The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer in New York.

MR. MUDD: And I'm Roger Mudd in Washington. After the News Summary, Elizabeth Brackett looks at efforts to control the Mississippi River. We have our regular Friday political analysis - - tonight Mark Shields is joined by Vin Weber -- a report on this weekend's election in Japan, followed by Paul Solman on whether the trade summit paid off for American workers, and we close with essayist Amei Wallach. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: Floodwaters and damage estimates both rose today. In St. Charles County, Missouri, the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers converged about 20 miles above their usual meeting place. Seven thousand people were evacuated from the area in the past several days. In addition, there have been two days of heavy rainfall through much of the Midwest, making matters even worse. Most damage estimates of the eight state flood region have been in the five to eight billion dollar range, but Illinois Senator Paul Simon said today nine billion would be more realistic. On Capitol Hill, Agriculture Sec. Mike Espy spoke about the impact on the nation's food supply.

MIKE ESPY, Secretary of Agriculture: All Americans should show concern about this particular situation, because this is an incredible agriculture belt that provides about $45 billion usually in agriculture production, 2/3 of all the corn produced in America, about 6 billion bushels, 1/2 of all the soybeans grown in the United States, in this region, about 1 billion bushels a year, 1/5 of all wheat, and right now, as best we can tell, we have about 8 million acres in this upper Midwest region underwater, but while the impacts are great, we do not consider these losses of such magnitude that they will jeopardize the food supply or significantly effect food prices.

MR. LEHRER: We'll have more on the flood right after the News Summary. Roger.

MR. MUDD: President Clinton today put off until next week announcing his decision on gays in the military but that did not stop politicians on all sides of the issue from speaking out. They were reacting to reports that Mr. Clinton will accept a Pentagon recommendation whereby the military could not be asked if they were homosexual and could not reveal if they were.

REP. GERRY STUDDS, [D] Massachusetts: Those drafts as I last saw them, in spite of the improvements that I think were made because of some of our efforts, remain in my view fundamentally insupportable. They finesse the question, the now famous question of whether homosexuality per se is incompatible with military service. But they explicitly insist that homosexual conduct is incompatible with military service, and they make no distinction whatsoever between public or private conduct or proper or improper conduct. All conduct in every draft that we were shown was explicitly proscribed and, therefore, the subject of dismissal from the service.

REP. DUNCAN HUNTER, [R] California: We think that the Clinton administration is dedicated to a strategy of opening the door a little bit by changing the policy to a slight degree are creating a preferential class by mentioning homosexual orientation as being something that the military can live with, and then the ports to basically drive a truck through that opening, ultimately resulting in the accession of large numbers of homosexuals into the armed forces of the United States.

MR. MUDD: Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn of Georgia said today regardless of what the President decides he will introduce legislation to prevent homosexuals in the military from doing or saying anything that would reveal their sexual orientation. Nunn spoke on the Senate floor.

SEN. SAM NUNN, Chairman, Armed Services Committee: The presence of military units by persons who by their acts or by their statements demonstrate a propensity to engage in homosexual acts would cause unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order, and discipline, and unit cohesion that are absolutely essential to effective combat capability. There should be no change in the current grounds for discharge for homosexual acts or statements and marriages.

MR. MUDD: The White House said today President Clinton's support was unequivocal for Dr. Joselyn Elders, his nominee to be surgeon general, even though her confirmation hearings have been delayed for a week. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus whose support for the President is riding on his continued backing of Dr. Elders say they're confident she will be confirmed. The hearings were delayed at White House request to give the Senate Labor Committee time to investigate charges that she and other directors of an Arkansas bank had made negligent loans. The Committee is also checking reports that Dr. Elders has been drawing a salary as health commissioner of Arkansas at the same time she is getting $550 a day plus expenses as a consultant to the Health & Human Services Department and that her husband failed to pay Social Security taxes for his mother's nurse. Republican Sen. Don Nichols of Oklahoma says the nomination is in trouble. The White House says in each instance the facts can be well stated in her favor.

MR. LEHRER: The Federal Reserve reported today industrial production fell .2 percent in June. It was the first drop since September. The government also reported the nation's merchandise trade deficit shrank almost 18 percent in May. The decline to just over 8.3 billion dollars was due mostly to improvement and the trade imbalance with Japan. We'll have more on U.S./Japanese trade later in the program.

MR. MUDD: Running water was cut off again today in Sarajevo just two days after it was partially restored. Natural gas for cooking was also shut off after almost 24 hours in the Bosnian capital apparently because of leaks. As the crisis deepened in Sarajevo, U.N. officials appealed for more aid at a meeting in western donor nations in Geneva. We have a report narrated by David Symonds of Worldwide Television News.

DAVID SYMONDS, WTN: Money has now become a key issue in the fight to feed Bosnia.

SADAKO OGATA, UN High Commission for Refugees: We don't have money to go through the summer even.

MR. SYMONDS: And what is it you want?

SADAKO OGATA: Well, altogether we need about another $200 million.

MR. SYMONDS: This meeting was a call for help. The message was that humanitarian aid could grind to a halt. The U.N. was given $100 million, but it's only enough to keep convoys rolling until winter.

LORD DAVID OWEN, E.C. Envoy: Every week that goes by we get closer to winter, and I think this is the really crunch question. If this war continues, we will not be able to do enough to protect people on any winterization program. I mean, this winter is going to be much worse.

MR. SYMONDS: And that's because the Serbs have a stranglehold on places like Sarajevo. By regulating the flow of U.N. supplies, they can cut production as they did in a bakery just one day after it reopened. If they choose to stop fuel in winter, the city will freeze.

MR. MUDD: U.N. envoy Rolf Ekeus met with Iraq's deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, in Baghdad today. Afterward, Ekeus gave no indication that any progress had been made in resolving the dispute over monitoring Iraqi weapon sites. Iraq has refused to allow the U.N. to install surveillance cameras at two missile testing facilities. The U.S. and other U.N. members have threatened military action if Iraq continues to defy U.N. resolutions.

MR. LEHRER: U.S. documents concerning missing Vietnamese soldiers were handed over to the government of Vietnam in Hanoi today. They could help Vietnam account for some of its 300,000 MIAs. In Washington, an aide to President Clinton said more help was needed from Vietnam on accounting for American MIAs. He told MIA families without more Vietnamese cooperation there would be no changes in the U.S. trade embargo or other improvements in relations between the two countries. The United States today announced it was extending talks with North Korea on nuclear weapons. The talks were supposed to end today, but the main U.S. negotiator at the Geneva talks promised a substantive announcement on Monday. The United States has warned North Korea is developing a nuclear weapon and has demanded the opening of two nuclear sites for inspection.

MR. MUDD: FBI agents have arrested an international hijacker and brought him to the U.S. to stand trial. He is a Palestinian who confessed to killing two passengers, including one American, during the 1985 hijacking of an Egyptian airliner en route to Cairo. Fifty-eight other passengers died in the shootout between Egyptian commandos and the hijackers at a refueling stop in Malta. The man was sentenced to 25 years in prison, but Malta released him in February, apparently under pressure from libya. The hijacker, identified as Omar Mohamed Ali-Rasak, was arrested yesterday in Nigeria. He's been indicted in Washington on U.S. charges of aircraft piracy. That's it for the News Summary. Just ahead, trying to control the Mississippi, the week's politics, Japan's election, the international trade agreement, and a great collection. FOCUS - DAM THAT RIVER

MR. LEHRER: We begin again tonight with the Midwest floods. Elizabeth Brackett reports from Iowa City, Iowa, on the part dams play in controlling what happens along the Mississippi River.

MS. BRACKETT: Will Iowa City become the second major city in the state to lose its water supply? The answer to that question will largely be decided by this man, Col. Al Kraus, commander of the Army Corps of Engineers for the North Central Region of the United States. Yesterday the Iowa River was lapping at the sandbags protecting the waterworks plant. Still, Kraus was considering releasing more water from the Coralville Reservoir just upstream from Iowa City.

COL. AL KRAUS, Army Corps of Engineers: The reservoir, Coralville Reservoir, is quite full, and we would like to drain as much of the water off of the reservoir as we can. I personally want to come to town and take a look at the situation on the ground to get an idea of how much additional water we might be able to let loose without causing any substantial damage.

MS. BRACKETT: The decision on Coralville was the most critical decision of the day for Kraus, but it was just one of the hundreds he has made since the flooding began. The Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for flood control on the Mississippi River Basin. With the river now raging, there is little the Corps can do to control it. What they can still do is control the outflow from the dams and reservoirs on the rivers that lead into the Mississippi. There are three in Iowa: Coralville just above Iowa City, Sailorville just above Des Moines, and Red Rock just below Des Moines. Record volumes of water are now flowing out at all three dams. At Coralville, the water is hurdling down the outflow and spillway at 24,400 cubic feet per second. The usual outflow is three to four thousand feet per second. The emergency spillway was built to control the water the gates on the other side of the dam couldn't handle. But there has never been water over the top of that spillway, and now the water is almost four feet deep. The amount of water that flows through the outlet is regulated in the gate control house. Twenty by forty foot gates are raised and lowered with the touch of a finger.

MS. BRACKETT: If you push this button, you can put enough water down there so that the waterworks plants would flood in Iowa City?

JOHN CASTLE, Army Corps of Engineers: Yes, that's true.

MS. BRACKETT: But with the reservoir so full if more water is not let out, the severe flooding upstream will continue. The plant manager says he's glad he doesn't have to make the decision. That's up to Col. Kraus. But he does understand the impact.

JOHN CASTLE: Over the years I've gotten to know a lot of the people. Maybe I wouldn't recognize them on the street, but I know their voice. I talk to them periodically on the telephone. And yeah, being the one that has to say go down and open the gate up, we got to send them more water, it bothers me, but I don't have any say in the matter, and nobody does really with this amount of water.

MS. BRACKETT: At the Corps' regional headquarters in Rock Island, engineers spent much of yesterday morning discussing the situation at Coralville.

SPOKESMAN: Well, it looks like they've already got about as much water as they can stand. They're being very cooperative. They're saying if we needed to put out a little bit more they'd, you know, they'd monitor it and so on, but I don't think they can take anymore. And I think we need to reserve whatever capacity we got there in case we have a downstream rain. If we get heavy rain on Clear Creek like we did a few days ago and that pops up, we wouldn't have any response time.

MS. BRACKETT: Some of the engineers had taken a firsthand look at the treatment plant with the colonel earlier in the morning. But most of the decisions here are made after assessing the data the myriad of computer screens are reporting.

SPOKESMAN: We've been holding the level of the river below 28 foot.

MS. BRACKETT: Once the data is compiled, the staff sits down for a regular morning briefing. Here is where the decisions are made. In addition to flood control, the Corps has also been charged with providing the water for Des Moines, since their waterworks plant was flooded last Sunday.

COL. AL KRAUS: Bottled water. Okay. We almost got 50,000 gallons a day going in there. That's great. Non-potable, we do have our 12 tankers operating. I understand they're getting some use out there on fires. That's one of the things we ought to keep in mind. You got a bad fire, we may have to draft some of the potable water tankers to support that effort too.

MS. BRACKETT: The critical decisions on whether to release more water from the reservoirs were made more quickly.

PERSON IN MEETING: A lot of distress areas that are just barely hanging on, and so they're still out assessing it, and he needs to coordinate with the city before there would be any suggestion that maybe we could increase it some.

COL. AL KRAUS: Okay. Let's hold tight.

MS. BRACKETT: Iowa City could breathe a little easier. No more water would be coming down the river from Coralville. The same decision was made today, so the flow is now holding at 24,400 cubic feet per second. The colonel admits that the decisions are not easy.

COL. AL KRAUS: A lot of the decisions are quite difficult, because we know they have a wide ranging impact on both people upstream and downstream, so it is difficult, but you get the best information you can and make the best, the best decision you can. One of the things is, that makes it very difficult is the unpredictability of what's going to happen with the rain. And what we've been doing is getting a lot of very heavy rainfall, six inch, seven inch, eighteen inch centers and at places you just don't expect 'em, at times you don't expect 'em. It makes 'em very difficult.

MS. BRACKETT: At the Iowa City waterworks acting superintendent Ed Moreno was relieved. The river crested yesterday, and the Corps would not be increasing the flow from Coralville. For the moment, his plant was holding off the river, unless, of course, it rains.

MS. BRACKETT: How much can you adjust to? As I understand it, there's 24,400 cubic feet per second flowing now. How much more could you take?

ED MORENO, Acting Water Superintendent, Iowa City: Well, I don't know. A lot of it would depend on the precipitation in the area, you know, what would happen in the tributaries downstream, and also how we would adjust here, you know, the kind of seepage going through our sandbags and some of the prep work that was done, so exactly, I couldn't give you a figure exactly.

MS. BRACKETT: A few weeks ago, it was inconceivable that a major American city could be left without water. That was before Des Moines. Now a second Iowa city listens to the Corps, looks to the sky, and waits.

MR. LEHRER: And unfortunately, the National Weather Service has some bad news for the people in Iowa City. The forecast calls for scattered thunderstorms there tonight, more thunderstorms throughout the weekend. Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, Mark Shields and Vin Weber, the Japanese elections, the trade deficit, and an Amei Wallach essay. FOCUS - POLITICAL WRAP

MR. MUDD: Next tonight we have our regular Friday night analysis of the week's politics. We get that from syndicated columnist Mark Shields and tonight we are joined by Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman from Minnesota who is now president of Empower America, which is a Republican think tank based here in Washington. He's also head of the Weber Group, a political consulting firm. Since you're no longer a congressman, I'll call you Vin tonight, if I may.

MR. WEBER: Thank you. I appreciate it, after all these years.

MR. MUDD: After all these years. Let's see, Budget Director Leon Panetta says the target is in the vicinity of $500 billion of a deficit reduction package. The President drops any mention of a fuel tax last night on Capitol Hill. And the White House acknowledged that the deficit is $35 billion less than they thought. What's going on? Compromise, rollback, what?

MR. SHIELDS: I think politically the Democrats have to do at least 500, 500 billion. I really, I think that, that's the marker laid out this at the outset of the conference by both Sen. Moynihan and by Congressman Dan Rostenkowski, the chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee. I think if there's any gravidas, any seriousness of purpose about the Democrats as a governing party, I think they've got to meet 500 billion, because once they start backsliding, they're in trouble.

MR. WEBER: I think that's right, except the problem is actually being judged by that once the figures come in was illustrated by exactly the point you made. We have a 25 to 35 billion dollar shift this week based on interest rates, a $5 billion shift or more in another direction based on the cost of the floods in the Midwest. The fact is Congress and the President cannot decide we're going to cut the deficit by $500 billion. They can try. They can say that's what they've done, but at the end of the day what happens if inflation matters more, or what happens with the unemployment, and so no President can really say this is exactly what the deficit is going to be. And yet this administration has set it out as such a firm marker that they're going to be judged by it.

MR. MUDD: But what's the matter with announcing a goal and trying to stick to it?

MR. WEBER: There's nothing wrong with it, except that the voters will then hold him to it, and he may well try to explain it in a couple of years, gee, folks, it's not my fault that the unemployment rate went up, and hence, the deficit was larger than I said, and they're going to say one second, you raised our taxes, you said $500 billion, and you didn't do it.

MR. SHIELDS: Well, I think when you set out that this administration is about deficit reduction and that that's what the principal policy, that is the key to the economy's revitalization, you can't, you can't get loose and elastic with that, with that goal, and you've set it out. You're absolutely right about the $5 billion and the flood, and people accept that. That's an act of God. It's something that was unprecedented and unexpected. At the same time the Republicans I think are ill served by saying that, gee, this windfall because of the lower interest rates and this year's deficit, well, justifies, justifies lower taxes, that we don't have to do as much.

MR. MUDD: You don't think it does?

MR. SHIELDS: No, because I think these are the very, these are the very same folks, my good friends on Capitol Hill, Vin's former colleagues, who were saying you're not doing enough, Bill Clinton, on the overall cuts, you're not doing enough, now, you're doing too much, and there's no need. I think the Republicans find themselves, quite frankly, as defenders and apostles of the status quo. People are not enchanted with the Clinton program. They're not delighted with the Democrats. They certainly are totally alienated from the status quo, and anybody who's seen as advocating that I think is in trouble.

MR. WEBER: The understatement of the evening certainly is that people are not enchanted with the Clinton program.

MR. SHIELDS: Well --

MR. WEBER: It's a problem for them though because the Republicans can correctly go back home and say, look, we've been telling you all along the tax increases are not to reduce the deficit, the tax increases are for the Democrats to spend. Now we can show you that the deficit by their own numbers is $35 billion smaller. They still want the same magnitude of tax increases, not to cut the deficit, it's to spend the money.

MR. MUDD: Okay. Let's change subjects, if I may, if we may. Gays in the military. The White House says the decision is coming next week. This afternoon two senior White House officials, one very tall, one very short, briefed and said that the President will be vetting this policy over the weekend with the attorney general, who apparently has some fears about defending it in court. It will be you can't ask if you're a homosexual, and they will not be permitted to tell. No investigation or pursuit of a homosexual unless the commanding officer hears several times about someone's sexual orientation, and the President generally supportive of this policy but hasn't signed off on it. The briefers let it be known that this is not a permissive policy and that homosexuals would not be welcome in the military. So what's going on? Is the President trapped into a campaign promise he now has to back down on?

MR. SHIELDS: The President has tried to honor a campaign promise which he made and which he was really blind-sided on politically, because the Bush campaign, for reasons that will be explained probably sometime in the Bush oral history in the year 2100, will tell us why they never raised this issue. I mean, this is an issue where it is really a no win situation for, for Bill Clinton and the Democrats politically on the gay issue right now. First of all, the gay community which supported him, which bailed him out economically when he really needed help financially in the campaign in 1992 and which gave him all out support in the election of 1992, feels that they've been let down because he said he was going to lift the ban. And the veterans groups are not pleased with this, with this compromise. I do think it's probably a majority position in the country. The majority of Americans' position is that they want tolerance, they don't want, they don't want witch hunts, they don't want these, these looking under the mattresses or whatever else, and at the same time they're not sure they want a sanction.

MR. MUDD: So what happens if, if it's set up as a piece of legislation?

MR. WEBER: The bad news for the President here is -- and I don't necessarily disagree with Mark that maybe this is the policy most people want -- but what most people really want is to not hear about this. This is not the most important thing to most people. It's why the Republicans, I would argue, got in trouble in the last convention. It wasn't so much that we disagreed with their positions on gays and abortion. This is not what's important to us. What's important to us is the economy and our jobs and taxes and health care, why are you Republicans all obsessed with abortion and gays, and all of the sudden they elect a new President that they think is going to deal with those issues. The first thing out of the chute is gays in the military, and, again, it's not so much that they agree or disagree, it's why are you focusing on this, and so every day that this issue dominates the news, I'm afraid the President loses. And I don't think there's a substantive position that rescues him on it, because what the Americans want is for this thing to go sort of off the radar screen.

MR. MUDD: You think he's sorry he ever made that promise?

MR. WEBER: I don't know about that. It happens he believes in it, and as Mark said, he got a lot of support from that community. I think he's really sorry that he didn't find a way of handling it that would not have assured that it was going to be a front burner issue. I think that gays and homosexuality are now going to be the social issue of the Clinton administration. He's not going to get rid of it.

MR. SHIELDS: One PS on it, Roger. I think if he really wanted the issue to go away, he probably ought to listen to Barney Frank, and Barney Frank, who had been trying to work, openly gay congressman from Massachusetts, has been trying to work on a compromise, said today that he could not support this position. What Barney Frank and some of the others are urging is to push a lifting of all the bans with the full knowledge and expectation it would then be overturned on Capitol Hill like that and the issue would die. As it is now, what I think the administration is suggesting is going to be codified according to Sen. Nunn next week and the Senate Armed Services Committee.

MR. WEBER: Which means the Congress votes on it again.

MR. SHIELDS: Congress will vote on it. We're going to have litigation and we're going to have legislation, and it's not going to go away.

MR. MUDD: The White House has agreed to a delay in the confirmation hearings for Dr. Elders, the President's nominee to be surgeon general. Is this clearly a matter of financial improprieties, or is it a conservative campaign against a woman who is, has embraced abortion and contraception? What's going on?

MR. WEBER: I think that it's a little bit of both. The problem for Dr. Eldrige, it seems to me, is that at least my perception, people I talk to, she's not a terribly lovable figure. The way she comes across, she's sort of harsh, she's sort of strong in her opinions, doesn't mind, she doesn't mince her words, sort of like Mark Shields, if you will, and she --

MR. MUDD: Not lovable, Mark?

MR. WEBER: But she is not -- I have to say, as somebody who doesn't agree with her politics, when I finally saw Lani Grenier on television, I thought this is a very sympathetic figure, I really liked her. People don't necessarily sympathize with Dr. Elders, so when a problem comes up with her financial life, or something like that, I don't think she has anything to fall back on, and so I think that she is ripe for the attack, and I think that she's going to have a tough time.

MR. MUDD: Mark.

MR. SHIELDS: What you have here, Roger, is the political analogy of a couple that aren't getting along, and so they end up arguing about who's going to take out the trash or whose turn it is to do the dishes, when they're really arguing about something more serious. The reality is that the, the financial stuff is truly a smoke screen. I mean, it's a great thing. It's like liberals went after Bob Bork on the Supreme Court. You go where you can find that, that point of vulnerability and somebody you want to knock down. For positions on condom distribution and her -- federal funding of abortion and sort of her wall poster shibboleth about we teach through driver education what to do, the kids to do with the front seat --

MR. WEBER: Front seat.

MR. SHIELDS: -- now let's teach 'em what to do in the back seat. Generations got by without that instruction, but I guess she, she wanted to do it. If that weren't the case, then the financial stuff probably would have been overlooked. But I think that does, it does present -- and any time youhave to take a week and say let's slow down for a week on any nomination, it means the nomination is not as well off today as it was yesterday.

MR. MUDD: But he can't afford politically to walk away.

MR. WEBER: Well, he can't on the Black Caucus, the Congressional Black --

MR. MUDD: He cannot.

MR. WEBER: He cannot, and the Congressional Black Caucus and the women in Congress have already served notice. They sort of feel like that he did not defend Lani Guinier strongly enough. They took some flak from their own constituencies, and they've served notice, we're going to fight on this, Bill Clinton. And so he has a problem on his hands. He has to hope that her confirmation hearings go splendidly, because he's not going to get a "bye" from the Congressional Black Caucus or the women of his own party.

MR. MUDD: Mark.

MR. SHIELDS: It's all tied together to what you're asking about the budget. Okay. You got to get 51 votes in the Senate, and you got to get 218 votes in the House. It passed the House by six votes. You take the thirty-five or six Black Caucus House members out of that equation or even half of them and you don't have a majority or even a third of them, and Bill Clinton's economic plan is in big trouble. So any time it's that close in trying to get a majority, everybody has enormous leverage over you.

MR. MUDD: Okay. We're running out of time. A couple of quick questions. President Clinton cut short his vacation though upon your advice, went to the Mississippi Valley, is going back again Saturday to look again. Can he get -- he can't get enough of it, can he?

MR. SHIELDS: The federal government, I commend the President. It's called a photo op. Lousy photo ops are Presidents throwing out baseballs at ball games. George Bush was bad at it. He was a good ball player. Bill Clinton wasn't a good ball player, was bad at it. The federal government is seen as remote, as uncaring, as aloof, as impersonal. Bill Clinton by going out there and showing what a caring President I think communicates the concern of the nation, and it is genuine. And I think he reflects it. I think it was a natural move for the President to do. I think it was good.

MR. MUDD: On this program, Mark Shields gets the last word. Sorry.

MR. WEBER: That's only fair. It's only fair.

MR. MUDD: Nice to have you, Vin Weber, and Mark Shields. FOCUS - YEN FOR A CHANGE

MR. LEHRER: Now from the politics of the United States to the politics of Japan. There are elections in Japan Sunday which some say could lead to the biggest upheaval and Japanese politics since the end of World War II. The big issue is corruption. Lindsay Taylor of Independent Television News reports.

LINDSAY TAYLOR, ITN: Out for votes on the streets of Tokyo, the colorful campaign of the Kamato Party hits the road. Supporters are grouped. The candidate's name means fish house. With a policy agenda that includes the expulsion of foreigners, this party has only marginal support. But one message today does strike home. A fish cannot live in dirty water, the crowd is told, a reference to the polluted state of Japanese politics which have resulted in this election. Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa back on the stump after successfully playing host to world leaders at the G-7 summit. But Mr. Miyazawa is fighting for his own political survival. He's paying the price for failure to clean up his party, the LDP, and introduce political reform, a failure he blames on his opponents.

KIICHI MIYAZAWA, Japanese Prime Minister: [speaking through interpreter] Opposition leaders refused to meetthe Party Chairman even when invited. That's no way for members of parliament to behave. So if it's said that the LDP is to blame for not achieving political reform I say, you must be joking.

MR. TAYLOR: Despite polls suggesting the LDP is heading for defeat, Mr. Miyazawa remains optimistic. But few expect him to be. In a country strong with tradition, any shift in political fate represents a radical break with the past. But honor and integrity are also deep rooted here, values many Japanese believe too long absent from the country's politics. After years of tolerating political scandals, public opinion has finally erupted over corruption allegations surrounding the ruling LDP. The most recent and biggest scandals so far centers around the construction industry, with politicians accused of receiving huge amounts of money in return for placing contracts. The money's then used allegedly to buy power and influence. One company, Hazama, is alleged to have created a slush fund of millions of pounds. Continuing revelations in the Japanese media have pressurized the prosecuting authority into action, preventing politicians riding out such scandals as they've done in the past.

GREGORY CLARK, Professor of Japanese Studies, Sophia University, Tokyo: There have been scandals going on for the last forty or fifty years, but they have been babies in comparison to this. This is a monster, mainly the complete domination of the Liberal Democratic Party by a small group which had their fingers right in the construction industry, were pulling out millions, perhaps even billions of dollars, and using this to dominate the party. They were nominating prime ministers. Now we have a clear case of the name of it is called is hand in the honey pot. So that allows all this pent up frustration which has been lying around for 20 years to suddenly explode.

MR. TAYLOR: Early morning in the bullet train, symbol of Japanese economic achievement, leaves Tokyo carrying the possible next prime minister. At Mishima Station, Tsutomu Hata, emerges, leader of Japan's renewal party Shinseito. The former finance minister, he left the LDP to lead a breakaway party campaigning on a platform of political reform.

TSUTOMU HATA, Shinseito Leader: [speaking through interpreter] I thought Prime Minister Miyazawa was ready to introduce political reform but when he whistled nobody danced. He was like an emperor without any clothes.

MR. TAYLOR: The message is certainly popular, but it remains to be seen if Mr. Hata has sufficiently distanced himself from his discredited former colleagues. The signs are good, he said, as he departed for the next campaign stop. During his bullet train campaign around the country, Mr. Hata and his Shinseito Party are likely to be the biggest beneficiaries from the disarray in the LDP, but they will not be the only ones. The scandals have opened the door for a new, younger breed of politician giving a fresh momentum to politics in Japan. Morahiro Hosikawa's Japan New Party is one such grouping. Also campaigning for clean government, it made the biggest gains in last week's Tokyo elections and could be pivotal in any forced election coalition.

MR. TAYLOR: Are you hopeful? Will you be victorious do you think?

MR. HOSIKAWA: I hope so.

MR. TAYLOR: But Mr. Hosikawa too has past links to the scandal- ridden LDP.

GREGORY CLARK: The people who have actually had their fingers in the pie are the people who are now most active in this campaign for reform and have broken away from the Liberal Democratic Party saying we are the, we are the reformers. I mean, it's rats leaving a stinking ship and taking the stink with them.

MR. TAYLOR: All this has left the traditional socialist opposition struggling to be heard. Sado Yamahana, the leader of the Social Democrats, could see whole blocks of support switch to the new groupings with his party's failure to seize the initiative on reform. The campaign fails to turn heads, reflecting an apathy that's not confined to one party. The strive to maintain technical perfection and economic advancement have long eclipsed political development here. Still, a higher than usual percentage turnout of voters is expected, despite the widely felt disenchantment with politics and the party which has come to represent them. "I'm still thinking who to vote for," said this man, "but it won't be the LDP."

WOMAN ON STREET: [speaking through interpreter] Anyone but the LDP. The first priority is to stop the control by one party.

PERSON ON STREET: [speaking through interpreter] I want something new too, but I don't know about the new parties.

MR. TAYLOR: Promise of reform is music to many ears, but people remain skeptical. Many Japanese believe that while the authorities are quick to enforce some laws, they've not shown the same zeal in pursuing wrongdoing among the people and business classes. The economy has not been a major factor in this election. Compared to most countries, Japan's is still very healthy. But despite the obvious affluence, signs of recession and economic hardship can be found.

TAKASHI INOGUCHI, Professor of Politics, Tokyo University: The prices especially have gone up tremendously because of the nature of the economy, so they, some of them profit from that, but many others suffer from that, and many others complain.

MR. TAYLOR: In Tokyo's seamier districts another sinister side to politics here. The Akutsa, or organized crime gangs, recognizable by their heavily tattooed bodies, have well known links with politicians though they're not saying who.

GANG MEMBER: No comment.

MR. TAYLOR: Refusing to be identified, he told us that whoever wins the election Japanese politics would never be conducted without the Ukusa. While such illegal activity may continue, there is a determination to reform lawful funding of parties. The Japanese version of the CBI, the Kadon Ren, has for years channeled business contributions to the ruling LDP. Now it's planning to share out funds that other market-orientated parties, the recognition of the country's changing image at home and abroad.

NATSAKI FUSANO, Senior Managing Director, Keidanren: Japan must change now. We entered into the new age, but the old system has been oriented to meet only mostly the domestic needs.

MR. TAYLOR: Most parties campaigning in the elections say they're committed to political reform, but the question is: Will Japanese politics be cleaned up?

TAKASHI INOGUCHI: Well, I think to a certain extent it will change, because it enhanced public financing and increased fairness are required by law as well as by the very task which has moved public opinion, and the expectation from the rest of the world would encourage the politicians to become much cleaner, but of course, and the system remains basically the same and is slowly changing, and secondly, human nature is very difficult.

MR. TAYLOR: If change does come, it's tomorrow's generation, today more interested in the rock idols of Tokyo to Yogi Park, that are likely to reap the benefits. "You've supported me in the past. Will you support me from now?" were the words to this song, a question also on the lips of Japan's politicians this weekend. FOCUS - TRADE-OFF

MR. MUDD: When President Clinton was in Japan last week, he and other world leaders made important progress on world trade. They agreed in principle to lower tariffs on a variety of goods traded by more than a hundred nations. For the United States, a reduction in tariffs is supposed to mean new jobs, 1.4 million of them according to the administration. Business Correspondent Paul Solman of WGBH-Boston tells us that that's likely to happen.

MR. SOLMAN: If you've been following the news recently, you've been hearing a lot about the economic summit in Tokyo and in particular what's been billed as a major step toward free trade, the agreement to totally eliminate trade barriers across a number of industries. But just how big a breakthrough is it? Well, it's a global question, but fortunately, we can start looking for an answer right here in my neighborhood. A couple of weeks ago at a block party right here I just happened to run into one of the world's foremost authorities on trade, economist Robert Lawrence who lives right over there on Thorndike Street. Lawrence is a free trade booster, just back from Tokyo, so we asked him how big a deal the tariff agreement is, assuming all the countries that have to ratify it do and whether the administration's job plans are for real.

MR. SOLMAN: Okay. So is it really going to create 1.4 million jobs?

ROBERT LAWRENCE, Economist: Look, I don't think we can be very certain. This is an agreement where we're lowering our tariffs and other countries are going to lower theirs, so it's true, on the one hand, we're going to be exporting more. Lower tariffs will mean Americans are going to be able to sell abroad, and that's going to clearly create jobs in this country. So there is the million four, so something I don't know, some number will, will, Americans will find employment opportunities as a result of those exports. But we've also agreed to lower our tariffs, and that's going to be, mean we're going to be buying more from other countries. And so because of that, some American firms aren't going to make sales that they otherwise would make, and so maybe some Americans will lose their jobs as a result of that.

MR. SOLMAN: All right. As one of the world's foremost authorities and certainly our neighborhood's foremost authority on trade, suppose you had 99 of your colleagues here on your lawn, and I asked them, what's the consensus on how many jobs are going to be created in America by this deal, what's the answer you as a group would give me?

ROBERT LAWRENCE: I don't think you'd get a consensus number, because we can't be sure. Some of those people who are going to have jobs now in exports would be doing something else. They won't come from the unemployed. We'll be shifting people from one occupation or one activity to another. So you can't reach an overall number. These changes will also take place over a long period of time. So they're very difficult, it's very difficult to stay whether these will all be new jobs. But, look, the real point isn't simply to create jobs. The point about trade is to do things more efficiently.

MR. SOLMAN: To help us understand what he means by doing things more efficiently, Lawrence suggested we look at a specific industry in which trade barriers are now supposed to come down. The beer industry. Sam Adams is the fastest growing beer in America, and this is where they make it, the Boston Beer Company, now the 12th biggest brewer in the United States. Jim Koch, the man who brews Sam Adams, says the benefits of free trade would be immediate for American beer makers.

JIM KOCH, Brewer: For us it's an exciting opportunity, because Samuel Adams makes world class beer here, and I believe we can compete with any beer anywhere in the world on the quality of our product.

MR. SOLMAN: But have tariffs been a problem up to this point?

JIM KOCH: They're an enormous problem. We sent two kegs of beer into Ireland, and they charged us $700 of duty. The same beer coming into the United States from an Irish brewery would pay $1.50.

MR. SOLMAN: Currently, the U.S. runs a huge trade deficit in beer with the rest of the world. We import far more than we export. With Ireland, for instance, we buy about 26 times as much of their beer as they buy of ours. With Mexico, the ratio is roughly ten to one, Germany a hundred and seventy-five to one. The reason in large part is high tariffs that protect domestic beer industries around the world, while U.S. tariffs on imported beers are almost non- existent.

MR. SOLMAN: How pervasive are the tariff barriers to beer around the world?

JIM KOCH: For a U.S. brewery they're not just barriers, they're almost a brick wall. When we send our beer, for example, to Sweden, where we sell a lot of beer and have been rated as the best imported beer in the country, the price of our beer is tripled, because of the import duties.

MR. SOLMAN: You mean, if I go to buy Sam Adams in Stockholm, it costs me three times as much as it would otherwise cost me or what a Swedish beer would cost me?

JIM KOCH: Absolutely.

MR. SOLMAN: So this is a potential bonanza for you if countries like Sweden sign on?

JIM KOCH: Well, it's a real opportunity to sell our beer in markets all over the world that have been closed to us.

MR. SOLMAN: What happens to your company if you start selling more in a place like Sweden?

JIM KOCH: It means more jobs here at a brewery. It means more jobs for American farmers who grow the grain that we use in our beer, and more jobs for auto makers, the carton makers, all down the line.

MR. SOLMAN: Now, Jim Koch is a salesman, but even allowing for his occasional effervescence, the trade agreement, if ratified, would suggest an export boom in beer's brewing. Again, however, while the boom would mean new jobs for some, it would also mean lost jobs when foreign firms take away business from Americans. Now according to economist Robert Lawrence that's okay, because efficiency, not jobs, is the key to the free trade story in beer as everywhere else.

ROBERT LAWRENCE: Well, one of the interesting things about brewing is that the more output you have, the lower your costs are per unit, so Sam Adams brewery, if they can increase their sales, is going to become more efficient by getting those stale economies. So what trade does is to allow us to be more efficient, and in the aggregate, there's going to be more wealth created. We can't be sure, however, that there won't be some losers. In fact, there are likely to be some losers on the other side. But by deploying our resources more efficiently, the basic purpose of competition in general and trade, in particular, we've raised wealth in the aggregate.

MR. SOLMAN: In other words, an economy that works to capacity, as efficiently as possible, enables every worker to turn out more stuff, whatever it is. That, to most economists, is the ultimate goal, and free trade gets you there so long as you can compete successfully. Some can, of course, some can't, but in any case, it usually takes quite a while.

LEE IACOCCA: [TV Commercial] You know what I think? I think America's getting an inferiority complex about Japan.

MR. SOLMAN: For years, executives like Lee Iacocca bellyached about foreign competition. But in the end, it was Japan that helped turn Chrysler around and fueled a revival that may actually have caught up with the former chairman's rhetoric.

LEE IACOCCA: The truth is we've got advances over the Japanese in every car we make.

MR. SOLMAN: So for economists pushing free trade, the first selling point is more competition which benefits consumers everywhere. Now, the way to reach that goal is to provide your workers with more plant, more equipment, more know-how. In other words, you've got to invest in them, and that's a second selling point for free trade. Again, here is a case in point.

JIM KOCH: We're the No. 6 selling imported beer in Sweden, and I think we can double or triple when our price comes down to competitive levels. It's a major source of growth for us, and as we grow, we have to add more kettles, more tanks, and buy more malt.

MR. SOLMAN: Prof. Lawrence says Koch's investment plans represent what may happen to companies all across the globe.

ROBERT LAWRENCE: And now they can spend more money on equipment and on, on plant, and that's going to stimulate economic growth. The reason our living standards improve over the long run is that we invest in capital, in technology, and in skills. Trade is going to make a contribution to the unemployment problem, because by making the world more certain for firms we're going to encourage investment, and that should increase employment.

MR. SOLMAN: So Lawrence's free trade agreement is twofold: More competition and more investment in the interest of economic growth. But coming out of the summit, what we've heard instead is the promise of more jobs.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: The breakthrough achieved today in the international trade talks is good news for America and good news for the world. It means more jobs and higher incomes for our people.

MR. SOLMAN: While the arguments of economists tend to be long- term and abstract, the workers of the world look to politicians for something more immediate and more tangible. ESSAY - QUESTIONABLE PERSPECTIVE

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight, some differing perspectives on art. Our essayist is Amei Wallach, art critic for New York Newsday.

AMEI WALLACH: Who does art belong to anyway, to the artist who made it, to the collector who bought it, to the museum who cares for it, or to the public? The question comes up often these days as museums strapped for money consider the last resort of selling their art just to keep the doors open. And it's coming to a head right now in Washington, where great French paintings from the Barnes collection are on display at the National Gallery. The Barnes in question was Dr. Albert Barnes who made his fortune marketing patent eye medicine and then amassed one of the best collections of art in America, a hundred and eighty paintings by Renoir, sixty-nine Cezannes, sixty Matisses, forty-four Picassos, and the best, a Gauguin and Modigliani. Barnes sure believed all that art belonged to him, certainly not to the museums who hooted at his paintings and snubbed him, or to the public who'd never even heard of Serra in 1922 when he formed the Barnes Foundation. When Barnes died in 1951, he stipulated the paintings couldn't be loaned or reproduced in color. You had to be lucky and filled with fortitude to brave inclement weather and stand in line, hoping you could get in the two days a week the foundation was open. You had to work for the experience. And like a lot of experience you have to work for, it was worth it. Barnes had very definite ideas about his art. Context was everything, he believed. In his limestone chateau in Merion, Pennsylvania, he hung his paintings with African sculptures, Japanese enamels, American door hinges, Navajo blankets, and surprises from the African-American painter Horace Pippin. Barnes believed that such mad excess would enrich the eye and establish unexpected relationships, and he certainly got the point with Picasso. Barnes did what he wanted with the art he paid for. But now between them, the National Gallery and the foundation that owns the art have outsmarted him. The National Gallery has hung his paintings according to the ideas of the museum experts he hated, on plain walls, in predictable, mini-retrospective. This way, a public in the hundreds of thousands is going to get to see Matisse's "Joy of Life" just the way they've come to expect from blockbusters. But not one of them is going to have the throat catching experience, I and a few thousand other people did coming upon it unexpectedly, up the stairs, at the foundation in Miriam the way Barnes insisted it had to be seen if it was going to be seen at all. So although for the run of the world tour everybody can have what one museum thinks is the best of the Barnes collection, as museums would like it to be shown, it's a pretty muddled answer to the question: Who does art belong to? Richard H. Blanton, who became president of the Barnes Foundation in 1990, believes the art belongs to the foundation which can do with it whatever it wants. He wanted to sell some of it to raise the $15 million he said was needed to update the building. That ignited outrage and lawsuits that still continue. Museum ethics say that a public institution has a responsibility to the works of art in its possession and can sell them only to buy other art, never to pay light bills. Instead, a judge ordered a compromise. He prohibited the sale but overturned Barnes' stipulation that the art only be seen in Miriam. For just this once, he permitted the current international tour which is expected to raise $15 million for something more than light bulbs. Glanton says that money left over from the Barnes tour will go to provide university scholarships for the rural and inner city needy to study art. This is in the spirit of Barnes, he says, who left control of the foundation to the African-American Lincoln University. So is this the public the art is for? My answer is that art belongs to itself, to its own ability to enrich and enhance our lives. And when anyone turns it into a commodity to serve a cause, however worthy, he's lost a lot of the reason for its being. There are enough commodities these days. There's not enough art. I'm Amei Wallach. RECAP

MR. MUDD: Again, the major stories of this Friday, floodwaters rose in the Midwest, and in St. Charles County, Missouri. The Mississippi and Missouri Rivers converged about 20 miles above their usual meeting place. Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois said $9 billion was a realistic damage estimate for the eight state flood region. And this evening, White House officials said President Clinton generally supports a gays in the military policy which would bar openly practicing homosexuals from the military but would prohibit investigations of those who are discreet. Good night, Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Good night, Roger. Have a nice weekend. We'll see you on Monday night with a profile of Supreme Court nominee Ruth Bader Ginsburg, among other things. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you, and good night.