The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the tonight the work and mission of the Presidential Commission on Race as seen by two of its leaders, John Hope Franklin and Angela Oh; an interview with three Americans aboard the space station Mir; another side to campaign finance reform, that of the ACLU and the Christian Coalition; and some thoughts about the artist Roy Lichtenstein, who died yesterday. It all follows our summary of the news this Tuesday. NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: President Clinton today suggested to his Commission on Race that it look at the future, rather than the past. He advised it specifically to study racial issues in schools and in housing. He spoke at a meeting of the commission in Washington, where he also announced grants to help communities enforce equal housing rules. Chairman John Hope Franklin said he welcomed the President's suggestion.

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN: The advisory board has been going along two tracks: one to try to be certain that these shared aspirations and ideals and values are in the forefront; at the same time discovering or trying to find out practical ways, everyday ways of realizing our goals.

JIM LEHRER: President Clinton said he would hold his first town meeting on race relations in December. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. Mr Clinton also led the tributes for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff today. Army General John Shalikashvili retired after 39 years in uniform. The President awarded him the Medal of Freedom. He called it a "bittersweet" occasion.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: This is, frankly, a bittersweet day for me. I am full of pride but also some regret. For the last four years I have counted on Shali for his wisdom, his counsel, his leadership. He has become an exceptional adviser and a good friend, someone I knew I could always depend upon when the lives of our troops and the interests of America were on the line. And I will miss him very much.

JIM LEHRER: Henry Shelton, another army general, is Shalikashvili's successor. The Federal Reserve Board today decided not to raise interest rates. The board's Open Market Committee made the decision at a four-hour closed-door session. That left the interest rate on overnight loans between banks unchanged at 5.5 percent. The committee last raised rates in March. The U.S. Government will continue to operate past the beginning of the new fiscal year at midnight tonight. The Senate today unanimously passed an emergency spending bill to fund operations until October 23rd. The House did the same last night. It was necessary because Congress has passed only three of thirteen appropriations bills. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin today moved to make the Internal Revenue Service more responsive to taxpayers. He said customer service centers would be set up to answer complaints and questions on November 15th, and one Saturday a month thereafter.

ROBERT RUBIN, Treasury Secretary: Our goal is very simple: to build the Internal Revenue Service the American people deserve. The steps we have taken today and all the steps we have taken over the past couple of years are aimed at making sure that the nation's revenues are collected fairly and efficiently.

JIM LEHRER: Earlier in the day President Clinton urged Republicans not to politicize the agency's problems. He said, a taxpayer bill of rights and a modernization board had already improved customer services. But House Speaker Gingrich said the IRS remained hopelessly out of control and should be supervised by an independent board. He spoke at the National Press Club.

REP. NEWT GINGRICH, Speaker of the House: Let's have a board of supervisors who are non-partisan business figures, who know how to run a business, and have the IRS modernized by them and have the IRS budget and the IRS structure run by them. Now, I think that is a very sound step towards a more citizen-oriented, more practical, and better managed Internal Revenue Service.

JIM LEHRER: Gingrich also said he doesn't believe legislation giving the President fast-track trade authority can pass the House. The President wants expanded power to negotiate trade agreements. In the Middle East today Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said the expansion of Jewish housing in the West Bank will continue. Yesterday, Foreign Minister David Levy said in New York Israel would consider a construction timeout sought by the United States. Palestinian officials said peace talks could not resume otherwise. In Washington today State Department Spokesman James Rubin said continued building would jeopardize the final stages of peace talks.

JAMES RUBIN, State Department Spokesman: The final status talks will have a real, real hard time succeeding in the absence of a timeout. We are very clear in our minds that in the absence of a timeout the prospect for success in the final status negotiations would be greatly reduced.

JIM LEHRER: In Algeria 52 members of one family and 32 others were killed in separate raids last night. The Associated Press reported the killings took place in a town 30 miles south of the capital, Algiers. No one claimed responsibility but Muslim militants were suspected. They'd been trying for five and a half years to overthrow the Algerian government and install a regime based on Islamic law. And in the former Yugoslavia today President Milosevic ousted Belgrade's non-Communist mayor. He also dismissed the directors of the city's Independent Television Station. That brought out an estimated 20,000 protesters who were later disbanded by riot police. The abrupt moves by Milosevic rolled back gains made by democracy advocates last winter. After weeks of demonstrations, Milosevic allowed their leader to become mayor of Belgrade. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the race commission, three Americans on Mir, campaign finance reform, and the late Roy Lichtenstein. FOCUS - FACING RACE

JIM LEHRER: Kwame Holman begins our coverage of President Clinton's initiative on race.

KWAME HOLMAN: Today in Washington the President made his first public appearance with his advisory board in June when he appointed the seven scholars, former politicians, and religious and other leaders to advise him on ways to achieve racial reconciliation. Despite criticism, the group has moved slowly. But the President said he was pleased with the board's work thus far.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I think he made a very important beginning by urging that we focus on the education and economic opportunity, things which cut across racial lines that are necessary to bring us together. I also think it's important that we have the facts, so this afternoon I know you're going to hear from noted scientists and demographers who will share their research on our changing population patterns and attitudes on race, and I think that's an important thing. I'm going to have a town hall meeting on this subject on December 2nd. And I will continue to do what I can to support you in reaching out to Americans of all backgrounds and actually discussing this so that we build bridges of mutual understanding and reconciliation. So I look forward to going on with the discussion, and I think maybe the Vice President might like to say a word or two, and then we can go forward.

VICE PRESIDENT AL GORE: I think this initiative, as I said previously, may turn out to be the most important single initiative of your entire presidency because it's obviously so important for our nation. Race is a pervasive, if often unacknowledged, part of every issue, controversy, indeed, conversation in the United States of America. And those who pretend it's not are in danger of deluding themselves and missing important aspects of whatever subject they're trying to deal with. Secondly, however, if it's dealt with openly in the kind of historic national dialogue the President has chartered for our nation and followed up with the kinds of actions that he has recommended and pointed the way to it can be transcended.

KWAME HOLMAN: Board members then took their turns making statements. Linda Chavez Thompson of the AFL- CIO said children will be one bridge to transcending race.

LINDA CHAVEZ-THOMPSON, AFL-CIO: It is almost a very crucial part for this advisory board to bring the young people in to converse about how they will make whatever plans we come forth in a year. We're not going to be around long enough to implement some of those if we don't have the youth of this country involved in the conversation of race because they're going to be the ones that finalize whatever plans we put together.

KWAME HOLMAN: Tom Kean is a former Republican governor of New Jersey.

TOM KEAN, Former New Jersey Governor: I don't know if people in this country really recognize just how important this initiative is. In my state alone we have over a hundred recognized ethnic groups and racial groups. Whether or not this democracy is--I believe--is going to survive and flourish depends how well we are going to live together, how well we can resolve our differences.

KWAME HOLMAN: William Winter was the Democratic governor of Mississippi.

WILLIAM WINTER, Former Mississippi Governor: We live in this very diverse country, increasingly diverse, and yet, there is--there are common values that we all share. And my understanding is that the common value that maybe is most common to all of us is what we want for our children. If every school in America could look like the one where my grandchildren go, I think we would establish these common values in a way that would ensure that we will be one America.

KWAME HOLMAN: President Clinton said integrated schools start with integrated neighborhood and today he announced public and private efforts aimed at combating housing discrimination.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Thank you.

KWAME HOLMAN: And late today, the President's spokesman said the President is unlikely to offer an apology to black Americans on behalf of the nation for slavery or segregation. He said community leaders have not raised the issue with the President, and it has not been an active item of discussion by the advisory board.

JIM LEHRER: Now, the chairman of the advisory board, John Hope Franklin, an Emeritus Professor of History at Duke University; and board member Angela Oh, a Los Angeles attorney, who serves on the Los Angeles Human Relations Commission. Professor Franklin, how would you characterize what was accomplished at this meeting today?

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN, President's Advisory Board on Race: Well, we did a number of things. Not only were we stimulated and inspired by the President, his words, and the words of the Vice President, but we took stock of our staff and its work. We had a number of other persons, specialists in certain fields, psychologists, and demographers, who gave us some picture of, on the one hand, precisely what kind of population we are now and what we can expect in the future, so far as the diversity of our population is concerned. And on the other hand, we had a person who--a specialist who told us a good deal about what people thought of race and what their attitudes were toward the problem of race. And then we had some others who talked about certain psychological problems that were related to the development of the relations between various diverse groups in the country and made suggestions about what we ought to do to shore up our whole effort to improve the climate and to move forward toward reconciliation and peace in the area of race.

JIM LEHRER: Ms. Oh, do you feel that your board is off on the track toward doing something that matters?

ANGELA OH, President's Advisory Board on Race: I really do. I think that it--I've said this many times before--I think it's quite courageous for this administration to take on an issue such as this and to be supportive of an initiative that really takes the American public on a journey that many people have not wanted to take, are resisting taking even privately. We're doing this in a very public way as members of this advisory panel in trying to engage the American people in discussion.

JIM LEHRER: Who's resisting?

ANGELA OH: I think there are segments of our population that don't believe that this is an issue that is--

JIM LEHRER: There is no racial problem?

ANGELA OH: Right. And I've had actually young people tell me this, college-educated people tell me that, you know, this is just not an issue of my generation. It seems to be something that's leftover from the 60's. This is what's been said to me. And I find that really to be a remarkable statement because I think while we did make some headway, it's very clear that we haven't realized even half of what we thought we were doing out of the civil rights movement that everyone knows occurred 30 years ago.

JIM LEHRER: Professor Franklin, do you see the race problem in the United States basically a white/black problem?

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN: It began as--well, I don't know that it began as a white/black problem. I suppose it began when Europeans encountered what we now call native Americans. That's the beginning of it. You and I know something about that in the Southwest. But it began in the Northeast. But beyond that, the problem persists, there's no question about it. And then there was a long period of a black/white problem. But surely from the late 19th century to the present the problem has been expanding as new groups came into the country and were, of course, not entirely welcome. And the welcome or the lack of welcome was expressed by people who had already developed notions about other groups-- different groups, and they used these same things against them. For example, the hostility toward Asians in the 1890's and then this century was developed as a result of the experience which whites had with blacks. So they could--they could place all kind of restrictions on Asians as they came in from the Pacific area to the Western states.

JIM LEHRER: Ms. Oh, do you go about this on the premise that it is the minds of white people that have to be changed if there's going to be a change in the racial situation in this country, or does it go beyond that?

ANGELA OH: I think that when I talk about a new paradigm, a multi-faceted paradigm, I'm talking about introspection in and among the groups that are what we call minority groups in this country as well. There's a great deal of concern internally I know in the Asian-Pacific American community. We look--those of us that are active in this area- -we look for ways in which we can educate within our community because in my particular instance,ethnic Koreans, over 80 percent of people residing here are foreign born. What do I represent? I represent the next generation because certainly the people who will be sitting in this chair in the next twenty or thirty years will have been born and raised here. We need to do some internal education as well because that will also inform as to our relationship to people in the world. You see, I'm approaching this task as one that is looking toward the 21st century. Will America maintain its prominence as the last remaining superpower? Will America continue to be able to lead in economic and political arenas in ways that other countries who are going to be grappling with the same kinds of questions have not yet been able to do.

JIM LEHRER: President Clinton said last week in the 40th anniversary of the Little Rock school situation that race remained very much an issue of the heart. Do you agree with that?

ANGELA OH: I absolutely agree with that.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree with that, Professor Franklin?

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN: Oh, yes. I think it's more than heart, but I certainly agree that--

JIM LEHRER: How are you and your fellow board members going to change the hearts of all the hearts that need to be changed on this issue?

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN: Well, you first change the heads. We need a very extensive program of education. People need to know. I think the people develop attitudes which are in the heart on the basis of whatever information they have. And much of the information they have is wrong, is erroneous. Their notions about racial superiority and racial inferiority--their notions about certain characteristics of--certain racial characteristics for people--are inaccurate. Perhaps when they get accurate information, they then will consider their attitudes. And the moment they do that, then their hearts might change.

JIM LEHRER: Some specifics. Kwame Holman said in the piece the President--let's make it very clear--he does not favor reparations or an apology to black Americans for slavery or segregation. Do you agree with the President?

ANGELA OH: Well, the business of the board is not to deal with remedies, or to look at it retrospectively the business of the board is to look prospectively. And this question is really not within the purview of the board's mission. Personally, I have said that I support the notion of reparations. And we've got precedence for it among the Japanese- Americans who were interned during World War II, but it is not a position of the board, nor it is an issue that we intend to take up.

JIM LEHRER: How do you feel about that?

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN: Well, I have personal views about it which I think will not be the views of the board. I would be very happy, for example, if we could get some recognition of the fact that it isn't slavery; it's--it began before slavery. It certainly persisted after slavery, and an apology about slavery would not--would not make the point. The other thing is that in the 20th century we have had an enormous amount of hostility. And if it had been slavery, if slavery would have been the cause, it wouldn't be the problem. There are other causes that are very important but, you know, affirmative action was a kind of reparations and it's receiving enormous opposition to that, and if you can't even get a level playing field based on people's qualifications, I'm not certain that because we could get very far in the whole question of reparations.

JIM LEHRER: Is the board going to deal with affirmative action?

ANGELA OH: I don't believe that we are. This is a policy question that has been raised in California. Voters have spoken in that state. I understand that--

JIM LEHRER: Against affirmative action?

ANGELA OH: It was against affirmative action.

JIM LEHRER: Or at least it may take some responses back out.

ANGELA OH: I think we need to talk about what this room that one tool has been taken away and has been taken away so aggressively because I view affirmative action as only one in an array of tools that are available to us as a society. We've chosen to discard it for the moment in California. I don't think that the board is going to take that up. We're looking at broader strategies. We're looking at economic opportunity in education, for instance, in this first phase of our work. And in doing that we had the invited experts give us some informed insight into how we think about race relations in this country. And now we're looking for strategies that will reach our young people. And education is a vehicle also for that.

JIM LEHRER: So how are you going to do that? I mean, first of all, do you agree with her that affirmative action is not on your table at the board?

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN: Affirmative action is really not on our table. The President's taken a very strong position on affirmative action. He spoken in San Diego in no uncertain terms in favor of it. And I would agree with him. That, of course, probably still--exists.

JIM LEHRER: In California. All right. We talked about what you're not going to do. So what are you going to do? I mean, how will you--how do you get up when you leave this city tomorrow to go now continuing your work as a board, are you--

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN: I said earlier that one of the most important things we must do is develop programs of education.

JIM LEHRER: This is with kids in the schools?

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN: For everyone.

JIM LEHRER: For everybody?

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN: For everyone. We--I said before the North Carolina general assembly that we have Smart Start in North Carolina for children. We need Smart Start for grown people too, for older people, and we can't wait for the younger people to grow up, although we certainly are working with them. We can't wait for them to grow up. The older people need education too, for they are influencing the younger people, so that their education is terribly important. Let me look at various things. For example, today, the Secretary of Housing & Urban Development issued some orders and brought some suits which are for the purpose of correcting some of the evils in the area of housing. That can be done in a number of other areas, and we're looking at those areas and encouraging the President and his administration and various other levels of the government to do everything they can to use the powers they already have.

JIM LEHRER: How are you going to judge success? How is the board going to judge success, Ms. Oh?

ANGELA OH: Well, first, I think we're going to be able to measure it by the level of interest as we travel around the country. One of the things that we will be doing is traveling around the country as a board composed as a whole, as well as some of the individual members in holding various meetings and conversations, some with the President and possibly the Vice President and cabinet members present. The interest that is expressed in participating in those kind of activities will be one measure. We are also looking at trying to identify ways in which we can preserve what we're calling promising practices, or best practices. These are efforts that are being undertaken in various parts of the country where people are trying to find ways to build those very bridges that we're talking about needing to be built. And we would like at the end of the day to come up with a product that we can then distribute hopefully to the rest of the country.

JIM LEHRER: Transplanted to other--okay.

ANGELA OH: You know, ideas. This is a resource guide.

JIM LEHRER: Sure. All right.

ANGELA OH: Check this out. Does it fit for you?

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN: Literally, scores and scores of examples of what's happening in local communities. And that's what I'm doing--I'm saying put those together and let other communities take patterns and models and replicate them in their own communities. We've got a lot of activity in that area.

JIM LEHRER: We'll have you back from time to time to see how it's going. Thank you both very much.

ANGELA OH: Thank you.

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN: Thank you. FOCUS - SPACE TALK

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight the view from Mir, campaign finance reform, and remembering Roy Licktenstein.

JIM LEHRER: Elizabeth Farnsworth has the Mir story.

NASA SPOKESMAN: Three, two, one, booster ignition and liftoff of the space shuttle Atlantis.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: The space shuttle Atlantis brought NASA astronaut David Wolf to his new home on the Russian space station Mir. Wolf arrived over the weekend for a four-month stay on the increasingly controversial and problem-plagued spacecraft. The decision to send Wolf came at the last minute, after NASA was assured that Mir is safe, despite several months of mishaps. The station's central computer has failed three times in as many weeks, most recently last Monday. One of the worst collisions ever in space took place in June when a cargo ship rammed into the station, damaging solar panels that provided electricity. Earlier this year an oxygen generating canister burst into flames, filling the station with smoke and the air conditioning and carbon dioxide removal systems have both broken down. Wolf has spent his first few days on Mir moving supplies to the space station, including a new computer, pressurized air tanks, food, and water. He is the sixth American to live aboard Mir and is replacing astronaut Mike Foale, who spent much of his time on Mir doing repairs. I talked to David Wolf, Michael Foale, and Commander James Wetherbee earlier today.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: David Wolf, you've been on the Mir for a couple of days so far. What has surprised you most about it?

DAVID WOLF, NASA Astronaut: When I first walked in, I got a big breath of very fresh air. It was clean and cool. There is an amazing amount of equipment here. It's a little bit like a--one of those camera-TV-computer shops in New York City. And it's a lot to learn to work but it's going to be a lot of fun.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: So, Dr. Wolf, the problems that have been plaguing Mir are not affecting you right now, the carbon monoxide--sorry--carbon dioxide levels, for example?

DAVID WOLF: No, the breathing air feels very fresh, and I don't sense a high CO2 level whatsoever, and we've talked about that and we all feel good; no headaches, no high breathing rates, feels good.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And, also, Dr. Wolf, is the mysterious brown fluid continuing to leak from Mir?

MICHAEL FOALE, NASA Astronaut: I'm not sure David knows about that but I could address it directly since we were the ones to observe it, with Anatoly and Pavel. About a week ago when we lost attitude control because of a computer failure that you probably know about, we observed some small sporadic particles, andthey were brownish, that glistened in the sunlight, like snowflakes. And they were coming from the command module or the Spektr module. Since then we haven't seen those flakes, and we now think that they're related to a deposit, a residue of something, and I don't know what that is. On the module back there, whenever the sun falls on it, and it does not fall there, except when we're in the wrong attitude--then something will boil or bubble up, and you see these flakes drifting away from the station. But we don't feel there's any alarm really to be raised about these particles that we see.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And Michael Foale, stay with me. You've moved back into the shuttle, I understand. Are you relieved to be there.

MICHAEL FOALE: I am really relieved to know I'm going home. I have a commander who's going to take me home, Jim Wetherbee here, and I'm really looking forward to seeing my family. The relief is not--it's not a relief because it's something I've certainly expected, certainly planned for, and I know it's part of the process of coming to station Mir, as David has, going through your days, weeks, and months, and not trying too hard to worry about the end and when it's going to come. And then when it comes, you just accept it, and go home. And that's the way I have approached this flight, in a day by day fashion, and it's worked very well for me.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And Michael Foale, staying with you, as you know, the issue of Mir's safety has become an important issue in Congress right now and Rep. Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin, did not want David Wolf to be left behind when the shuttle leaves later this week. How do you answer those concerns, you who've been there through these very difficult four months?

MICHAEL FOALE: Well, I have only positive things to say about those concerns. What I mean is I appreciate the Senator's concern. I think the interest in safety--I think the very open discussion that the Senate and congressional interest has provoked at both NASA and in Russia has been very helpful. I think there has been progress as a result of all of this scrutiny by Congress; however, I always have felt safe here because behind us is a spacecraft called Soyuz, and the Soyuz, in any event, can allow us to leave the station in a real emergency. The problems of power management, too much condensation, things that have been reported, they are real problems that we have to deal with, but they're not life- threatening. They can make your life a little uncomfortable and if they went on for a long time, your life could become miserable, but we generally surpass these things and put them to the side.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And, Michael Foale, give us a sense of some of the experiments, or what you've learned from the collision, for example, that make these risks especially worth it.

MICHAEL FOALE: Well, no one likes a collision, and I can't say I ever do that one again--however, once--the whole point in emergency big endeavors--and this is a great endeavor between our countries--Russia and America--in our doing this international program--you are going to have accidents. And the strength in this program is how you overcome the unexpected problems, not in how you execute all the things that you planned for. And I think the way we're overcoming this is really what we should be proud of.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Commander Wetherbee, looking forward, tell us what's to happen in the spacewalk. I believe it's tomorrow, right?

JAMES WETHERBEE, Atlantis Shuttle Commander: Yes, it is. For the first time, we'll have a non-American in an American spacesuit--with Vladimir Titov performing a spacewalk with Scott Perezinsky--two of my crew members. They will go outside and recover an experiment called MEEP--an environmental space measuring device that was deployed several flights ago on SCS76. They will bring that package back down to the Earth and investigators can study the effects of cosmic rays and ultraviolet radiation up in space in an effort to help us build a space station in the future. It also will deploy some Russian hardware that was sent to us relatively recently, only a couple of weeks before our launch. And I'm very impressed with the resourcefulness of the Russian space program in sending over the hardware, still not knowing fully where the leak is. But they've covered all the contingencies and they've given us enough hardware to deploy outside, so hopefully tried to isolate the leak in the Spektr module and recover its full capabilities. So we're really excited about that.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And, Commander, you've brought a whole new computer or the parts to make the computer for Mir, is that right?

JAMES WETHERBEE: That's true, and here it is right here. Mike is going to lift it up and show it. It is a new guidance control computer for the Mir, which hopefully will help keep their attitude without losing their attitude.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: David Wolf, tell me what your goals are for the next months. What key experiments are you going to be working on?

DAVID WOLF: The first order of business is to get the laboratory in full working order. We're well on the way. I wish you could see it. It's a wonderful micro gravity laboratory. We're working with three-dimensional tissue cultures the last few days, where we are able to grow three-dimensional tissues, which behave--will help us learn the principles of tissue engineering and are useful for our cancer research program and a whole slew of other experiments.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: I understand you've already made some discovery just in your trip up there about these tissues.

DAVID WOLF: Well, I knew what to look for. Before I was an astronaut I worked on the team that built this experiment, and we had a group of theories on how these three-dimensional tissues should form and I was lucky enough- -I gathered the whole crew together I was so excited when we actually saw this very delicate three-dimensional structure which kept form on Earth--and as soon as I just moved the culture vessel a little bit it just fell apart and was disrupted, showing how this very quiescive zero gravity environment allows us to build these three-dimensional tissues, which over time will solidify and give us the principles for our cancer research, research and tissue engineering program.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And, Dr. Wolf, in the time we have left, tell us what you're doing today. What kind of work are you doing? Are you bringing equipment in and out? Is that the main business of the day?

DAVID WOLF: Today I'm assisting Wendy in organizing the laboratory, and I'm working with Mike extensively. I'm learning the details of this space station, which is just spectacular, I have to tell you. The guys are behind me right now eating lunch; it smells good in here. It's a friendly place. It's a hard working place. It's everything you can imagine in a space station.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: As you know, your trip was very controversial here. Do you feel safe?

DAVID WOLF: Yes, I do. I feel very safe. Anatoly and Pavel are two of the best cosmonauts in the world, and we have a good escape vehicle and a good orbiting vehicle, so we have a lot of back-outs should things go wrong, and I feel very good about the mission.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Well, thank you all very much, and good luck in these days ahead. SERIES - THE MONEY CHASE

JIM LEHRER: Campaign finance reform. Last night, as part of our ongoing coverage, we heard from two advocates: former Vice President Walter Mondale and former Republican Senator Nancy Kassebaum Baker. Tonight, Margaret Warner has the other side.

MARGARET WARNER: The centerpiece of the campaign finance reform bill being debated this week in the Senate is a ban on unrestricted donations to political parties, so-called "soft money." But another key component of the McCain- Feingold bill is causing concern among independent non-party organizations as well. Among other things the bill says that if such groups run ads within 60 days of an election mentioning the name of the candidate the funds financing those ads must meet federal election law disclosure requirements and limits. Currently, independent groups need not meet such requirements as long as their ads don't expressly call for the election or defeat of a particular candidate. Now, two opponents of the bill who come from opposite ends of the political spectrum: Laura Murphy is the legislative director for the American Civil Liberties Union and Randy Tate is the executive director of the Christian Coalition. Laura Murphy, what problems do you see in this bill?

LAURA MURPHY, American Civil Liberties Union: Well, there are many problems but the biggest problem is what the bill does to issue advocacy groups like the ACLU and the Christian Coalition and now the Sierra Club. Basically we would have to become political action committees in order to participate in the political process. We want to be able to talk about candidates' voting records, but because that talk in the eyes of members of Congress may have influence on the outcome of the election we are basically being banned. And the most extreme ban is the one you talked about, which is 60 days before an election, a primary or general election. We would not be able to run issue ads on radio or on television explaining what issues are at stake in the upcoming election. We think that that's a terrible violation of the First Amendment.

MARGARET WARNER: But now, Senator McCain says and the bill says it isn't that you couldn't run those ads but that if you did, money you used to pay for them would have to be regulated just the way a candidate's campaign ad money is. Why is that--

LAURA MURPHY: Or like a PAC.

MARGARET WARNER: Or like a PAC, political action committee. Why is that a violation of the First Amendment?

LAURA MURPHY: Well, why should we have to change our tax status, change the structure of our institutions in order to comment on issues that we work on year-round? Why is it that when something like the partial--the late-term abortion issue, for example, comes close to an election we are barred from talking about it with our 501C-3 or 501C-4 moneys?

MARGARET WARNER: Those are two different kinds of tax status.

LAURA MURPHY: That's right. Why should we jeopardize our tax status with the IRS in order to participate in public debate over issues? This is a--this has a chilling effect on groups. They will be afraid of being dragged into court by the FEC. And during the last 25 years the ACLU now, the main Right to Life Committee, all kinds of organizations have been drawn into court by the FEC because they don't like our voter guides, because they don't like our ads calling for the defeat of certain legislation, because it may impact an election. So basically the Congress is trying to create a hermetically sealed environment so that everybody who talks about candidates fits in with regulation. And we don't think that that is permissible in a free society that enjoys the First Amendment. The First Amendment was created so that people had the right to criticize government and elected officials.

MARGARET WARNER: Randy Tate, how do you see this bill and how it would affect organizations like yours?

RANDY TATE, Christian Coalition: I would agree, it will have a chilling effect, and it's clearly unconstitutional. The courts declared and have numerous times that those groups like ours that do not engage in express advocacy, say and vote for or against or elect or don't support a particular candidates, can engage in what's called issue advocacy. This bill would end issue advocacy. Let me give you an example. I have with me what's called a scorecard. Under this restriction of 60 days a candidate who has a primary, running unopposed in the month of May, we would be prohibited for numerous--two months from distributing these voter guides to the broad public because they would mention a candidate. And so we would be restricted from sending out action alerts to our members into a broader cross-section of the community to let them know where a particular member of Congress, regarding an issue that's coming up before Congress, if there's a vote on partial birth abortion, as was mentioned before on the tax cuts, we wouldn't be able to do it. I don't think that we should let the citizen's voice be silenced and leave it up to the pundits, the politicians, or political action committees to determine what the public debate is going to be. I think everyday citizens should be able to petition our government, talk to their legislators, educate their neighbors to have an impact on their government.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. But let me ask you essentially the same question I asked Laura Murphy, which is that the proponents of this bill say you could still do that, you could still mention a candidate in your voter guide, but the money you raised to do that would have to be disclosed, the contributors would have to be disclosed, and there will be limits, the same limits that now apply to candidates. Why is that too onerous?

RANDY TATE: Well, it's onerous for a number of reasons. It would restrict small organizations, for example, of setting up a political action committee. If you've ever set up a political action committee, you need several attorneys, a couple of CPA's, piles of paper work, and it would have a chilling effect on everyday citizens trying to organize their neighborhood to have an impact on their local member of Congress. We're an issues-oriented organization. We do not support or oppose any particular candidate. We don't see ourselves as a political action committee, and what we find considerably offensive is the fact that we would have to get permission from our elected officials to hold our elected officials accountable. And we find that a clear violation of the First Amendment in our ability to come together and to speak out for or against issues that our members and the public at large feel very strongly about.

MARGARET WARNER: Well, Laura Murphy, this really gets to the nub of I guess the differences between you all and say Senator McCain. He says a lot of these aren't issue ads--an example--that that's sort of a bogus term. An example he used was that labor, he said, spent $2 million to run ads againstCongressman J. D. Heyworth in the 6thdistrict of Arizona saying he was just a horrible man and a horrible congressman. And Sen. McCain said, you know, that wasn't an issue ad, that was a candidate ad, in this case an anti-candidate ad, and so it should be regulated just like candidate ads are.

LAURA MURPHY: Well, that's a common complaint, but the truth is that whatever that ad said, somebody wanted to say something about Congressman Heyworth, and they had a right to say it, and they had a right--they have a right to say it whenever they feel like saying it, and just because it has an influence on the outcome of an election doesn't mean that the FEC has the right to regulate it. But I wanted to get back to an earlier point you made about why is this so burdensome. We have anonymous contributors to the ACLU, but they could not be anonymous contributors to a PAC. A PAC limits a contribution to the organization to $5,000 annually. If someone wants to give the ACLU $50,000, they are committed to do that under current law, but if we convert to a PAC, their limits on contributions to the PAC, they have to be fully disclosed. Again, there are enormous bookkeeping and paperwork requirements. And not everybody who is a member of the ACLU would either support the creation of a PAC, or would they want to be members of a PAC. So there might be a significant drop-off. Yet, we all are concerned about civil liberties, all of our members. So you're really requiring us to force voices in a certain way during--in a highly regulated environment that really is burdensome to organizations, especially grassroots organizations. The people who have been brought into court by the FEC have been small organizations. We got into this because three elderly people came into the office of the ACLU because they wanted to run a full-page ad in the New York Times opposing Richard Nixon and the bombing of Vietnam and in Cambodia. And they listed an honor roll of Congress people, including Senator George McGovern in 1972, who refused to support the bombing of Cambodia. And the FEC said, oh, no, this is political speech. This may influence the outcome of the election. And what these people were trying to do was influence the fate of the Vietnam War. So who's going to decide, who's going to sit there? It's going to be the FEC looking at the content of the ad to determine whether or not it can go forward.

RANDY TATE: A couple of points, if I may, on that.

LAURA MURPHY: Please.

RANDY TATE: That I think are important to make. Under this particular bill if an outside organization runs, for example, an ad in the paper, I'm talking about the issue of partial birth abortions, if that is a highly debated issue in that particular campaign within 60 days of the election, that could be construed as an indirect contribution to one of the candidates, depending on which side this particular organization is aligned. We think that's outrageous. I don't think we should turn over our free speech rights to the speech police, the Federal Elections Commission. And I think it's important to point out, as well, that every major case or every major decision by the FEC that restricted free speech rights the courts have overruled because they've been a very huge infringement on everyday citizens trying to have an impact on their government.

MARGARET WARNER: Mr. Tate, let me also ask--I should have mentioned this earlier when you held up your Christian Coalition Voter Guide--now, Sen. McCain said on the floor of the Senate explicitly it wouldn't cover voter guides. You're not reassured by that?

RANDY TATE: No, absolutely not. The restriction is a ruse. It is phony. Once again, we shouldn't have to get permission from the elected to allow the citizens to hold their elected officials accountable for their record. And it creates an incredible set of regulations and hoops that you want to jump through. I mean, to pass out one of these voter guides like was passed out in South Carolina all it states is who the candidates are, what the issues are, and where they stand. There's no vote for this candidate or vote against that candidate. I don't believe we have to go to our government to get permission to be able to exercise what our founding fathers thought was an important part of being an American citizen. And that is your ability to engage in free speech, talk about your elected officials. And I don't think we should leave it up to the media. I don't think we should leave it up to the politicians, and I don't think we should leave it up to the political action committees to be the only ones engaged in free speech. This will have a chilling effect if this bill passes. It is a serious threat to our constitutional rights.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Well, thank you very much, both of you. FINALLY IN MEMORIAM

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight remembering Roy Lichtenstein and to Phil Ponce.

PHIL PONCE: Roy Lichtenstein, one of the originators of pop art, died yesterday at age 73. He rose to prominence in the 1960's by making art based on cartoons. And whether the images were of romance or war, his works often parodied and poked fun at American life. Paul Richard is the art critic for the "Washington Post." He joins us now for a look at the artist and his work. Welcome, Mr. Richard. First of all, why was Roy Lichtenstein considered an important artist?

JIM RICHARD, Washington Post: Oh, he was a lovable artist, and he left a very strong imprint on 35 years of American painting and American pop culture. And he took elements of pop culture that were really not at all a part of the world of--high world of painting and brought them together.

PHIL PONCE: So what did he do that hadn't been done before when you talk about making new elements of pop culture, what do you mean?

JIM RICHARD: He took images that had no esthetic content. You could open a romance magazine if you were a teenage girl or a war comic if you were a teenage boy, or flip through the ads in the back of a New York tabloid and see images that your eye would just skip over. He took these images, copied them, at first rather crudely, but then with fabulous elegance, and made these images deserving of being scanned or attention paid to them equal to the art in museums. And he really broadened what we saw as and thought of as art.

PHIL PONCE: So he used cartoon images as a way of what, making us look at cartoon images in a different light?

PAUL RICHARD: Well, he--you have to understand he came out of a period where abstraction and art that was really visibly not about very much was on the center of the table. Lichtenstein came along and took these images and adjusted them. If you look at the comics that he was "copying" and paintings that resulted when he was through, they really don't look very much alike at all. He would thicken a line--look at the nose on that woman--or adjust the composition or the sort of abstract qualities. If you don't know that you were looking at a comic strip, you would think this was a very elegant and very cunningly designed piece of work.

PHIL PONCE: That's an interesting point. He didn't just blow up a comic strip. He would manipulate the images. He would manipulate the composition, the thickness of the line, and the color.

PAUL RICHARD: If you ever saw a show of his work, what you left with was a feeling of the curious most buoyant elegance, no mistakes, no sloppiness. You're showing relatively early pieces, but by the 80's and the 90's his work was high chic from the moment you stepped into the gallery.

PHIL PONCE: Let's stick with some of his earlier stuff. One of--his breakthrough piece was called "Look Mickey," and this was a piece that was first exhibited in 1961/62, and here--

PAUL RICHARD: There it is.

PHIL PONCE: --we have Donald Duck saying, "Look, Mickey, I've hooked a big one." Why was this a significant piece?

PAUL RICHARD: Well, if you can imagine how "shocking" it was to see a comic strip on the wall of Leo Castelli's gallery in 1962, it got a lot of attention. But previously there had been things on the wall that were just blank canvasses or active brush strokes. And suddenly he took what was kind of an illegitimate subject for art and painted it in such a way that when you saw the object--I'm not talking about the reproduction on your television screen--but saw the object on the wall, it said, "I am a serious painting. And people believed it.

PHIL PONCE: So, did one have to see the work personally to believe that it was art, because some of the early critics would look at it and say, please, that's just a blown-up cartoon--what makes it art?

PAUL RICHARD: It's very hard to decide what makes something art but with Lichtenstein's case everybody recognizes art pretty quickly. He showed for the first time in 1962 by within 10 years he had the highest prices that were ever paid for any living artist. He'd had a mural at the World's Fair in 1964. The first painting he sold out of Castelli's gallery was sold to the architect Philip Johnson, the man famous for sophisticated taste. And Lichtenstein was really very easy to see as a classy and elegant and always sort of twinkly and funny image on the wall.

PHIL PONCE: But what was he trying to say?

PAUL RICHARD: I think he was trying to broaden the arena in which a permissible imagery in serious sort of progressive art--it didn't only have to be about gods or goddesses; it didn't only have to be about atrocities of World War II or tragedies or Freudian miseries; that things that we sort of took for granted, normal parts of American life, could be allowed into this realm, and he just brought them in grinning and chuckling.

PHIL PONCE: One of the pieces that you mentioned in your column this morning is a piece called "Image Duplicator." What is it about "Image Duplicator" that you like? Here we have--

PAUL RICHARD: We have a kind of mad scientist saying, "What? Why did you ask that? What do you know about my image duplicator?". In a science fiction comic that would probably fit into the normal narrative; you wouldn't think about it twice. On the wall of Castelli's gallery it was, of course, was a pun about Lichtenstein himself. Here was this image duplicator. He took images and somehow tweaked them and toned them and adjusted them and made them look not like comic strips but like Lichtenstein's.

PHIL PONCE: Humor was important. Had humor been important in art at that time?

PAUL RICHARD: Humor is always problematic in art. It's like humor in church. Art is very much at ease with suffering and the beauty of the God-created world, but jokes were not considered really permissible. And Lichtenstein was somebody who always had humor and cheery humor in his heart.

PHIL PONCE: He's been described as someone who was incredibly nice, modest, and hard-working, somebody that people would naturally like. Did that come through in his heart?

PAUL RICHARD: Yes. And the art was the same way. He really wanted to please and at a very high level. He was, as far as one could tell, a man of no bulging ego. He was--went to the studio every day as if he was going to the office. He made thousands of paintings and prints and drawings and distributed them widely. And he was a very honorable, nice guy, and known as such in the art world for a very long time.

PHIL PONCE: Paul Richard, I thank you.

PAUL RICHARD: Thank you. RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Tuesday, President Clinton suggested his commission on race look at the future, not the past. Treasury Sec. Rubin said the IRS would set up centers to answer taxpayer complaints, and the Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged. We'll see you on-line and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.