The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. I'm Robert MacNeil in New York.

MS. WOODRUFF: And I'm Judy Woodruff in Washington. After our summary of the day's news, we assess the impact of this week's four major Supreme Court decisions. We'll be joined by Nina Totenberg of National Public Radio and law professors Laurence Tribe and Charles Fried. Then Gergen & Shields offer their regular Friday night analysis of the political week, and finally Charlayne Hunter- Gault has another in her series of conversations on getting along. NEWS SUMMARY

MS. WOODRUFF: Navy Secretary Lawrence Garrett abruptly resigned late this afternoon. He said he was taking full responsibility for the Navy's handling of the so-called "Tail Hook Scandal" involving sexual harassment. The incident took place at a 1991 convention of Naval aviators in Las Vegas. Twenty-six women who attended the convention, half of whom were Naval officers, said they had been grabbed at and fondled by a group of current and former male Navy and Marine pilots. Sec. Garrett attended the convention, but said in his resignation letter to President Bush that he neither saw nor engaged in any offensive conduct. Also today, a Navy official told Congress that a criminal investigation of the incident had been suspended because some of the investigators may themselves be suspect. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: In a major civil rights case, the Supreme Court today ruled that segregation continued at state-run colleges and universities in Mississippi, despite the fact that whites and blacks are free to attend the school of their choice. In its eight to one ruling, the court said state policies toward the schools served to perpetuate the effects of past segregation. A lower court must now decide a remedy. Justice Antonin Scalia was the lone dissenter in the ruling which could affect other states that once ran segregated universities. In a six to three freedom of speech ruling, the court said that public airports can bar religious or political groups from soliciting money on the premise. But in a five to four decision, they said the same groups must be allowed to pass out leaflets and other materials. We'll have more on this week's decisions on the court term right after the News Summary. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: The nation's freight and passenger trains were rolling again today. Strikers from the Machinists' Union left their picket lines early this morning at the CSX Railroad. The other freight carriers, which shut down during the CSX strike, resumed operations. Last night, the House and Senate approved an emergency bill. It imposed a 38-day cooling off period and ordered the dispute to arbitration. President Bush signed the bill shortly after its passage. Most freight trains were moving today, with full service expected to be restored tomorrow. Amtrak short haul passenger trains which had been sidelined during the two-day shutdown were also back in service, but officials said it would take at least another day for the longer routes to resume.

MR. MacNeil: The spending of American consumers last month rose faster than their incomes. The Commerce Department reported that consumer spending rose .5 percent in May, while personal income climbed .3 percent. Analysts said unless income growth improves in the coming months, consumers will not be able to maintain their current pace of spending that accounts for 2/3 of the nation's economic activity.

MS. WOODRUFF: Astronauts aboard the space shuttle Columbia experimented today with water droplets suspended in space. It was just one of thirty major experiments the seven-member crew is expected to conduct during its 13-day mission. NASA officials said the water experiments may have a practical application back on earth. The research could further the development of time-released medicines and fuel pellets for nuclear fusion reactors.

MR. MacNeil: New federal pollution rules have drawn fire from environmental and congressional critics. The Environmental Protection Agency issued rules yesterday giving businesses new authority to increase the amount of pollutants they release into the atmosphere. Representative Henry Waxman of California accused the EPA of buckling under to pressure from Vice President Quayle's Council on Competitiveness. The Council had argued that businesses needed the rules to cut the costs of meeting requirements of the 1990 Federal Clean Air Act. Waxman, the Act's principal author, described the rules as a massive loophole designed to carve the heart out of the pollution law. Amnesty International today accused Los Angeles police of using excessive force, sometimes amounting to torture. The London-based human rights group said blacks and Hispanics were particularly frequent targets of the abuse. It faulted the city's police leadership for failing to take disciplinary action against officers committing the offenses. The report came as the successor to Police Chief Darryl Gates was sworn into office. Gates officially retires this weekend after 14 years as chief. His replacement is former Philadelphia Police Commissioner Willie Williams.

MS. WOODRUFF: United Nations Secretary General Boutras Boutras- Gali today gave Serbian forces in Bosnia an ultimatum: "Stop fighting in 48 hours, or the U.N. will consider new action to get relief supplies to citizens in the besieged capital of Sarajevo." That word came from the president of the U.N. Security Council. Also today, a Pentagon spokesman said that U.S. forces in Europe have been on alert for the past 10 days to stand by for a humanitarian airlift into Sarajevo. President Bush met with his top security advisers at the White House today to discuss the growing crisis. Afterward, National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft said the U.S. would only act in concert with other U.N. countries and only after a cease-fire. Sec. of State James Baker also tried to downplay speculation about military intervention, but he expressed concern about the situation. He spoke at the State Department.

JAMES BAKER, Secretary of State: It is extremely unfortunate to watch a continuation of this humanitarian nightmare in which innocent men, women, and children are being slaughtered by armed forces who are lobbying mortar and artillery shells into the midst of a civilian population and at the very least, at the very least, I think it is incumbent upon all of us in the civilized international community to do what we can to see to the provisioning of humanitarian relief. The current United Nations plan calls for the provisioning of humanitarian relief pursuant to a cease-fire and pursuant to a political understanding. And my understanding of that resolution is it does not authorize the use of force.

MS. WOODRUFF: Serb commanders in Sarajevo reportedly ordered their forces to stop firing on the city today, but by evening, new shelling shattered a day of relative calm.

MR. MacNeil: United Nations officials in Somalia said one and a half million people in the East African nation are threatened with starvation. They issued an appeal for immediate international aid to save their lives. The country's famine is the result of a drought and a bloody civil war. Thousands of refugees have fled to surrounding nations.At least 150 died this week when a ship carrying them was refused entry to ports. Some died of starvation; others drowned while trying to swim ashore.

MS. WOODRUFF: That's our News Summary for this Friday. Now, it's on to a review of this term's major Supreme Court decisions, the political wisdom of Gergen & Shields, and a Charlayne Hunter-Gault conversation on racism. FOCUS - WEEK IN REVIEW

MR. MacNeil: We lead tonight with some major Supreme Court decisions handed down this week. And we begin with today's historic decision, the first time the court has ever looked at segregation at the college level. The court decided that Mississippi's state- run colleges and universities unlawfully segregate students, even though all state schools are officially open to both blacks and whites. We're going to hear from two legal scholars, but we start with Nina Totenberg, legal affairs correspondent for National Public Radio. Nina, what specifically does the court say is wrong in Mississippi, and what must the state do about it?

MS. TOTENBERG: Well, the court said to the state what you have offered is not enough. What the state offered was, it said, look, we don't discriminate anymore; we've got an open admissions policy; anybody of any race can go to any one of our schools as long as they're qualified, and that ought to be enough; we've stopped discriminating. And the Supreme Court said, given the state's history of a dual system of schools, of segregated, legally segregated, officially segregated system of schools, for over 100 years, that is not enough, you must take affirmative steps to desegregate; you must do specific things. For example, the court said that a number of the practices the state now has are suspect and have to be examined by the lower courts. It said that its admission policy of relying almost exclusively on college board scores, instead of what is considered the better predictor of college boards, plus high school graduation -- high school grades is a far better way to do it and clearly that -- the court suggested that the system used by the state channels whites to white schools and blacks to black schools. So the bottom line is that this is going to have to go back to the lower courts. The decision was eight to one and the court gave some rather specific guidance to the lower courts about what to look at. There is the danger of course that blacks, predominantly black colleges will have to be closed and merged with the larger institutions, the better-equipped institutions, the predominantly white institutions.

MR. MacNeil: We did a report on that case from Mississippi when it went to court. And I remember one of the details complained of was that a lot more resources and a much wider choice of courses was offered at the predominantly white state institutions than the black ones.

MS. TOTENBERG: That's right. Now, the court did say that just because a school is predominantly white or predominantly black isn't enough to disqualify it. What the court said is you shouldn't have needless duplication of programs, you shouldn't have overtly unequal systems. And, you know, some of these schools are located twenty or thirty miles from each other and have the same essential degree programs. And I think the court was suggesting rather clearly that that may not stand, not unless the state can present evidence that there is a really good educational reason for doing it that way.

MR. MacNeil: Okay. For analysis of the impact of the court decisions, we're joined by two legal scholars. Charles Fried is the former solicitor general of the United States. He served during the Reagan administration. He's now a professor of law at Harvard University. Laurence Tribe has argued many cases before the Supreme Court and has advised others on presenting liberal positions to the Court. He's also a professor of law at Harvard. And both gentlemen join us from Boston. Charles Fried, how important is this ruling in the long context of efforts to desegregate public education in this country? And what effect do you think it's going to have on states outside Mississippi?

PROF. FRIED: The major surprising effect that it's going to have in the region, in the Southern states where there previously were segregated university systems is to be a real threat to traditional predominantly black institutions, because I don't think the court left much room for systems which would encourage that kind of an institution. I don't know whether that's good or bad. I think we're certainly losing something if some of those places disappear or fold up or are swallowed up into larger institutions, because they have some very fine traditions. But I think that's the major -- that's the major fallout to watch.

MR. MacNeil: Is this a big decision, Laurence Tribe?

PROF. TRIBE: I think it's a significant decision and I think that my colleague, Charles Fried, has put his finger on one of the more ironic dimensions of it. Indeed, Justice Thomas in a separate opinion stressed how unfortunate it would be if the decision were construed to require the closing of traditionally largely black schools, which have been important as sources of opportunity.

MR. MacNeil: Public schools.

PROF. TRIBE: That's right, public universities. I think though another important dimension of the case -- and I think it's an important theme throughout the year -- is sort of the dog that didn't bark, what the court didn't do or didn't say. It did not go any distance toward suggesting that there must be resource equalization. One important theme that pervaded some of the possible arguments in the case was that even if formally the system had been integrated, if predominantly black schools received dramatically less resources per student than predominantly white schools, then the system might be technically not separate but very much not equal either. And it's interesting that the court does not do very much in the direction of suggesting that there need be resource equalization as part of the remedy.

PROF. FRIED: Although the Bush administration did suggest that might be something they had to do.

PROF. TRIBE: That's right. Quite often, the court has in a sense been to the right of the Bush administration. And this may be in a sense an instance of that.

MR. MacNeil: All right. Let's move on to the decision this week involving school prayer. The court said the reading of a prayer at a public school graduation ceremony violates the constitutional separation of church and state. Nina, what specifically was the court asked in this case, and what did it say?

MS. TOTENBERG: Well, the Bush administration used this case as a vehicle to achieve something that both the Reagan and Bush administrations had long sought, which was a greater accommodation between church and state in public settings. And the Bush administration asked in this instance that the court would redo the framework of analyzing church-state cases of the last 30 years and instead apply a new standard, which would allow any religious practice, as long as it wasn't coerced, meaning the Bush administration argued a practice if you didn't do you were legallypenalized for not doing. Well, the Supreme Court, as Prof. Tribe said, didn't bark. It didn't rework the framework of church-state cases. It didn't buy the coercion argument as, at least as put forth by the Bush administration. Instead, by a five to four vote, the court said in this case involving a graduation prayer that it was, in effect, psychological coercion to require youngsters to participate even by standing up for an invocation or a benediction in a non-denominational prayer, that the clergyman had been picked by the state, in this case the principal of the school, had been helped in writing the prayer, because he gave a pamphlet to the rabbi who was picked for this occasion, and that that amounted to coercion, and the opinion was written by Justice Kennedy.

MR. MacNeil: I think the little story behind it is interesting, that the family that objected went to one graduation where a Christian prayer was read and then after complaining, went back the next year and found that there was a Jewish prayer, a prayer at least read by a rabbi. Just describe that.

MS. TOTENBERG: Well, the Weisman family went to one daughter's graduation and heard a Christian clergyman ask that we all give thanks to Jesus Christ for the work of these youngsters. And they were offended by that, and so they asked that there be no prayer. Instead, the school picked a rabbi. And what Mr. Weisman said was it seemed to me what was good for the goose, was good for the gander, and I shouldn't be oppressing other people by having my religion highlighted at this occasion.

MR. MacNeil: Laurence Tribe, was this in any way a surprising decision?

PROF. TRIBE: Oh, I gather a number of people were surprised, but I am surprised by their surprise. I can't quite figure it out. It was really a very easy case when one strips away some of the posturing. The idea, for example, that a high school graduation is a purely voluntary matter and that if you object to the prayer, all you have to do is not attend your own graduation, which was the position advanced by the Bush administration and by the school board, was a little short of laughable, I think, and so it was not surprising. What is dismaying, I think, is that a decision like this, which merely reaffirmed and very slightly extended the classical proposition that official prayer in elementary and secondary school settings is impermissible, that such a decision should have been rendered by a court that was divided five to four, that's dismaying. It suggests that some very fundamental propositions that ought to be easy are now hanging by a thread.

MR. MacNeil: Does it dismay you, Mr. Fried?

PROF. FRIED: It doesn't dismay me a bit. What's interesting, Nina said the dog didn't bark, but it did growl. It growled because Justice Kennedy, who is a very sensible man, refused to go through again the traditional way of analyzing establishment clause cases and he did emphasize coercion. It's just that his coercion was rather sensitive, I think reasonably sensitive. And that suggests to me that when we get other establishment clause cases, where there isn't that kind of coercion -- and I'm thinking particularly of vouchers to allow parents to send their children to parochial schools -- that the dog will, indeed, bark.

MR. MacNeil: Which, in fact, was announced yesterday by the Bush administration, the provision -- Congress we hear is unlikely to act.

PROF. FRIED: I think they could get some comfort from this decision.

PROF. TRIBE: Well, of course, what is comfort for some is discomfort for others. I don't always have problems with voucher schemes, but the broader point is that rituals of various voluntary kinds are fine. Official ceremonies may by a narrow vote be excluded from coercive settings, but when the power of financial distribution is involved and very large issues of the separation of the church and state are at stake, a narrowly divided court may not be enough to preserve a really fundamental principle.

MR. MacNeil: Well, let's turn to another major case of this week, and this term the "hate crimes decision." That case involved a Minnesota cross burning by a teenager on the property of a black family. Nina, describe the story and how the court decided in this case.

MS. TOTENBERG: Well, St. Paul has an ordinance that's a very broad ordinance. It had an ordinance that said that anyone who puts out a symbol, such as a swastika or a burning cross, that offends the listener, can be prosecuted. And that was the law used to prosecute this bunch of teenagers who had burned a cross on the lawn of a black family who had recently moved into an all white neighborhood. And they woke up in the middle of the night and saw this cross burning in their yard, called the police, the kids were caught and prosecuted under this law. Now, all nine members of the court agreed that the law was unconstitutional, but they broke down five to four on why. And for those of us who are court watchers, this in many ways was the most interesting case of the week, because it illustrated a difference in approach, at least in First Amendment free speech cases, between the Justices, or among the Justices. On one side was the five-member majority led by Justice Scalia, who wrote the opinion. And Justice Scalia said, you may not single out one kind of speech and make it a crime that is particularly punishable, because you particularly don't like that kind of speech. You can punish a cross-burning as arson or vandalism, or any other -- or trespass, but you cannot then further heap onto that more baggage and say it's particularly awful because of the hateful message involved. Now, four members of the court said, we don't agree with that. There are such things as fighting words, meaning words that are so awful that they are calculated to provoke violence or to intimidate people and that with our history of racial discrimination and slavery in this country that to allow -- to disallow a narrowly tailored law aimed at that kind of speech, that kind of -- for example, cross burning -- is wrong and that a narrowly tailored law should be permissible.

MR. MacNeil: Charles Fried, you and Laurence Tribe are both there on a university campus. What effect is this ruling going to have on the so-called politically correct speech on campuses where some universities have undertaken to ban speech that some racial or other groups find offensive?

PROF. FRIED: Well, I think this decision and Justice Scalia's decision specifically has a very important bearing on that, because at Stanford, in Michigan, and Wisconsin, and a number of other places, certain kinds of speech are banned because they upset people who belong to certain categories. And it's the sort of standard catalogue in terms of sexual orientation, race, religion, Vietnam era, veteran status and so on. And other kinds of speech which are equally offensive are not banned. And it seems to me that Scalia was putting his finger just on that. But I think the burden of this decision is that the Maoists who burned the flag in the Eichman case two years ago are just as bad and just as good as the skinheads who burnt the cross in this case. And each case, what you had is legislatures who are trying to create a kind of blasphemy law, simple blasphemy law, these ideas which we hate so much that you are punished for expressing them, and what the court said is we have no civil blasphemy in this country.

MR. MacNeil: Laurence Tribe, do you agree, this is going to have an effect on campuses which have passed these so-called "politically correct restrictions?"

PROF. TRIBE: Yes, I think it will, although in many of the instances with Stanford and other cases you have private universities. They will not be directly subject to the Constitution and so they will perhaps take a leaf from the Scalia book without necessarily feeling bound by it. One of the things about this case that I find particularly interesting is the way in which at least some Justices who were less convinced when it came to flag burning that we ought not to punish that kind of political blasphemy, finally joined an opinion by Justice Scalia which reaffirmed that decision and extended it. And I think that that is a good sign. The fact that again the court seems beneath the surface unanimity closely divided on the question whether you can, indeed, punish some expressions because they are particularly hateful is obviously a sign of dismay. I think that this case illustrates what might have happened and didn't, because I and a number of other people observing the case thought that the court might use it in order to narrow a certain approach to First Amendment cases, looking at a law on its face, the so-called doctrine of over- breadth. That would have been dangerous. And so this is a case in which I was quite relieved by what did not happen.

MR. MacNeil: The --

PROF. FRIED: And one of the really exciting things is that in this case we can now see that Justice Scalia in respect to the First Amendment more or less picks up the mantel of William Brennan. And that really is an amazing thing.

PROF. TRIBE: I don't think that's true, because when it comes to a really important case like the gag order on abortion, William Brennan would never have voted the way Justice Scalia did. And that in the end matters enormously, that is, when the power of the purse is involved, it turns out that the government can use its enormous authority to condition funding in order to silence people. And I think that in the long run, that kind of decision means that even on the First Amendment this is not a very progressive court.

MR. MacNeil: Speaking of abortion, the big decision that everybody's waiting for will presumably -- the Pennsylvania abortion case -- will presumably come next week, but taking the term up till now, Charles Fried, what can you say about the sort of trends -- I'll ask it as briefly -- the trends on the Rehnquist court?

PROF. FRIED: The most heartening thing is that this is a group of Justices who are thinking of themselves, who are going in a variety of directions and I think the number of opinions is good, not bad, because it means that there is real speculation for creativity by the way Justice Thomas is displaying considerable independence of thought and so we have nine individuals there, and I like that.

MR. MacNeil: How do you see the trends so far, Mr. Tribe?

PROF. TRIBE: Well, it's a little like, you know, with the abortion decision not yet down, it's a little like asking wasn't it lovely here in Pearl Harbor on December 6, 1941. But that aside, and I do agree that occasionally Justice Thomas shows some independence, the statistics tend not to bear that out. And although, of course, the court is not monolithic, these are bright people, they don't all follow one line, the spectrum from this court's right to this court's left has shifted so dramatically that we are now sometimes picking over tea leaves and rearranging the deck chairs on the deck of the -- the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. It seems to me that the overall drift is very powerfully to the right and any given snapshot may not show it.

MR. MacNeil: Nina, in conclusion, when do you expect this big Pennsylvania abortion decision?

MS. TOTENBERG: Well, let me just caution everybody that we might not get it at all. The court is fully capable and may and has in the past on similar occasions put the case over for re-argument next term. But if we get it at all, we will get it on Monday and you should see the steps of the United States Supreme Court these days in the modern era with everybody with their cellular phones, waiting to call back to their offices, where the faxes are ready to grind out the immediate responses, that we will then put on the air 15 minutes later.

PROF. FRIED: Want some predictions?

MR. MacNeil: Yeah. In five seconds each, predictions, Mr. Fried.

PROF. FRIED: I think they're going to O'Connorize it, and that's not bad.

PROF. TRIBE: Well, I think what Charles may mean is that they will blur the lines, they will not announce quickly that Roe is overruled, but they will make it clear that states can impose more obstacles on women seeking abortions.

MR. MacNeil: Okay. Well, Charles Fried --

PROF. FRIED: The German parliament did today.

MR. MacNeil: I'm sorry, say that again.

PROF. FRIED: The German parliament voted on the subject today in order to harmonize the West German and East German approaches to abortion. And I think what they came up with looked remarkably like the Pennsylvania statute.

MR. MacNeil: Okay.

PROF. FRIED: Absence --

PROF. TRIBE: Well, I don't agree --

PROF. FRIED: -- notification --

PROF. TRIBE: I don't agree, but I guess we don't have time.

MR. MacNeil: Whatever comes on Monday we will be discussing in great detail. Charles Fried, Laurence Tribe, Nina Totenberg, thank you.

MS. WOODRUFF: Still ahead on the NewsHour, Gergen & Shields, and a conversation on getting along. FOCUS - '92 - GERGEN & SHIELDS

MS. WOODRUFF: Next tonight, the political week with Gergen & Shields. Bill Clinton came out with a new economic plan, President Bush with new charges against Ross Perot, and Perot with counter charges of dirty tricks. We'll go through them all with David Gergen, editor at large at U.S. News & World Report, and syndicated columnist Mark Shields. Well, gentlemen, let's start with all these stories that have been circulating about Ross Perot. We said some of them have come from the Bush organization. Some of them, in fairness, have come from the press as well. They're out there. The Bush campaign has moved in to take advantage of them. And what's the effect of all this at this point, Mark?

MR. SHIELDS: Well, it's effectively put Ross Perot on the defensive. And you don't score points politically playing defense. Ross Perot has had basically an uninterrupted good run of luck and positive coverage in the last two weeks, fifteen days or so. He's been playing defense and answering charges. And I think it's hurt him. We've seen his negatives go up in public opinion polls.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, does that mean all charges are correct and have been proven and so forth?

MR. SHIELDS: No, No. I don't think so. I think there's a couple of things. You want to go through them charge by charge, or how do you want to do it?

MS. WOODRUFF: We can go through a couple of them anyway.

MR. SHIELDS: Okay. No, I mean, I think there's a pattern that emerges that the word apparently was on the street that Ross Perot liked information, because an awful lot of information came to him.

MS. WOODRUFF: Is that a bad thing?

MR. SHIELDS: Well, I mean it isn't -- it's not the kind of thing that most Americans look for as part of the job description of a President, this sort of super snooper, or whatever else. And he passed on information. He had it. He had files and whatever. I think a couple of the specific charges he has hit right over the ballpark. I mean, first of all, the charge the President in his outrage this past week when told about the allegation that Ross Perot had spied on his sons, and this turned out, in fact, to be a case -- Mr. Bush's son -- Ross Perot produced a thank you note, a thank you note from George Bush thanking Ross Perot for passing this information on to him in May of '86, so George Bush's outrage looked contrived, artificial, and political posturing. And I think it was a shot from Perot that looked across the bough of the Bush campaign. I have information. I keep information. I keep my correspondence. And they reached another note today. So I think that -- I think in that sense that Perot scored on Bush.

MS. WOODRUFF: And, David, pick a number. I mean, the Pennzoil - - I don't know where to start there's so many of them out there.

MR. GERGEN: There are a lot of charges. I think the critical point though is that this was a crisis week for Ross Perot. For a man who never stepped into the arena, he was taking some very hard punches. I think what he showed this week on the good side for his campaign is he showed he could take a punch in politics and he could deliver one back that was just as strong. The bad news for his campaign is he came out of this brawl somewhat bloodied. And I think that he leaves -- I think he leaves the week without the kind of shine that he had going into it. He'd never been bloodied before in politics. I think basically he faced the problem now that the momentum, the forward momentum in his campaign, maybe substantially slowed down. Now, on the charges, themselves, on the charge that got so much press was he was investigating Bush's kids, which was what the press essentially was arguing, the President had this interview with ABC, in effect, calling it un-American. I think when Perot then produced a letter from George Bush saying, thank you very much for passing on this information, I think Mark is absolutely right. That was a devastating response. It put the ball back in the President's court. And frankly, I don't think the press has pushed the President very hard on that, on that question of what's this really all about.

MS. WOODRUFF: What about this tax deduction -- we can't get into all the details here tonight -- but this tax deduction that was going to the head of Pennzoil, this piece of land, Hugh Lidke, a close friend, former business partner of George Bush?

MR. GERGEN: I think that issue is one in which Perot is more vulnerable. And I think it's very questionable what he was really doing. His public response is that he was doing it because of the tax consequences of a land sale out in the West, but in fact, when you get into it, it appears that he was collecting, at least collecting information on George Bush's friends, if not on George Bush, and I think on that one he's vulnerable. I think the serious one, Judy, the one that really is at the heart of the feud between Perot and Bush really goes to the POW's and what happened in the investigation of the POW's. That's where the real blood feud is between these two men.

MS. WOODRUFF: Why is that?

MR. SHIELDS: Well, I mean, Ross Perot -- the POW issue, Judy, politically has been sort of a twilight issue. It's been an issue. It sort of at the fringes of politics and politicians have gone there from time to time. There's a question obviously of deep commitment, emotions run very high, people whose sons, husbands have never been found or never accounted for. And what we've got this week for the first time, I mean, Ross Perot has been there throughout and Ross Perot has been accused of consorting with people or movements over there that have been a little marginal or questionable. And this week we apparently have got confirmation that in 1973 that Americans were left behind, living Americans.

MS. WOODRUFF: A hundred and thirty-three.

MR. SHIELDS: That's right. And John Kerry, Sen. John Kerry's committee on Capitol Hill, and if, in fact, this is confirmed -- and it appears that it's going to be -- then it gives enormous validity to Ross Perot's position and puts I think an enormous defensive on those people who are associated with the Nixon administration at that point.

MS. WOODRUFF: Are you disagreeing with the point that it helps?

MR. GERGEN: No. I think Mark is absolutely right on that. I think the tale is quite complicated and let me -- if I can shorthand it just a bit -- essentially, the Nixon administration got Ross Perot to get involved in helping the prisoners of war. When he got involved, he got very emotionally involved and very committed to these men when he was over in Vietnam, he saw the conditions and so forth. And it's been as close as to an obsession as anything I've seen with a man since then. I think the evidence, as Mark says, now bears him out that the government did not tell us, give us the straight skinny on that and that there may have been shameful activity by our government in concealing it. The second part of it though, Judy, is why he has broken with George Bush is he feels that Bush as -- during the days of the Nixon administration and then in the days in the days as vice president somehow played a role in helping the government turn a blind eye toward the condition of those people. I think on that charge there is much less evidence to support Mr. Perot. I think it's extremely murky. I think on the question of the prisoners he's right. On the question of whether George Bush was personally involved, I think the evidence is much, much murkier.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well --

MR. SHIELDS: Let me just say -- and I think we will eventually have a lot clearer picture than we have right now -- but let me just say Ross Perot made one serious campaign blunder a month ago. He had advice on this show to go out and spend ten to fifteen million dollars to introduce himself to the American people, say who he was, what he was about, what he would stand for. Now when the negatives hit, there's nothing to fall back on. There's a wonderful story of Ross Perot to tell. I mean, beyond all this other stuff or the snooping or anything else, this is a man who's made a difference in public education, who's made a difference in medicine, who's made a difference in people's lives and all the rest of it. And that story has not been told because ironically he resisted spending the ten or fifteen million dollars to do it. And what Michael Dukakis taught us in 1988 was if you don't define yourself as a candidate for President, then your opponents will define you unflatteringly and unfavorably.

MS. WOODRUFF: How do you grade, both of you, grade the Bush organization, the White House, and the campaign, and the way they've responded to all this, and the way they've come back and thrown some pretty tough language at Perot and the people around him?

MR. GERGEN: If you're judging the capacity of the Bush administration to play attack politics, they are the best in the business. You know, they know how to go after Bill Clinton. They know how to drive his negatives up. They know how to go after Ross Perot. They're in the process of trying to drive Ross Perot's negatives up. They would like to drive Ross Perot out of the race before Labor Day. They are very good at that. If you judge the capacity of this administration to put forward a positive vision of the future, you're talking about a totally different team.

MR. SHIELDS: Let me just say, Judy, that the words that they used -- and they came out -- David's absolutely right -- as a concerted organized effort, not very American, dictator, temperamental, scary, not tolerant, bizarre, frightening, terrifying. These are the words that were used by the President or his surrogates to describe Ross Perot. Why? Because George Bush is in big political trouble. He trails his opponents on who would be better for education, who would be better for the economy, for prosperity, for unemployment. The only place he's ahead of his opponents is in foreign affairs, family values, and still leadership. And what they're trying to do is attack Perot, a sense of Perot as a leader.

MS. WOODRUFF: We don't have enough time left to do justice to Clinton's economic plan, which he -- revised economic plan, which he came out with this week. We've got just a little over a minute. But there was an item today in the Boston Globe, a report, suggesting that people around President Bush say that he's been exceedingly at times tired, emotionally drained, and that he even considered not running this year, and that there are still questions on the part of some of the people around him about how much enthusiasm he carries for this campaign. David, you talked to this --

MR. GERGEN: There have been a variety of reports that his children do not want him to run. There's some question about whether Mrs. Bush really wanted him to run. I think the President - - there was a time when he was uncertain. What's happening now, Judy, his body clock, his rhythm, tells him this is not the time to launch an active campaign. He's been telling his people, look, don't get started too early, don't panic. Let me just say, because we have such a short time, I do think that we ought to take notice of the fact that Bill Clinton is on the rebound now. I think he has to be given credit for putting an economic plan out there. He's the only candidate in the race right now with a serious set of proposals about the future. I don't happen to agree with a lot of them, but give him credit for what he's done. he's endured and now he's rebounding.

MS. WOODRUFF: Mark.

MR. SHIELDS: I think that Clinton's plan is a good one, and I think it's an interesting one. It ought to be the focus of debate. He has put the issues squarely out there. Do you want to emphasize consumption, as has been done in the past? Do you want to do investment? And I think Bill Clinton makes a very persuasive argument for investment in America's future.

MS. WOODRUFF: But did he get the attention this week that he deserved without plan because of all this business that was going on between Perot and the media?

MR. SHIELDS: A three-way race with the Hatfields and the McCoys over here just throwing swill at each other, as Bush and Perot are doing, he is the beneficiary just by not being one of those two. He probably hasn't got the kind of discussion or attention he deserves.

MR. GERGEN: He's gotten himself well positioned, but he still has to hit the ball out of the park in the Democratic Convention. A great deal now rides on his speech in the Democratic Convention.

MS. WOODRUFF: Two weeks away, and we'll give more time to Bill Clinton next week. Thank you both. CONVERSATION - CAN WE ALL GET ALONG?

MR. MacNeil: Finally, to our continuing series of conversations on race and the question asked by Rodney King after the Los Angeles riots, "Can we all get along?". In tonight's installment, Charlayne Hunter-Gault interviews two men, one black, one white, who share some of the same values, but differ sharply in their perceptions of the racial divide. They are journalist Jim Sleeper, editorial writer at New York Newsday and author of "The Closest of Strangers, Liberalism and the Politics of Race in New York," and Derrick Bell, author of "Faces at the Bottom of the Well, the Permanence of Racism." Bell is a visiting professor at New York University's School of Law. He is on leave from Harvard, protesting the lack of tenured black women faculty.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Derrick Bell and Jim Sleeper, thank you for joining us. Let me ask you this question that I've asked everybody in this series. How wide do you think the racial divide is in America today?

JIM SLEEPER, Journalist: I just feel pulled in two directions about this. On the one hand, there's no question statistical measures of segregation, of neighborhoods being more segregated, are troubling, instances of racial violence. There is tremendous fighting going on. There is great distance. On the other hand, I feel that on another level, there's an intimacy such as there hasn't been in the past. We've always sort of haunted each other's, one another's thoughts. Blacks and whites have been locked into such a tight psychic engagement throughout these years. And through thick and thin, the number of interracial marriages and relationships continues to rise. New generations come along with attitudes that I think are different, are more malleable. And I think that we have to get away from assuming that every evidence of white exasperation or intransigence is the same thing as the blood gut racism of the Klan.

DERRICK BELL, Law Professor: I think Jim has a point with regard to this, that there are a lot more people that are going to get along well and interact and what have you. But the overall scene is I think not very hopeful. One of the things that confuses all of us, I think, is the difference between now and 20 years ago, or 30 years ago. Now the signs are down. Now no one, even those who we think are most racist, want to claim the tag of racism. Rather than exclusion or prejudice, what we have is preference. The restaurants, and you and I can go into fancy restaurants in midtown New York and be well served. Our children, if they went in tomorrow asking for waiters' jobs, would likely not be hired, you see. It's amazing. We have more civil rights laws on the books than at any time in our history. And the fact is there is probably more discrimination. It's of a different level, no signs over the door, but people who don't want to hire my children for jobs don't hire them and nothing happens to them. People that don't want to sell you a house or rent an apartment to me don't do it and for the most part nothing happens to them. Does that mean that these laws are useless, we should throw them away? Probably not. But we should recognize that discrimination is now sufficiently subtle and sophisticated that those who want to discriminate do so.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Let's talk for a minute about perceptions, because they seem to be so radically different.

JIM SLEEPER: I think a lot of whites feel an exasperation based on perceptions that they have about black leadership, about the way the shots have been called, about the fact that they are all being accused of having an invidious racist intent. You get a kind of wagon circle and you get a kind of tit for tat.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: You think that's happening?

JIM SLEEPER: Oh, I think it has happened tremendously, sure.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, give me a quick example.

JIM SLEEPER: Well, I think the sensationalized criminal justice trials like the Tawana Brawley case and the Central Park Jogger case, we've seen leaders almost sabotage cases, twist evidence, to convince black people that the system is inherently racist and won't work for them.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And the result of that is --

JIM SLEEPER: The result of that is --

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: -- in those instances.

JIM SLEEPER: -- it induces a kind of communal paroxysm, a kind of communal despair, a kind of acting out of the rage which doesn't go anywhere because it wins no allies among people of goodwill. Even among most blacks, I must say, I think it siphons off a portion of the community into a kind of a tantrum that doesn't really lead to a strategy. For 10 years I lived in Central Brooklyn and ran a small newspaper and was active in black politics, in neighborhood politics, and very much immersed in the life of the city. And I realized, if anything, I deepened my sense that most blacks don't want people making excuses for any kind of bad behavior on the grounds of historic racial oppression. They want people, whites and others, to pay them the compliment of holding them to the same standards that they hold one another to in order to survive every day in neighborhoods like the ones I lived in.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Derrick, Jim Sleeper has alluded to a failure on the part of black leadership to face up to its responsibilities. Do you see that as a problem?

DERRICK BELL: I think each of us are give perceptions, so I kind of remain quiet and listen to what I think is, if it's Jim's perception, with his background, God knows, it must be the perception of a lot of other whites. I think a part of it -- maybe not for Jim but for a lot -- is this sense that anything -- remember Martin Luther King was not loved during his life. He was seen as one of those bad leaders. The letter from the Birmingham Jail was a response to other ministers because he was being criticized for going too fast, for these protests, for not simply praying and letting it go at that, you see. So anything out of the -- out of the accepted -- is seen as a problem by an awful lot of whites. When Louis Farrakhan speaks to his audience, he upsets a hell of a lot of white people, you see, but while he is speaking to the needs and the hopes and what have you of the people to whom he is speaking. And that's just going to happen.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Let's get to this issue though of perception as Jim Sleeper defined it in which many things are -- race becomes the sort of over arching issue, for example, the trial, the Central Park Jogger, which is a national thing, not a local thing, the Tawana Brawley thing -- is there any possibility that race is being overplayed in this? Or isthere a valid role for the issue of race there?

DERRICK BELL: I think probably not. The perceptions are different. If we could do a study and show yes, well, backs overplayed race on this, it could be explained by the fact that it doesn't exist in a vacuum, that that incident or this police brutality situation is part of a long pattern. That was the Rodney King situation. If there had not been the pattern both in Los Angeles and across the country of police brutality against upward middle class blacks, not just blacks with police records, this would never have created the kind of thing. It's only because it fits into the pattern. So to say that well, we blew up that incident too much or this one, you may be right, but it doesn't alter the fact that it comes as a, just an explosion out of a pattern of behavior.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Isn't this precisely the heart of the matter? I mean, something as fundamental as this, two intelligent men who basically come from the same sense of it seems to me values and concerns about society seeing this -- how do you narrow this gap? Because this is fundamentally the problem.

DERRICK BELL: Plus, did you see a couple of times Jim -- not Louis Farrakhan?

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Right.

DERRICK BELL: I see Louis Farrakhan as a great hero for the people. I don't agree with everything he sees and some of his tactics, but hell, I don't agree with everything anybody says.

JIM SLEEPER: Would you agree on this? There's the element of personal responsibility, a responsibility of leaders to take care in the way they define and project situations, not to say that Tawana Brawley was raped if they don't have evidence that she was. That's a responsibility that you cannot fob off on 200 years of white racism. There are certain things that people have to do in the here and now even as fighters for justice. At the same time, there is the 200 years, there are the patterns that Derrick spoke about. And from my sake, or from my point of view, the only kind of leader I can respect is one who shows the double vision, who is aware of the patterns, who understands them but never uses them as an excuse for behavior that is just, that vilifies opponents, that dehumanizes people of one's own camp, that, you know, tells deliberate lies. Those two things ultimately don't lead anywhere.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: That brings me back to the Rodney King question. Given all of these variables, can we all get along?

JIM SLEEPER: We can if each side, speaking racially, takes some extraordinary steps, makes some extraordinary public gestures. Whites clearly have to do things to demonstrate that the cops who beat Rodney King and the jurors who acquitted them don't speak for whites. I think there are things that blacks have to do too, that black leaders have to do. And we would be wrong to come away from this without saying that there are strategies that protest leadership has to reassess.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Like --

JIM SLEEPER: Like giving Sister Souljah a platform at a convention after she has said on national TV what she had said.

DERRICK BELL: See, that's exactly the point.

JIM SLEEPER: It's a gesture and only a gesture. And I understand that. But we have to make decisions about how we choose to -- what foot we choose to put forward, always.

DERRICK BELL: The problem is, Jim, is what you really are saying, although you don't intend it, is blacks in order to come, move ahead, to get along, have to put forward more often than they would like the subordinate foot, and I'm afraid that that's just not going to happen. I would answeryour question by saying that I'm not sure we can do it. I think that we are in a very dire time, that the parallels with the late 1900s are very, very real. And by the time --

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Meaning --

DERRICK BELL: Meaning more hostility, more violence, more separation, particularly as our economic situation grows worse, as it's much more likely to do than get better.

JIM SLEEPER: And I would say that if times are going to be as bad as Derrick suggests -- and they may be -- our margin for error -- by that I mean white liberals, blacks, people who are addressing this problem -- is much narrower than usual. And what that means is not that blacks have to put forward a subordinate foot, but that, yes, there is a certain -- when your back is to the wall and you need to find allies, you can't afford to do things that gratuitously alienate people who might be your allies. There is that middle group of whites who are waiting, almost yearning, for somebody to say something that short of being accusatory offers some common ground, and I don't think we've been hearing much of it said.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Let me ask you to respond just briefly to another point that's come up in the discussion in recent days with the Sister Souljah comment and everything, the notion that black people cannot be racist simply because of the legacy of oppression and slavery and victimization.

DERRICK BELL: Well, the thing is we certainly can hate whites. Now that -- I mean, if we didn't either as individual bad people or what have you, we wouldn't be human. Racism though connotes power or connection with power. And that blacks don't have. So that you might not like a statement by Sister Souljah or Jesse Jackson or Louis Farrakhan or what have you, but they don't have the power to inflict policy based on those statements.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And that's your definition of racism?

DERRICK BELL: It makes a difference. Now, I think one of the things that whites fear is that they might and that fear is justified.

JIM SLEEPER: I disagree with that, because I believe that if blacks settle for a definition of power that is just along racial lines, they are in a sense -- and thereby categorize all whites as being implacably on the wrong side of the issue -- they are settling for something that amounts to racism. No, they are not being racist in the same sense that their perception has the ability to thwart the aspirations of whites, but yes, they are being racist in the sense that it is drawing something vital out of a common enterprise. It is crippling in a sense whites as well as blacks. The original sin is white racism and whites have to come to terms with that. But the idea that blacks in settling for that definition can't make it worse, I think that's wrong. I think that you do have the power to make it worse, to make it irremediably worse.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Derrick Bell, you, what keeps you going if you're so pessimistic about the possibility of solving this problem in America?

DERRICK BELL: You try to figure out what is your life about and I was working as a civil rights lawyer in the sixties and down in this rural Mississippi county that I talked these people into trying to desegregate the schools 10 years prematurely, as I now think, and I was walking up this dusty road with Mrs. Biona McDonald, and I think she's since died, and I said, Mrs. McDonald, you know, they're trying to foreclose your mortgage in town, they fired your sons from their job, they even shot through your house last week, I understand, why do you do it? And she said, Derrick, I'm an old lady, I live to harass white folks. And the marvelous thing about her, Charlayne, she, I mean, the way those neighborhoods, she lived near whites who were supportive of her, so it wasn't a racial thing, but she knew that those people who were oppressing her were white. She knew that she couldn't, she didn't have their power, she didn't have their money. She certainly didn't have their guns. But she saw her life as given in trouble, being on the case all the time. And I've accepted that as my motto. I live to harass white folk. So those at Harvard and some of the other places need to be on guard.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But to what end, Derrick?

DERRICK BELL: Because the basis of life, it seems to me, is to recognize the bad stuff, recognize the evil, and try to do something. It doesn't mean that you can change it. It means that you recognize it and you oppose it. So by harassing what I see as evil and racism and racial policies, I do that which I think justifies my existence. And out of that sometimes I win, sometimes I lose, but win or lose, I am on the case.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And what about you, Jim Sleeper, do you live to harass anybody?

JIM SLEEPER: I guess I have a tremendous sense of exasperation both at racism and at responses to racism that unwittingly I think only reinforce the circle. And I'm just trying to break the circle. That's how I feel.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Jim Sleeper and Derrick Bell, thank you.

DERRICK BELL: Thank you, Charlayne.

JIM SLEEPER: A pleasure. RECAP

MS. WOODRUFF: Again, the main stories of this Friday, Navy Secretary Lawrence Garrett resigned, saying he took full responsibility for the Navy's handling of the so-called "Tail Hook Sexual Harassment" scandal. And U.N. Secretary General Boutras-Gali warned Serbian forces to halt their military offensive in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo within 48 hours or face unspecified consequences. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Judy. That's the NewsHour for tonight. We'll be back on Monday night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.