The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MS. WARNER: Good evening. I'm Margaret Warner in Washington.

MR. MAC NEIL: And I'm Robert MacNeil in New York. After our News Summary tonight, we sample voter opinion in small town Missouri, then six of the NewsHour's regular essayists examine why the country seems to hate Washington so much this election year, and finally Charlayne Hunter-Gault looks at what it will take to establish democracy in Haiti. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MAC NEIL: President Clinton called on two bitter enemies today in an attempt to move them nearer to peace. Not since 1974 has an American President set foot in Syria, a country the U.S. has branded a sponsor of terrorism, but in a high visibility gambit President Clinton traveled to Damascus today in the hope of drawing Syria and Israel back to the bargaining table. We have more in this report by Penny Marshall of Independent Television News.

PENNY MARSHALL, ITN: President Clinton believes there can be no comprehensive peace deal in the Middle East with Syria, hence, his high risk strategy of visiting the Syrian capital, Damascus, himself. He is hoping that his handshake with President Assad with prod the Arab nationalist leader closer to peace with Israel. But today at least, President Assad wouldn't be seen to move.

PRESIDENT ASSAD: [speaking through interpreter] Emanating from the principle full withdrawal for full peace, I stress to President Clinton --

PENNY MARSHALL: Full withdrawal from the Golan Heights in return for full peace was President Assad's message through his interpreter. It's a line Israel and the President have heard before. Israel has occupied the Golan Heights since the 1967 War. Before peace can come, Syria's holding out for the return of the region from Israel, while Israel is returning out for full recognition from Syria first. Bill Clinton is the only American President since Nixon in 1974 to set foot in the Syrian capital. Assad has long been considered a pariah because of the support his regime lends Arab terrorist organizations. His visit gives President Assad credibility. What is President Clinton going to get in return?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: But our job will not be done, and we will not rest until peace agreements between Israel and Syria and Israel and Lebanon are achieved.

MR. MAC NEIL: Despite Assad's continued demands for a full Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, President Clinton said the two men had made some significant progress today in their private talks, but he acknowledged that a Syrian-Israeli accord was still not at hand. Later, the President traveled to Tel Aviv and then on to Jerusalem, where he addressed the Knesset, a first for an American President since Jimmy Carter in 1979. Mr. Clinton spoke about his visit to Damascus.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I believe something is changing in Syria. Its leaders understand that it is time to make peace. There will still be a good deal of hard bargaining before a breakthrough, but they are serious about proceeding.

MR. MAC NEIL: The President was forced to cancel a walking tour of Jerusalem's holy places because of a sovereignty dispute. The sights he was expected to visit are in East Jerusalem, which was captured by Israel in the 1967 War. Both Israelis and Palestinians claim the sector as their capital. But the First Lady, not bound by the same protocol, toured the area without incident. Mrs. Clinton stopped at the Western Wall, one of Judaism's holiest shrines. Observing tradition, she placed a piece of paper with a wish in a crack between the stones of the Wall. Tomorrow the President and First Lady travel to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Margaret.

MS. WARNER: The Russian government survived a no-confidence vote today by the country's parliament but not by much. Opposition leaders called for the vote after the ruble lost 25 percent of its value earlier this month. The deputies who were present voted overwhelmingly for the measure, 194 to 54. But under the rules of the 450-member body it was still 32 votes shy of the number needed for passage. Two hijackings in Russia ended today, one peacefully, the other violently. In Moscow, a man commandeered an airplane with 164 passengers on board and demanded a $2 million ransom. The police quickly seized him. One thousand miles to the South, a hijacker blew himself up with a homemade bomb after commandos stormed the aircraft he had seized 30 hours earlier. All of hostages had already been released or had escaped. He also had demanded $2 million and passage to Iran.

MR. MAC NEIL: Bosnia's Serb army appears to be in a major retreat following the biggest government offensive of the two and a half year war. The predominantly Muslim government army has captured about 60 miles of territory east of the city of Bihac. About 5,000 Serb civilians have fled to Croatia or Southeast towards Serb-held territory in Bosnia. U.N. and NATO officials said today they'd agreed on new, tougher rules on airstrikes against Bosnia. The new rules call for faster response to violations and the identification of three or four targets before the strike is to begin.

MS. WARNER: For the first time in U.S. history the nation has more than 1 million people in prison. That's according to a report released today by the Justice Department. There are more than 919,000 inmates in state prisons and nearly 94,000 in federal facilities. More than one in five of those inmates are held in just two states, California and Texas. The prospect of a basketball strike was averted today, when owners and players agreed to play the season under "no strike," "no lockout" terms. That means the National Basketball Association season will begin November 4th. The players have been without a contract since the end of last season. At issue in the current negotiations over a collective bargaining agreement is the question of salary caps for the layers. That's the same sticking point that brought this year's baseball and hockey seasons to a halt.

MR. MAC NEIL: That's it for our News Summary. Now it's on to why Washington makes people angry and re-establishing democracy in Haiti. FOCUS - BASHING THE BELTWAY

MR. MAC NEIL: With less than two weeks left before voters go to the polls, an anti-Washington feeling is a common theme in many races. To see what's behind this voter anger, NewsHour essayist Jim Fisher, a columnist with the Kansas City Star, went to Warrensburg, Missouri, 60 miles Southeast of Kansas City. There he met up with the Rusty Zipper Club, a group of townspeople who regularly meet for coffee and talk at the local cafe.

JIM FISHER: What are your feelings about, about politics in 1994, the mid-term elections, anybody? I'm sure you've got an opinion.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: It's going to be a tough one.

JOHN PRICE: Well, I think we need a change in Washington. All the scandals and things that are going on with our congressmen and senators, they need to be put out.

JIM FISHER: All of them?

JOHN PRICE: All of them. The ones that have the scandals, and then there's some that need to be put out, yes.

JIM KIRKPATRICK: Right here is the bad part about it is that here is the President who is done the thing he reduced the budget, the first one to do it, and he has said -- he offered the programs that he said he was for, and what did we get -- no, no vote out of the Republican Party headed by Dole.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Unemployment at the time is the lowest it's been in years and years.

JIM KIRKPATRICK: 3.9 right here, unemployment, lowest it's ever been. See, that's another thing. He got the jobs.

JIM FISHER: Do you think he got 'em?

JIM KIRKPATRICK: It's his programs that he's -- it went down here in his administration.

AL FOLKNER: Here you have a President who has been evidently successful. You know, all these things, Jim, you said are true. He's had recent successes in Haiti and Iraq, but these aren't even in the news today. He keeps creating problems. You know, he's a minority President with ethical problems that's been successful, and the whole thing is still very unpopular. I think that's a real crisis of leadership. I don't think he can do anything to gain leadership capability.

JIM FISHER: Why do you think Clinton is so unpopular?

AL FOLKNER: Well, I think it's you.

JIM FISHER: The press?

BOB VOGEL: Precisely. The day of his inauguration our local newspaper on the editorial page carried a cartoon to the effect that the broken promises of President Clinton, on the very day he was inaugurated. He hadn't had time to break a promise yet.

JOHN PRICE: Well, he vacillates from one thing to another thing. He hasn't any -- he doesn't stay down one line, and the Democrats are controlling Congress, and it's time for change.

JIM FISHER: Well, now didn't we say change in '92?

JOHN PRICE: Yeah.

JIM FISHER: Do we want to change again?

JOHN PRICE: We want to change again.

JIM JOYNER: And I think the American people are just tired of all the excuses, and I think the American people are ready to say, you know, let's do what's best for the country, let's not necessarily do what's best for Missouri or Virginia or, or Kansas, let's do what's best for the country. And I think until the Congress reacts to that message, we're going to have this problem for many years to come.

RICH LAWSON: Every election year we see the dog and pony show. It's all TV, it's all glitz, and it's all glamour. Do whatever I have to say, whatever I have to do, kiss all the ugly babies in the world, but I've got to get elected. And it doesn't make any difference what I say or what I promise, whether it happens or whether it doesn't happen, I want to be elected, and then after that, let the chips fall where they fall. If I get programs through, great, if I don't, so what, I'm the President, I'm the Congressman, I'm the Senator, I've got a good income, and you know, I don't understand -- I do understand why you would spend millions and millions and millions of dollars getting elected to a job that pays you a couple of hundred thousand a year.

JIM FISHER: Every day in the paper you see this and you see that, the government's doing this, the government's doing that. An activist government is maybe not what a lot of Americans want now?

JIM PRICE: Well, we'd better a lot better off if they stayed out of it.

EARL EHLER: Too much big government.

JIM PRICE: Too much big government.

EARL EHLER: Way too much big government. That's what -- that's another thing I think that Clinton was going to try to change but he hasn't changed. He has no control really. He can't control the Senate. He can't control the House.

JIM JOYNER: There was a program on TV last night, and they showed drug addicts in California collecting Social Security, because they were drug addicts. You know, they say, well, I'm sick, you know, and, therefore, they were paying them Social Security supposedly to go out and get help. What they were doing, they were taking the Social Security check, cashing it, and buying drugs. You know, and I think people see enough of that, that it's ridiculous! And the Congress doesn't seem to care. You know, they -- a billion here, a billion there, oh, what's a billion dollars?

BOB WARNS: Now, what I think we need, I think we need, is an old Republican. I'm not confident that -- I think the Republicans are going to get in right now -- I'm not confident they're going to do the right thing. What they need to do is downsize this government, absolutely have to downsize this government, just as American business had been doing and are doing. Back in 1975, I made a prediction that if American business ever got efficient, we'd have the biggest depression going. Well, I was wrong, because what I didn't realize, that we were going to have a rolling restructuring of business. So we're restructuring business. What we've got to do is restructure this country now. And the Congress has got to do it. The first thing is a crisis of confidence in the Congress, and the first thing they got to do is roll back their salaries from whatever it is -- it's a ridiculous sum -- by at least 25 or 30 percent.

RICH LAWSON: I don't know who the poet was, Frost or -- my English teachers please forgive me -- and whoever it was -- Frost I think said, "Something there is that doesn't love a wall." And I think the public at large feels that there is a wall there, and we can't get beyond it to get them to understand why we are distressed and upset about the programs and things that are going on in Washington, why we feel we don't have any representation coming out of Washington, but I think there's a feeling, or at least there is with me, that there's a wall there. And I can only come up to it. I can't go over it, or I can't get beyond it to, to try to help settle the problems.

MR. MAC NEIL: Now some additional perspective on the anti- Washington mood of the country this election year. We're joined by Jim Fisher in Kansas City, plus five more of our regular essayists. Clarence Page is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Richard Rodriguez is editor of the Pacific News Service based in San Francisco. Here with me in New York: Roger Rosenblatt, a New York writer; Anne Taylor Fleming, a writer from Los Angeles; Phyllis Theroux, a writer from Virginia. Jim Fisher, back to you for a minute. Political reporters have been telling us all this fall that there's a lot of anger at Washington this year. Would you call that group you talked to this morning angry or something else?

MR. FISHER: I'd -- angry, a lot 'em loathe -- I think loathe is a better word than hate -- what they see going on in Washington. I think Rich Lawson, the guy that used the analogy about the wall kind of touched on it, said it best, because see there is out here -- we look at the beltway -- there is no way we can get through to it. And even with Dole being as powerful as he is in Kansas and - - but it just seems that people, the government has become a ruling class, almost like the lords in Britain at one time. These people are almost untouchable. It's, it's a strange thing. I once had a politician here -- I went out and covered him, and we ran around his district in that part of Missouri, and, you know, there's this thing about saying all politics is local. And I don't believe that because this Congressman told me, he says, boy, he says there's three things you don't ever want to talk about in politics, or when you run an election. You don't want to talk about gun control, and you don't want to talk about abortion, and you don't want to talk about vitamins. Well, my eyes went up at vitamins, and I said, why vitamins, and he said the vitamin people, if they think you're against 'em, will kill you at the polls. And I use that as an illustration to say that we've seen this administration and past administrations are getting more and more into people's business, and maybe it's gun control and abortion, however you feel about that. But the vitamin, the vitamin part, they came up with that this past spring, and people, I think, just feel that government's in their face, and they've had enough. And it really at this point doesn't matter who'sin office, get rid of the bum.

MR. MAC NEIL: You're nodding your head, Phyllis Theroux?

MS. THEROUX: Well, I sort of speak, think of Washington from having lived there for most of my adult life, and I think that the problem with Washington is that truth takes a horrible beating. You just can't find it. It's sort of a boxing ring mentality. And I think the whole country sits back and listens to these politicians, and they know they're not telling the truth, and there's no buzzer that can go off and say stop. You know, this isn't -- doesn't square with reality. And you never hear -- I think I would just be so happy if I could hear Dole say to Mitchell or somebody, you know, you've really got a point there, on camera, or gee, I've never thought of that, some sort of spirit of cooperation between politicians would --

MR. MAC NEIL: Anne, is anger the word for how people feel about Washington this year, do you think?

MS. FLEMING: I think disgust is the word that I would use out in California more than anger. I mean, it -- the line is blurred. One of the things that occurs to me as we all talk about this and one of the things I've been conscious of this particular election is that we seem particularly disgusted or angry. And in some ways, we're asking the politicians to give us, to pander in a sense to the worst in us this election. And this has been a really low, slimy election. I can certainly answer for California, and these people can answer for their part. The politicians, we've asked them in a sense to pander to the lowest of us, the fear in us, anti- immigrant, lock 'em up. You saw in that earlier thing, you know, California has half the state practically imprisoned. And in a sense, we're asking them to do that, and maybe in our anger at them for pandering to the lowest in us, because I don't think we like the way that feels, is a healthy measure of self-disgust.

MR. MAC NEIL: Richard Rodriguez, anger, disgust, what would you say this year?

MR. RODRIGUEZ: I would say with the anger there's a certain amount of disdain that leads to a peculiar kind of disinterest. I know as political essayists, we're supposed to be more interested in the political life than most citizens, but people I hear from are not interested in this election very much. In fact, I was talking at lunch today with a friend of mine who is a fireman here in San Francisco, an African-American, who said, you know, the real advantage Mexicans have had in California, Mexicans who have not voted in very large numbers, is that, in fact, you never believed in politics, you want about your real lives, you've got jobs, you didn't believe that the political life would change your society. We have black congressmen; we have black senators; we have blacks in the political elite, and what have we gotten? We haven't gotten anything, except the assumption, the belief that, in fact, somehow government is going to change our lives. In some way, you know, it's really a stake in America right now, this confusion about whether government is too much in our lives or whether we can't get to the government is really how much government do we want in our life? It was always my assumption that America was born out of a skepticism about Washington, an insistence on state's rights, a disdain for the national life such that we never really believed that Washington can change our lives, should change our lives, will change our lives. Do we really believe that the politicians are going to change the great care and the human heart in America right now?

MR. MAC NEIL: We used to, did we not?

MR. RODRIGUEZ: Well, we heard at the top of the hour that there are one million people in jail. There are politicians who are getting elected in the United States with the promise of more jails. Did we really believe that that is the answer to the problem? And if we believe it, then I suppose we believe the radio commentator, the twice-divorced radio commentator who goes on about family values, we believe the womanizing politician who tells us we need a higher moral plane in America, then we are the fools.

MR. MAC NEIL: How would you characterize the mood about Washington this year, Roger?

MR. ROSENBLATT: Well, it certainly is the deepest sort of disappointment. Unlike Richard and some of the people that Jim talked to, I think that under the layers of wanting big government diminished, which has been a long cry, a longstanding cry in the country, most people appreciate what big government can do. I think there has been a real misunderstanding, a deliberate misunderstanding, for example, of what the poverty program did as big government were. When people work in communities, which is now the popular thing to do, to do some communitarian work, they compare it to big government, and they say, well, we can do this in our block, but they can't do something in Washington, and then the fellow who brought up the wall comes to mind. But the fact of the matter is what you realize when you do community work is how little you can do without some central government help. I'm not just talking about dollars. A presidency, a senator, a congressman who speaks for some national voice, the only reason that strikes became effective as, as a tendency, a national tendency, was because there was a Washington to bounce off to, to oppose. But what we have now is not a balance of powers, we have a gridlock of powers, and I don't think it's what goes on in Washington that gets people dismayed, disappointed, disgruntled, or disgusted. I think it's what does not go on, that nothing goes on, and the man who couldn't reach it I think hit a cord.

MR. MAC NEIL: Clarence Page, you're sitting there in this reviled capital. How -- what is your feeling about the -- is there a difference, a difference in quality or intensity about people's feelings about the federal government this year?

MR. PAGE: Well, I think there definitely is, and let me say, Robin, that I agree with everything that's been said so far in this panel, and I'll go so far as to say I'll probably agree with everything that's going to be said in this panel, because everybody's right.

MR. MAC NEIL: You may lose your job, if you go on like that.

MR. PAGE: Hey, I want to tell you, let me see if I'm going to say something that somebody else will disagree with. I think, Robin, first of all, I do hop back and forth between Washington and Chicago quite regularly now, and I feel I'm going to two different worlds. I feel very much like Washington is caught up in settling arguments that began in the 60's and that weren't settled then, while the rest of the country, I feel, is trying to cope with the 21st century. America is going through big changes out there -- we -- as big of a change as we went through a hundred years ago, when this shifted from being a rural country, a nation of farmers, to a nation of urban dwellers. Our new demographics now show that Americans are more suburban. And here I hark back to what both Roger and Richard talked about earlier, what they touched on. I think that we're seeing more communitary efforts, efforts that are closer to the community, closer to those little platoons out there, if you will, at the neighborhood level and the grassroots level, and people see these things working. They're seeing public housing residents turn around their public housing. They're seeing some suburban volunteer efforts. They're seeing community parent-teacher efforts, and they're wondering why can't Washington connect with that. Washington is still trying to settle a health care debate which really should have been settled back in the 60's or the early 70's, and that's just the beginning. The crime issue is an expression of frustration. The country is dividing between rich and poor. We're going to see more crime, this million people in jail is just the beginning, and the politics now are swerving toward more "lock 'em up," because it just seems to be some kind of a solution that may help to restore a sense of civility a lot of Americans think we've lost. Robin, I think this is why Marion Barry at his surprise victory in D.C. and why I suspect Oliver North is going to have a surprising victory in Virginia. Both of them have a Christian fundamentalist base, one liberal and black, the other one white and conservative, but on both sides they feel there's something coming apart in this country and that the Washington moguls aren't connecting with it and that Barry and Oliver North are both outsiders. And that has a certain appeal this year.

MR. MAC NEIL: Phyllis Theroux.

MS. THEROUX: Well, I brought along something that Thomas Jefferson said one time, Robin. "Whenever a man" -- and I guess we should now say woman -- "casts an eye on public office, a certain rottenness of character is sure to set in," so we've had the problem of politicians being tempted ever since political life was established. But I think that Washington today has really become so much more a bastion of privilege. There are sixty-one or sixty- two thousand lawyers in town. And that's up from a thousand in 1950. There are ninety-one thousand --

MR. MAC NEIL: How does that represent a bastion of privilege in your mind, 62,000 lawyers?

MS. THEROUX: It's the highest -- I think there's just a lot of money in Washington to be made, and there are a lot of lawyers, and there are a lot of lobbyists there to make it, and I don't think that has much to do with public service.

MR. MAC NEIL: Roger.

MR. ROSENBLATT: Just an addendum, Washington is also the home of the two most hated professions in America, journalists and politicians.

MR. MAC NEIL: We're somewhat better off than used car salesmen by most of the --

MR. ROSENBLATT: Not by the polls.

MR. MAC NEIL: -- polls.

MS. FLEMING: I think we're right down there.

MR. MAC NEIL: Well, we'll leave that. We're not talking about anger at journalists tonight. We're talking about anger at the politicians.

MS. FLEMING: But we may be part of the problem. I mean, one of the things that I'm thinking about as I sit here, I'm wondering what somebody listening to all of us sort of talk about, we're quite somber about this, and I mean there are plenty of people -- in fact, I ran into somebody in the lobby, and he said, I know you're going to be on a panel that angered Washington -- he said, we're angry at you. I said, well, thanks, and the point being that, has the relentless scrutiny, in particular of private lives of public officials, contributed to some of this? I mean, are we part of the erosive factor of a sense that government is positive and can make a difference? And I think the answer has to be yes.

MR. MAC NEIL: Jim Fisher, do you agree with that? Are we -- is the press part of the problem, eroding confidence in government?

MR. FISHER: I think we are to a degree, but I think the fashion of the -- which one gentleman calls the mainstream of the -- the willing accomplices in the media -- 99 percent of the media is writing obits and covering garden clubs and wandering around Kansas and Missouri and writing columns and being treated wonderfully by the people. But you find one thing the people are getting, they're getting the information. I was out in far Western Kansas last week, and a man came up to me in a town of fourteen people, Shields, Kansas, which is between Ness City and Dayton, and if you know Kansas, you know that, but most Americans don't. And he knew all about this Taiwanese -- this Vietnamese farmer in California who'd plowed up a kangaroo rat, and he was incensed, and he was incensed not at probably who he should have been incensed at, the bureaucrats, and maybe the Fish and Wildlife Service, he was incensed at Congress, he was incensed at Washington, even though it took place in California. So I think there's a bleeding. I mean, people hear government and they get their backs up, and as Clarence said, I think the election, if that comes to pass, at Barry and North, is -- they have strong support, and their followers will vote for them out of good conscience, but I think there will be some that go in the polling booth and will say as they pull a lever in your face, they've just had enough of it, and they --

MR. MAC NEIL: Let me ask you this. You met with that group this morning, Republicans and Democrats. The Republican Party seems to be assuming that voters are a lot madder this year at Democrats in Washington. In fact, Newt Gingrich is talking as though he's almost the Speaker of the House. What is your feeling? Is this anger partisan this year?

MR. FISHER: I think it's probably both -- half and half. I think there is -- you hear these people talk about Bob Dole, and they're mad at him. They think he held up health care, or they think that Gingrich is a blowhard. But I think the Democrats come out on the short end basically because they have got -- as that one gentleman said -- they've got the House, they've got the Senate, and they've got the presidency. And we voted to get things done, and nothing really happened in their eyes. Health care failed, and they got through NAFTA, but other than that, it was a -- as some said -- a good Congress on the Republican side, and as some said a bad Congress if you're on the Democrats. I think the Democrats are getting the fall out from this and this unrelenting examination by the press up and down. Clinton's up, Clinton's down. Mitchell's up, Mitchell's down. Foley may lose. Kennedy may lose. Kennedy may win. And I think it's just people don't know what to think. And I think the Democrats are the victims.

MR. MAC NEIL: Richard Rodriguez, do you sense a particularly specifically partisan tone to this anger this year?

MR. RODRIGUEZ: I do think that in some ways it is more Republican anger than Democratic anger. We may be, as Roger suggests, at some kind of crisis point for the liberal agenda. It may be wearing itself down. I'm more -- I'm more taken by something that we haven't talked about, and that's not the anger in America but the, but the disinterest in America, the people who will not vote, the people who are not interested, the people who don't know Newt Gingrich. I come back to what Clarence was saying, and at the risk of making myself redundant by agreeing too much with Clarence, it does seem to me that there is a kind of spiritual crisis in this countrywhich is not going to simply play itself out in, in the election of Ollie North or Marion Barry but it is playing itself out in some other kind of way in American high schools, in the murder of children, in the kidnapping of children, in the disinterest of parents toward children and children towards parents, in the pop culture which is as much as Hollywood now, Hollywood is as much as Washington a source of disaffection in America. We don't like it. We don't understand it. We don't feel connected to it. We don't feel connected to our own children. We don't know what to say to our wife or a wife to her -- the husband. There is this sense in which things are coming apart, and, and Bill Clinton is only part of that larger picture, it seems to me.

MR. MAC NEIL: Roger.

MR. ROSENBLATT: At the risk of seeming even more political in agreeing with Richard and agreeing with Clarence, are we running for something here? The -- that sad litany of events that Richard just gave us really borne in most of our experiences. This is the first time in my life -- I've lived half a century -- the first time in my life that I can remember no discussions about the future of America, no serious discussions about the ambitions of America, even about the silly ideals of America in which we believe in some lower level and with which we grew up. I don't know if you blame that on Washington. I think it's partly, in part, is to blame on the quality of candidates too that we have, and these things may find themselves working their way, earning their way out of this dark cycle by better people and better laws and better ideas and better bills. But for the moment, it really is a low point.

MR. MAC NEIL: Well, speaking of people and Richard mentioned the President, Anne Taylor Fleming, how much of this feeling is directed at President Clinton, do you think, and why? How much is he the focus for this, whether it's disgust, anger, disillusionment, disinterest, whatever?

MS. FLEMING: I think he's a big piece of it. I don't think he's the only piece of it. I think people have a sense -- and I've heard, you know, Gigot and Shields talk about this -- they have a sense that, yes, he's being able to do some of the things he's said, but deep down there's something a little amiss, the trepidations that they elected him with. There's some sense that he is not of the character that they would wish for their leader. And the problem is how -- I mean, it's a problem the White House is having, getting through us and, again, that's partially the media, to get through -- one of the people that Jim was talking about said he's done the following things but we aren't hearing about that. I think there is a sense that he is a flawed man, but I go back to the sense of, you know, this deconstructing we do of the private lives of these people. I dare say my life -- and I can't answer for the rest of you -- might --

MR. MAC NEIL: Thank God.

MS. FLEMING: -- might not hold -- exactly -- might not hold up to this kind of relentless, relentless looking at. And we have a sense, I think, that television is exacerbated, that we have to have pure good guys and bad guys, that, you know, it's white hat or black hat, it's he's up or he's down. To me, Clinton is obviously a fairly complex, very capable, obviously fairly committed politician, but he's flawed. Well, who isn't? And I think some sense of the complexity has, has absolutely been lost over the last stretch of decades.

MR. MAC NEIL: Clarence Page, how much is Bill Clinton the focus of this, or the target for this, these feelings, strong feelings this year?

MR. PAGE: Well, the buck stops there. Bill Clinton has had a problem with gravidas, if you will, that sense of being able to project strong leadership, partly because I think he's tried too hard to please everyone, which is why you get the impression of vacillation as one of the gentlemen Jim Fisher was meeting with spoke of earlier, the sense he flip flops. I talk to people and they're asking me what has Bill Clinton done. I mean, it's amazing how quickly much of the public has forgotten about NAFTA, the budget fight, the low unemployment that we are now enjoying. It's a what have you done for me lately kind of sense that, that what the -- that the White House has lost connection with their lives. The economy may be doing well, but they don't feel it in their wallets, and that's where the late night comedians and the constant chipping away by polarized politics and the batter -- the battering that we pundits give the White House all the time, this begins to have an effect after a while, and it chips away at Bill Clinton's popularity.

MR. MAC NEIL: Phyllis Theroux.

MS. THEROUX: Well, two things: One, sort of playing off of Clarence when he talks about the voter that's saying what's in it for me, what have you done for me lately, I think we have not really thought much about the whole concept of public servants. I don't think we think about the people that are in Congress very often, if at all, as being public servants in that traditional sense. Most of them, like us, are in it for themselves, or at least they project that aura to a lot of people, including me. I don't get this feeling that there are too many of them that are there to serve the public. The second thought I had as I was sort of coming up here, thinking about the subject of why people hate Washington is that we're a very hurried society. We're in a rush. We don't have time to really cultivate good elected officials. We don't do what I imagine was done in earlier days. We don't go to the town meetings. We don't have time to fix it. We have time to vote for them but not to follow through. So in a way, we're sort of like owners of a piece of property, and we farmed out the land to people that we've, in effect, hired, and we have ourselves to blame, because we don't have the time to oversee them.

MR. MAC NEIL: Roger.

MR. ROSENBLATT: Bill Clinton just on that subject, one mistake I think he has made is to make himself, to present himself as President through such media as radio talk shows, and call in spontaneously, and that kind of thing, rather than, you know, Clarence mentioned the lack of gravidas, rather than doing press conferences, giving addresses to the nation, and acting assuming the style of the President. When he does that, I think he's extremely effective.

MR. MAC NEIL: That is advice he's been getting in the last couple of months from Leon Panetta, to put himself in more structured context.

MR. ROSENBLATT: I think particularly at this time, and given some of the things that we've all been saying here, a structured context wouldn't do any harm.

MR. MAC NEIL: Jim Fisher, just in conclusion, are we exaggerating al this, this year? I mean, we've been talking about alienated voters for 30 years that I can remember anyway. Are we overplaying this?

MR. FISHER: I don't think so. I think that after we finished down there in Warrensburg, the talk turned to another politician. His name was Harry Truman, and he came home, and he got off the train in Independence, Missouri, and he never got rich, and he used to take a walk around the Independence Square and play cards and drink a little whiskey, and he grew old and maybe a little cantankerous, but you could tell from those men that that's not the politician we have today. We have a professional. We have a -- and maybe you have to do it that way today. I don't know. But it's changed, and they -- we can't go back -- but I think they yearn for that, as Phyllis said, if they could just be honest, just for once in whatever side they are, and I asked one of them, do you think they're telling you the truth, he says, not at all, but Harry would have.

MR. MAC NEIL: Well, Jim Fisher, Richard Rodriguez in San Francisco, Clarence Page, Anne Taylor Fleming, Phyllis Theroux, Roger Rosenblatt, thanks. FOCUS - HAITI - TIME FOR DEMOCRACY

MS. WARNER: Finally tonight, we return to the Haiti story. More than 15,000 U.S. soldiers remain there, safeguarding the fledgling government of newly restored President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. That new government will have to revitalize an impoverished economy that's been further devastated by three years of international sanctions. But the hardest job of all will be to create a democratic society. Charlayne Hunter-Gault has returned from Haiti and reports just how difficult that will be.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: This was not a new sound in Haiti. It was one that agents of the military forced underground during the last days of their repressive regime. It was Rams' pop hit "Fey," Creole for "Leaf," "The day I fall is not the day I die, and I only have one son, and they made him leave the country." Defiant lyrics like these, drawn from Haiti's legendary parable that spoke of Jean- Bertrand Aristide and the military coup that forced him into three years of exile. Now that the son was back and the military gone, the crowd was celebrating their first taste of real freedom in years. But for Haitians, this was not the first time their hopes for democracy has been raised, only to be dashed by the barrel of a gun and a reign of terror. So for the six million Haitians of this tiny island nation, the question is whether this time will be any different, whether the roots of democracy have any greater chance today than the fruits that can no longer grow in Haiti's once rich but eroded soil. For Haiti's history is, indeed, rich, born out of revolution against France in 1804, becoming the first independent black nation in the Western Hemisphere. So why, after 180 years of trying, is Haiti still struggling to become democratic? It was a question we put to Robert Malval, a successful businessman who at Aristide's request served briefly as prime minister in 1993. He argued that the fact that Haiti had the first successful slave revolt gave Haitians a vision of their country bigger than life.

ROBERT MALVAL, Former Prime Minister: This fact still remains, you know, national conscience, as one of the great facts of history. And we have never been able to pass beyond these times which were heroic ones in our history.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And times of heroic figures, like the fiery ex- slave and revolutionary leader Jean-Jacques Dessalines. One of Aristide's first public acts since his return was to participate in the annual commemoration of Dessalines. Yet, it was during Dessalines' times that the patterns were set that have kept Haiti's political and social life tied in knots. Dessalines, who appointed himself ruler for life in 1804, was violently anti-mulatto. He was assassinated in 1805. It was the mixed blood slaves, or mulattos, who took political control from the French and established the pattern whichstill exists today of the light-skin elite fuel ruling the dark-skin masses. Malval argued that many of them had studied in and been influenced by France, so that when they returned to Haiti, they behaved as French colonialists did.

ROBERT MALVAL: They became soon the target of those who felt that nothing had changed with independence, and it created some sort of a psychosis among the elite at the time that like the French they would be kicked out of Haiti in five or ten years. And I think the elitists lived with this precarity for 200 years, so there has never been some long-term vision. Everything was done on a short- term basis.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: How to survive.

ROBERT MALVAL: How to survive.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: If survival was the guiding principle of the elite, it was a principle executed by the military. Jean-Claude Bajeaux spent years underground or in exile and saw his mother and other close family members raped and murdered for his pro-democracy activities. He believes Haiti was trapped by the 1804 revolution.

JEAN-CLAUDE BAJEAUX, Ecumenical Center for Human Rights: Actually, independence was a trap for us as a nation because we were supposed to be free in 1804, and we fell into a new oppression.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: A new oppression.

JEAN-CLAUDE BAJEAUX: A new oppression.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: The oppression of the military?

JEAN-CLAUDE BAJEAUX: The military that was the instrument of the small group, the heads of change. There have been always a small group of people who have been the beneficiary of Haitian independence, and that hasn't changed, except that the election of Aristide was for the first time the breaking of the system. And that's why this group, what we called oligarchy, you know, a very powerful group in the bourgeoisie, they have never accepted the idea of democracy.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Today in homes high above the teeming slums and bidonvilles of Port-au-Prince, the rich rarely talk to the press, and when they do, they are cautious, guarded, and often fearful. The rich, some say, may for the first time be forced to accept democracy. It is an open secret that the coup d'etat that overthrew President Aristide was financed by big industrialists in Haiti. They resented his populist rhetoric and argued that rather than a force for democracy, he was a dangerous ideologue bent on having his revenge against the light-skin elite. Now, they have been sobered by three years of a crippling embargo that has closed some of their businesses and wrecked the Haitian economy. And Malval, for one, believes that this reality has created a new attitude among them that might be more hospitable to democracy.

ROBERT MALVAL: The fact that our army, our system collapsed in less than a week here is proof enough that the whole system was rotten, that there is now a new beginning, and this is why I insist without turning our back on our past for the first time I think we will be able to look up to the present and the future.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: If discussions with the elite are taking place behind closed doors, as has been reported, this is how the Americans are talking democracy with the masses. They're what the U.S. military call psyops, psychological operations teams that share information about democracy with the Haitian public either in informal, random sessions, or through leaflets and loud speakers. Haitians and others with long memories welcome this kind of help today, but history has made them uneasy. They argue that during America's 19-year-occupation in Haiti that ended in 1934, they left no democratic footprint.Their principal concern then was security, their only legacy a well-trained army that terrorized the people.

FATHER GERARD JEAN JUSTE: [speaking at church service] No more killing! Become a new person! Become democratic!

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Father Gerard Jean Juste is a priest who worked with Haitian exiles abroad before returning to Haiti and being forced underground after an attack on his life by military agents. On this day he was presiding at the funeral of a young activist who was slain, presumably by the same agents of the military in the last hours of the military regime. He argued that for American- style democracy to take hold in Haiti, Haitians have to bridge the psychological gap created by American hostility dating back to Haiti's very beginning.

FATHER GERARD JEAN JUSTE: What I say, we each -- many nations in the world have received systems in order to stay democratic, but for Haiti, after our liberation, we didn't find that help. They're trying to choke us to death.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Why? Because of racism?

FATHER GERARD JEAN JUSTE: Because of racism, we were reduced to the very bottom, and we need to accept the help, and the help, regardless that some of us, including me, were reluctant to accept that help knowing that in the past when the foreign troops arrive here, it's mostly hostility and what we discover, big miracle, instead of hostility, we find humanity. So this is a different world now that we live in.

JEAN-CLAUDE BAJEAUX: For the first time we are seeing American government backing the people against their own army. And that was always the country and all the history of Latin America, but now we are living in a post Cold War era, when you cannot justify that thing.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And so with a different kind of American presence, Haitians once again are making a stab at democracy. For Haitians like Jean-Claude Bajeaux, that means trying to get the country's critical institutions functioning in a democratic way as quickly as possible, especially the justice system without with which there can be no democracy. One of his early missions was to try and get a list of prisoners to determine how many of those inside were put there by the military as a way of silencing their opposition.

JEAN-CLAUDE BAJEAUX: I'm going to say it was not Aristide and to insist on him that more important that the problems of the salary of the people, the problem of prices of the commodities, the more important jobs, more important for the people is to see their killers punished.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Justice.

JEAN-CLAUDE BAJEAUX: Justice in a normal, civilized way.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But there are worries that if justice isn't swift, democracy could be undermined by the very people who need it most. Already there have been isolated cases of vengeance. Haitians like Bajeaux, however, maintain that the people will be patient. He says they only need tangible proof that democracy works.

JEAN-CLAUDE BAJEAUX: Because there's a lot of democracy to be made about the violence of the crowd, what Cedras, it was bring about the mobs. It was witnessing that every sentence, the mobs, the mobs, the mobs. But you had a constant violence against the Haitian people that has been there for 887 years, and it's a very patient people. It's -- our people is not violent. They are ready to believe that the people that are arrested now will be tried in court, so they are ready to take them not to harm them and to give them to the American MP and then in the hope that they will see them tried in court.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Mark Danner is a reporter and longtime observer of Haitian politics, including the violent disruption of the 1987 election.

MARK DANNER, New Yorker Magazine: Because there wasn't a real justice system here, it meant taking someone who had been perpetrating violence on them and killing them or beating them in the street, and Father Aristide during his term in office had a great deal of trouble, because he was unable to frankly denounce this. He retains, as far as I can see, that same problem now. I mean, he has returned. He is saying no to vengeance, but if he says no to vengeance, how is he going to supply justice for the people. He has to somehow come up with a way to supply justice to them. He has no justice ministry. He has no courts. He has very little means to do this. On the other hand, he's got the Americans who say, you know, calm these people down, no vengeance, reconciliation.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So far, the issue of the American role in helping Haiti sort out its problems has been handled gingerly by all sides. But Danner is among those who see that looming as a major problem in the not-too-distant future.

MARK DANNER: I think the job here is enormous. There is an enormous history here. There is a past. It is not a table erasa. It is not as if the table has been wiped clean, and we're starting to build something new here. There is a past. There are hatreds. There are rivalries. There are fears, and the job of trying to build a new politics here is going to be immensely complicated. On the other hand, you have the American presence with a commitment that to me is quite unsure at this point. I think the question of whether it'll be possible to build a democracy here will be solved, will be answered only in five or six years at most, or longer, and it'll be a question, it seems to me, that Americans have to answer as well as Haitians.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So is it that the roots of democracy haven't been planted or haven't sunk into the soil?

MARK DANNER: I think they have hardly been planted. I think the soil, the soil is ready. But one thing has remained constant, which is that a small group of people have been able to draw the wealth from this country, from the soil, which is where the richness of this country lies, by oppressing a large group of people.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Still, Haitians like Robert Malval are cautiously optimistic, arguing that this is the most hopeful moment that Haiti has ever had, and at the end of the day, it is up to Haitians to make it work.

ROBERT MALVAL: We have a proud history, and the masses know when it's not wise to go too far and know when to stop, and now it depends on the different elites to know when they should begin. And I think this is our job, not to stop the masses, because themselves know where to stop. It's to convince the different elites that the time has come for them to begin making a move toward the masses.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Meanwhile, as Haitians go about rediscovering the past to democracy, the international presence is very much in evidence. It is unclear how long the international peacekeepers will stay here, but for now, their presence is the only real guarantee that President Jean-Bertrand Aristide will have a fighting chance to establish the democracy that has so long eluded his country. RECAP

MS. WARNER: Again, the major story of this Thursday was the Middle East. On the heels of yesterday's peace treaty between Israel and Jordan, President Clinton traveled to Syria today to advance U.S. efforts to broker a wider accord. It was the first trip to Damascus by an American President in 20 years. Mr. Clinton reported some progress in his talks with Syrian President Assad, but he acknowledged that an Israeli-Syrian agreement was still not at hand. Good night, Robin.

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