's four years or five years, depending on the British parliamentary system, not a hundred days. And I think that it's kind of, kind of unhelpful to anyone, including to the United States, to pass these kinds of definitive and quite vitriolic judgments about a president who has just received the confidence of the American people and say after ninety or a hundred days, by the way, you're through, let's turn our attention to somebody else.

MR. MacNeil: Well, Prime Minister Mulroney, thank you very much for joining us.

PRIME MINISTER MULRONEY: Thank you, Robin. RECAP

MR. MUDD: Again, the major stories of this Wednesday, President Clinton says he expects to work out differences with those Senators who want to change his economic package. Also, he denied reports that he would delay for long the release of his health care plan but did say he wanted to get his economic plan through the Senate first, and Mr. Clinton said he would re-examine his choice for the Justice Department's top civil rights post in the face of mounting criticism from Senators. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Roger. That's the NewsHour for tonight, and we'll see you again tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.