The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

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

MS. WARNER: And I'm Margaret Warner in Washington. After our summary of the news this New Year's Eve, Paul Solman explains why the good old days really were the good old days, Mark Shields and Paul Gigot review the political highlights of 1993, and our NewsHour essayists also look back at the year. NEWS SUMMARY

MS. WARNER: Political violence continues in South Africa. Even as the country moves towards its first multiracial election, police are looking for black gunmen who burst into a crowded Cape Town pub last night spraying the patrons with gunfire. Four people were killed and five wounded. Most of the victims were white. We have more in this report by Ian Cundall of Independent Television News.

IAN CUNDALL: Five gunmen burst into the crowded bar in Cape Town's liberal observatory district firing automatic weapons. A hand grenade failed to go off. Three women died, along with the bar owner who tried to stop the killing. Five were wounded. Unconfirmed reports that a radical black group opposed to sharing power with whites have admitted they did it. The shootings have been universally from them. President F. W. DeKlerk said it was a barbaric deed and appealed to the unity. Archbishop Desmond Tutu said it was a dastardly act. The Xanian People's Liberation Army is reported to have been behind the attack, its declared aim to derail next year's democratic elections. A violent backlash from the extreme right is now feared. Breakaway groups have sworn to avenge such attacks in the past. The observatory suburb is among Cape Town's most multiracial areas, all sides of the community now grieving the four white victims.

MS. WARNER: Since the shooting, a second militant black group has also claimed responsibility. More than 100 people have been killed in political violence in South Africa in the past 10 days. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Four federal agencies are now seeking information about radiation experiments conducted on humans during the Cold War era. Officials from NASA and the Departments of Energy, Defense, and Veterans Affairs have been called to a White House meeting on Monday to coordinate the effort. Energy Sec. Hazel O'Leary began the investigation in her department. So far, officials have found evidence of testing on as many as 800 individuals. Today's Boston Globe reported that 23 pregnant women being treated at the Boston Hospital were injected with radioactive iron in the 1950's. The paper said the research was funded by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and the Office of Naval Research.

MS. WARNER: This New Year's Eve in Sarajevo is being marked just as it was last year, with the sounds of gunfire and victims' screams. Serb gunners ushered in the holiday evening with a shelling barrage that killed five and wounded more than three dozen on the city's main street, but for hundreds of other former residents of the Bosnian capital, the new year brings with it an unaccustomed feeling of safety. They're part of a so-called "people's convoy" which just arrived in the Croatian port of Split after a torturous journey. Some of the nearly 800 refugees were met by relatives. Others will travel on to third countries.

MR. MacNeil: back here at home on this New Year's Eve a poll by the Associated Press finds Americans pessimistic about social problems but upbeat about their economic future. 67 percent of those polled expect racial tension to increase and 60 percent think the streets in their neighborhood will be less safe. But on the up side, 52 percent, mostly younger people, expect their personal finances will improve in 1994. President Clinton will greet the new year as featured speaker at a symposium tomorrow called "What I've Learned." It is one of many sessions being held at a retreat in Hiltonhead, South Carolina, known as Renaissance Weekend. The Clintons have been regular participants in the annual off-the- record gathering of high achievers in various walks of life. They have stayed mostly out of camera range, except for a few recreational detours like a golf game this morning in sub-freezing temperatures.

MS. WARNER: That's it for the News Summary. Now it's on to Paul Solman on the good old days, a political review of 1993, and a look back from our NewsHour essayists. FOCUS - THOSE WERE THE DAYS

MR. MacNeil: First up tonight, the economy. As we close out the year, most of the signs and statistics point to economic recovery, new home sales up, inflation low, unemployment down, and consumer confidence up. In fact, the Associated Press poll today shows slightly more than half of the American people believe they'll be better off next year.But one basic fact has not yet turned positive. Real income is still declining for millions of Americans as it has been for two decades. That's the phenomenon Paul Solman explored last year in a report on a problem that still hasn't gone away.

[ARCHIE AND EDITH BUNKER SINGING "THOSE WERE THE DAYS" IN SCENE FROM "ALL IN THE FAMILY"]

MR. SOLMAN: Well, for many Americans, including Archie Bunker and family, those were the days, or at least that's what people now seem to think. Even though the U.S. has experienced economic growth of 72 percent over the past 20 years, people feel they're worse off. Partly it's because we're worried about the decline of the American economy relative to competitors like Japan, but another reason many people feel worse off is that their income, adjusted for inflation, their real income that is, has been going nowhere for two decades. We're going to show you what's happened to real income in America these past 20 years using Archie, Edith, and the kids, all the folks in the family. We begin back in 1973, a couple of years after the show debuted.

[SCENE FROM ALL IN THE FAMILY]

EDITH: Oh, Mike, would you pass these sandwiches around?

ARCHIE: No, no, no. That's like asking the elephant to pass the peanuts.

MR. SOLMAN: This was the good life. Archie brought home the bacon. Son-in-law "meathead" ate it.

[SCENE FROM ALL IN THE FAMILY]

ARCHIE: Don't be rooting under the pile! [referring to plate of sandwiches] Can't you take what's on top? Can't you be indelicate for a change?

MR. SOLMAN: Now, Archie was no English major, but then he didn't have to be. He didn't need schooling to work on the loading dock at a tool and die plant. The money was good and only figured to get better. Here's Archie's income estimated by economist Kevin Murphy for an average 50 year old blue collar worker of 1973, high school degree tops, about $13,000 a year, adjust for inflation about $37,000 today. Wife Edith wasn't working, son-in-law Michael was in college. Daughter Gloria, if typical of her peers, was working half-time, making around $2,500 a year, adjusted for inflation, that's $7,000 today. Add to Archie's paycheck and family income in today's dollars would be around $44,000.

[SCENE FROM ALL IN THE FAMILY]

ARCHIE: [All in the Family] I want to propose a toast to the good old US of A, where everybody gets a slice of the pie. All you got to do is do your work and in the end you get it.

MR. SOLMAN: The Bunkers have made it into the fast expanding middle class. The future looked especially rosy to the next generation, baby boomers like Michael.

HEIDI HARTMAN, Economist: Well, he had the experience of his parents to look at and he saw how well they did in the post World War II period and he probably thought it was going to be just as great for him, why not?

MR. SOLMAN: Economist Heidi Hartman has studied the income data.

HEIDI HARTMAN: It looked like a real economic engine. American capitalism looked really, really successful.

MR. SOLMAN: In the mid '70s, however, the little economic engine that could suddenly wouldn't. This isn't Archie's factory but the Ford Motor Company. Work like Archie's depended on firms like Ford, whose business had begun to sputter. Blue collar salaries were rising, but inflation was eating up all the gains. You could see the economic slowdown begin on "All in the Family," when Archie got a raise.

EDITH: ["All in the Family"] Archie, did you get a good raise?

ARCHIE BUNKER: ["All in the Family"] Edith, a three year contract for 15 percent.

MICHAEL: ["All inthe Family"] Arch, Arch, what about the cost of living escalator clause?

ARCHIE BUNKER: ["All in the Family"] Oh, come on. The hell with the escalator! We're on firm ground with a 15 percent raise! Now, don't make me mad!

MR. SOLMAN: Archie doesn't get the basic economics. When your cost of living goes up faster than your paycheck, you take home more money, but because of inflation, it won't buy as much as it used to. Only "Meathead" understands that Archie's real income is going down.

MICHAEL: ["All in the Family"] Oh, boy.

GLORIA: ["All in the Family"] What's the matter, honey?

MICHAEL: ["All in the Family"] I didn't want to spoil his happy moment, but he's not any better off now than he was before.

GLORIA: ["All in the Family"] Well, of course he is. He got a 15 percent raise.

MICHAEL: ["All in the Family"] Gloria, remember reading in the paper the cost of living went up 12 percent last year?

GLORIA: ["All in the Family"] So?

MICHAEL: ["All in the Family"] So next year it's supposed to go up another 8 percent. That's 20 percent. Archie thinks he's 15 percent ahead, but he's already 5 percent behind. [laugh track]

MR. SOLMAN: After awhile, it wasn't all that funny. By the end of the '70s when Ronald Reagan ran for President, his best line was about real income and how it wasn't rising.

RONALD REAGAN: [Nov. 28, 1980] Are you better off than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago?

MR. SOLMAN: Okay, we're about to check the 1979 numbers on the Bunkers. Keep in mind the point is not to see how Archie Bunker did as he got older, but what happened to his old job. Would a new worker filling Archie's shoes at the tool and die company be making more in 1979 than Archie made back in '73 after you adjust for inflation? Well, the Archie of '73 was making $37,000, the Archie of '79, an inflation-adjusted $36,000, down about 3 percent. But by 1979, more women had entered the work force, women like Edith, who would have been making about $9,000 annually, again adjusted for inflation. So family income was up because the family was working harder. And this kind of scene was becoming more and more common by 1979.

EDITH: ["All in the Family"] Look what I got, my first paycheck. Where's Archie? I want to show him. Archie!

MR. SOLMAN: Women like Edith were joining the one growing sector of the economy, the service sector.

GLORIA: ["All in the Family"] Let's see it. [referring to paycheck]

EDITH: ["All in the Family"] Pay to the order of Edith Bunker $63.28.

MR. SOLMAN: Well, it may not sound like much, but to keep her family in the middle class, Edith really had no choice but to work.

HEIDI HARTMAN, Economist: And she's noticing Archie's real wage decline and she's thinking, well, what can I do for my family, I also want to help the kids out and there's nothing to help them out with because our family income's declining, so if I'm going to help them, you know, start their family growth in a little bit healthier position, maybe I'd better start going to work.

MR. SOLMAN: Meanwhile, young men like Michael were even more strapped. Let's say he'd left school for a job back in '73. Typical income for a meathead of that era with a few years of college was about $10,000. Now, the '79 meathead seemed to be doing much better, up around $15,000. But the point of our story is that when you adjust for inflation, his real income had actually dropped from $29,000 to $27,000 a year, again in today's dollars.

MR. SOLMAN: And then along came the 1980s, Reaganomics, and the economic boom trumpeted by both the administration and the media. By 1988, the economy had grown nearly 30 percent in eight years. This so-called "boom" was symbolized by icons of the era like corporate raider Gordon Gekko, addressing the stockholders of the company he's targeted for takeover here in the movie "Wall Street."

GORDON GEKKO: ["Wall Street"] The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works.

MR. SOLMAN: For the well addressed and well heeled, the data are pretty clear. In general, the higher their income when the decade began, the greater their share of the economic gains of the 1980s. For a while, many of the bottom 60 percent or so believed that the wealth would trickle down to them. But as manufacturing jobs were lost or automated out of existence, replaced for the most part by lower paying service jobs, it became harder and harder for folks like the Bunkers to maintain their real income, or even their identity as members of the middle class. Here are the 1988 data: a blue collar worker like Archie continuing down to about 34,000 in today's dollars, meathead dropping to 25,000 or so. The go-go '80s, they were called, but the only direction the "All in the Family" guys were going was down.

MR. SOLMAN: Queens, New York, 1992. To bring our story up to the present, we thought we'd visit the neighborhood where the Bunkers supposedly made their home. And since Archie worked on the loading dock, we visited one nearby to see how someone with his job is doing today. The nearest thing we could find to Archie Bunker was Frank Mondello. What was he making in 1973?

FRANK MONDELLO: $150 a week. But can I tell you something about that salary then? Okay. When I was making $150 a week, I had two children, I bought a house, and I had a car that was one year old. We were living very, very well.

MR. SOLMAN: Like "Meathead" and Archie, Frank Mondello has seen his paycheck rise, but his real income slip. He now drives a very old car, says he couldn't afford a house if he had to buy one today, thinks things are getting worse.

MR. SOLMAN: Now, if we're here in 1973, and I ask you, do you think things are going to get better and better, what do you tell me?

FRANK MONDELLO: Oh, yes, I never thought it would end. I never thought in a million years that I would see what I'm seeing today, as far as, you know, the regular guy, I mean the guy that wants to go out and make a living, you know, the guy that's willing to work hard, and he can't get a job for $500 a week or $450 a week. It's ridiculous.

MR. SOLMAN: We end this story right across the street at a once bustling tool and die company [Allmandinger Tool, Die & Metal Stamping]. Inside, $2 1/2 million worth of machinery sitting idle much of the time. This is the kind of place that once paid blue collar Americans a good living. But there's no one here. Twenty years ago, Americans here were in the right place at the right time, with skills all of us were willing to pay good money for. Back in those days there was no Japanese quality to compete with, no cheap foreign labor. But today firms like this, and what workers are left in them, just can't compete at the old high wages. Only with new investments and new skills can firms like this and their workers hope to provide again the kind of value we were once happy to pay for. Otherwise, the long-term trend seems likely to continue, a chunk of Americans doing better than ever and the top few percent really making out, the majority standing still or doing worse.

MS. WARNER: Still ahead, the political year in review and our essayists look back too. FOCUS - POLITICAL WRAP

MS. WARNER: It's the last Friday of the year, and that means it's time for a final political wrap-up of 1993. We get it from our regular wrapper-upper, syndicated columnist Mark Shields. Joining Mark tonight is Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot. Welcome, gentlemen. Happy New Year!

MR. SHIELDS: Happy New Year, Margaret!

MR. GIGOT: Happy New Year to you!

MS. WARNER: Well, let me start with the obvious question. What kind of a year did Bill Clinton have? Mark.

MR. SHIELDS: Bill Clinton had a, a year that could be best characterized as sort of in theatrical critics' language "lousy opening act," miserable stumbles on the attorney general's job, on gays in the military, recovered in the second act, by the summer it hit its stride, restored discipline to his party, brought accountability to our political process. By the end of the year, having got his own budget through, his own tax increase, deficit reduction, took on his own party, argued about the wisdom of it, but got through against critics' judgment whether he could do it, then the North American Free Trade Agreement, passed the Brady Bill, ended on a high note. So Ronald Reagan used to say open strong, coast, and then put a good, strong finish. Clinton opened weak, a good middle, and a strong finish.

MS. WARNER: I don't know if that's "Raiders of the Lost Ark" or "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." What do you think, Paul?

MR. GIGOT: Well, I think it's grading on a curve, Mark.

MR. SHIELDS: I --

MR. GIGOT: He had -- he had a disastrous start, a near disastrous start, but he did recover, and I think somewhat, and I think -- I'll point to two events. One was the appointment of the person who used to do this show, David Gergen who brought some adult supervision and some discipline to a White House operation that was really chaotic. The other thing I think is surprisingly NAFTA because while the tax bill wasn't so very difficult to pass because it was really -- he tried to do it on a partisan basis, NAFTA showed he could put together a bipartisan coalition. It proved that he was willing to take on interest groups in this town, even his own party's interest groups, and for a President who wasn't doing very well on foreign policy, it showed the leaders of the world that he could bring American public opinion around. I think that was the critical decisive point of this year for him.

MS. WARNER: Well, we always learn a lot about a President in his first year. What do you think turned out to be his greatest strength and his greatest weakness?

MR. SHIELDS: Probably the same thing. I mean, his ability to reach out to all kinds of people, to persuade whomever he's with, especially members from Congress, that they are the most important thing on his mind at that moment, to persuade them of the importance of their mission together, and at the same time perhaps to try and please. I think Paul's right on NAFTA. I think that the budget and deficit is a more important historical act for Bill Clinton because it did, it did assume accountability for a party, for the stewardship of our economy. In 12 years we've been through professional wrestling in Washington. The professional wrestling has been that a Republican President has submitted an unbalanced budget to the Congress. The Congress has chastised him, condemned him, criticized him for doing it, and then the, then the Congress passed a budget, and then the President and his friends, and the press chastised, criticized, and condemned the Congress for doing that. And so we had this built-in lack of accountability. Bill Clinton restored accountability, and I think for that it's an enormous contribution.

MR. GIGOT: I think his biggest strength is his energy, I mean, just sheer enthusiasm and youthful vigor. After George Bush, I think the voters were really eager for somebody who threw himself in to the job, and if you can say anything else about Bill Clinton, one thing you can't say is that he's not trying to do enough. He really is trying to do an awful lot of things.

MR. SHIELDS: Good point.

MR. GIGOT: I think his weakness is, is character and trust. I don't think that he has established that bond yet with the American people where they really do believe everything he says, and a lot of times it's because what he says turns out not to be what you see in the particulars of a bill, particularly the tax bill. Health care may turn out to be that way, and I think this is the weakness that makes me think that maybe these accusations of the last couple of weeks go right to that weakness because you say, well, can we really believe this fellow?

MS. WARNER: Well, do you agree with Mark? I mean, he was elected, of course, to change things. Has he changed the way Washington works?

MR. GIGOT: Well, he certainly broke up a Republican gridlock in the sense that there was the Republican veto of Democratic Congresses. I mean, they passed the motor voter bill. They passed the Family Leave Act. They passed those things that were really pent up demand of the last 12 years. I'm not so sure that he built up Democratic gridlock, and I think Congress really put its imprint on him in an awful lot of ways, particularly concerning the reform agenda that Ross Perot still speaks to.

MR. SHIELDS: I think this is a real point of disagreement between Paul and me. Bill Clinton has -- the stars are lined up for the Democrats, I mean, as one of our astronomers -- astrologers might have pointed out. All the stars are lined up. This is the Democrats' chance. They have the Congress. They have the presidency. This in the words of John Lewis, House Democratic Whip from Georgia, a test of whether we can govern. Bill Clinton has imposed them, there's no doubt about it. I mean, Paul slid very easily over the deficit reduction bill and the tax increase. Will Rogers said 60 years ago, Republicans are smart enough to make a lot of money, and two or three times every century Democrats are smart enough to get back and take it away from them. And that's exactly what -- that's the tap on 1993.

MS. WARNER: Can you believe Mark is admitting this?

MR. SHIELDS: That's exactly -- I mean, Bill Clinton did something that was really tough for Democrats to do, to be accountable. We had this lack of accountability. If things work out, then the Democrats are going to prosper politically in 1994 and 1996. If they don't, then they ought to be held accountable, and the Republicans ought to be given a chance. The 12 years have been corrosive not simply because there's been divided responsibility but most of all, Margaret, because when you control one institution of government, as the Democrats control the Congress, and the Republicans control the other, you don't simply attack the other party, you attack that institution of government that the other party controls. And that leads to distrust, it leads to skepticism, and ultimately to pessimism.

MR. GIGOT: Let me go back actually a little bit. There's no question that accountability has arrived, particularly because it passed the budget with one vote in each of the Senate or the House. All right, so the Democrats are accountable. What happened I think in that budget and why the President was so hurt in the beginning was because Congress -- it was really a congressional budget. Let's say the tax bill was the same thing that this Democratic Congress wanted to pass for a half dozen years. Instead of the President coming in to try to pass his middle class tax cut -- remember that one -- that vanished -- instead, that vanished because the Democrats wanted to raise taxes, the Democrats on the Hill, because they have a bigger spending agenda, and they imposed that on him. And the other thing I'd point out, remember the line item veto, remember campaign finance reform? We don't hear much about this anymore. And that's because Congress is imposing its priorities, I think, on this President, and he understands if he wants to pass health care, he can't jeopardize those other things.

MR. SHIELDS: You are right about campaign finance reform. This was a great example of the Democrats knowing full well that a Republican President was in the White House, and whatever they passed, however noble and sanctimonious they could be, they had a Republican President, and the Republicans knew as well, so they didn't -- you notice the Republicans didn't filibuster -- with a Democrat in the White House and a real possibility of it happening, Democrats said, oh, my goodness, this could really happen, some Democrats were, and Republicans said, geez, we've got to filibuster this thing. So, I mean, and the public financing provisions were essentially removed. I think we'll still come out with a campaign finance bill in 1994, and I think it'll be a major improvement.

MR. GIGOT: This must be the holiday spirit.

MR. SHIELDS: No, no, I think it's there.

MS. WARNER: Well, Paul, of course, the Republicans are in a new role too. Now how did they do being in opposition?

MR. GIGOT: Well, for a first year party that control over neither House of Congress, I think you can say that they did better than might be expected. But that was a function, I think, not of Republican strength, really, Bill Clinton's early weakness. That's why I think in the end they ended up winning the six, I think, big races during the course of the New Jersey governorship and so on. You, you see them slowly getting to be better at building an opposition, and Clinton saying no. What you don't see by Republicans yet is a real alternative governing philosophy. You don't see an agenda, an alternative agenda to the President's, and I guess I would point to health care, where we've got almost as many Republican bills as they do votes in the Senate. I mean, there's so many of them, and they really haven't gotten together yet to, to say here is our philosophy of government, here is why it's an alternative to the President, here's why it's better.

MR. SHIELDS: Paul's being too harsh on the Republicans. I mean, the Republicans -- let a thousand million flowers bloom. I mean, for the first time in 12 years Republicans are talking about health care. They have ideas. They have a plan. I mean, I didn't even know there was a problem in the country. Another thing is the Republicans had a great year electorally in 1993, and the Republicans won city hall in New York City, they won city hall in Los Angeles, which is the political equivalent to the Democrats of losing a PTA election to Woody Allen. I mean, they really took it on the chin, if you think about it. And the Republicans won the governorship to New Jersey, they won the governorship in Virginia, and most important of all, in both New Jersey -- or certainly in Virginia, there was a reluctance for the Democratic seat in Texas in the special election which Bob Kruger lost to Kay Bailey Hutchison, there was a reluctance to bring the President in, which I think served the Republicans -- you know -- showed the strength of the Republicans.

MS. WARNER: But, I mean, was there a coherent Republican message in all these victories, or was this just throwing the rascals out?

MR. GIGOT: I don't think there was a coherent Republican message. I think there was still a residue of anti-incumbency with some anti-Bill Clinton sentiment, particularly in the South, where this President continues to be very weak. I think one of the most interesting things that happened this year for the Republican though was the rise of Newt Gingrich in the House to become the de facto leader and future leader, and the Young Republicans. This is a generational shift. This is a more aggressive, energetic, more partisan, but this ultimately could be the kind of challenge to Bill Clinton's presidency that George Mitchell and the Senate Democrats proved to George Bush's presidency in 1988.

MS. WARNER: Do you think we'll see different next year?

MR. SHIELDS: I think, I think we will. I think we saw really the end in large part in 1993 of bipartisanship, and I could not, I could not salute its exit any more enthusiastically. I like partisanship. I mean, as Adelai Stevenson once said, independents of the people want to take the politics out of politics. And we have partisanship. 90 percent of the House Republicans voted with the majority of their party, or the average Republican voted 90 percent of the time with the majority of the party in the House, the same thing for the Democrats, the average Democrat voted with the majority of his party, 90 percent of her party 90 percent of the time. That is good. That's accountability. That's what it's about, these are ideas, I fight for them, I believe in them. You oppose them. You come up with different ones.

MS. WARNER: Before we go, what happened to the angry voter and their champion, Ross Perot?

MR. GIGOT: He got into a debate with Al Gore. Well, that's part of the problem, but I think I wouldn't write off Ross Perot altogether yet, because I think where he still has a big credibility, his most credibility is on those issues of reform of Washington, of cleaning up the place a bit, rather than on specific issues like health care say or tax, taxes, it's, are these people on the up and up? Let's clean up the campaign finances, and that's why I think that Perot is still popular on that issue, and look at term limits. Everywhere you go, they win.

MR. SHIELDS: Even voters are still there, Ross Perot needs something desperately to be for. He was against the President's budget reconciliation. He was against NAFTA. Now he's against the health care. He needs something to be for himself. Americans just don't like nags, they don't like shrews, someone who's constantly complaining and griping, and that's how Ross Perot's starting to come across. Paul is right about those issues. Those issues are still there. I think they're there for anybody to pick up.

MR. GIGOT: Yes.

MR. SHIELDS: I mean, for Bill Clinton to pick up, for the Democrats, or the Republicans, but that they are identified most, most conspicuously and I think realistically with Ross Perot.

MS. WARNER: Well, Mark and Paul, thanks, and Happy New Year to you both.

MR. SHIELDS: Happy New Year to you, Margaret. Thank you.

MR. GIGOT: Happy New Year to you, Margaret. ESSAY - CLOSING THOUGHTS

MR. MacNeil: On this New Year's Eve, some end of the year thoughts from five frequent NewsHour contributors. We brought together a panel of our regular essayists. I talked with them yesterday in our New York Studio. Joining me were Roger Rosenblatt, a New York writer, Jim Fisher, a columnist with the Kansas City, Missouri Star, Phyllis Theroux, a writer based in Washington and Ashland, Virginia, Richard Rodriguez with the Pacific News Service in San Francisco, and Anne Taylor Fleming, an author and writer in Los Angeles. Anne, how do you feel about the country at the end of 1993, and is it different from how you felt about it a year ago?

MS. FLEMING: I tend to feel much more optimistic than I felt last year. It seemed to me that every year for the last twelve when I would come to the end of the year during the Reagan-Bush years, it was with a sense of dread that we were going to have the same dialogue or non-dialogue. At least, it seems to me that some things are on the table now. You can talk about violence. You can talk about AIDS. You can talk about homosexuality, all kinds of things that are out, even though it's a much messier world, both I think domestically and internationally. I feel comforted that there's noise.

MR. MacNeil: Everyone feel more optimistic? Do you feel more optimistic?

MS. FLEMING: Oh, good.

MR. ROSENBLATT: Much more optimistic. I think it has a lot to do with the Clinton administration versus the last two administrations, and tendency to address with however mixed success problems with which people identify like health, like violence, and so forth, so I certainly feel better.

MR. RODRIGUEZ: Could I sound a counter note? It seems to me that -- my sense is that what we inherited from the Bush years, a sense of we were the big boy on the block now that Russia was not the big player, has been replaced now by a sense of just how little we can do as the big boy on the block. There is Bosnia. There is Somalia, the ludicrous inability to settle such a minor skirmish. There is, there is this new Russia on the horizon about which we know so little. Internationally it seems to me that we are faced with a country, a world that is not exactly bending to our will. We have created a peace accord and, and by naming the players in the Middle East, but are they the players, or are the fundamentalists on the Israeli side, and on the Palestinian side, are they the players of the future? I'm not sure that I feel that confidence, and domestically, the issue that seems to be on everyone's mind in America right now, the enormous violence of America, is under a kind of umbrella of optimism. My sense is that it's grown darker rather than brighter.

MS. FLEMING: But people at least are talking about it. I mean, during the last 12 years, the country was arming itself to the teeth, the deficit was growing, the economic classes were being wrenched apart. At least now I feel so much like Roger, at least it's on the table. And just back to the international thing for a minute, maybe it's good that we have to deal with a much more morally ambiguous world. For some reason, that has instilled confidence in me because it, it makes us be much more attentive to the nuances of those countries. We didn't plow into Bosnia. We tried with Somalia. I mean, it's a much --

MR. MacNeil: As long as we don't have to be morally ambiguous ourselves.

MS. FLEMING: Well, I'm perfectly happy to be morally ambiguous myself. Roger.

MR. FISHER: Well, it seems tome whatever the politics are the last twelve years or the past year with Clinton, the American people in the last year have without any government -- I think a 4 cent gasoline tax is the only part of the Clinton administration's tax plan that's in, in place -- yet, we're coming out of the recession. We've officially been out of it since '91, but this Christmas season is very good, and people got all the -- all the signs say that Americans, they've solved the recession. This hasn't been government or anything like that. And I'm finding people are, they're more circumspect about what their government can do for them. They're starting to ask some real hard questions, and maybe it's -- leave us alone a little bit, give us some breathing room -- and especially for the media, I think that's -- I'm less hopeful, excuse me, about the media because it seems to be everything is a crisis, from -- and I think the administration seems to pick this up too. It is crisis to crisis to crisis. And I think we're going to wear the poor old American people out pretty soon.

MR. MacNeil: How do you feel, Phyllis? Are you optimistic?

MS. THEROUX: I guess I'm optimistic in some ways just because I think human beings usually pull it off in the end, but I think that this business about things being on the table I think Anne's right, but I think there are also separate tables. I think that racially we're not talking to each other at all. The minority, the black Americans, the white Americans -- they're not listening to this program, most of them, and we're not listening to their programs. And I think that we really need to combine the tables if we're going to get somewhere meaningful.

MR. MacNeil: I have to say that quite a lot of African-Americans listen to this program, but --

MS. THEROUX: I guess I just know the wrong ones. [laughter]

MR. FISHER: But I see a balkanization of this. I mean, people are saying we and us, us and them. It's more and more in the news that it's us versus them. It's us versus them, and that is one of the most disturbing things I see in this country.

MR. RODRIGUEZ: I hear a lot of chatter in America. People are talking all day on television. We've just continued the discussion. We're stuck somewhere between Oprah and Geraldo. Americans are talking about being gay, about, you know, having one leg, about, about being divorced, but it seems to me that a lot of that talk comes out of this extraordinary loneliness in America. I don't know how many dinner parties I go to where the discussion is Prozac. Everybody is depressed, and the richest among us, the most successful, the ones who have achieved the American dream are the ones who seem saddest. That sadness in America is something about which no one wants to say very much about but it is, it is very much a part of the fabric of our lives.

MR. ROSENBLATT: What Richard says is right. There's always been a melancholy attached to America. It has to do with our isolation. It has to do with the circumstances under which we were founded. It has to do with the distance between our ambitions and our realities. And I don't know -- I can't imagine a circumstance when we would not be a melancholy country in some level.

MR. RODRIGUEZ: Well, you know, what you're hearing now in the United States, it seems to me, especially over the issue of immigration, for example, that you hear in California, is this long, loud melancholy from California, native born Californians that we have run out of the American dream, and against the Vietnamese and the Guatemalans and the Mexicans who are coming with the expectation that America still exists and that there is a future here, the controlling, the controlling voice of America is, is this blond woman in California or in Canoga Heights or wherever she lives who is interviewed --

MR. ROSENBLATT: Not that blond woman.

MR. RODRIGUEZ: -- who is interviewed by every New York television network and who wants to go to Colorado, she wants to go to Washington. She has had it with California.

MR. MacNeil: Come on, blond woman in California. Stand up for yourself.

MS. FLEMING: I love California. I'm going to stay in California. Richard and I come from different, different parts of the state. I speak from the bimbo-headed South, so, the blond bimbo-headed South. I need to speak up for us. It is true. I think California as a microcosm of the rest of the country, you are feeling all of the tensions, but, again, I think they're positive, they're on the table. I loathe the immigrant bashing that's going on in California. And it is going on. And you do go to dinner parties and people are taking Prozac or wanting to move to Oregon where it rains all the time and they will really need Prozac. There, there I go.

MR. MacNeil: We just killed two Oregon public televisions I think, but anyway --

MS. FLEMING: They're always saying they don't want us, and that's fine. But at least, again, one has the sense of foment, of dialogue. I do agree with Phyllis that there is certainly -- both Jim and Phyllis talked about the balkanization. That is true, but at least there's some tension out there that seems to suggest that we all understand that that has happened. I mean, I always said that this politically correct thing was sort of the left-side answer to what had happened during Reaganism. Reaganism essentially estranged everybody from everybody, rich and poor. Then you get the left side answer is politically correct, which is to say, okay, we'll make a virtue out of being balkanized. I think now you're getting a reaction to all of that, and people are talking about trying to find some common values. The real key is how do you find common values in, in what is essentially a secular society.

MR. MacNeil: Let's pursue this balkanization idea a moment. Clearly, violence between groups or among members of the society does not bring people together. How do you feel coming from what looks to us on the coast like the most protected part of America in a way? Are you feeling, Jim Fisher, in Kansas and Missouri, the same sense of a much more violent society than it was?

MR. FISHER: Not at all. And I don't mean to be a Pollyanna. Kansas City has its drive-by shootings and its killings, but I don't lock -- don't lock my door at night. It's hard to believe. It's one of those -- I don't lock my car sitting out in front of my house. It's probably stupid.

MR. MacNeil: What do you think about all the attention the rest of us are paying to violence?

MR. FISHER: I think it's being overdone. I think it's been going -- you know, that Polly Klaas, as sad as that was, and the media jumped on that like it was the second coming, but there was a kid named Charles Lindbergh, Jr., who got snatched out of Hopewell, New Jersey, sixty some years ago, and it's the same - - a worse crime, in fact, with the, the ransom and everything else, or at least equal to that. But there's nothing new. I think the media -- there's no doubt there's more violence and there's more drive-by shootings than what I as a kid -- we used to have a fist fight -- now they get a gun. And that's -- I don't know what to do about that. I don't think you can -- I don't think you can legislate --

MR. MacNeil: Do you think the media are overplaying violence? Are they accurately reflecting the amount of violence in the country, or are they, are we exaggerating?

MR. FISHER: Well, I don't know anybody who's been shot. I don't - - I mean, they're not shooting -- you would think that they're shooting people on every street in Dubuque and Kansas City. I know it's tough in New York and LA and in San Francisco and in big cities, but it's -- in mid America, it's not that bad.

MR. MacNeil: Phyllis, is -- discuss your feelings about violence and --

MS. THEROUX: Well, I just spent four years in an inner-city school in Washington, D.C., and the first thing I had to get used to was the fact that when I asked them to write essays about the scariest thing that ever happened to them, they would tell me, and little tiny children -- I'm not going to go through what we all know, but I had to get used to the fact that uncles were bleeding on the floors of kids' living rooms, and these were all black children, but they're a stone's throw from the White House, the old cliche. So I think -- actually, when I think of my children, my own children's friends, who are now in their twenties, they have had more people in their lives die one way or another, a lot of them through drugs, and I have yet to have as many friends die as they have had.

MR. RODRIGUEZ: That seems to me to be quite changed. The -- not only drugs but also AIDS. The proximity of youth to death now --

MS. THEROUX: Is very close.

MR. RODRIGUEZ: -- seems to be something quite new in the American consciousness. And this violates -- I mean, as Americans we've always looked to youth as a kind of metaphor for possibility, but the notion of the young now -- and you hear them at very young ages. In San Francisco, there's a radio station that comes on late at night, and the calls from teenagers and pre-teenagers about how I'm going to commit suicide tonight, or somebody's after me, wants to kill me, this is, this is the voice of America out there. It may not be in Kansas, but it is very much in the American suburb right now. And part of the Polly Klaas tragedy, it seems to me, is that this was a violation of the white suburb that shocked a lot of people in California because it was the safety of that illusion.

MR. ROSENBLATT: And the violation of the house.

MR. RODRIGUEZ: The violation of the house.

MR. MacNeil: And the violation of the house.

MR. RODRIGUEZ: And the violation -- the other thing that's different from the Lindbergh kidnapping, it seems to me, is the, is the violation of childhood now that you -- adults misusing children sexually. I mean, it was one thing to kidnap a child. It's another thing to, to rape and kidnap a child, and the, the loss of innocence for children is astonishing. The sexual sophistication at very young ages now --

MR. FISHER: Oh, you can't believe that now.

MR. RODRIGUEZ: -- that is quite changed, I think in the American experience.

MR. MacNeil: Roger.

MR. ROSENBLATT: I think our tolerance, a national tolerance of violence is about over in terms of what we do, not just hand wringing about it. I think the Brady Bill was a small but very good sign of things to come. I think we're going to get a lot of guns off the street, and I think it's high time.

MR. MacNeil: Do you think Americans have really had it?

MR. ROSENBLATT: I think Americans really have had it. I think December -- the wisdom of what Jim said notwithstanding -- and I know it's true from particular perspectives -- I think we are in a much more violent time. I think December has been hell, this past month at whose end we are now. The, the fellow on the Long Island railroad, Polly Klaas's body being discovered, another fellow in an unemployment office, another fellow --

MR. MacNeil: Some people who have apparently just blown up several members of a family.

MR. ROSENBLATT: And sending bombs around, exactly, up in New York State sending bombs around to, you know, various recipients, five people killed. The, there -- I think there comes a time when certain phenomena reach a point when people say that is it, and at this -- this far and no further. I really hope we have arrived at a point, but I also sense that we have.

MS. THEROUX: That's one thing that really concerns me.

MR. MacNeil: What specifically, Phyllis?

MS. THEROUX: For instance, I just happen to be spending some time out at a prison in Virginia, a women's prison there, and so I've got prisons on my mind, as do a lot of people, and I come to find out, not in this particular prison but in California -- I don't know how many of you saw a report recently on California prisons - - that prison guards have a huge lobby, and they contribute -- they spend money in the state legislature that, in effect, gets them more prisons. Now that's senseless and insane. And on top of that, this is a national phenomenon. We start poor people out in schools that look like jails and we treat them, you know, terribly, and it's not a big surprise that those same people wind up in prison. And then we refuse to educate them or give them any kind of drug rehabilitation of any kind.

MR. MacNeil: Surely the huge growth in the prison population has been due to the drug laws and compulsory sentencing laws.

MS. THEROUX: Right. But what do we do with them when we get there? Virtually nothing. There are hardly any drug rehabilitation programs, so people are stuck in these prisons with no training to get out.

MR. RODRIGUEZ: Well, to follow from what Roger was saying, it seems to me that the change in the American need right now is in favor of punishment --

MS. THEROUX: Exactly.

MR. RODRIGUEZ: -- rather than rehabilitation.

MS. THEROUX: And that, that upsets me quite a lot.

MR. RODRIGUEZ: And it's going to get more severe.

MS. FLEMING: You are hearing both though because in California there is dialogue now preparatory to the gubernatorial race, and I know in Texas, Anne Richards has -- I don't know if it's her pilot program -- there are programs now going into prisons that are mandatory rehabilitation before you can get out. I guess I'm clinging to the few things that at least -- again, at least it's being talked about.

MS. THEROUX: I don't think we have a problem with solutions. It's doing them. I think we know a lot about how to cure some of our problems.

MR. RODRIGUEZ: I'm not so sure.

MR. MacNeil: Do we know how to cure violence?

MS. THEROUX: You can't just say cure violence. You've got to sort of get at the core of it, and you've got to get where people live. I think we know what to do in the school system or a school. I think many different programs all over the country have been shown to work.

MR. MacNeil: Don't we know that what you need are two-parent, caring, nurturing families and jobs, and --

MR. RODRIGUEZ: Do we know that?

MS. THEROUX: I don't think we do know that.

MR. MacNeil: Is that not -- we don't know that?

MS. THEROUX: I think what we, what we do know is that children need to have families that are workable, and the families need to feel as though they've got some sort of support in their community, so they can, can be good parents. Anybody who's been a single parent --

MR. RODRIGUEZ: Increasingly one is hearing this argument about monster children essentially, that there is a kind of killer bee loose in the world.

MS. THEROUX: Right.

MR. RODRIGUEZ: Techno-environmentalists are saying that these children were raised on polluted water, too much lead in their blood, too much, too much crack from their mother's tit.

MS. THEROUX: Hm mm.

MR. RODRIGUEZ: These are children like we've never seen before, and there is this new feeling in America that there is a new breed of child out there that we don't understand. I predict that within the next ten years we are going to be arguing about whether or not we have a right to execute children.

MR. MacNeil: Umm, what is the most interesting trend you see coming forward in this society, Jim Fisher, something that is coming along and changing that's different from the way it was a few years ago?

MR. FISHER: Well, the easy thing would be the information highway, and that, I don't think that's the -- the 500 channels - - there's not that much on 40 now, but --

MS. THEROUX: Too much on 40.

MR. FISHER: Too much. I think what I'm seeing as a trend is that young people and -- are -- are starting to say, starting to look at these big corporations and the lifetime jobs, everybody wants a lifetime job, and we have the Japanese example and all that, and they're saying, no, we want to be entrepreneurs. And more and more you hear these kids that are saying, no, I think I'll go to work for myself. And I find it, you know, if anything, there's -- I'll give you an example. I talked to a guy not a month ago. He makes a wood product down in the Ozarks. And he was in the computer business, high-tech national security interest, and he and his daddy designed this product, and I won't tell you what it is because I haven't got his permission to do it, but it sells for about $25, and he went in and he makes it. And he makes about ten thousand, twelve thousand a year, sells them for twenty-five bucks apiece, makes good money. He had 15 employees. He decided the government was too intrusive. He got rid of his employees, and he automated, but he didn't automate with electronics, the machinery we think of electronics, with robots. He did it with glue and springs and stuff that's almost out of the 19th century, and he's just happy as a lark now, but he says, "The reason I can't hire people is that government is too intrusive, and I would be more than willing, I want to do my part, but I want also for them to leave me alone." And not -- he's not a laissez-faire capitalist or a robber baron, but he wants some relief from the continuous government pressure that he feels he's getting and is terrified of the Clinton health plan. That's one of the reasons he's cut back. He said, "I'm not paying it."

MR. MacNeil: Who else wants to talk about what they see as interesting trends coming along?

MR. ROSENBLATT: I just am instructed by what Jim sees, and I -- I do see more people wanting to be independent. It's the upside of balkanization in a way, an old American feeling that solitude will breed independence, will breed some virtue in one's life.

MR. MacNeil: It's also the corollary of an awful lot of downsizing in big corporations which are not hiring as many graduates and forced its -- forced independence.

MR. ROSENBLATT: Exactly. And I think which workers regard, quite properly, as perfidy on the part of the corporations. It was a deal made with a lot of people, because particularly people getting older now, and who are fired just before their retirement benefits come through, or the benefits are being cut back, and they're beginning to have two reactions: One is, how dare you? And the other; why should I have led a life on which I depend on this corporation for my pride? And once that question sets in and it's not rhetorical, then you see the results that I think that Jim is talking about.

MR. RODRIGUEZ: In California, what you've seen too with the recession is the unemployment of the well educated, people with, with engineering degrees, people who are in other ways protected in society, people who bought into the notion that if you get a college education, you'll have a job. What you're seeing in America too are these, these graduates of American universities who are not being employed, who are working as cocktail waitresses with their degrees in Russian literature, that we do not know how to employ our children anymore, especially our well-educated children. I think we're just a few years away from wondering whether it is worth our while to send to Yale for a year, spend $30,000, when there is no job at the end of those four years. Is it worth $125,000 when there is no job? And what do you do when it's in Los Angeles --

MR. MacNeil: And you don't think that's going to change if and as we come out of this recession and the economy starts growing again, they're going to grow the economy, as Clinton says?

MR. FISHER: I don't think that's ever coming back.

MR. RODRIGUEZ: Yeah. I don't think so.

MR. MacNeil: You don't think that's ever coming back?

MR. FISHER: My daughter got a degree in genetics from the University of Kansas last year. She's working as a cocktail waitress. She can't get a job in Kansas City, because there's no "genetics" firms, and she thought she'd get on with a drug firm, but they may cut back because of the Clinton health plan, and that's not the Clinton health plan's fault but it's just -- I think we're in a revolution in this country that's maybe as much -- it's a cultural but it's also -- we're going to have things in 10 years -- maybe we'll be talking about putting children to death but the way we do business is going to be completely different.

MR. MacNeil: Anne.

MS. FLEMING: Oh, I think so. I think certainly in California. I think there is the massive sort of -- it hasn't even really begun restructuring that's going to have to take place. I mean, we lost the defense industry. That's not going to come back. There are -- I do think there are major underpinning shifts. And because I'm continuing to be optimistic about the fact that we're going to make some adjustments I just want to say that I did agree with Richard and I think there's a real danger as we try to shift that certain people will be demonized; children, prison populations, that the real test certainly of leadership and whether Clinton or anybody else is up to the task to speak to, to trying to keep us cohesive as we shift, or to make us cohesive, which we haven't been for a very long time, to find the common thread. The other, the other ironic optimism to me is the violence thing in some ways makes this a perverse community of fear. I mean, I find it everywhere. I find it, rich, poor, black, white, male, female. I mean, that's a sort of perverse kind of sense of community but I do find people talking about all of these things again and talking and being cognizant of some of the, of the need for compassion as we shift, and I'm hopeful about all that.

MR. MacNeil: Phyllis, what do you see coming along that interests you?

MS. THEROUX: I'm been seeing it coming along for some time, and I don't want sound too amorphous, but I think the soul is making a comeback.

MR. MacNeil: The soul?

MS. THEROUX: Uh huh.

MR. MacNeil: Not soul music?

MS. THEROUX: I'm sure that's part of it, but if you check the best-seller list, if you have a book that has the word "soul" in it as in Care of the Soul, which happens to be a very good book actually.

MR. MacNeil: Every writer here is taking notes.

MS. THEROUX: Right. Or solitude -- who was it -- Anthony somebody -- who wrote a book on solitude a few years ago. I think this country is getting a little tired of its own self-absorption and is beginning to draw wider circles.

MS. FLEMING: We do have Body Parts though as well at the top of the best-seller list.

MS. THEROUX: I'm not --

MR. RODRIGUEZ: Self-absorption -- I mean, this is --

MS. THEROUX: Also The Inner Life of Dogs.

MR. RODRIGUEZ: This is also the country that, you know, over the NAFTA issue was, was perplexed about how much it wanted to marry Mexico, the country right next door. This is a country that has not yet faced what it means to be a North American yet. We don't know what that means.

MR. ROSENBLATT: Right in our midst now I'm very pro-immigrant, and I just did a piece for the "New Republic" in which I talk -- it's a nice exercise, you know, when you get away from the factions and you talk to people who are recent arrivals in this country, not the ones who have just come in as a result of some crime committed, people who have come into this country to repopulate the country, you -- we would all be heartened to hear what our grandparents were. It doesn't matter what the skin color is or what the accent is. These are the same ambitions, the same basic conservative politics actually that wound up finding its liberal roots or liberal tribulets, but nonetheless, want to keep a family together, hold on to religion, to work very hard, to succeed in the country. There are differences. To be sure, they can go home easier. There are airplanes to do it and so forth. Many were not immigrants as a result of a political oppression. But if you're looking for something good in which to enter the new year, I think the new immigrants are that.

MR. RODRIGUEZ: If you're looking for something bad to consider the new year is where the native born fit into that story. It seems to me that the immigrant has a place to play in the American story. The real question is: What place do those of us who are native to this country have to play? As we get older, this country now is in its thirties, what is our relationship to these countries that are in their teens? You know, the average population in Mexico is fifteen years of age. They're just beginning their industrial revolution. We're at the end of ours. What is our relationship to those countries that are just becoming youthful as we grow middle aged? I once said on a national television show, I'll also say it again on yours, I thought that there is no immigrant problem with the United States, there's a native born problem, and that if there was a real solution, it would be that we would have to leave this country after three generations, go off to New Zealand or Australia or someplace and leave America free for our Guatemalan immigrants.

MR. MacNeil: We have to leave this program right now. I'd like to thank you all very much. RECAP

MS. WARNER: Again, the major stories of this Friday, in South Africa, two different militant black groups have claimed responsibility for a brutal assault in a Cape Town pub last night. Four people were killed and five others wounded. And four federal agencies are now seeking information about radiation experiments conducted on humans during the Cold War era. A meeting has been called at the White House Monday to coordinate their efforts. Good night, Robin, and Happy New Year!

MR. MacNeil: Happy New Year, Margaret! That's the NewsHour for 1993. We'll see you again next year on Monday night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night, and Happy New Year!