The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: Terence Smith and our regional commentators consider the surge of religion in politics; Mark Shields and David Brooks, substituting for Paul Gigot, offer some end of the year political analysis; Susan Dentzer reports on the personal conflicts surrounding care for the elderly; Elizabeth Farnsworth has a conversation with author Robert Conquest; and Roger Rosenblatt opens a week-long series of millennium essays. It all follows our summary of the news this Christmas Eve.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: Hijackers seized an Indian airlines plane today with 189 people on board. They commandeered a flight from Nepal and made landings in India and Pakistan, then they flew to the United Arab Emirates to refuel. They claimed to have killed four passengers and wounded five. But India's foreign minister said officials could not verify the claim.

JASWANT SINGH: We have no confirmed news as yet about injury, killing on board, the identity of the hijackers or indeed any demand that they might have made.

JIM LEHRER: In this country, holiday travelers passed through tightened security at airports and border crossings. Authorities had gone on alert after warnings of possible attacks by terrorists. In recent days they've arrested several people on the Canadian border. One was an Algerian man who allegedly tried to bring bomb- making materials into Washington State. Canadian police put out a warrant today for another man in that case. A former military chief declared a coup d'etat today in the Ivory Coast. He urged people in the West African nation to remain calm, but soldiers looted and fired weapons in the capital. The country's elected president called on his followers to resist the coup attempt. His exact whereabouts were unknown. In Venezuela today flood survivors pleaded with officials for toys so children would have something for Christmas. They also struggled to find food and clean water. Much of the country's Caribbean coast was entombed in mud and rock after heavy rains last week. Up to 30,000 people may have died. Visitors poured into Bethlehem and Rome today to celebrate Christmas. Boy Scouts led parades through Bethlehem's Manger Square. Officials said they expected more than 50,000 visitors on Christmas Day, despite concerns about terrorism. At the Vatican, a huge nativity scene was unveiled in St. Peter's Square. Crowds gathered there for Christmas Eve Midnight Mass. The service was televised worldwide. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to: The politics of religion; Shields and Brooks; eldercare; Robert Conquest; and a Roger Rosenblatt essay.

FOCUS - RELIGION AND POLITICS

JIM LEHRER: Terence Smith has the religion and politics story.

TERENCE SMITH: In 1960, then Senator John F. Kennedy did all he could to make his Roman Catholic faith a nonissue in the presidential campaign.

SENATOR JOHN F. KENNEDY: I believe in a president whose views on religion are his own private affair -- neither imposed upon him by the nation nor imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.

I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for President who happens also to be a Catholic.

TERENCE SMITH: Four decades later, the contrast is unmistakable. In the last Republican debate in Iowa, three GOP hopefuls invoked the vocabulary of evangelical Protestantism when asked which philosopher or thinker with whom they most identified.

GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH: Christ. Because He changed my heart. When you turn your heart and you're life over to Christ, when you accept Christ as a savior it changes your heart, it changes your life. And that's what happened to me.

SEN. ORRIN HATCH: I bear witness to Christ, too. I really know Him to be the savior of the world.

GARY BAUER: "I was hungry and you fed me. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me." Christ with those words taught all of us about our obligations to each other.

TERENCE SMITH: Candidate John McCain is running a radio ad with religious overtones. It's narrated by a fellow former prisoner of war in Vietnam.

SPOKESMAN: Christmas service of 1971 was centered around some scripture that John had gotten from first bible he's been able to get from the Vietnamese. John composed an extremely compelling sermon that night about the importance ever Christmas.

TERENCE SMITH: Another Republican, Alan Keyes, speaks of putting faith in prayer back into the classroom. He appeared recently on the "NewsHour".

ALAN KEYES: We have lost our moral way. We have forgotten the principle that our rights come from God and must be exercised with respect for existence and authority of God.

TERENCE SMITH: On the Democratic side, Vice President Gore recently discussed his faith describing himself as a born-again Christian.

VICE PRESIDENT AL GORE: I affirm my faith when I am asked about it. But I try do to do so in a way that communicates absolute respect not only for people who worship in a different way but just as much respect for those who do not believe in God -- who are atheists.

TERENCE SMITH: As a young man in his 20s, Bill Bradley spoke publicly of his Christian conversion and once joined evangelist Billy Graham on a missionary trip to London. Today, however, he distinguishes himself from virtually the entire presidential field by keeping his religious views to himself.

BILLY GRAHAM: I've decided that that personal faith is private and I will not discuss it with the public.

TERENCE SMITH: Front runners Bush and Gore also meld religion and politics by endorsing the role of faith-based organizations as conduits for government assistance to the poor. And as a matter of practical politics, the evangelical vote to expected to be important in key battleground states, like Iowa and South Carolina.

TERENCE SMITH: More on religion and politics now from our regional commentators. Patrick McGuigan of the "Daily Oklahoman," Cynthia Tucker of the "Atlanta Constitution," Bob Kittle of the "San Diego Union Tribune," and Lee Cullum of the "Dallas Morning News." Joining them is Jane Eisner of the "Philadelphia Inquirer". Welcome to you all.

Cynthia Tucker, how comfortable are you with this overt discussion of religion in the presidential campaign?

CYNTHIA TUCKER: I'm uncomfortable with it, Terry. And let me be clear, I would never suggest that religious faith have no role in public life. But let's remember the context here. This is a presidential campaign. And I'm always a little skeptical about what candidates say in the course of a political campaign. What we see here is most of the major candidates with the exception of Bill Bradley, going out of their way to very publicly profess their commitment to Christianity when they know that the majority of the voters in this country, if they affiliate themselves with any religion at all, the vast majority of voters affiliate themselves with Christianity. So all they're doing is pandering here and they're not taking any risk. It's not as if there is a Jewish candidate professing his belief in Judaism or a Muslim candidate professing his faith in Islam. Again, these are all candidates professing their faith in what is the major religion in this country. And it seems to me that this is an issue that should concern sincere Christians.

TERENCE SMITH: Pat McGuigan, is it pandering or appropriate commentary?

PATRICK McGUIGAN: Well, I think a degree of skepticism is probably healthy. But certainly wouldn't want to border into being cynical about these public professions of faith. In fact I think voters are interested in this kind of thing; a person's faith, the way they deal with their spiritual life, with their friends, neighbors can family, is a vital aspect of their character. It shows their philosophy of life. It shows a recognition -- for that matter -- of the limits of politics, or a philosophy in terms of guiding us. Faith is a vital component of human existence. Our rights, millions of us believe, our rights are natural. They are given to us by God not by the state. And so a recognition of a higher power of God and in this country in particular, a recognition of the Christian tradition is, I think, a healthy thing. And that doesn't preclude others that don't share that tradition from participating in the process. I think people are interested in knowing more about candidates for President and there's a particular hunger for moral leadership right now, and I'm watching like everybody else not cynically but a bit skeptically of the protestation or the professions of faith by the various candidates.

TERENCE SMITH: All right. Jane Eisner, where do you come down on this?

JANE EISNER: Well, I also, of course, as a journalist share some skepticism. But I think it's important for voters to be able to make full judgments about values and the perceptions that the candidates have and that they would bring in this case to the White House. You know, I wasn't comfortable listening to the comments of George Bush and Gary Bauer and Orrin Hatch. But, you know what -- that was important information for me to have, because if I was uncomfortable listening to them, then perhaps it make me question what their motivations are. So, I'm not sorry they said that, in fact, I'm glad because it gave me as a voter some information in terms of how I can eventually evaluate them.

TERENCE SMITH: Why were you uncomfortable?

JANE EISNER: Well, because for one thing, as I'm not a Christian, and so I wonder how those individuals as President would govern a multi-cultural, multi-religious state. Also I don't quite understand what the idea would be in terms of Jesus as a political figure, and how that would affect someone's way of governing and doing policy.

TERENCE SMITH: Bob Kittle, what's your view?

ROBERT KITTLE: Well, I think Jane has raised a good issue here. But I think the discussion today about religion is very different than it has been in the past. And I'm old enough to remember the 1960 primary when John Kennedy went to West Virginia and became, and was elected in a heavily Protestant state. And what he really was working against was anti-Catholic bigotry - not so much trying to suppress a discussion of religion in our political life. So I think it's very important that these issues be discussed. Yes, I think we have to be skeptical about the motives of politicians in this area, but I think they are reflecting in part a desire in the country for stronger moral values and a recognition that religion plays a big role in our moral fiber, and that somehow religion can contribute to the -- to solving some of the social pathologies that we are afflicted with. So I don't think there's anything to be alarmed about here. I think in general, it flows in line with the history of this nation. After all, the first settlers on these shores were motivated by religion to come here. I'm reminded of Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address where he made a very public plea to God, to a just God, to assist in binding up the nation's wounds. I don't think we need to be concerned about candidates who express their personal views or for that matter invoke the name of God from time to time. Yes, we have to understand the context, but in general, I don't think this is anything to be concerned about.

TERENCE SMITH: Lee Cullum, how did you feel; how did you react when you heard those quotes?

LEE CULLUM: Well, Terry, I want to begin by saying that I don't want to see religion divorced from our public life. I don't think we would be true to ourselves or the people if we did that. We are one nation under God. But Bob Kittle was talking about the founding fathers, and Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute had what I thought a very good piece in the "New York Times" about this, pointing out that the founding fathers did indeed invoke God and foaled religion into their public discourse. But they did it very carefully. Think about the Declaration of Independence: all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. "By their Creator" is a carefully chosen phrase. It embraces the deism of Jefferson himself; it embraces the Methodists down in Georgia, the Baptists up in Rhode Island, the Congregationalists in Massachusetts, the Anglicans in Virginia, the Jewish and Catholic communities in Baltimore. I mean no criticism of any of the candidates in this race -- certainly not George W. Bush who is very well thought of here in Texas as you might imagine. But I do hope they will think carefully when they're speaking to a broad public audience - that they will think about trying to find common ground as possible especially on issue as sensitive as religion. The important purpose of a great leader, I think, is to create community. And that is done by seeking common ground. I think if they're speaking to specific congregations, then, of course, it's appropriate to be more specific in what they have to say about religion.

TERENCE SMITH: Cynthia Tucker, what do you think explains this discussion this year? Why is it coming up so forcefully in this campaign?

CYNTHIA TUCKER: Well, I think there are a couple of things going on here. As we heard earlier, evangelical Christians will play a very important role particularly in the GOP primary. I think in George W. Bush's case -- and I'm not saying that his religious values are insincere. What I am saying is, that he is pandering to a certain segment of the voting public by making those professions of faith so publicly. And I think in his case, the appeal is directly to conservative Christians who may not think that he is true enough to their values. In the case of Al Gore, I think it is something very different. Al Gore is doing all he can, I think, to distinguish himself from Bill Clinton who many view as a very immoral President. But think the important thing to remember is, if asked, Bill Clinton also would make a very public profession of his Christian faith, he can quote the Bible with the best of them. He goes to church regularly. So I'm not at all convinced that moral leadership flows from a public profession of Christian faith.

TERENCE SMITH: Pat McGuigan, how much of this is politics? How much of is it genuine discussion of religion?

PATRICK McGUIGAN: I think it is in many ways in the four square tradition of American politics and culture. I think much of what Cynthia just said, not necessarily her first comment, but what she just said, has a lot of merit to it. I do believe that the separation that people have made between personal life or personal behavior and one's political philosophy is a little bit artificial, and that there is an important nexus, there needs to be consistency there. The founding generation of our country certainly in various ways evoked not only the Creator, but very specifically Almighty God. Jefferson referred to the fact that he trembled for the country when he reflected that God is just, that he was fearful of judgment if our society, of our culture didn't live up to its best promises -- in the Great Awakening before the Civil War, in the abolitionist movement before the Civil War, in more modern times the civil rights movement. Right now, in terms of social justice on the more liberal end of the spectrum and in the pro life movement on the conservative end of the spectrum people very much motivated by religious faith are very involved in our politics and they're going to be looking to all these candidates for cues as to how they feel about these important issues.

TERENCE SMITH: Jane Eisner, there is of course another important American political tradition, which is the separation of church and state. Is this in your view an erosion of that?

JANE EISNER: No, I don't think discussion is erosion of that. But I agree with what Lee said. We have to be looking to see that these candidates are very careful in this discussion. It's not just what they say in terms of their own beliefs as important as that information is, but really what they would do if they were elected to office. It's clear that there's a growing awareness that faith-based institutions have a lot to offer to combat social ills, particularly in a city like Philadelphia. But I think we have to craft those kind of partnerships with government and with the private sector in faith-based institutions very carefully to protect the rights of the secular society that we have, and in particular, also to protect the rights of very good, moral Americans who may not profess a particular faith.

TERENCE SMITH: Bob Kittle, of course, the religious component is there in arguments over school vouchers, over various things. So, it goes beyond just the personal profession of religion or religious views, does it not?

ROBERT KITTLE: No, it certainly does, Terry. And I think part of what we are seeing is a refining of how we interpret the First Amendment and how we structure that wall that divides church from state. And I think over the last 30 years or so we have had a very, very secular approach to all of our problems. And I think now we're looking at whether religion may not have some role in solving our problems such as the problem in our schools. Private schools, whether they are parochial or private, seem to do a better job often in educating our children than public schools. We have to ask as the courts are being asked all the time to settle the issue of whether it is in accordance with the First Amendment, with the separation of church and state for government to pay for students to go to private schools, parochial schools instead of the public institutions. I think we're going to see this Supreme Court redefine that a bit as it's trying also to grapple with the issue, for example, of whether it is proper in accordance with the First Amendment to a allow high school students to offer a prayer before a football game. And I think the pendulum is moving back toward a greater accommodation of religion and faith than we have seen in the last decade or two or three.

TERENCE SMITH: Lee Cullum, do you agree with that? Did you think in part the public is asking for this sort of comment from its presidential candidates?

LEE CULLUM: Yes, in a way I do think so, Terry. You know, Pat McGuigan referred to the Great Awakenings. Irving Crystal is the one, I think, who said, we're having a great awakening right now. And it's occurring with a lot of feverish activity and feeling. It's accompanied also by a retreat from science, a retreat from reason. Reason has grown much too cold in the 20th century, a retreat to mysticism. Now, I have to say, these candidates are reflecting this culture. I would add, let's remember, they were asked, kind of a tough question, your favorite philosopher, your favorite thinker, a lot of candidates don't have that on their mind. And that is what the questioner knew. I would have to say that anybody running for office in this country if he or she read "Plato's Republic" every day had better not admit it except in Massachusetts or election would be impossible. We areanti-intellectual in many ways -- so, I think we must accept that these candidates are responding to the culture and are reflective of the culture. And it's a moment that needs to be handled with great delicacy and tact and care.

TERENCE SMITH: All right. Thank you all very much. I'm afraid we're out of time. Thank you very much and Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

FOCUS - POLITICAL WRAP

JIM LEHRER: And that brings us to some Friday night analysis of the Presidential campaign and other matters political from Shields and Brooks, syndicated columnist Mark Shields and the Weekly Standard's senior editor, David Brooks, who is substituting tonight for Paul Gigot.

Mark, the two presidential nomination races, where does the Republican race stand as we speak and we're about to go into January and the real thing actually begins?

MARK SHIELDS: The end of what Arthur Hadley called the invisible primary, the first year before the voting begins. Jim, I'd have to say that George W. Bush, in the press he's gone from wire to wire from -- a year ago he's been at 52/53 percent in every match up against the Democrats against Al Gore consistently twelve or thirteen points ahead, all through the way, he's led his own field. The surprise of course is that it's John McCain. It wasn't Pat Buchanan who won the New Hampshire, Dan Quayle, the vice president, the wife of the last presidential nominee. It's John McCain, the first time candidate outside of Arizona who's the only one that's given - some eight or nine points ahead - according to the most recent surveys in New Hampshire.

JIM LEHRER: Generally speaking, David, would you say Bush is still the one to win?

DAVID BROOKS: You'd have to put your money on him, but McCain really is moving. He's eight or nine points ahead of New Hampshire, and the thing that's happened recently is in South Carolina, which is the next state, he's showing real movement, again not likely to win but increasingly likely, and in Michigan, which is the next big one, there was always this theory of the Bush firewall where they'd stop McCain. Well, the firewall keeps moving back and back and back, Michigan, Virginia, and the weird thing about the Bush campaign is they don't know how to beat McCain; they expected the attack to come from the right, from Steve Forbes. How do you beat a Republican who's running on campaign finance reform? There's been no such creature before, and they really don't know how to do it; it's like fighting a dodo bird.

JIM LEHRER: But going through the list that Mark just did - the candidates who were in - and now, there's McCain, who's the one-who were in and now are out - now here's McCain, who is the one who's really giving Bush the race. Does that surprise you at all? Did you expect one of these other guys to --

DAVID BROOKS: I thought there'd be a conservative or top two, and this is deep and lasting. You know, I grew up - National Review - conservative movement. We had a sense of teamwork. When you went around the world, there were other movement conservatives you were with. Now we're not talking to each other anymore. The conservative movement, as we knew it, from National Review through Goldwater, Reagan, and Gingrich has just collapsed this year. And that's a lasting influence on American politics.

JIM LEHRER: Do you see it the same way?

MARK SHIELDS: Yes. I was surprised that there was not a candidate who emerged from the cultural conservative side, the Republican Party that produced Pat Buchanan in the past, someone where people could really get excited. Jim, any movement gets in trouble when it starts looking for heretics instead of converts. And I think that's what's happened to the conservative movement; they're now looking for heretics. People look straight from the orthodoxy rather than welcoming and recruiting in new members.

JIM LEHRER: Do you think that's the problem?

DAVID BROOKS: I think that's part of it, though there was also the problem of success, you know, the conservative movement was built as an opposition movement - oppose Communism - oppose liberalism. Communism is gone; liberalism is not what it was. And then it became sealed off in itself - a lot of corruption, a lot of egomania, Newt Gingrich, and then the good people are still around - they're still conservative - but that sense of cohesive movement is all gone.

JIM LEHRER: Now, on the Democratic side, Al Gore versus Bill Bradley, where does that stand tonight?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, again, Gore in New Hampshire, the first in the nation primary, the most recent survey there has Bradley up beyond the margin of error in the polls, some ten or twelve points ahead of Al Gore. Big surprise, Jim. I think you have to look at both parties and say the two establishment candidates, George Bush and Al Gore, backed by more money, the big names in the party, the presidents, governors, and all the rest, find as their challengers two candidates - and serious challengers - John McCain and Bill Bradley, who are riding an issue. We've had nothing but unearned cynicisms, voices tell us, nobody votes on it; campaign finance reform -- my goodness - it's only a concern of some Looney tunes editorialists and some sensible shoes wearing League of Women Voters ladies. And now you've got two Senators who have defined themselves - Bill Bradley and John McCain - on this issue who are the challengers to the money-backed candidates. And I think that Bill Bradley has to be considered certainly a serious challenger - even more serious challenger to Al Gore - than is John McCain or George Bush.

JIM LEHRER: You're nodding.

DAVID BROOKS: The rules really maybe have changed. You know, we always think the good government types always say negative advertising doesn't work, the people are sick of negative advertising, and then every year it works, except for maybe this year because Gore has unleashed a torrent of negative attacks on Bill Bradley - called him a quitter - attacked his Medicare - attacked Bosnia, all sorts of attacks. Bradley's favorables in New Hampshire are up 8 percent. It could be for the first time that the conventional negative attacks that always seem to work are not working. And that could be (A) an anti-Clinton thing and (B) could be attacks - a scatter shot; when George Bush attacked Michael Dukakis, all the attacks had one theme: the guy's a pointy headed liberal from this weird state of Massachusetts. But the Gore attacks don't have that single unified theme.

JIM LEHRER: What about the point that's been made that once the Democratic race became a two-person race that there was just so much built-in anti-Clintonism, anti-whoever is in power -- as President - whatever - that Gore was going to have a problem - it's not so much positive Bradley - it's just that?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, I think that's rear view mirror wisdom. At the time, you recall, Al Gore had a 50-point led over Bill Bradley, and Bill Bradley had this rather unorthodox campaign, going around talking to people, taking their questions, I mean, it really was a living - and it arrives in the polls. The Gore people began by denying his existence. Now, it's a twice a day. It's an AMattack, a PM attack on Bill Bradley. He's double parking outside an orphanage - I mean, there's just - they've gone from that, and I think that there was an advantage, no question, when you get just one candidate in a race, whether you dislike Al Gore or whether he was too loyal to Bill Clinton or not loyal enough.

JIM LEHRER: That's the point. In a general way, David, here we sit, as I said. We're about to go into the real thing; people are going to actually start voting here pretty soon. Has this process up till now been good for democracy? What's your overview about it?

DAVID BROOKS: I think it's been quite a good, interesting election. One of the striking things is how many people are watching these debates; they're getting big audiences, those cable channels. And the other thing is the money and the way the money is affected. I don't mean the money in the campaign but the money in the country. You know, in Iowa, the unemployment rate is 1.8 percent. In New Hampshire, it's 2.1 percent. Hubert Humphrey used to go to bed dreaming of numbers like that. And yet Al Gore is not getting credit for that. The White House candidate is not getting credit for that, and I think that wealth, that tremendous wealth explosion, is sort of coloring the whole campaign, affecting it in different ways, in very surprising ways.

JIM LEHRER: In fact, what do you mean, people are just so happy, so complacent, that they don't really credit anybody for it?

DAVID BROOKS: There's not gratitude. I think what I sense in the electorate is that - an idea we're so rich are we going to be corrupted by all this wealth, and there is sort of a rush to character - the guys who seem a little heavier, a little weighed down-- who can hold us down amidst this NASDAQ affluence we've got.

JIM LEHRER: Rush to character?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, as Peter Hart, the pollster, put it, to run for national office you'd better have a telling story to tell. And this year - I agree with David - there is no overriding issue, there's no defining issue, there's no war or peace or a bad economy to -- and voters have tended, Jim, to look more at the character, who's got a story to tell? John McCain has got a story to tell that is truly compelling, and it's moved - you know - dozens - and hundreds and thousands of people in this campaign. Bill Bradley has an interesting life story to tell, and that - that's sort of been the interaction that I think people have gone more not to issues than certainly to biography and sort of the sense of who these people are.

JIM LEHRER: Okay. Well, we'll see what happens from now on. David, Mark, thank you both very much. Have a good holiday.

FOCUS - ELDERCARE

JIM LEHRER: Now, a group of friends respond to the dilemma many families face: How to care for the elderly. It is reported by Susan Dentzer of our health unit, a partnership with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

CAROL CUMMINGS WARNER: You have to drink all the water you can. That's good.

SUSAN DENTZER: Just a few days before Thanksgiving, Carol Warner's 84- year-old mother, a stroke victim, landed back in the hospital with severe dehydration.

CAROL WARNER: That's the best thing you can do is drink water.

SUSAN DENTZER: For several days, Carol and her siblings thought their mother was near death. But then Augusta Cummings recovered.

CAROL WARNER: The minute you heard us dividing up the furniture the other day you woke up.

SUSAN DENTZER: Now Cummings has moved to a place where she's likely to live out the rest of her life, a Northern Virginia nursing home. Her daughter says she's improving.

CAROL WARNER: The main crisis issue we had to deal with was severe dehydration. Her skin was so dry that she was scratching at her arms and her legs herself. And now we're trying to get those wounds healed. And when she was in the hospital she was having little mini- seizures and would throw herself against the bed rails, which exacerbated that problem.

SUSAN DENTZER: Even with her mother getting excellent care from the home's professional staff, Carol Warner finds looking after her needs is an all-consuming job. In that, she's much like the other 25 million family caregivers in the United States.

CAROL WARNER: See, there are the fish, over there.

SUSAN DENTZER: Sometimes those families are in effect extended ones, like Carol Warner's 13 longtime friends. All were graduates of the class of 1962 at Yorktown High School in Arlington, Virginia. Back then, they were all members of the same school service organization. After graduation, they stayed in close touch, making sure to get together at least once a year, says group member Joan Loftis.

JOAN BERKEY LOFTIS: We talked about other things: Getting married, having children. But then more recently we began to discuss our elderly parents and other relatives that we were supporting.

SUSAN DENTZER: As grandparents and then parents grew disabled or died, the 14 friends found themselves facing similar struggles. Linda Roger's mother had Alzheimer's. Brenda Vieregg's mother died a protracted death from cancer. More and more, they talked about the common problems they faced, including dealing with their own sense of loss, says group member Linda Veatch.

LINDA STALEY VEATCH: When we would get together and different people were talking about their parents so much. And someone-- and it may have been Linda-- at one point said, you know, this is what we talk about all the time now; maybe we ought to write a book about it.

SUSAN DENTZER: So they did, in numerous sessions around Linda Rogers's dining room table, and through a frenzy of emails sent back and forth across the country. "The 14 Friends' Guide to Eldercaring" was published earlier this year by Capitol Books.

CAROL WARNER: It amazes a lot of people. They say, "how in the world did 14 women agree on anything, much less a whole book?"

SUSAN DENTZER: But they did agree on fundamental issues like the need to preserve the dignity of elderly parents or to share the care-giving role. And in so doing, they waded into what is likely to become a major national issue in years to come, says Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel of the National Institutes of Health.

DR. EZEKIAL EMANUEL: As the baby boom generation ages, by 2030, one out of every five Americans is going to be over 65. And a significant portion of them are going to need assistance. Secondly, each family, as we know, the birth rate has declined, so each family has fewer children. So that responsibility for the elderly is going to fall on fewer people.

SUSAN DENTZER: And according to a major new survey of caregivers of the dying that Emanuel oversaw, the preponderance of them are likely to be women.

DR. EZEKIAL EMANUEL: Three quarters of the spouses who provided care were women, three quarters of the children; it was the daughter, not the son. If you look at siblings, it was the sister, not the brother. Even among friends it tended to be women, not men friends.

SUSAN DENTZER: The 14 friends know these statistics because they live them.

WOMAN: It isn't always fair.

WOMAN: It isn't fair.

WOMAN: No one said life is fair.

SUSAN DENTZER: The friends' intimate experience with care giving allowed them to settle quickly on topics for their book. One of the most important was the frustration that care giving brings. Linda Rogers learned that in dealing with her mother's gradual mental deterioration before she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

LINDA GILBERTSON ROGERS: There is no way you're going to avoid frustration. And you just have to find ways of dealing with it. We had... my mother would call me on the phone and say, "Linda, you've taken my keys." She would repeat this every ten seconds. The phone would ring again: There she would be telling me I had taken her keys.

SUSAN DENTZER: What's often required in situations like this, the friends agreed, was a technique that they called breaking the code.

ALICE BECKLEY MacDONALD: They say this, but what are they really saying? So everything that is a problem, let's take this and say, beneath it all what are they really saying?

SUSAN DENTZER: The phrase is shorthand for trying to understand the loved one's worries and then looking for simple solutions. And that's just what Linda Rogers and her siblings did.

LINDA GILBERTSON ROGERS: We just got all kinds of keys, and we put the keys all over the house. So when she would call, I would say, "go look in the drawer. They're right there." (Laughs) So she could find the keys and deal with that in an instant.

SUSAN DENTZER: Another subject the friends emphasized was the need for sharing the caring of a disabled or dying loved one. While her mother was dying of pancreatic cancer, Judy McLeod commuted for several hours each weekend to help her father and aunt provide care.

JUDY SHERWOOD McLEOD: Each family has to figure out a different scheme of how it can happen, because there is usually one person who seems like they get it all. And they have to be able to get help from the siblings. And that is not always easy. Some of the people haven't been natural caregivers, some people live longer distances. So I think what we want to say is this has to be something that is out on the table, that people talk about, how can we share this?

SUSAN DENTZER: The friends had other advice to pass along, as well. They stress the importance of finding practical ways to preserve a loved one's dignity, even as he or she struggles with embarrassing or debilitating loss of function.

BRENDA JONES VIEREGG: My mother-in-law had to deal with incontinence for a long time before she died, and I think actually, it is a problem that many, many older women have. And it is probably one of the biggest thieves of dignity. It is a reason that elderly women often refuse to visit their friends, to go out, to do anything social, because they are tremendously embarrassed by it. There are a lot of products on the market that can help, things like deodorizers in rooms, clothes that have Velcro fastenings instead of buttons. When you are going out, make sure that you will be sitting in a restaurant at a table that is very near a bathroom. Those kinds of things that you can think of ahead of time will really help protect your elder's dignity.

SUSAN DENTZER: In the book, you use the phrase, "guilt is a four-letter word."

LINDA STALEY VEATCH: What we mean by it being a four-letter word is that guilt is so nonproductive. I mean it can totally incapacitate you. It makes you not make the right decisions. And you have to really ask yourself, if I'm doing everything that I can, then you shouldn't let anyone else make you feel guilty about what you can't accomplish.

SUSAN DENTZER: And that means, the friends say, never say never-- including vows not ever to place a loved one in a nursing home. You need to stay flexible, because with eldercaring, the only constant is change.

CAROL CUMMINGS WARNER: I don't feel any guilt right now for putting my mother in this long-term care facility, even though every older person's fear in life-- my mother included, very specifically-- that they don't want to go to what is a nursing home because it's like the end of the line. And yet we are just calling it long-term care. And this is the best we can do so we are not going to feel guilty. We have to do this for her to get the right care, the proper care.

SUSAN DENTZER: Finally, the friends say, it's inevitable that eldercaring will unleash a flood of emotions. Brenda Vieregg recalls her mother's illness and death.

BRENDA JONES VIEREGG: I still get weepy when I think about it. My mother was my best friend, and it was a lesson to me that the reason eldercaring is so difficult is that, besides the physical work which we all can do when you're caring for somebody, it involves the longest relationship of our whole life. And so you bring all of the emotions of that relationship into the caring process.

SUSAN DENTZER: These messages have struck a chord with thousands of people who've bought and read the 14 friends' book.

WOMAN: You need one. in the house.

SPOKESPERSON: I need one.

WOMAN: Yeah, you sure do.

WOMAN: I should get it. Thank you.

WOMAN: Do all 14 sign it?

SUSAN DENTZER: Although they've become caregiving experts, many of the 14 friends keep the book close at hand to reread when the going gets rough. Carol Warner did that during her mother's recent hospitalization, even as her friends rallied around to provide support. Many of them recalled Mrs. Cummings fondly from their younger days.

WOMAN: If there is such a thing as a Virginia lady, it is Mrs. Cummings.

WOMAN: I think so, too.

LINDA GILBERTSON ROGERS: One of the really fun things that I remember about Mrs. Cummings, I was at their house as usual, and she was downstairs. This was the ultimate lady. She was changing the filter in the furnace and she looked at me and she said, "Linda, never learn how to do this." (Laughter) "Once you learn how, it's your job."

CAROL WARNER: And she probably had on a silk blouse.

SUSAN DENTZER: How do you feel now about Carol going through this with her mother?

WOMAN: Proud of her. Very proud.

WOMAN: It's hard. (Laughter)

SUSAN DENTZER: Why proud?

WOMAN: Because she is doing it with such love.

BRENDA JONES VIEREGG: It makes me proud to have carol for a friend and the rest, the other 13 of this group. It is the hardest thing that I've ever done, and I think everybody in this group feels that way.

CAROL CUMMINGS WARNER: Mother, you want to put this under the tree? We'll put it right here. We'll put one here.

SUSAN DENTZER: The "14 Friends' Guide to Eldercaring" will be published in paperback next spring.

CAROL CUMMINGS WARNER: Do you? All right.

CONVERSATION

JIM LEHRER: Now, two millennium takes: The first comes in another in our series of conversations with authors of recent books or articles. Elizabeth Farnsworth has tonight's.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Historian Robert Conquest has written a new book "Reflections on a Ravaged Century." It is the culmination of a lifetime researching end observing the ideology he holds responsible for the mass murders of the past 100 years. Conquest has written 17 books on Soviet history, politics and international affairs. He's also a poet and novelist. A former British diplomat, he's now a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Thank you for being with us. Ravaged is a very strong word. What do you see as you look back?

ROBERT CONQUEST: Well, we've seen the ravages committed by the Nazis and Communists in the huge scale. I mean, millions have killed but in this book I'm not so much concerned to present the actual ravages as to how they came about, how people who went in to perform these horrible operations, what motivated them. Where did they pick up these awful ideas?

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: It is ideas, ideas you are exactly what you blame for these ravages.

ROBERT CONQUEST: With a capital "I" these things not ordinary idea like you and I would have but an overwhelming idea that we've got everything right, we know the answers for everything, and we can do anything to enforce it.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Tell us more about that. How did this happen that ideas like Communism, like Naziism became so obsessive that they led to the mass murders?

ROBERT CONQUEST: I think once you accept that you have the answer to everything, you can do anything to bring it about because your enemies are trying to stop you, are enemies of reason, of truth of everything -- enemies of the future. You represent the people, you represent the nation, you represent everything that is good and that entitles you to destroy the bad people. This is fairly obvious, the type of looking at it. But how did it possess intellectuals? Who are the Typhoid Marys who brought this awful mental affliction into people's lives, into movements and things? That's what was interesting to me - basically - I mean, I naturally develop what they did.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And there have been ideas, which were held obsessively and dangerously for many, many centuries. Bu you go back to the French Revolution and point to it as -- at the beginning of the ideas your most concerned about, right?

ROBERT CONQUEST: It's that time when they first got the motion that you would have a perfect society and you can bring it about by terror and that -- they did both -- the people and the nation, the French Revolution. The nation went to the Nazis, you may say, and the people went to the Marxists. This is putting it crudely. But it's really -- it did affect the whole intellectual class. It's a mental laziness that you have the answers and really study any further than that and how did it happen? I do go into the sort of people who --

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Tell us about that? Why did it affect so many people?

ROBERT CONQUEST: Well, it's very attractive in some ways. People do want answers; this is natural, but the ordinary man in the street didn't think he got all full answers. He knew he didn't - it was the intellectual, creating the single, perfect answer and time and time again this has happened.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You use a term that is -- Orwell's term actually -- that I like "the lure of the profound" -- what do you mean by that?

ROBERT CONQUEST: Well, that I use because in the book I'm trying to avoid anything plotted and incomprehensible or referring to things that nobody is going to be interested in. I tried to keep it like in Orwell's terms, clear, and making the points and illustrating with many examples -- not just examples of horror or stupidity but striking ones.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: But the lure of the profound is also one of the things that at least from what I've observed, drives intellectuals into these totalitarian ideas, right?

ROBERT CONQUEST: Yes.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: They want the deepest, most scientific, most modern and most profound idea to be theirs?

ROBERT CONQUEST: I think they think it's modern, that counts as profound. There are many old political ideas which are more profound in a real sense. But I think what Orwell meant by profound was not to try and produce a huge, complex ideology for anybody, because all the ideologies were quite complicated. But they were accepted on trust, it's been proved by a German doctor and Marx has proved something intellectual - just accepted it. He didn't read "Das Capital."

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You, for many, many years, before other people were pointing or would accept what was happening in the Soviet Union, were writing about what you knew was happening in the Soviet Union. Much of what you said or some of what you said has been proven true by documents released since the falling of the wall. Do you feel like you're vindicated?

ROBERT CONQUEST: Well, in a sense. I always thought I was vindicated anyway. I thought the evidence was perfectly clear. Now I feel certainly that the people who are still to some extent taking the view that Soviet union -- that Stalin wasn't so bad. It hasn't actually gone yet. Certainly what we said is accepted everywhere now on the whole, but not among certain sections of the intellectuals.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: So even though you think the evidence exists there are still people who don't believe that Stalin was responsible for the death of millions of people?

ROBERT CONQUEST: Well, they parley it away; it was really not the important thing, he industrialized the country, which in fact was being done anyway - like they did with Hitler. It wasn't Hitler, some academics say, it was the machinery. It was the institutions that did it. Of course not, it was Hitler and the institution he created.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: So, do you think that there are still in our intellectual life right now, ideas that are like - or remnants of ideas that are still quite dangerous?

ROBERT CONQUEST: Well, I think there are ideas that given much more scope and importance than they are willow wisps on a dangerous marsh. I would include the idea of the European Community, for example. I mean, Europe is not really, cannot be a nation state. So it's a big thing, horrendous bureaucracy. And it can't hang together. But that's nothing like the totalitarian ideas, it's still an idea with a rather small, capital letter, which is distorting European history and the West --

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What else do you see right now that worries you for the next century?

ROBERT CONQUEST: Well, we're nearly there. Russia, of course, is in a terrible state. And we don't know what's happening today in Chechnya for one thing, in Moscow. And it doesn't look very nice, and that could cause real trouble. But I still think that -

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Expand on that, what do you mean?

ROBERT CONQUEST: Well, it could spill over into the caucuses, into Azerbaijan or somewhere. But I still think that real trouble is getting the real unity of the democratic countries which will be able to face the troubles together, based, of course, on American alliance, and be able to cope with the really rogue states. There are states worse than Russia that don't have much arms, but enough to cause trouble.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You're talking about --

ROBERT CONQUEST: North Korea. Iraq. There are rogue states which have to be somehow accommodated or prevented from doing -- it's a dangerous situation.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: I like the way you write about what makes the rule of law and democracy work in countries like England, the United States, New Zealand. You talk about the need for compromise about sort of humility in the face of our own limitations. Tell us a little more about that.

ROBERT CONQUEST: Yes, I think that sometimes people say the democrats are short-sighted and muddle headed. But I think you want to be a bit short sighted. It's better than having a long sight into a nonexistent future. You may see a certain way ahead. And muddle-headedness means taking -- admitting several views that must be worked together somehow, adjusted. I think this openness of society which prevails in the West or part of West is why we're ahead of them, why the closed societies couldn't cope. Their brains were going.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And you don't know -- I don't know if apathy is the right word - but you don't mind that some people don't care about politics. You think that's really healthy. If everybody cares too much, it can be dangerous, is that the right -

ROBERT CONQUEST: I think that happened in ancient Greece -- all politics, fighting in the streets -- whereas Rome, they had terrific troubles in early Rome, but finally it was settled legally -- the rise of the Plebs -- after endless trouble, because they had some sort of legal system which the Greeks didn't.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And we shouldn't worry in this country if not everybody votes because it's a sign that things are going well, do you think?

ROBERT CONQUEST: Well, I think it's a good thing if informed voters got well informed and fair number of them voted. But I don't think it's a bad sign if 20 percent or 30 percent or 40 percent don't vote.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Well, thank you very much for being with us.

ROBERT CONQUEST: Very great to be here.

ESSAY - STORIES FOR THE MILLENNIUM

JIM LEHRER: Millennium take number two: It's the opening essay in a series on the end of the century written by our five regular essayists. Tonight's is by Roger Rosenblatt.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: In the final days of the Warsaw ghetto, the Jews imprisoned there had no doubt that they were going to die. They had seen others taken away to the extermination camps, and they were dying on their own of starvation and disease. Still, in those last days, the people wrote stories: Fragments of autobiography, diary entries, poems, letters, accounts of events. They wrote them on scraps of paper and rolled them into the crevices of the walls of the ghetto. They knew that they were done for. They felt certain that the Nazis had taken over the world; that if their little writings were ever discovered, it would be by the Nazis, who would laugh at their puny efforts and toss the scraps of paper away. Why did they do it? Why bother to tell a story that no one would hear? And why make the telling of that story their last act on earth? Because it is in us to do so, like a biological fact -- because story-telling is what the human animal does, to progress, to learn to live with one another. Horses run, beavers build dams; people tell stories. Chaucer's pilgrims go back and forth from Canterbury and feel compelled to pass the time by telling tales. The Ancient Mariner, crazy as a loon, grabs the wedding guest and forces him to listen to an incredible yarn. The birth of Jesus, the onset of all of Christianity, is called the greatest story ever told, and it is told several ways. In the Book of Job, the messenger says, "and I only alone am escaped to tell thee," just as Ishmael says at the end of "Moby Dick," says, "and I alone am left to tell the tale." Shakespeare said that life is a story, "a tale told by an idiot." But life the way we live it-is not the tale, but the telling of the tale. There is a story within us, and that story is us, which we tell and we tell until we get it right. In this millennium year, people are making guesses as to what will happen. The only thing certain is that they will make guesses as to what will happen: They'll talk about it, they'll tell stories about it. We like to commend ourselves as a rational species; that lies exposed all the time. But we are a narrative species. Our brains are formed to bind and blend information.

SPOKESPERSON: People on the sidewalk. Oh, Joseph, you know that animal, don't you?

ROGER ROSENBLATT: As children, we learn language to tell stories that are already in us, not the other way around. And we spend the rest of our lives telling, learning, repeating, making sense of stories, which is our way of making sense of us. A law trial, for instance, is a competition of stories. One story is told by the prosecution, one by the defense. The jury chooses which story it likes better. Businesses rely on stories to make money -- stories of former successes and failures direct decisions to buy, sell, merge, expand, downsize, go public. See the story of Big Mac. See the story of the World Wrestling Federation. See the story of Martha Stewart. It's a real good thing. In medicine, the patient tells the story of his or her symptoms. The doctor heeds the story to know what to do. Then the doctor tells another story, of therapy. The doctor tells the patient, this will happen and that will happen, until, one hopes, the story has a happy ending. Everything we do is a story: History, poetry, painting, sports, science, gossip, ourselves, of course. And it is a story told again and again. We tell the same stories over and over, of our strivings for heroism, for honor, for profit, for social progress, and understanding and sympathy and power -- most of all, for love. In one way or another, every story is a love story. Boy meets girl. Boy meets boy. Boy and girl seek bliss. We yearn-- how we yearn-- for improvement. That's what evolution is all about-- refinement, improvement. And evolution itself is a doozie of a story: Little animals beget bigger animals until one emerges with something to say. What do you have to tell me? What do I have to tell you? We stare at each other over the air of the years, and reach to tell the story of a lifetime. We did this thousands of years ago, and, with luck, we will do so thousands of years hence, millennium after millennium, once upon a time. I'm Roger Rosenblatt.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major news stories this Christmas Eve: Hijackers seized an Indian Airlines plane with 189 people on board. It eventually flew to the United Arab Emirates. And crowds gathered in Bethlehem and Vatican City to celebrate Christmas. We'll see you on line and again here Monday evening. Have a nice holiday weekend. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and merry Christmas.