The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

MARGARET WARNER: Good evening. I'm Margaret Warner. Jim Lehrer has today off. On the NewsHour tonight, a summary of today's news, plus making airports more secure, a new literacy focus in the Head Start program, analysis from Mark Shields and David brooks, a conversation with Roger Rosenblatt about his new book, and remembering baseball legend Ted Williams who died today.

NEWS SUMMARY

MARGARET WARNER: The motive behind yesterday's shooting attack at Los Angeles International Airport remained a mystery today. The FBI Identified an Egyptian immigrant, a 41-year- old limousine driver named Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, as the man who killed two people at a ticket counter for Israel's El Al Airlines. An El Al guard then fatally shot him. An FBI special agent said today there was no evidence Hadayet was connected to any terrorist organization, and said he wasn't on any terror watch list. We'll have more on this story in a moment. It was a big day on Wall Street. The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 324 points, or 3.5%, to close at 9379. That makes a weekly gain of more than 130 points for the Dow, which had dropped for the previous six straight weeks. The NASDAQ Index gained 68 points today, nearly 5%, to 1448. Some analysts attributed today's gains to investor relief that there had been no major terrorist attack on the Fourth of July. Today's unemployment news wasn't good, however. The Labor Department reported the jobless rate inched up 0.1% in June, to 5.9%. The economy created just 36,000 new jobs, less than half what many analysts had forecast. Iraq and the United Nations failed to reach agreement today on resuming weapons inspections. The announcement came after two days of talks in Vienna. Iraq has barred inspectors since 1998. The U.S. charges Baghdad has used the time to rebuild its weapons of mass destruction. President Bush has warned of unspecified consequences, including military action, unless the inspections resume. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan was asked about that today.

KOFI ANNAN: First ever all, I'm not sure if the U.S. has taken a decision to attack or not. So I'm not here to stop an attack. I'm here to get inspectors in. As I have indicated, I'm waiting for the minister to get back to me.

MARGARET WARNER: Diplomats said there might be additional talks in the coming months, but no date was set. In the meantime, the "New York Times" reported a draft U.S. plan to topple Saddam Hussein is working its way through military channels. It said the document calls for air, land, and sea-based assaults, and covert operations against Iraq's suspected weapons of mass destruction. Flood waters forced at least 4,000 people from their homes in south Texas during the night. The rising Medina River threatened the towns of Castroville and Lacoste, southwest of San Antonio, and the lake fed by the river threatened to overflow its dam. The heavy rains, which began a week ago, have caused seven deaths so far. Baseball legend Ted Williams died in Inverness, Florida, today. Hospital officials said he suffered a heart attack. He was 83 years old. The famed Boston Red Sox outfielder was the last man to bat .400 for a season, in 1941. He retired in 1960. We'll have more on Williams later in the program. Also coming, airport security, new demands on the Head Start program, Shields and Brooks, and Roger Rosenblatt's America.

FOCUS SAFEGUARDING AIRPORTS

MARGARET WARNER: Ray Suarez has our report on yesterday's shooting at the Los Angeles airport.

RAY SUAREZ: The FBI says it now has some information on the man who opened fire at Los Angeles International Airport yesterday. He was an Egyptian immigrant who came to the United States in the early 1990s. He lived and work in Irvine, California. Although the Israeli government has called the incident an act of terrorism, FBI officials at today's news conference continue to say they were not prepared to declare any motives yet.

RICHARD GARCIA, FBI Special Agent: Right now we don't have any indication that this individual acted in an effort as an act of terrorism. We are trying to still determine the motive. We conducted a search of his residence during the night. We also located a vehicle that belonged to him, or at least was registered to him in his name and to the address that we searched at the airport. The information that was came out of these two searches is being looked on at this time. We are also determining from this information if there's any additional leads that will indicate that this person acted other than himself alone, or whether or not there's a better determination on his motive. There have been some reports coming out in the media that supposedly this individual was on a list or a watch list. That is not true. He has not been on any FBI or any FAA watch list. We did confirm that this morning to ensure that we could at least let you know that. Right now we know that he was married, or at least had a spouse and a child. We know that family members have traveled last week prior tothe shooting, to Egypt. And we're in an effort to try to interview them. We're working with the Egyptian government through our office in Cairo for this effort. We are trying to locate additional relatives that we can find and/or associates or friends here in this area or in other states in order to make a better determination. We have not determined whether or not this individual had any anti-Israel views or any anti other type of racial views, too. As you know, besides terrorism and such, we are also looking at the possibility of a hate crime. We are also looking at the possibility of the person being despondent for some reason on a, I won't say normal, but an abnormal reaction to being despondent. So if in fact this person has information whether or not this person had a particular bias or particular religion or nationality that would determine a motive. It appears he went there for the intention of killing people. Why he did that is still undetermined. That's what we are trying to find out.

REPORTER: Have you talked to family members or neighbors?

RICHARD GARCIA: Excuse me. Let me finish. We do not have an indication from the witness we have interviewed yesterday of information whether or not there was a struggle, any type of statements yelled by the individual prior to the shooting, which makes it very difficult to determine an exact motive. Generally, you would think on a terrorist-type act or a statement that s trying to be made because of a terrorist act, that somebody would do something or say something verbal ahead of time. Then again, we are not ruling that out as well.

REPORTER: There are statements by local Jewish leaders and the Israeli consul general contrary to your findings. Are those statements hurting you by them saying this is a terrorist act?

RICHARD GARCIA: No, it's not hurting-- you have to understand, from my understanding, the Israeli government when a violent act takes place on the entity of Israel or an individual of Israel, they presume terrorism first until proven otherwise. We cannot make such presumptions like that. We have to base our information on fact. We have to base our information on extensive investigation to lead to us what is the motive to make a call like that. That's just a difference in how we view things.

RAY SUAREZ: Before Thursday's shooting, Los Angeles Airport officials had proposed a $9.6 billion redesign that would include a remote site to screen all passengers before entering the terminal.

So just what are the security questions raised by Thursday's shooting? We put that to Isaac Yeffet, president of Yeffet Security Consultants. He's a former head of security for El Al, the Israeli airline involved in the attack yesterday. And David Plavin, president of Airports Council International, which represents commercial airports in the United States and Canada.

Isaac Yeffet, Americans have had to become used to a somewhat higher level of security since last fall. Does yesterday's shooting show that they need more security still?

ISAAC YEFFET: We know that the airports are not protected as they should be protected. The terminals are public areas, wide open-- anyone can go and walk at any terminal he wants. This is, in fact, what happened yesterday with the Egyptian terrorist who came, after doing homework-- and I have no doubt that he did homework-- to learn where is the terminal of El Al, what time is the flight, when the passengers arrived, what kind of screening... they do screen the passengers and non- passengers. Once he found out that he can go with no problems, he carried on his body two guns and knives, came close to the ticket counter and started opening fire. Luckily, we have our professional and well-trained security armed people together with the local law enforcement that there are armed also, and after a few seconds, both gave the answer and killed the terrorist, and saved lives of so many innocent people that there were at the terminal at this minute.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, David Plavin, Isaac Yeffet is calling into question those open areas still being treated as public places, the entryways to the terminals.

DAVID PLAVIN: The whole question about security is a longstanding issue that has no perfect answer. Security is a balance. It's a balance of how well you protect people, but it's also a balance against what you do with them. Can people fly? Can they fly without unnecessary restrictions? And is security at the terminal different in any important respect from security at a baseball stadium, at a shopping center, at any place where people gather? People have come to the notion that airports are symbolic targets, and so we really come to try to put together everything in place at the same time. You can't do a security system without trying to do all the things you need to do. You've got to have ways of stopping people, but more importantly, as the Israelis know well, you have got to figure out who the problem people are. You've got to identify them in advance; you've got to stop them before they get them. We are an open society. We could make the security system absolutely perfect if we shut it down, but it doesn't make any sense to shut down the system -- we've got to figure out a balance. We always assess risk. Everybody assesses risk. You make a judgment about how safe you are in your car, and you believe that you're safe because you theoretically have control over it. And yet we know, statistically, a car is a much less safe to be than any place in the aviation system. So I think it's really important that we not overreact, that we do a properly planned, properly carried out security system that includes all of the things that Mr. Yeffet mentioned. They are obviously necessary. You can't do them overnight. You can't do them in a way that says, let's bring the system to a stop. It just doesn't work, and I don't think that would be a goal that we should be aiming for. We should be aiming to do the things we can do today, and then plan for putting the other pieces in place as we can do them.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Isaac Yeffet, if you look at the way the airports that are already built in the United States are designed, how would you change the way people enter them in a way that could have made yesterday's attack either less deadly or less likely to happen?

ISAAC YEFFET: I'll answer you. You mentioned not to overreact. I agree with you 100% where we should not overreact, but between overreact and nothing security, there is a big gap between zero and 100. The goal should be to come close to 100% gradually, slowly -- slowly but surely-- that we will be able to secure the passengers and the flights in our country. We have enough disasters with aircraft that were hijacked and exploded in this country, in Europe, and so on. We don't need this kind of lack of security in our country. Number two, if you ask me what we should do, I will give you one after one. Number one: We need to hire qualified people and not unqualified and untrained people, undedicated people that are running the security in our country these days. We need to hire people that, at minimum, they graduated from high school; that they speak English, that they are U.S. citizens, and we can train them a week in a classroom and another ten days on-the-job training to make sure that they know what are the terrorist organizations around the world, what attacks they have done, why they succeeded and we failed, what should be done in order to make sure that this won't happen in the future. Number two, we have to train them how to read passports and how to read a ticket in order to see what is fake, what is not fake. We need to train them how to approach the passenger and offer questions that the passenger will understand that we do it for his safety because we stay on the ground and the passenger take the flight, and we want him to arrive safe and secure to his destination. We need to put undercover security armed people at the curbside of the terminal with the uniform of policemen. We need to protect the terminal. We need to protect the security checkpoint, the gate, the aircraft, the perimeter. This is not something that we can say we overreact. This is the A, B, C of the security that we can say that we need in this country. Another --

RAY SUAREZ: Let me get a response from David Plavin, because you've given us a list of a lot of daunting tasks that airports around the country would have to do in fairly short order.

DAVID PLAVIN: I think there is really nothing to take exception to in terms of what Mr. Yeffet says. I think the point is that if you look at the way the statute now is being effectuated, that's what's happening. You are hiring probably 50,000, 60,000, probably more people to do personnel and baggage screening. The problem with that isn't that it's a bad idea; the problem is that it's really hard to imagine how a governmental agency can be set up with 50,000 or 60,000 people in short order of the kinds of characteristics that these employees should have are absolutely right. And that's indeed what the statute requires, and that's indeed what the Transportation Security Administration is pursuing.

RAY SUAREZ: But would anything that either of you have suggested have prevented or made less likely or less deadly yesterday's attempt?

DAVID PLAVIN: Well, I think that's the point. The point is that all of these things are targeted at particular aspects of the security system. But what we do know is that no matter where you put a barrier, there is always a gathering of people before that barrier trying on get through it, and so I don't think we should assume that somehow you can make every aspect of a person's journey 100% controlled, that we can actually control how people get into a secure area, because every place has a control point. The issue about where you do this and how you do this is going to be as important as what you do. And I don't think that Mr. Yeffet would quarrel with that. The question is how you get started down the road to do it, do it in a systematic way. Recognize that it is going to cost you a lot of money-- and I guarantee you, it is a lot more money than anyone has contemplated up to now-- with a lot more people to do the job with a lot better qualifications and a lot better training and education regimen than anything we've seen up to this point. I think that's absolutely right, and I think we have to get there... we have to get there in a way that makes some sense. We can't just open the door tomorrow and hope that there'll be somebody standing there with the right qualifications to prevent you from going through it.

RAY SUAREZ: Mr. Plavin, Mr. Yeffet. Thank you both.

FOCUS GETTING A HEAD START

MARGARET WARNER: Next, does Head Start need a new start? Lee Hochberg of Oregon Public Broadcasting has that story.

TEACHER: Okay, today we're going to write the letter "m." Does everybody remember the letter "m"?

LEE HOCHBERG: The three- and four-year-olds in the Albina Head Start program in Portland, Oregon, had a pretty good feel for their letters when we visited a few weeks ago.

TEACHER: That is a nice "m," Dantae. Those are some good-looking "m's" there.

LEE HOCHBERG: But there's debate over just how literate the 900,000 preschoolers in the nation's Head Start classes really are, and how literate they ought to be. Head Start is a $6.5 billion federally funded program to promote school readiness for preschoolers from low-income families.

CHILD: I'm the champion!

TEACHER: Yes, you did a good job today.

LEE HOCHBERG: Head Start says it's doing a good job. The bush administration, though, says not good enough.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Many children are still showing up in kindergarten not ready to learn. That's got to change. So the Department of Health and Human Services will implement an accountability system for every Head Start center in America.

LEE HOCHBERG: President Bush in April ordered 50,000 Head Start teachers to get training on new ways to teach early literacy. And he proposed Head Start funding be contingent upon proof that the program prepares children for later learning.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: We want to say that in return for federal taxpayers' help, we expect you to be providing the foundations for reading. Every Head Start center in America must teach these skills and must demonstrate that its teaching is effective.

LEE HOCHBERG: The new Head Start policy puts more emphasis on literacy than ever before.

SPOKESPRSON: This summer, half a million children will need your help.

LEE HOCHBERG: The federal government created Head Start in 1965 as a comprehensive summer program for disadvantaged kids. It was to create a nurturing learning environment, but also to monitor students' physical, dental, and mental health, and guide parents on care giving.

LEE HOCHBERG: In 1998, Congress mandated new academic standards for the program, requiring preschoolers to expand their vocabularies, identify ten letters of the alphabet, and other goals. The Bush Administration says those standards aren't being met. Head Start leaders are dismayed by that conclusion.

RONNIE HERNDON, Head Start: It s insulting. It's insulting to the Head Start community. You have not even taken a cursory look to find out what are these programs doing across the country.

LEE HOCHBERG: Ronnie Herndon is chairman of the National Head Start Association, which promotes Head Start, and he directs the Albina Head Start school in Portland. He says 80% of his preschoolers meet Congress' standards, and many go beyond those standards.

RONNIE HERNDON: They said ten letters. I thought that was laughable-- "kids should know ten letters of the alphabet when they leave Head Start." Well, I should hope so.

LEE HOCHBERG: Albina's head teacher, Karrissa Palmer, says her staff assesses students three times yearly for literacy and other skills.

KARISSA PALMER: "Does the child know the front of a book? Does she understand that print contains a messages?"

LEE HOCHBERG: "Where to start on a page, which way to go." So it is reading skills, basic reading skills.

KARISA PALMER: Mm-hmm.

TEACHER: Has anybody ever flossed their teeth? You have? Can I show you?

LEE HOCHBERG: Head Start leaders say the program's attention to health issues helps students learn. In a recent analysis, the National Bureau of Economic Research concludes, "Head Start generates long-term improvements in schooling attainment, earnings, and crime reduction." And a study of 3,300 Head Start students by Assessment Technology, an educational consultant, finds Congress' reforms are having impact, and the kids are better mastering number concepts and literacy skills. But the administration says improvement isn't coming fast enough.

WINDY HILL, Department of Health & Human Services: With so many children going into so many Head Start classrooms annually, there's never a time to wait.

LEE HOCHBERG: Windy Hill is the Department of Health and Human Services' Associate Commissioner for Head Start.

WINDY HILL: While Head Start children are showing gains, when they leave Head Start, they still are performing below the national norm, and that's just not acceptable.

TEACHER: They can't find the dictionary.

LEE HOCHBERG: At the University of Washington Center for Mind, Brain, and Learning, researchers say teacher training could improve literacy outcomes. Colleen Huebner is studying methods of engaging preschoolers in reading. She says some new academic findings haven't been integrated into Head Start.

COLLEEN HUEBNER, University of Washington: Developmental research of the past 20 years has absolutely exploded and taught us amazing things about early learning. We now know things we didn't know 35 years ago when Head Start began.

LEE HOCHBERG: The administration wants Head Start's 50,000 teachers to study and

teach phonemics, the approach on this training video.

SPOKESMAN: Pre-k students should focus on listening activities that include rhyming.

LEE HOCHBERG: It builds reading readiness by playing games with similar-sounding words. The President says it was successful at a Head Start program in Texas. But educators like Kathryn Barnard, the director of the University of Washington's Center for Infant Mental Health, say the administration is overselling the method.

KATHRYN BARNNARD: The best term that describes it is wishful thinking. I think it's an idea, it's exciting to see a procedure that has worked in a study or two. To then think that this is going to work nationwide on all children in Head Start, I can tell you right now, it will not be successful.

LEE HOCHBERG: Barnard says many of the one-quarter of American children-- low income or not-- who enter kindergarten unprepared to learn, do so because of developmental or emotional factors, and the Texas program can do nothing about that. And Head Start leaders, while granting phonemics may have a place in some curricula-- it's already being used in Portland-- say preschool children can learn by many methods.

RONNIE HERNDON: Most kindergartens don't require that you come in knowing your ABC's and you can read "Oliver Twist." This is kindergarten, by the way. We're not talking about Harvard or Yale; this is kindergarten.

LEE HOCHBERG: Teachers-have begun receiving training in phonemics this summer. But many say they're alarmed about the administration's plan to link Head Start funding to literacy outcomes. Even supporters of Head Start reform, like Colleen Huebner, say defunding programs is the wrong approach.

COLLEEN HUEBNER: This isn't something we can afford to take money away from. Head Start's probably aren't hurting children. I think to defund them, we probably increase the risk of hurting children.

LEE HOCHBERG: But the administration's Windy Hill says the government needs the stick to ensure better outcomes.

WINDY HILL: What we're saying is that as we begin to monitor programs, we are going to hold programs accountable for meeting the standards. Including the mandate that teachers demonstrate competency in areas that include early literacy.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Starting today we'll distribute a guide book for early childhood educators and caregivers.

LEE HOCHBERG: Head Start leadership fears the administration's increasing focus on literacy portends a broad shift for the program. The President has said he wants to move Head Start to the U.S. Department of Education. Head Start predicts that could eliminate future funding for the health and counseling services it provides. The administration has no comment right now on Head Start's future funding.

MARGARET WARNER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, Shields and Brooks, Roger Rosenblatt's America, and baseball great Ted Williams.

FOCUS SHIELDS AND BROOKS

MARGARET WARNER: Now, our weekly analysis from Shields and Brooks; that's syndicated columnist Mark Shields and David Brooks of the "Weekly Standard." Mark, recently the President gave a speech-- a graduation speech at west point-- in which he asserted a whole new defense doctrine, that we may strike other countries first before they strike us -- virtually no reaction from Capitol Hill. We at the NewsHour did a discussion on it this week and we got tons of e-mail, a huge outpouring on both sides. My question is why has there been so little response from the Hill, do you think, including from Democrats?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, I think first of all, Margaret, it is a major departure from the whole policy of containment and deterrence which has been the hallmark and definition of American national security policy for the past half-century, more. And I think the question as to why there has been so little discussion, and debate and reaction is to look right at the Democrats. It doesn't cheer me as somebody historically sympathetic to that side, to watch them go mute. Right now, I mean, the Democrats have a whole host of issues, most of recently corporate criminality which voters think the republicans are a lot closer to corporate interests and so forth. So the Democrats say if we can stay as close as possible to George W. Bush, enormously popular as commander in chief, on war issues, then we'll force the electorate in 2002 to make their decision politically in the congressional elections upon domestic issues. And Dick Gephardt, the House Democratic leader, has already basically given the President pre-qualification, like the credit cards you get up to $2,500.

MARGARET WARNER: Or a mortgage?

MARK SHIELDS: Yeah, that's already good. It's totally contrary to the politics 11 years ago.

MARGARET WARNER: How do you explain it?

DAVID BROOKS: First, I agree that it was a major speech; it was almost like George F. Kennan s X Article to lay out the strategy for the Cold War. I do think it is the Democrats who have failed to raise it. Well, first, the media, we are not always good at conceptual stories, and I should say the "Weekly Standard," the day after the speech, had a piece on why it was a major speech.

MARGARET WARNER: And the "New York Times" did lead that Sunday with the story. It s not as if it wasn't reported.

DAVID BROOKS: But the Democrats have a bad conscience about this. The liberal streets, faculty clubs and the "New York times" readers are, in my opinion, against the Bush initiative because they think it is almost warmongering. The Democratic elites are careful not to seem hawkish not to seem anti-defense. You have Tom Daschle and Joe Biden and people like that saying it's not a question of when we oust Saddam to focus on Iraq, it's how we do it. We want to hear more. So there is really -- there would be potentially a major split in the Democratic Party if this was openly debated. Some people, like a Democratic consultant named Bill Galsten is trying to start the debate but it would split the party.

MARGARET WARNER: Mark, as you pointed out, the Democrats do think they have an issue on this corporate irresponsibility. And one thing they are jumping on the President this week involves a lucrative stock sale he made some 12 years ago where he didn't report it in the time prescribed by law. Tell us about that. And do you think that has legs, , more legs for the Democrats than this other?

MARK SHIELDS: One quick thing on David's, and that is on the earlier discussion, the

MARGARET WARNER: On preemption.

MARK SHIELDS: -- preemption, it is contrary to American self-image. It sounds like a sneak attack. Americans, we all grew up loathing Pearl Harbor; it was a sneak attack, and that s what s so violative, and that s why it does deserve to be. Is this America s cultural value, ethical value, as an international power and I think that will be debated, and if it isn t, we all ought to be ashamed of ourselves.

Twelve years ago, George W. Bush, before he ran for governor of Texas, his father was President of the United States, he was a director of a company called Harkin Petroleum, down in Texas. Just before just before the company declared a loss on its quarterly statement, the President to be unloaded 212,000 shares of this at $4 a share, bringing home some $800,000, which he then used to pay off the loan to buy the Texas Rangers, which gave him sort of the populist, every-man value and credential he needed to run for governor in a strange way. The President you re required as an insider to indicate file forms with the Securities and Exchange Commission if you intend to sell or if you do sell. He did file the intention to sell statement, but he didn't file the other paper for nine months. By that point, in December of that year, the stock had fallen to a dollar a share. And the President did a lot of back-end filling, saying, no, no, it wasn't his fault-- it was this and that. This week the White House confessed the president had failed to. Does it have legs? What it does, Margaret -- the corporate credential, the business credential was a great credential politically in this country 1998, 2000, someone who had met payroll, done all these things. All of a sudden it is becoming an albatross. I think the spate of corporate scandals are the economic equivalent of Watergate. Watergate didn't affect every politician but it has tainted and besmudged and besmirched politics. I think it is doing the same thing to American business, so people want to distance themselves from such practices.

MARGARET WARNER: How do you see the issue?

DAVID BROOKS: Mark just reported it better than a lot of people have because the law, as Mark says, says you have to report each of these sales twice. He did it once; he didn't do it the second time. The idea that he was trying to hide something is not true. He might have been sloppy, I don't know we he didn't report the second time. But the first forms, the so-called 144 Forms were filed on the day of sale. So he did report it. Then there s the mystery of why he didn't report it the second time. He says it was "sloppiness." To me the serious question and the question which has always dogged him about this Harkin Energy business from his first run for governor is was there insider trading? Did he unload it because he knew something was going to happen?

MARGARET WARNER: Because he knew the report was coming out?

DAVID BROOKS: And the evidence so far the SEC looked into it -- every major news organization looked into it, because it looked so bad, as Mark said. The SEC and all the other investigations said there was no sign that he had material insider trading information. And so far that s the evidence; there has been no new evidence suggesting he had any inside information.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, final topic before we leave: Al Gore. He held a retreat last weekend in Memphis, David, with some of his supporters. And the next morning blanketing all the major newspapers in this country was a story about the fact that he said to these supporters, you know, if I had it to do over again, I would just let her rip. I would be myself, and not listen to the consultants. What did you make of (a) the substance of what he said and (b) why on earth did his folks want the whole world to know about this conversation?

DAVID BROOKS: To (b), he is running for President. This is the start. To me, I wasn't so sure it was an attack on the consultants. It was taken as an attack on some of Bob Sherman and some of the other consultants, which was ungracious, unprofessional, unmanly really to load off when he was the weakest link in the campaign. The consultant he should have blamed was maybe his daughter. To me it was a sign -- he said let her rip. And it s a sign of something I see in politicians which is McCainitis. They saw McCain telling the truth, letting the red dog out for a romp, being his true self. And they said, I m going to do that. What they don't realize is, you have to have a true self before you can let the true self out for a romp. And there are not many politicians who can do that because their whole lives have been geared around calculation, poll reading. They don't have candid views about these things. And to me it was a sign that Gore is slipping into the McCainiac trap of thinking I can do it too, when in fact, I don't think he can.

MARGARET WARNER: So you think -- as some columnists -- from Richard Cohen to Bob Novak -- left to right -- said he was reinventing himself again.

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I think he will have to reinvent himself. People don't want to buy an old Madonna album, they don t want to buy an old product; they don t want to buy an old Gore.

MARGARET WARNER: How did you see it/

MARK SHIELDS: In 1961, after the failure of the Bay of Pigs, John Kennedy, the President of the United States, said success has many fathers, failure is an orphan; I take full responsibility for what happened. He went to 83 percent in the polls. It was not only the right thing to do; it was the politically insightful thing to do. First of all, nobody outside of us is interested in what went on in a losing campaign. We are consumed with it. Most people in the country don't care about it. For Al Gore to get up there and say it was somebody else's mistakes and why was he listening to these people? Why was he paying them if they were such disasters? And so I think in that sense it was a serious mistake. One of Bush's folks in after 2000 election said to me, you know, we had a lot tougher job in the debates than Gore did. I said what do you mean? George Bush had to debate three different people. Al Gore in the three different debates was three different people and managed to lose an election when three out of four voters on Election Day said they were living in the best economic times of their life. That was an achievement.

MARGARET WARNER: Thank you both very much. Have a great weekend.

CONVERSATION

MARGARET WARNER: Next, a new book by one of our own, and to Terence Smith.

TERENCE SMITH: The book is "Where We Stand: 30 Reasons for Loving our Country." The author of this collection of love letters to America is a NewsHour regular, essayist Roger Rosenblatt. Roger, welcome.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Thank you, terry.

TERENCE SMITH: In this collection, you start out with a very admiring look at where we began as a nation: The Constitution. You admire that document.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: I admire the Constitution as the class document of its kind. All constitutions set up laws and political systems and various mechanisms for running a country, that is, written constitutions. Ours does more than that. It .. the guys who put this thing together were able to foresee an entirely different world than you and me and whoever lived in the country, and they did it by creating a document that was partly a stable, 18th century moderate house-- symmetrical house, balanced house-- and then they realized that that house would be fairly dull, so they put a wing on it, literally a wing, in the sense of flying, and put on the Bill of Rights, and said here's a people who can be stolid and stand still as a dime, and also want to fly.

TERENCE SMITH: And it guarantees our right, as you write in one of the essays, to be free and to be stupid if we choose.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Yes, and we've exercised the right to be stupid quite frequently. The idea of freedom is so special in this country, and all of this, as you know, came out of 9/11, so that one starts to appreciate, really, what freedom means and the whole panoply of definitions, and one of them is the freedom to mess up and to be foolish and to act foolish, and to delimit ourselves and to say things that we're not supposed to say. So few people understand-- or sometimes they understand it but they have to be reminded-- that the whole idea of free expression is that's when you tolerate people who say things you don't like, you do not want to hear.

TERENCE SMITH: You say it grows out of 9/11, out of September 11. Would you have written this book, these essays, had it not been for September 11?

ROGER ROSENBLATT: I doubt it. I doubt it. Certainly if I had, they would have required some other impetus, one would hope not as tragic, but the... it was interesting to me how an emotion becomes a thought. Patriotism is often put down as an idea or a premise for a book, or it's simple-mindedly defined as, "well, conservatives can be patriotic, but liberals cannot," and so forth and so on. I wasn't interested in any of that. I was really interested in how patriotism defines and justifies itself. This is a complex, very interesting, quite wonderful country, and the more you thought about it-- or the more I thought about it, the more one thinks about it-- when you start to pile up the reasons for loving it, for admiring it, they become substantive, interesting-- at least I tried to make them that.

TERENCE SMITH: You argue in one piece that everyone is a liberal in this country. Defend that proposition.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Well, but give the whole title: "Everyone's a Liberal," and then, in parentheses, "oh, go ahead and read it anyway."

TERENCE SMITH: (Laughs)

ROGER ROSENBLATT: And this is partly because I grew up in a conservative household and fought with my father all the time about these things and explained that while I was always in the right, he would win every fight. But the seriousness of that contention is that when I say "everyone's a liberal," we have all-- Republicans, Democrats, conservatives, liberals, so- labeled-- bought into certain things that have to be defined in a liberal context. We are for the underdog. We are for pulling the poor up. We are for equality. We are for individual rights. Some combination of New Deal proposals and 1960s individual rights efforts have affected everyone. There are excesses, to be sure, and liberals have shot themselves in the foot as a result of those excesses, but I always ask, you know, when somebody challenges me on this thing, "What do you think was attacked on 9/11?" What was attacked? It was our freewheeling, sauntering, unbridled, unfettered, unregulated, unorthodox liberal life.

TERENCE SMITH: And you argue also that the nation has made enormous strides in what has to be defined as a liberal direction, if you look back over thirty or fifty or more years.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Also, as people say when they look at the similarity of platforms, for example, the national political platforms of the Republicans and Democrats, that the Democrats have abandoned the liberal agenda, but it really isn't so. It's the Republicans who have absorbed it.

TERENCE SMITH: Made it theirs. In a chapter on the media, you argue, I think it's fair to say, that the good sense of the American people has sort of saved the media from themselves.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Yeah, it's embarrassing how intelligent... (laughs) ...the good public can be when it comes to our trade and our line of work. I offer, for example, the Monica/Clinton story, where the press was way out ahead in wanting to hang the guy and to say that this is a major story and this is something that is going to lead impeachment-- in fact, it came close. And the people said, "no, wait a minute," you know, "we don't quite take it that seriously and we see some balances and we see some other qualities in the President and level it off." And then the press caught up with the people. Those are very nice moments in our trade.

TERENCE SMITH: And the news organizations respond.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Indeed.

TERENCE SMITH: They come back into what is closer to the center...

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Exactly.

TERENCE SMITH: ...In your view. You take a look at the environment and you argue that the greatest argument for the environment is the environment.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: I... you and I know all the things to say about protecting this and not putting this chemical in and so forth and so on, all of which I agree with. But the beauty of the environment-- in fact, one of the things that was fun writing this book-- is to find 30 different doors into one's affection for the country, and one is I just went trout fishing with a fellow in Wyoming, and just the appreciation of the sky, the mountains, the fish, the stream and all those things that we take for granted, and frankly, they are granted.

TERENCE SMITH: You raise a question that I want to put to you, finally, which is, are you guilty here of a kind of exaggerated or sunny optimism that fails to take into account the problems?

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Well, I do take into account the problems, and one of the things that I say is... or I remark on, is our remarkable ability to deal with irreconcilable issues in this country, which I also think is part of -- one of the nicer consequences of freedom. But, in direct answer to your question, yes, I am guilty of all that optimism and exuberance. And out of a tragic, sad, tear-inspiring event comes a reminder of how lucky we are.

TERENCE SMITH: Roger Rosenblatt, thanks so much.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Thank you.

FOCUS SPLENDID SPLINTER

MARGARET WARNER: Finally tonight, remembering a baseball legend. Once again, Ray Suarez does the honors.

SPORTSCASTER: It's a home run for Ted, his 31st of the season.

RAY SUAREZ: He was one of baseball's greatest hitters and the last player to bat .400, that accomplishment, a .406 batting average, came in 1941 during Williams third season with the Boston Red Sox. Babe Ruth called Williams a natural. Born with a great set of wrists, his thin frame, agility, and batting ease led to the nickname "Splendid Splinter." Joe DiMaggio once called Williams the best hitter he ever saw.

JOE DiMAGGIO: In 1936 to the present day, I can truthfully say I have never seen a better hitter than Ted Williams. ( Applause )

RAY SUAREZ: But Williams was characteristically blunt about his accomplishments.

TED WILLIAMS: In my heart, I can't honestly say I think I was better than Babe Ruth or Lou Gehrig or Jimmy Fox, Roger Hornsby. I think I belong in the company of some of them, but to say I was the best, I don't know how you're ever going to prove that.

RAY SUAREZ: He once said he hated everything about baseball except the hitting.

TED WILLIAMS: I asked Roger Hornsby, as good as anybody at the plate, I said, "what is the single most important thing I have to do?" He said, "get a good ball to hit." He was right on the money and I preach that every time.

RAY SUAREZ: In 1943, Williams was drafted. Doctors dubbed him a healthy specimen, and Williams served in combat, eventually missing five baseball seasons in his prime during war world ii and the Korean War. In his 19-year career with the Red Sox, Williams hit 521 home runs, and had a lifetime batting average of .344.

SPORTSCASTER: Pinch-hitter Ted Williams at bat.

RAY SUAREZ: He earned two triple crowns leading the league in batting average and homers and twice voted the American League's most valuable player. In 1960 in his at at-bat before retiring, Williams hit a home run.

SPORTSCASTER: Here s a pit and there s a long drive to deep right center. It could be... it is, it's a home run!

RAY SUAREZ: And showing his trademark single-mindedness to the end, won't acknowledge the cheering crowd. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966.

SPOKESMAN: Please welcome the greatest hitter that ever lived, number 9, Hall-of-Famer baseball legend Ted Williams!

RAY SUAREZ: In 1999, the Hall-of- Famer was honored at the all- star game at Boston s Fenway Park. This time there was nothing but adulation for the hitter who had had rocky relations with fans and sports writers. Williams had open heart surgery last year and had suffered a series of strokes. He died at a Florida hospital today at age 83.

And to discuss the Splendid Splinter's legacy, we're joined by Steve Buckley, a sports reporter for the "Boston Herald."

Steve, when he was an active player, Ted Williams openly said he wanted to be remembered as the greatest hitter ever. Does he have a claim to at least part of that title?

STEVE BUCKLEY, The Boston Herald: I think he has a claim to the entire title. When Ted was a player, he was a lot brasher than when he was when he was older. When he became an old man, he became mellow and tried to downplay his achievements. No player, or very few players, could combine the power Ted Williams had, i.e., hitting home runs, along with the batting average. He was a .344 lifetime hitter. This was a guy who was a dead pole hitter who constantly put the ball into play and got on base and hit a lot of home runs. The great power hitters in baseball history, very few have the batting average that Ted have.

RAY SUAREZ: The obituaries are moving in profusion on the wires and TV and radio, and they never fail to mention "last man to hit .400." Why is it such a big thing and why has nobody done it since?

STEVE BUCKLEY: Well, the big reason that nobody has done it since is baseball has evolved as a game, and on any given night, a team will bring in four or five or six different pitchers to face a batter. In those days, it was one pitcher, maybe a mop-up man. You might have a pitcher who was tired in the sixth, seventh, or eighth inning and you could go to bat against a guy like that. That's not the case anymore. Ted Williams, to end the 1941 season, he might have been able to sit out the last game and just quit with a .399 average rounded out to .400, but it never occurred to him that day in Philadelphia that he wouldn't play. He went out there and played, got the hits, hit .406. It is said nobody will do it again. A few people -- George Brett has come close. It may never happen again.

RAY SUAREZ: I've read more quotes from Ted Williams about the science of hitting than I think from any other hitter. I saw one today. "In order to hit a baseball properly, a man has got to devote every ounce of his concentration to it." He wasn't just getting up there and whaling away, was he?

STEVE BUCKLEY: No. You read stories about Ted Williams as a child at Hoover High School in San Diego, he was in front of a mirror, swinging a bat, he was taking a sponge ball in his hand and squeezing it. He used to personally inspect the bats. One story that doesn't get a lot of play is Ted used to talk to umpires around the American League about what certain pitchers were throwing so he sort of would get his own pre- game scouting report. That's the kind of work he put into it. And Ted was a manager with the Washington Senators later on in his career. It was difficult for him to impart this knowledge to a lot of hitters because he, being one of the great hitters of all time, would talk to players whose physical skills weren't a match to his own, and he would say, "if you get a good three and one pitch inside, do this with it." I was talking to Dick Billings this afternoon, played with the old Washington Senators. He said, "I could listen to this stuff, but I didn't have Ted's pure skills to be able to do that."

RAY SUAREZ: He once switched positions once so the sun wouldn't shine in his eyes. He was legendary for his eyesight, wasn't he?

STEVE BUCKLEY: Yeah. Some of it is a little bit urban legend. There was legend he would read the record going around the turnstile, that he could see the spin on the baseball and count the stitches and all that. I think some of it might have been press box whimsy later on in Ted's career. He definitely had outstanding vision. He was a fighter pilot in Korea, he was a great fisherman. His hand-eye coordination was unparalleled, and he had tremendous eyesight. What he could do with a baseball, with a blistering fastball, on the inside and wait for the right moment. To keep in mind you had right field and left field, Ted Williams was pure pull. They would over shift him toward right field knowing he would pull the ball and he would pull the ball rather than going to left field and he still hit .344 lifetime. It s an amazing accomplishment.

RAY SUAREZ: Now, here we have been talking about the amazing accomplishments-- over the last few years, he was putting up huge numbers at 38, 39, 40 years old. Yet he seems to have had adifficult relationship with writers, with the fans, with the baseball world in general. Talk a little bit about that.

STEVE BUCKLEY: Well, Ted was a player who was not a pleasant guy with which to deal. He constantly fought with sportswriters. There was an old Boston sportswriter/pundit named Dave Egan. They called him the colonel, and for a good number of years, Dave Egan made Ted the primary target and used to write things to tick Ted off. He had a lot of confrontations with fans. There was a spitting incident once. He threw his bat once and it actually hit Joe Cronin, president of the red sox, hit his housekeeper, who was sitting in a box seat behind home plate. And there was a lot of that. Ted was an ornery cuss, and he wasn't the most pleasant guy to deal with. I think he mellowed in his older age. My pleasant memories of Ted come later on in his life. I was a young sportswriter dealing with Ted in his 70s. The beauty of Ted Williams is, as he mellowed in age, he came to really love contemporary baseball. There are a lot of players in their 70s and 80s that speak a lot of ill of today's game, players aren't as good as they were, they don't hustle, they don't do this. To hear Ted Williams talk about the likes of Paul Moliter and Nomar Garciaparra and Wade Boggs, he had a great deal of respect for today's hitters definitely mellow in his old age. I don't think he was as nice a guy to deal with in the '40s but I wasn't around to deal with him back then.

RAY SUAREZ: You're saying now, he lived long enough to, in effect, make it up to the people of Boston and baseball fans. The bad blood didn't continue into his elder years.

STEVE BUCKLEY: On the contrary, he made it up with lots and lots of interest. If this was a penny stock, he would be a millionaire right now, because there's a tunnel named after Ted Williams in Boston, Lansdowne Street behind Fenway Park has been renamed Ted Williams way. He became a pop icon to younger fans who weren't around back then. To see Ted Williams come into a room, players from both teams would crowd around him to listen to what he had to say. He was wonderfully anecdotal when it came to talking baseball back then and baseball now. He was very contemporary with the game. Fans loved him. During one of his last appearances at Fenway Park, he spoke of the fact that he never tipped his cap during his days with the Red Sox, and he said, "folks, I tip my cap to you." And he lifted off that big old Red Sox cap and he had a big old smile on his face and got a wonderful standing ovation, and it was and is a great Fenway Park memory.

RAY SUAREZ: Steve Buckley, thanks a lot for joining us.

STEVE BUCKLEY: A pleasure.

RECAP

MARGARET WARNER: Again, the other major developments today. The motive behind yesterday's shooting attack at Los Angeles International Airport remained a mystery. The FBI identified an Egyptian immigrant as the gunman who killed two people before being killed himself. And it was a big day on Wall Street. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained more than 320 points, while the NASDAQ index was up 68. A reminder that "Washington Week" can be seen on most PBS stations later this evening. We'll see you online, and again here Monday evening. I'm Margaret Warner. Thanks for being with us. Good night.