The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight campaign finance reform goes to the Senate floor, we have excerpts, Senators Bennett and Durbin, and analysis by Mark Shields & Paul Gigot; then the 100th birthday of William Faulkner and an Anne Taylor Fleming essay on marriage. It all follows our summary of the news this Friday. NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: Campaign finance reform went to the floor of the Senate today. It came suddenly on order of Republican Majority Leader Trent Lott last night. The specific legislation is the McCain-Feingold bill, which would ban soft money, unlimited contributions to political parties, and would sharpen the differences between money used to promote candidates and that used to advocate issues. We'll have more on the debate and the story right after this News Summary. President Clinton was in Houston today for two fund-raising events and a speech at a community college. He urged his student audience to get behind the push for the reform bill.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: We have debated this before, and every time we debate it--at least since I have been President--every year we've had a good campaign finance reform bill before the Senate, I have supported it, and every year it has died under the parliamentary tactic that allows one more than 40 Senators to keep any bill from being voted on called the filibuster. There will be a lot of efforts to make it look like we're going to do something and nothing will happen unless we all work hard and demand that something happen.

JIM LEHRER: On another subject Mr. Clinton also praised a study showing Hope scholarships could make community college free for students in seven states. They make $1500 available for tuition and other costs in the first two years of college. They become available next year. Back in Washington hearings on the Internal Revenue Service moved to the House today. The chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee, Bill Archer of Texas, said the best way to reform the current tax system was to get rid of it completely. A Democrat on the committee said this week's findings by a Senate committee on IRS goals and tactics were sobering. The space shuttle Atlantis was on its way to Mir today. It is expected to dock with the Russian space station tomorrow. Atlantis was launched from Cape Canaveral last night. Astronaut David Wolf will replace American Michael Foale, who has lived on Mir with two Russian cosmonauts since May. The shuttle crew will also deliver a new computer, repair equipment, and supplies. In Russia today President Yeltsin signed a law placing the Russian Orthodox Church above all other religions. The law declares respect for Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Christianity but limits their activities. It says all other faiths must exist in Russia for 15 years before they can hold services or perform missionary work. Advocates of the law argued alien religions have been making in-roads since the collapse of Communism. Opponents said the move violates freedom of religion granted by Russia's constitution. Two hundred and thirty-four people are feared dead in a plane crash on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Two Americans were aboard when it crashed 20 miles North at the Medan Airport. Sirah Shah of Independent Television News reports.

SIRAH SHAH: There was nobody left to save. But Indonesian troops could at least begin the distasteful task of clearing up after the country's worst ever air disaster. They pulled body after body from the wreckage. And they covered them for the night with leaves. Transporting them away from the scene of the crash will be difficult. The debris lies over the most inaccessible, forested terrain. Relatives heard that the plane had crashed into a mountain in dense smog. The transport minister broke the news that all 234 crew and passengers had died. It's not yet clear what part the haze from bush fires, which has blanketed the country, had to play in the disaster. Medan Airport was the only one in the area still open. It has more sophisticated facilities than the rest but visibility was reportedly down to 500 meters, enough to cause extreme concern.

JIM LEHRER: The dense smog that has covered much of Southeast Asia is being caused by wildfires in Indonesia. Fire fighters said today it will take monsoon rains to extinguish the fires. Two people have died from smog inhalation. Fifty thousand others are being treated for respiratory ailments. In Italy today a series of earthquakes hit the central part of the country. Ten people died. More than a dozen were injured. Homes and other buildings crumbled. In the town of Assisi the ceiling and some Frescoes of the 13th century Basilica of St. Francis sustained extensive damage. The Basilica's famous Frescoes by Giotto depicting the life of St. Francis were slightly cracked. Officials said the strongest quake measured 5.5 on the Richter Scale. It was felt 90 miles away in Rome. In the Middle East today Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said building 300 new houses in the West Bank was necessary. He dismissed U.S. Secretary of State Albright's call to freeze further settlement building. He said it was necessary because of the natural growth of the population. Palestinian leaders warned yesterday more building could touch off more suicide bombings. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the McCain-Feingold debate, Shields & Gigot, a William Faulkner celebration, and an Anne Taylor Fleming essay. SERIES - THE MONEY CHASE

JIM LEHRER: The big debate over campaign finance reform finally came to the floor of the United States Senate today. Kwame Holman begins our coverage.

KWAME HOLMAN: Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott made it clear he's in no hurry to see current campaign finance laws reformed, but this morning he opened the debate on the issue to give the full Senate a chance to decide.

SEN. TRENT LOTT, Majority Leader: I indicated all along that I knew this issue would come up, that it should come up, and it should be debated, and, therefore, I have kept that commitment, and we'll begin our debate; we'll have the full debate; and we'll have some votes.

KWAME HOLMAN: Lott then suggested the best way to reform campaign financing might be to do away with most of the laws that govern it.

SEN. TRENT LOTT: Perhaps the public good would best be served not by restricting donations to campaigns but by promoting them with full disclosure, full, total, and immediate disclosure. I wonder what would happen if every donation to a federal campaign had to be logged into the Internet as it was received by the campaign. Anyone interested in the integrity of that campaign, the identity of its donors, the possibility of undue influence or corruption would be able to track the campaign's revenues dollar by dollar as they come in. Maybe we could agree on that. Then let interested Americans donate as they will for this one overriding reason, because spending money to advance your own political views is as much a part of the right of free speech as running a free press.

KWAME HOLMAN: But Democratic Leader Tom Daschle followed Lott to the floor and insisted the problem simply is too much money.

SEN. TOM DASCHLE, Minority Leader: And the average cost of winning a Senate seat in 1996 is now $4 + million. To raise that much money a Senator has to raise $14,000 a week every week for six years. How many more times will we have to tell someone who may consider running for the United States Senate, you can't afford it? This is now a cult for millionaires. You either have lots of money, or your indebted to somebody for the rest of your life. But that's the choice. That should not be the American way.

KWAME HOLMAN: The Supreme Court already has equated contributing to political campaigns to free speech, but Republican John McCain of Arizona and Democrat Russ Feingold of Wisconsin say they have refined their legislation to control campaign contributing and spending without violating anyone's constitutional rights.

SEN. JOHN McCAIN, [R] Arizona: It is not perfect reform. There is no perfect reform. We tried to exclude any provision which would be viewed as placing one party or another at a disadvantage. Our purpose is to pass the best, most balanced, most important reforms we can.

KWAME HOLMAN: The McCain-Feingold bill would ban unregulated soft money contributions to political parties.

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Our soft money ban would serve two purposes. First, it would reduce the amount of money in campaigns; second, it would cause candidates to spend more time campaigning for small donor donations from people back home.

KWAME HOLMAN: The bill would define and restrict spending on so-called express advocacy advertising.

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: If soft money is banned to political parties, money will inevitably flow to independent campaign organizations. These groups run as even the candidates who benefit from them often disapprove of. Further, these ads are almost negative attacks on a candidate and do little to further healthy political debate. As we all know, they are usually intended to defeat a candidate and are often, in reality, coordinated with a campaign of that candidate's opponent.

KWAME HOLMAN: The bill would increase public disclosure of campaign contributions.

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: The bill mandates all FEC filings documenting campaign receipts and expenditures be made electronically and that they then be made accessible to the public on the Internet not later than 24 hours after the information is received by the Federal Election Commission.

KWAME HOLMAN: The bill would encourage candidates to limit personal spending on their campaigns.

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: If an individual voluntary elects to eliminate the amount of money he or she spends in his or her own race to $50,000, then the national parties are able to use funds known as coordinated expenditures to aid such candidates. If candidates refuse to limit their own personal spending, then the parties are prohibited from contributing coordinated funds to the candidate. This provision serves to limit the advantages that wealthy candidates enjoy and strengthen the party system by encouraging candidates to work more closely with the parties.

KWAME HOLMAN: And finally, the bill would restrict the use of labor union dues for political purposes.

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: The Beck decision states that a non-union employee working in a closed shop union workplace and who is required to contribute funds to the union can request and be assured that his or her money will not be used for political purposes. I personally support much stronger language. I believe that no individual, union member or not, should be required to contribute to political activities; however, I recognize that such stronger language would invite a filibuster of this bill and would doom its final passage.

KWAME HOLMAN: But Republican Senator Mitch McConnell is vehemently opposed to the McCain- Feingold bill and argues if he can't stop it, the courts certainly will.

SEN. MITCH McCONNELL, [R] Kentucky: In this whole field, Mr. President, at the end of the day we get back to the Constitution. You begin and you end this debate with the First Amendment to the United States Constitution as the Senator from Utah has pointed out. This is core political speech according to the United States Supreme Court. That's not Mitch McConnell's interpretation. It's not Bob Bennett's interpretation. This is the law of the land. The court has said it's impermissible for us to decide how much political speech is enough-- impermissible. In spite of that, the reformers persist in promoting the notion that it is somehow desirable for the federal government to determine how much political discourse we're going to have in our campaigns in this country. You hear them say time and time again we heard it this morning and we'll hear it next week. We're spending too much in American politics. Now, remember what the Supreme Court says that means that they're saying. They're saying we're speaking too much.

KWAME HOLMAN: The debate will continue into the next four weeks. So far, forty-nine Senators, all forty- five Democrats, and four Republicans support the basic reform bill. But it takes 60 votes to prevent a filibuster and bring the bill to a final vote, meaning the future of campaign finance reform legislation is very much uncertain.

JIM LEHRER: Now, the perspectives of two Senators involved in the debate: Robert Bennett, Republican of Utah, and Richard Durbin, Democrat of Illinois. I spoke with them earlier this evening.

JIM LEHRER: Gentlemen, welcome. Sen. Durbin, you support McCain-Feingold. Why?

SEN. RICHARD DURBIN, [D] Illinois: I think it's time for us to really address some of the serious problems in our campaign finance system. And McCain-Feingold, at least in its original form, did that, first to eliminate soft money. And I think that's one thing that we've learned in the course of the Government Affairs Committee hearings is long overdue. Secondly, I hope that there will be a provision in there that either has reduced cost or free TV time available. Unless we do that we're really not getting to the heart of the problem, which is the overall rising costs of campaigns. I spent over 80 percent of the money I raised in Illinois for television. And we have to reduce the costs of the candidates who don't spend as much time scrambling for money. Finally, when it comes to these so-called independent expenditures or advocacy ads, I think we need a much greater area of disclosure. The Republicans are critical of the labor ads. We on the Democratic side are critical of ads run by their favorite groups. Let's get down to the heart of the matter. Let's have full disclosure. Let's make sure they're bound by the same laws when they're actually involved in advocacy.

JIM LEHRER: Sen. Bennett, do you oppose McCain-Feingold? Why?

SEN. ROBERT BENNETT, [R] Utah: I do, indeed. I will agree with Sen. Durbin that these hearings indicate that something has to be done, but I think McCain-Feingold is clearly the wrong thing to do. I think it goes in a number of wrong directions all at the same time. When you sit down and scrub it all the way through, it's really a series of suggestions of how the federal government will regulate how people speak in a political advocacy circumstance. In any other context that would be called censorship. We're talking about whether or not ads can be run 60 days prior to the election that are available 61 days are not available 59 days prior, who can do it, where they can spend their money. The federal government is going to be checking up on it. The Federal Election Commission is going to be given a huge bureaucratic responsibility. I've been involved in an FEC audit, and I can tell you if you've ever been contacted by the FEC, you'd welcome a phone call from the IRS. This is not the way to increase political speech or increase American confidence. This is a bill that's just going to make things worse.

JIM LEHRER: Well, let's take the specific--the ban on soft money, Senator Bennett. Are you opposed to that ban?

SEN. ROBERT BENNETT: Soft money is what? According to the Constitution you have the right to say whatever you want. And if you decide to say what you want in an atmosphere, that is by an ad in the newspaper or on television, and pay for it, that's soft money. That's your First Amendment rights. Now, do I think there should be some different disclosure rules? Yes. Do I think there ought to be a clear examination of corporate involvement in politics? Yes. To say we're automatically going to ban soft money you're opening a very dangerous constitutional box that I think the Supreme Court will shut on you.

JIM LEHRER: Sen. Durbin.

SEN. RICHARD DURBIN: I think we get to the bottom line here, and the bottom line is--I won't speak for Sen. Bennett--but some Republicans have said the problem with our political system is there's just not enough money in it. If there were more money, there'd be fewer problems. And in respect--our showing respect for the First Amendment where the Supreme Court has said speech equals money and money equals speech, let's pour more speech into the system, more money into the system. That's not going to work. I think we've seen unfortunately what's happened in the past election cycle. When the opportunity for soft money, hard money, and mystery money came out, politicians went overtime trying to raise it and as a result cut corners and did things that were embarrassing.

JIM LEHRER: Sen. Durbin, you do not think that the right to give as much money or not as much money but the right to contribute money is the same as the First Amendment right, in other words, the two are not the same?

SEN. RICHARD DURBIN: No, I don't at all. And frankly, as a candidate, a federal candidate in seven or eight different elections, I've been restrained on the amount of money that I can raise from individuals, which ultimately meant how much I could spend on my own behalf to express my point of view, I think that's a legitimate concern. One of the elements that the Supreme Court did note 20 years ago in Buckley Vs. Vallejo is whether or not we have reached a point where not limiting money ends up in corruption in the whole procedure. I think we have reached that point. I think our political campaign system, if not corrupt, is corrupting. And we've got to change it.

JIM LEHRER: Is it corrupt, if not corrupting, Sen. Bennett?

SEN. ROBERT BENNETT: It's broken. Whether it's corrupt or not really does not depend on the system at all but people in it. I was--I was somewhat offended and expressed myself that way when some of the witnesses before the Governmental Affairs Committee said he had $50,000 from ascortia--that's clearly going to influence your vote. I've had big contributors in my office asking me to do things that I thought were not the right things to do. And I told them so. And they did not say to me--because they were honorable people--they happen to be wrong on this issue. They did not say to me you have to do it anyway because we gave you money. There's no quicker way for them to get thrown out of my office than to say that. And ultimately, if you have people of conscience and integrity, they will be people of conscience and integrity, regardless of the system. And if you have the tightest system in the world and you have somebody who's corrupt, he or she is going to stay corrupt no matter how many rules you have concocted. And I think this is terrible to say money is the only determinant in politics and money makes every decision. The record is clearly that that is not the case.

JIM LEHRER: Sen. Durbin.

SEN. RICHARD DURBIN: Well, you know, I think the American people have just about had their fill with this. Whether President Nixon is inviting his biggest contributors to his daughter's White House wedding, or President Clinton is inviting people into the Lincoln Bedroom, I think the American people have told us that as we spend more and more money on political campaigns, they are going to participate less and less. The statistics are there.

JIM LEHRER: But what about the Senator's point that it isn't money, it's the people?

SEN. RICHARD DURBIN: Well, obviously, it gets down to the bottom line, individual decisions of moral choices. But when you have so much money moving around and such great demands for money--in the state of Illinois Paul Simon six years ago spent $8 million to be re-elected. I got by with about five or six. But think about that. In the state of California $25 million for Barbara Boxer to be re-elected? It really is just an overwhelming responsibility to raise that money.

JIM LEHRER: Sen. Bennett, you don't see that, right, as an evil, the amount of money that's required now to run for political office?

SEN. ROBERT BENNETT: I wish the amount of money were less, and I think there are circumstances where you could make it less. But there--every election is different. Every circumstance changes. Sen. Kerry, for example, of Massachusetts, running against Gov. Weld, they made an agreement to limit their expenditures. They could both do it because they were both very well known politicians and frankly did not need to spend the money for name ID that a newcomer does. I think we have to recognize that we're being awful glib in this debate. For example, to say, as Sen. Durbin has, as the amount of money has gone up, the percentage of voting has gone down, to say that that is a cause and effect relationship is stretching things a little. You could say by that logic that we ought to stop spending any money on schools because the more money has gone up on spending on schools, test scores have come down. I don't think the money circumstance is causing the problems. There are a lot of problems. I don't think the money circumstance can be labeled as the single one at all.

JIM LEHRER: Just to test the waters here for a moment, Sen. Durbin, how important is this issue? Many people on the floor, many of your colleagues on the floor of the Senate today--Sen. Kerry, for instance, Sen. Bennett just mentioned him--Sen. Kerry said on the floor it was the most important debate the Senate has had this term, if not many, many terms. Do you agree with that?

SEN. RICHARD DURBIN: I do agree with it. I'm not sure if you polled the American people about the most important things on their mind that this would come up in the top three, but if you asked them about their opinion of our government, of our political system, of campaigns, and of candidates, I think you'd hear their responses and understand that what's at stake here is literally the future of this democracy. Is it going to be a participatory democracy, where people who are not millionaires have a chance to be elected? Is it going to be a democracy where people will vote because they think their votes count? Those are real fundamental questions. And if we don't address them, I think Sen. Kerry's right, we will have missed out on an opportunity to clean up a system that literally has more to do with the future of this democracy than almost anything.

JIM LEHRER: More to do with the future of this democracy than almost anything, Sen. Bennett?

SEN. ROBERT BENNETT: I think it's correct that this is a very fundamental debate and a very serious issue, but I obviously see it very differently. I see what's at stake here is a very frontal attack on the First Amendment. Now, it's in the name of something that sounds wonderful and that everybody feels good about. Let's clean up campaigns. But you look at the details, forget the labels--the labels are all wonderful, and they're on the side of McCain-Feingold--let's have reform and everything's great--you look at the details of this bill and you go back, as I said, this is a list of ways the federal government will use its police power to direct people in how they conduct their political advocacy. I think that's a very frightening kind of thing even in the best of motives. And, as I said on the floor today, I do not attribute anything but the very best of motives to all of the people who were on the other side of the issue. But, frankly, I find it very chilling.

JIM LEHRER: So, what's going to happen, Sen. Bennett, nothing?

SEN. ROBERT BENNETT: Well, there will be a lot of political maneuvering. I don't think there are the votes there in the Senate to pass McCain-Feingold. I think there are a number of us, quite frankly, who are willing to withstand the opprobrium, if that's the right term, of even a filibuster on what we consider a fundamental First Amendment issue. I have filibustered very seldom, but something this important I'm willing to do it.

JIM LEHRER: So it isn't going to happen, Sen. Durbin?

SEN. RICHARD DURBIN: Well, I'm worried about it because we only have 48 who are on board. I think you can add Sen. Specter as a possible vote in favor of cloture, so maybe 49.

JIM LEHRER: But you need 60, right?

SEN. RICHARD DURBIN: Well, we need 60 to beat back a filibuster, that's for sure. And, you know, it gets to the bottom line. If we are going to see this debate mired down because of alternatives and poison pill amendments and it comes to nothing, then the same Republican Party that's been so critical of this process through all these hearings at the Governmental Affairs Committee--

JIM LEHRER: All right.

SEN. RICHARD DURBIN: --will have to go home and explain why they didn't change it.

SEN. ROBERT BENNETT: And I'm perfectly willing to do that. As a matter of fact, sometimes my audiences get a little bored as I talk about this. They say we're not that interested; get on to something else.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Well, gentlemen, thank you both very much. FOCUS - POLITICAL WRAP

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight Shields & Gigot, happy birthday William Faulkner, and an Anne Taylor Fleming Essay. Margaret Warner is with Shields & Gigot.

MARGARET WARNER: And now for our weekly political analysis with our NewsHour regulars: syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot. Mark, as you listened to these Senators, where's this thing headed?

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: Well, I think it's headed exactly where they say it is. There are 49 votes now, if you count Sen. Arlen Specter, the Republican of Pennsylvania, there's forty-five Democrats and four Republicans who are committed to this bill and to its passage. And I think Senator McConnell of Kentucky has been pretty clear, and as we saw in the opening piece, he's willing to lead a filibuster to stop its ever getting to a vote. I think, quite frankly, that puts the Republicans in a difficult position. I think we have to pause right now and say this is a miracle, a miracle. McCain-Feingold declared dead nine times, the hearings got no interest, everybody said, and all of a sudden here's the Senator of the United States taking up the McCain-Feingold bill and talking about campaign finance reform, and Bob Bennett from Utah and Dick Durbin from Illinois are on our broadcast doing it. I mean, I just think--I think there's something serious here happening, and I would not rule it out. I think it's impossible to say right now that Jim Jeffords of Vermont, a Republican, Olympia Snowe of Maine, a Republican, John Chafee of Rhode Island, would not vote for this in the crunch, and I think at that point, Margaret, you're awfully hard pressed to say we're going to stop it with a filibuster, we're going to stop campaign finance reform.

MARGARET WARNER: Is that going to be hard for the Republicans to do?

PAUL GIGOT, Wall Street Journal: Mark's threshold for miracles is a lot lower than mine apparently, or a lot-- I don't think it's a miracle. I think when the President of the United States gets out and says I want this bill, even if he's trying to divert attention from the '96 campaign investigations that gets some attention. The media--most of the press--loves the idea of reform, reform has a nice sound to it, even if the problem is in the details of the reform. There had to be a vote. The Republicans had to have a vote. They couldn't be seen to be even denying that, but that doesn't mean there's going to be--this is going to pass. I think it's going to fail. I think the supporters might get the 50 votes, they might get the 50 votes if they have 49 now, but there is no way unless the Republicans decide that they want to attempt suicide--and they're not above that. I mean, they might do it. They've done it in the past, but if they--unless they want to really hurt themselves, they want to pass this bill.

MARK SHIELDS: Margaret, if you want--there's an old line about if you want candor in Washington, only talk to somebody who's over 70, who's been a public official, or given up all hopes of the presidency. I think it's revealing that you talk to anybody, virtually anybody who's served in public office, who's been through this, and they are absolutely fully candid about what a lousy system this is, how corrosive and how corrupting it is. We've had three living presidents, who are not ill. Jerry Ford, George Bush, and Jimmy Carter, three disparate figures, all call for the abolition of soft money. We had leading CEO's--I mean R. J. Miller--of Ford, Warren Buffet, I mean, captains of American industry, successful capitalists all say the same things. We've had Monsanto Chemical saying we're not going to give any more soft money. I mean, it is a lousy, corrupt, corrupting system.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Paul, both Senator Durbin--and also today Sen. Daschle kept talking about poison pill amendments. What are they talking about? What's going to be the Republican strategy with this?

PAUL GIGOT: They're talking about amendments the Democrats don't like. That's how you define a poison pill in this context. It's--to get back to Mark's point before I take yours, the difference here is not the question between--the problem is not this system and nothing. There's a philosophical difference. And there's a practical political difference about how you define reform. And if you want to define it as McCain-Feingold, it's-- Republicans can't go along with that because it does almost nothing, virtually nothing about unions. And that's one of the things that the Democrats--that--one of the first amendments Sen. Lott is going to put on. He would like to make a positive check-off, so that if you happen to be either a corporate employee or a union employee that portion of your dues that would go into political campaigns you could say, yes, I want that, or no, I don't, much like the federal election checkoff works on your tax reform. Right now it's automatically whisked away if you're in the union and they could spend it any way they want.

MARGARET WARNER: So you're saying the Republicans would try to attach that to the bill--

PAUL GIGOT: That's going to be the first amendment, my guess.

MARGARET WARNER: And that makes it very unappealing to Democrats.

PAUL GIGOT: That's correct.

MARGARET WARNER: So what do the Democrats do then? Don't they have to filibuster?

MARK SHIELDS: I think that's going to be part of the game, playing chicken as to who--whose bill--how the bill is changed so that who leads the filibuster, because filibusters are going to be seen in the final analysis, and I think this is the mistake that Mitch McConnell, the Republican from Kentucky, has made, is we are for the status quo. We really are. And that's the mistake, and I think Trent Lott is a sufficiently sophisticated and shrewd enough politician to understand Republicans cannot be. After these revelations, after disclosure upon disclosure, after the latest Wall Street Journal reporting today and the grand jury investigating Haley Barbour, the former Republican national chairman, in illegal foreign contributions, that this--being for the status quo is an unacceptable political position.

MARGARET WARNER: Sen. Bennett sounded completely embarrassed. He said he would be proud to--

MARK SHIELDS: I think Sen. Bennett would be. I think Sen. Bennett's one of those small group of people I'm talking about when it comes down to a difficult political decision. Let's understand one thing, Margaret. Soft money includes labor money. I mean, that's the--the abolition of soft money says labor can't do it anymore, it's labor, it's business, and it's rich individuals. You're not talking about people who make $35,000 a year when you're talking about soft money. You're talking about a few institutions, corporations, labor unions, and very, very wealthy individuals who give six-figure contributions.

PAUL GIGOT: Here's the problem.

MARGARET WARNER: But that isn't enough for the Republicans.

PAUL GIGOT: If you ban soft money, what happens, what is going to happen, what's going to happen is what happened this week, John Sweeney, the head of the AFL-CIO, at their convention said, we're not going to give soft money to the Democratic Party. What are they going to do? They're going to spend it themselves, where it is outside the system, where it is outside most of what McCain-Feingold wants to do, so that it's going to be even worse, and if there's no control over that, then how can--then why would you be a Republican and sacrifice something like soft money, which then you can use through your party to counteract? It's politically nuts.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Let's--before we close let me move on to one other topic, which was the attorney general, it's now become clear, has opened a preliminary inquiry into whether the President made fund- raising calls from the White House. Now, Mark, how serious is this for the President?

MARK SHIELDS: Oh, it's serious. I mean, in spite of the ridiculous calls for Janet Reno's impeachment and charges that she's somehow a puppet, no one really believes that who's a serious person in Washington, that she is a puppet of this White House or a puppet of anybody; therefore, she's an independent person. She's been embarrassed by the failure of her original task force to uncover what Bob Woodward and a couple of reporters of the Washington Post uncovered without the subpoena power.

MARGARET WARNER: Which was that a lot of this soft money raised--

MARK SHIELDS: Was being converted--

MARGARET WARNER: --really went to--

MARK SHIELDS: That the--the calls of the Vice President was being converted to hard money without the donor's knowledge in some cases, and so it's a serious matter. I mean, Janet Reno's a serious person, and this is not a step I'm sure she took lightly.

MARGARET WARNER: Where do you think it's headed?

PAUL GIGOT: Well, we're not going to indict a President, I don't care--no one is--for making phone calls from the Oval Office.

MARK SHIELDS: No.

PAUL GIGOT: The whole game here is: Does this trigger the independent counsel statute, which might trigger a broader investigation of what happened in campaign finance? And that's what the White House wants to head off.

MARK SHIELDS: I would say anybody who holds high public office ought to want to head it off because it isn't going to stop. I'd just say three words, Margaret, about independent counsels: Jim Guy Tucker. Jim Guy Tucker was the governor of Arkansas. He was a political nemesis of Bill Clinton. He had fought him for the governorship. They started an investigation of Whitewater, a real estate deal involving Jim, Bill Clinton, involving the McDougals, and who ends up in the slammer--Jim Guy Tucker. It's going to go to the Republican National Committee; it's going to go to the Democratic National Committee, both campaign committees of the House. It's going to go everywhere if you've got an aggressive, energetic independent counsel with any kind of a mandate.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, your column this morning, Paul, argued that Republicans stopped wishing for an independent counsel. Why?

PAUL GIGOT: Well, I'm in the minority among my conservative colleagues and the like. I just think that there is a problem because just look what happened to Ken Starr. I mean, three years ago Ken Starr--

MARGARET WARNER: Whitewater special counsel.

PAUL GIGOT: Whitewater special counsel. The White House was petrified of it. It turns out, I think, that in the 1996 campaign it gave the President a kind of immunity, political immunity. Anything came up. FBI files, he's looking into it, the special counsel, looking into it. Meanwhile, you can--you can not cooperate very much. You can delay, you can stonewall, and once a special counsel's named in this case I think it gives the press a chance to stand back and say, we don't have to look into it, it gives Congress a chance to absolve itself of responsibility of oversight, and this is the problem I had with the Republicans. They really don't want to do too much oversight here because it's politically very difficult and somebody might call you names. And they want to throw this all in the lap of some special counsel. And I think they ought to do their jobs before they give it to somebody else.

MARK SHIELDS: That--I would add one other thing to it--that is their experience that the Congress went through in the Iran-Contra hearings, where Ollie North was convicted, and then the conviction was overturned because of the witnesses being bathed in the testimony, as the court put it, bathed in the immunity testimony, that they, therefore, the jurors were aware of the charges and what North himself had said, my point being very simply that I think there's a lot of Republicans who don't want any legislation in campaign finance, and one way of saying, I don't want any campaign finance reform is to have an independent counsel.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. That's the end for us. Thank you both. FOCUS - SON OF THE SOUTH

JIM LEHRER: Now, a literary birthday. Elizabeth Farnsworth leads our celebration.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: This week marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of America's most influential and honored writers: William Faulkner, who lived in Oxford, Mississippi, almost all his life.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, but his family soon moved to Oxford, and it gave him the world that would make up his great novels. He left Mississippi briefly in World War I. Though he was rejected by the U.S. Army because he was too short, he managed to join the British Royal Air Force in Canada. But the war ended before he could get to Europe. He pretended it hadn't and told tales portraying himself as a war hero with harrowing experiences of battle and valor. He sported a mustache in those years, affected a British accent, and changed the spelling of his name--adding a "u" to Falkner. His friends recognized him asa great storyteller.

STONE: [1979] Bill told some of his lies. He told one about how when he was in Canada training for flight. He--something happened to the airplane--anyway he landed upside down inside the hangar, even though I had heard this story. And he said, "Did you ever try to drink a bottle of whiskey when you were sitting upside down in the top of a hangar?. We were just agog--we little country girls--and he said, "Well, that's what happened." He said, "I died."

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: In 1924, he went to New Orleans, planning to work for a newspaper. Instead, he met the writer Sherwood Anderson and began publishing verse and criticism in "The Double Dealer," an experimental magazine. A year later he was back in Oxford, and now he began to write about it. He was paying very close attention to how people around him thought and talked and was registering their experiences for his own work. His first book, a collection of poems, had been published in 1924. Two well-received novels followed, and by the late 20's he was at work on the four-generation saga of the doomed Sartoris family. Perhaps his greatest creation was the place they lived--Yoknapatawpha County. It was the Chickasaw word for the Yikona River that ran south of Oxford. And in dozens of novels and stories Yoknapatawpha was the background for the intertwining, often violent experiences of rogues and red necks, farmers and soldiers, whites, blacks, and mulattos, people of all ages and backgrounds. Their stories make up what Faulkner called the tragic fable of Southern history. "The only subject worth the agony and sweat of the artist," he once said, "is the human heart in conflict with itself." He shunned literary circles in big cities and isolated himself with his family in Oxford, placing stories in Colliers and the Saturday Evening Post, and publishing novels like "Sanctuary," "As I Lay Dying," and "The Sound and the Fury." In 1950, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. At the acceptance ceremony he said, "Writers have a special responsibility."

FAULKNER: it is privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man; it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: In Oxford, he was considered eccentric. He drank heavily and some called him "Count No Account" because of his arrogant behavior. Writer Shelby Foote remembered him in a 1979 interview.

SHELBY FOOTE: He came to Oxford in the late 30's say and that on the square you ask someone where William Faulkner lived, he would be apt to turn his head and spit. The town resented sanctuary, for instance, when Faulkner was known as a corn cob man. And they thought he was sullying the atmosphere.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Because his books weren't big sellers for most of his career Faulkner was very poor. To pay the bills in the 30's and 40's he sometimes reluctantly went to Hollywood and worked as a screenwriter. In 1949, MGM made feature film of his novel "Intruder in the Dust." It was shot in Oxford, and the townspeople who did not generally support his writing came out in droves to be extras in his film. By 1945, all of the novels Faulkner had written up to then were out of print. Then a year later the "Portable Faulkner" was published, and he began to get wide acclaim. In 1955 he won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer. Late in life Faulkner seemed overwhelmed by his achievement. As complex as the characters he created, often troubled and lonely, he had not been aware in his most creative years of the significance of what he was doing. In 1953, he wrote a friend, "Now, I realize for the first time what an amazing gift I had: uneducated in every formal sense, without even literate let alone literary companions, yet to have made the things that I made. I don't know where it came from. I don't know why God or gods, or whoever it was, elected me to be the vessel. Believe me, this is not humility, false modesty: It is simply amazement." William died in 1962.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: With us now is Donald Kartiganer, Professor of English at the University of Mississippi in Oxford and organizer of the annual Faulkner Conference there, and Lee Smith, who has written 14 novels. Her latest book is "News of the Spirit. Thank you both for being with us. Lee Smith, in your view, what makes Faulkner great?

LEE SMITH, Novelist: Well, I think the use of language primarily for me and also his willingness to take on the great themes, the--of history, to take on the relation between history and art, and I think he's really truly the greatest American writer, at least for me, and I keep reading and rereading his work over and over. And I'm always finding new things in even novels that I have thought were familiar to me.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Donald Kartiganer, do you agree with that?

DONALD KARTIGANER, University of Mississippi: Oh, absolutely. I think that his--as a stylist, as one of the creators of the modern imagination, and one of the--

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Let me interrupt you. What do you mean, "one of the creators of the modern imagination?"

DONALD KARTIGANER: Well, one of the writers, who along with people like Joyce and Elliot and Pound were simply breaking away from much of what had constituted poetry and fiction in the 19th century, trying new strategies, in Faulkner's case the long sentence, the looping chronology, the different narrative perspectives, the constant moving back between past and present, but also I'd like to continue what Lee was talking about, his sense of the past. This was a writer with a great historical imagination, and part of his greatness is the way in which he brings together that historical imagination and his, you might say his innovativeness as a stylist.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Lee Smith, was that particularly Southern, that sense of the past?

LEE SMITH: Yes. I think it is particularly Southern. I think it's particularly Southern that his sense of the past is often a tragic sense because, unlike the rest of the country, the South has had a history that could be viewed in that way.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And, Lee Smith, one critic said he was so exquisitely specific in writing about his place and his town and yet he made it universal. How do you do that?

LEE SMITH: I think through the use of specific detail and specifically through language. I think it's important, though, to remember that for me at least, anyway, all really great literature is regional literature, whether we're talking about Joyce's Dublin, or Dickens' London, or Madam Bovary in provincial France. And I think his Yoknapatawpha is so very specific, but I think it goes to show us, you know, who we are, what forms us, how should we live, what kind of small responsibility do we take for our lives, and all this really comes out as people and their relationships to the place that formed them. And these are universal questions, which are cloaked, I think, and presented by Faulkner in a very specificregional way.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Donald Kartiganer, do you have anything to add to that in how he makes it so universal while being so specific?

DONALD KARTIGANER: Well, I think one of the interesting things about Faulkner is that he is very much reliant on a whole bundle of Southern stock situations, stock characters, even stereotypes from the Southern imagination, as well as the Northern imagination of the South. And if you look at his characters, for example, the aristocrats, the poor whites, the spinster, for example, Emily Grierson in "Grows Friendly," the black mammy, or the menacing black males, the potential rapist and murder, these were all part of that tradition, but he of course takes them and makes these characters into full flesh and blood, three-dimensional beings whose complexities and conflicts clearly have something to do with us all.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And Lee Smith, speaking of the black characters, wasn't he one of the first writers to really write deeply about the relationship between black and white?

LEE SMITH: Oh, absolutely. And specifically in "Abslum Absalom" and in "Intruder in the Dust" and "Light in August," that--the race question is addressed head on and in a more frank and even brutal way than anyone else was writing about it, I think.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Lee Smith, you still read "Abslum Absalom" regularly, right? Is it something you carry with you?

LEE SMITH: I read it all the time. I read it the way other people read the Bible.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Why?

LEE SMITH: Well, it is huge. I mean, it is a novel which is enormous in its concerns. Basically, of course, the plot is--it tells the story of Thomas Sutton, who is a larger than life character, who was determined to create a dynasty out of what is referred to in the novel as "a hundred square miles of tranquil and astonished earth," but it is how he was undone by his pride and by his own sons. There's a kind of a "Lear"-like quality to it. But it is enormous in its concerns. It is enormous in--you know, it deals with three races, characters of both sexes, the sweep of history. It's about history. It's about art. It's about storytelling, and the relation that storytelling has to the story and how the story changes, depending upon who the teller is. And I think anybody who is trying to write fiction, for me, particularly, it's just like a kind of a touchstone. It's something I have to keep coming back to, and, you know, every time I read it I'm a different age, and it seems like I get something different out of it.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Donald Kartiganer, some people find Faulkner hard to read. They find him even verbose and try and then put him down, try and then put him down. What do you say to those people?

DONALD KARTIGANER: Well, I could take Faulkner's tact. When some said I tried to read "Sound and the Fury" three times and I can't get through it, and Faulkner very helpfully suggested read it a fourth time. I think I tried to do a little bit better than that with my students. I think there are certain adjustments you have to make and a certain understanding of what he's trying to do. He once said, "I'm trying to say it all in one sentence, between one cap and one period." In a sense, the whole narrative strategy of his work is to try to collapse all time. And I think this is where his historical consciousness comes into play. He never believed in a radical distinction between past and present. He felt that the past coexists with the present, and that in writing one has to capture that phenomenon. He said a story in a story is never just himself at a particular point in time, he is everything that created him. And so in the fiction these--the constant digressions, the qualifications, the moving backward and forward in time, he'll take a character up to an event and then suddenly in the next chapter you're 30 years back, going--in a sense approaching that event again. And the effect of this is to show us this unity of present and past and that if the writer is going to depict reality, he has to capture this phenomenon of the oneness.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Lee Smith, in the few seconds before we go, what about his humor. Eudora Welty, the writer, called it "the wisdom of his comedy." He was humorous too.

LEE SMITH: He was very funny. I think the "Reivers," which, in fact, was his last novel, is enormously funny, but even in the most--some of the most tragic work you will have these deadpan characters off of the--the Snopses or the more low life characters who were found among the hifalutin Constance and Sartorises, as well, who are very, very funny. It's this real ability to mix comedy and tragedy and all kinds of modes of speech, I think, which indicate the greatness of the writer.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Well, thank you both very much. ESSAY - IRONIC UNION

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, essayist Anne Taylor Fleming considers the ironies of marriage.

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: Walk by any newsstand and you can bet that the fattest magazines are those aimed at America's brides--dense tomes of dress ads and china ads, advice on bridal bouquets and bridal etiquette. The brides seem quite there, nestled between the Cosmo girls and the sultry starlets and modelettes that grace many another cover. You can only conclude that weddings are still big business in end-of-the-century America. For all the hip young women who are strutting their stuff in MTV-Land, there are millions of others still dreaming of walking down the aisle in white lace splendor, even all those children of divorce who are willing to take a gamble on marriage. What a funny contradiction we are--marrying in record numbers, 90 percent of men and women eventually marry, and divorcing in record numbers. Half of all marriages come apart, as do half of all remarriages. In short, we are serial marriers and serial divorcers. There's now a full tilt phalanx of the culturally concerned that say it has to stop, that divorce is the root of all social evil. You can find their work in the bookstores and on the op ed pages. Their general lament: that too many spoiled adults won't honor those wedding day commitments, won't tough out tough marital times, but, instead, follow their hearts or libidos out the familial front door, leaving broken families and brokenhearted children behind.

SINGER IN BACKGROUND: Your mind is full of rage!

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: They blame the 1960's, the hot tub hopping, free loving, divorce-advocating, counter-culturites, for leading us all down the path of bliss, selfishness, and divorce. They want to turn back the clock to make divorce harder again. The state of Louisiana has gone so far as to offer marrying couples a choice: They can go the standard "no fault" route, or sign on for a so-called "covenant marriage," in which they agree not to divorce until after a two-year separation. This kind of cooling off period, both for beginning a marriage or ending one, especially if there are children, might not be such a bad idea for two reasons: One is that the kids of divorce fare less well in school, in life, in their own marriages, than those from intact families. They carry that family fracture with them from the schoolyard swings to the 12-step programs. The other reason to hang tough is that couples are happier in pre-kid and post-kid marriages. In short, if you can tough it out while the kids are still home, in the full tilt throws of trying to grow up, you might have a happy marriage again on the other side, one of the bittersweet ironies of family life. One of the other bittersweet ironies is that the improvement in women's lives, their increasing freedoms and incomes, has also added to the divorce rate, even more perhaps than those much lambasted 1960's. Because more women can survive on their own now, they have less reason to stay in an unhappy marriage. And it is hard to imagine any state-sanctioned prenuptial agreements keeping them there. The truth is we've always had high standards for marriage in this country. We've always seen it as a consensual union between, more or less, equal partners. Even the Puritans, way back in the 1600's, allowed for divorce and remarriage, a precedent-setting break with the old country. In recent years, our expectations have just gotten higher. Witness these glossy tomes of giddy brides, all dolled up to stroll down the aisle into their future. It is precisely that hopeful view that leads us not only into marriage but out of it. That's the ultimate irony. I'm Anne Taylor Fleming. RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Friday, the Senate debated the campaign finance reform bill known as McCain-Feingold. It would ban soft money contributions to political parties, among other things. The space shuttle Atlantis is on its way, taking American David Wolf for a four-month stay on the Russian space station Mir, and 234 people died in an airliner crash in Indonesia, where a thick smog had reduced visibility. We'll see you on-line and again here Monday evening. Have a nice weekend. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.