The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MS. WARNER: Good evening. I'm Margaret Warner in New York.

MR. LEHRER: And I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington. After our summary of the news this Wednesday, we look at the Vatican's role at the United Nations Population Conference in Cairo, Fred De Sam Lazaro assesses the public health effects of empowering women in India, historian Michael Beschloss is our third conversationalist about President Clinton, and essayist Roger Rosenblatt talks about lawyers as folk heroes. NEWS SUMMARY

MS. WARNER: The U.S. and Cuba put their refugee talks on temporary hold today. A State Department spokesman said the chief Cuban negotiator was heading home for brief consultations with his government, but the American official said the talks could resume as early as Friday. The announcement came after a 45-minute meeting in New York between chief negotiators for both sides. There was no official word on whether progress had been made on ending the outflow of Cuban refugees headed for the United States. In Washington, Sec. of State Christopher had this to say during a news conference at the State Department.

WARREN CHRISTOPHER, Secretary of States: The talks have been productive, useful, businesslike. This we see as a not unnatural part of the talks, that he needs to return for consultation in Havana. I think the fact that he's going to be returning very promptly. He's leaving his delegation here as an indication that this is not by any means a breakdown in the talks but it's part of the -- part of the useful talks that are taking place.

MS. WARNER: The refugee flow eased a bit yesterday, the Coast Guard reported, intercepting 689 Cubans, or about half the number of recent days. But the pace picked up again today. Six hundred and twenty Cubans had been rescued by midday. At his news conference, Sec. Christopher also issued another warning to Haiti's military leaders. He said one way or another the de facto government is going to be leaving. Their days are definitely numbered. But he said there was no specific deadline for U.S. military intervention. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: The U.N. Population Conference continued in Cairo today. Several Catholic nations joined the Vatican in opposing abortion language in the Conference's proposal for population control. We have more in this report narrated by Richard Vaughan of Worldwide Television News.

RICHARD VAUGHAN, WTN: The Vatican is facing a virtual revolt by liberal nations keen to get on with drafting a global program aimed at slowing population growth over the next 20 years. The United States, Britain, and Egypt have urged the Church to state its reservations to the draft rather than block agreement. Archbishop Renato Martino, the Holy See's envoy to the United Nations, put pay to any hopes that the Vatican would water down its objections to a proposed draft on abortion. This delegate seemed to echo the thoughts of many as he urged participants not to turn the conference into a meeting on abortion.

NICHOLAS BIEGMAN, UN Population Conference: It's only because all of you talk abortion all the time, and you should talk population and development and health, education, and the environment, and all of that. And it's a waste of time to talk about abortion all the time. It's a nice controversy, but that's as far as it goes.

MR. VAUGHAN: A working committee presents the final clause on abortion on Friday.

MR. LEHRER: We'll have more on the Population Conference right after this News Summary. Vice President Gore met with Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds today. He told Reynolds peace in Northern Ireland was a top foreign policy issue for the Clinton administration, and the U.S. was considering giving more financial aid to help the peace process along. Afterwards, Reynolds praised the U.S. role.

ALBERT REYNOLDS, Prime Minister, Ireland: If it were not for the decisions they took to inject confidence into the political process, to show what could be gained from the political process, and to encourage others to turn away from violence for good, I think that's the role that we all appreciate that both the President and the Vice President have played in this situation.

VICE PRESIDENT GORE: Our commitment is to helping both communities in Northern Ireland and the Irish and British people in finding a lasting solution to this conflict.

MR. LEHRER: Britain today relaxed security measures in Northern Ireland in response to the IRA's cease-fire announcement last week.

MS. WARNER: The UN announced today that relief flights into Bosnia will resume tomorrow. The Sarajevo Airport was closed today after two UN planes were hit by gunfire. Pope John Paul II said today he still plans to visit Bosnia as soon as possible. Yesterday he cancelled an upcoming trip because of security concerns.

MR. LEHRER: James Clavell, the man who wrote the big novels about the Far East, is dead. He died of cancer yesterday at his home in Switzerland. He wrote five bestselling novels set in Asia, including: Shogun, Noble House, and Tai-Pan. He also wrote screenplays; "The Fly," "The Great Escape," and "To Sir With Love" were among them. He was 69-years-old. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the Vatican's role at the Cairo Population Conference, empowering women in India, a conversation with Michael Beschloss, and a Roger Rosenblatt essay. FOCUS - PAPAL PRESSURE

MS. WARNER: We lead tonight with the battle between the Vatican and a majority of countries attending the UN Conference on Population and Development in Cairo. At issue is a proposed Conference report, supported by the United States, on how to stabilize world population growth. The Vatican says the proposal would encourage abortion, sexual promiscuity, and homosexuality. The Vatican particularly objects to language that it says will legitimize abortion and put pressure on poorer countries to allow abortions. In Cairo, Vatican representatives rejected a U.S.-led effort to come up with a compromise. Yesterday, Vice President Al Gore, the head of the U.S. delegation, said he didn't expect the Vatican to sign the Conference report.

VICE PRESIDENT GORE: [Yesterday] The Vatican, while it plays a very active role and has been very constructive in many respects, did not sign the document in Mexico City 10 years ago, did not sign the document in Bucharest 20 years ago, and will not sign the document in Cairo no matter what happens.

MS. WARNER: Gore was personally attacked last month by the Vatican, which accused him of misrepresenting the goals of the conference. And on Sunday, one of the conference participants, Bishop James McHugh, suggested there might be political repercussions for the administration if it continued to support the proposal.

QUESTIONER: [NBC News "Meet the Press"] If the United States insists that there be language in the draft document which continues to espouse abortion in your mind, could American Catholics in good conscience continue to support the Clinton administration politically?

BISHOP JAMES McHUGH: [in Cairo] I think it would be a powerful incentive to American Catholics to walk away from the Democratic Party, as well as the Clinton administration. This administration has taken the most forthright stand on behalf of abortion on demand of any political party -- of any political administration in the United States. I think that Catholics are tiring of it. They certainly are tiring of the whole struggle over abortion, but this would be really a non-negotiable position on the part of the governed vis-a-vis the moral convictions of Catholics. And many of them would become terribly disenchanted not only with the administration but with the Democratic Party as well.

MS. WARNER: We have three views now on how the Vatican is flexing its political muscle in Cairo. Michael Novak is a theologian at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington. Sister Maureen Fiedler, a Roman Catholic nun, heads a group called "Catholics Speak Out." Her organization supports the Cairo initiative. Father Richard McBrien is a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame and the author of several books on the Vatican and modern Catholic teaching. Mr. Novak, let me start with you. What is the Vatican trying to accomplish in Cairo?

MR. NOVAK: As the world's foremost spokesman on human rights, Pope John Paul II is trying to speak to initiatives being very much neglected, namely the rights of unborn children, very helpless ones. And on this primary moral issue, he is obliged to take a stand no matter what the popularity of the stand, no matter who supports him or who doesn't support him. A hundred years from now, I think people will look back on the practice of abortion with a certain horror, when they will look and see actually what was done. And at that time, I think the Pope wants it understood that his voice was loud and clear for a crucial issue as we enter the 21st century.

MS. WARNER: Sister Maureen, is that the way you see it? Is that what you think the Vatican's up to in Cairo?

SISTER MAUREEN FIEDLER: No, I don't think so. Unfortunately, I think that what underlies the Vatican's opposition to Cairo is really its fear of the equality and the empowerment of women worldwide, and I think that's the basis of the unholy alliance that was made at least for a time with the Muslim fundamentalists. Now, I noticed that today even they have deserted the Vatican in its stand on this compromise language which the Vatican has refused to accept. And so the Vatican now is in the unusual position of actually being to the right of even a country like Iran on these questions. But I think what really underlies it, unfortunately, is the fear of women and a fear of the rights of women and the moral adulthood of women in making moral choices in their own lives.

MS. WARNER: Father McBrien, is that the way you see it, fear of women or the empowerment of women?

FATHER McBRIEN: Well, it might be there. I don't want to make that the fundamental issue, although I think that the perception of many people in the Church today, not just women, is that there - - that the Vatican administration, the hierarchy in general, have a problem with women. I mean, it took them how long to authorize altar girls? But I would encapsulate my reaction this way in partial agreement at least with my friend, Michael Novak: good morality, bad politics. I mean, abortion from the Catholic point of view is immoral, is an innocent human life at stake as well as the rights of women. They have to be balanced, and it's a very difficult issue in a pluralistic society and, indeed, in a pluralistic world. But this has been incredibly bad politics, the personal attack on Vice President Gore, Bishop McHugh's vague, not so vague, not so subtle political threats which are empty, because American Catholics will pay no attention to him or any other bishop in terms of how they will vote in any election. And so it'll only make them look more impotent than they now appear. So I think if the Vatican made its position, I think Vice President Gore was absolutely right, they had every right to make their statements, to issue, to state their reservations very forcefully but then to back off and not become a kind of block, because whether the document passes or not, they're not going to sign it. And even if the document doesn't pass, these developments will go forward, including, we would say, unfortunately in many respects, the practice of abortion.

MS. WARNER: Well, Michael Novak, what he's saying is true, is it not, that the Vatican, in fact, will go ahead and will not sign this, so is this bad politics? Have they handled this badly?

MR. NOVAK: I was at the UN, myself, twice, and if you know the vagueness of UN language and the code words, the secret history that all of this has, it's not bad politics, just as it's not bad morality to make the world stop and think. The United States is often in the position of casting a lone "no" vote, very often. And it turns out, in retrospect, in those cases we were right. And I think the Vatican will be shown to be right. At least the world is contemplating this very dreadful thing, abortion, and the Vice President, himself, came forth with the most forthright statement yet, that the United States does not see abortion as a means of family planning. That's a very important thing for the administration to say and for the world to hear. And why not? What's wrong with abortion? Well, if you look at Indonesia, you look at China, you look at Korea, you look at Vietnam, somebody's got to speak out against the coercion implied in these targets. If you depend on the individual decisions, you can't predict what population will be.

MS. WARNER: And what about Father McBrien?

SISTER MAUREEN FIEDLER: May I interject something here, if I could?

MS. WARNER: Yes, Sister Maureen, of course.

SISTER MAUREEN FIEDLER: Because the document is very clear in many, many places that we're not talking about coercive policies of family planning. We're talking here about voluntary family planning in every circumstance. And secondly, when you look at one of the unfortunate things about the Vatican's push, push, push, push, push on abortion, is that it has derailed the larger conversation. When we look at population issues in our world, it's not just a question of family planning. It's very much a question of the empowerment of women, and it's a question of those of us in the wealthy nations of the world looking at our own patterns of over-consumption. And these are issues that are not getting the kind of airing in Cairo that they need because the Vatican is putting too much emphasis on this one issue. And frankly, the history of the world shows whether you permit abortion, whether you forbid it, whether you make it legal, whether you make it illegal, it doesn't make it go away. The best we can do is reduce the incidence of abortion. And that's what Cairo is trying to do, and that's what I'm interested in doing, in making family planning, contraceptive family planning available in improving the lives of women worldwide so they're not driven to these decisions in desperation, which is what happens all too often. That's what we can do if we really put our mind to it, and that's what this discussion in Cairo is derailing, a conversation about that.

MS. WARNER: Father McBrien, do you agree that, that this whole controversy is derailing the larger issues, and, if so, why would the Vatican do that, because it is interested in these larger issues?

FATHER McBRIEN: Well, I don't know if it's derailing a discussion of these larger issues. If it is, it's certainly not doing it permanently, because this is only a blip on the radar screen. I just think that the -- again, it's a question of a political judgment, whether or not they should focus all their energy here. But the fact of the matter is that even if the abortion matter were settled to the Vatican's satisfaction, they would have a fallback position. Then there'd be a big fight about contraception. And there's a basic principle: Abortions happen because a pregnancy is unwanted. Now, the way to deal with abortions and to ultimately eliminate them is to stop unwanted pregnancies. But here we have a position which says abortion is immoral under every circumstance but, of course, you are very limited, exceedingly limited, in the ways in which you can prevent pregnancy, namely to the so-called rhythm method or natural family planning or just saying "no." That is totally and completely unrealistic. And even Catholic countries around the world, Brazil being the largest, are rejecting that approach to family planning in large numbers. Now we have to deal with that pastoral reality and not pretend that a word from the hierarchy, even a word from the Vatican, is going to make it all go away. The problem is there, and we have to deal with it.

MS. WARNER: Mr. Novak, what about that point on the Vatican's opposition to contraception?

MR. NOVAK: That's not the issue. Contraception is not at all the issue here. The issue is abortion. Over half of all those slain in abortion and even more in infanticide are women, after all. The crisis is not a population crisis. What's wrong with abortion is you are killing the cause of the wealth of nations. As Pope John Paul II said, people create wealth. They create wealth more than they consume it, and they do so when the system is one that liberates their capacities to do this. Countries that do that, even if they have very large populations, are quite prosperous. Japan is one instance, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan. These countries have moved rapidly out of poverty, and they do very well. People are the cause of the creation of wealth. They're not the problem. The problem is a repressive economic system.

MS. WARNER: Sister Maureen, let me ask you --

SISTER MAUREEN FIEDLER: Even the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, may I say, admits that there's a population problem and gave that report to the Pope only this summer.

MS. WARNER: Sister Maureen.

SISTER MAUREEN FIEDLER: What was your question?

MS. WARNER: I'd like to ask you to respond to something that Father McBrien raised earlier which is that this seems to be as much about politics, or seem to be suggesting that, as it is about theology or values. Are there political issues here as far as the Vatican is concerned, or is this mostly a theological --

SISTER MAUREEN FIEDLER: Oh, no. I think the Vatican is a political entity, and I think we have to recognize that in the world. Sure, there's theology, but I think that for preallots in the United States, for example, who opposed Clinton's election in the last election -- let's not forget that -- I think that for a group, someone like Bishop McHugh to make the kind of threat that he did about Catholics walking away from the Democratic Party, that's certainly entering into politics in our country. It's a toothless threat because Catholics are more likely, unfortunately, to walk away from the Church on these issues than they are to walk away from the Democratic Party. In the larger world arena, I think the Vatican frankly recognizes that there's power in defining what is right and wrong in other people's lives. And it's something that they've done. Unfortunately, they're defending a moral system that has -- although it's been with the Church for centuries -- is one that is not the product of any real dialogue with the Catholic faithful. And that's what we desperately need in the Church, so that grassroots Catholics, people who raise children, have to put food on the table, deal with the health of their children, these people need to be heard when you're talking about issues like contraception. They have not been heard, and consequently, the Vatican is defending a system that just doesn't touch the lives of those folks.

MS. WARNER: Father McBrien, how do you see it, the sort of global political picture?

FATHER McBRIEN: I'm not sure what you mean by global political picture here.

MS. WARNER: Well, I'm referring to what Sister Maureen was talking about.

FATHER McBRIEN: I think that the Vatican and the Catholic Church in general have a huge challenge facing them right now, because the world, itself, is so disparate. I mean, in Catholic countries, Islamic countries, the great secularization of the world, you know, it's a very complex world, and I think the day of expecting to have decisions made in a centralized way is over, that each of these regions of the world, each of these countries, even in terms of the Church, have to address the problems as they occur, and as they manifest themselves in their own country and in their own culture. And that includes the United States. But if I may go back just for a second to the point about the political implications here in the United States, I think the attack by name on the Clinton administration and the Vice President is reflective really of the opposition of certain key figures in the American hierarchy to this administration right from the beginning. And I think there's a close relationship there. And I think that's very unfortunate. I wish the American bishops had learned their lesson in the 1984 presidential campaign when they inserted themselves much too closely in the campaign, the Reagan-Mondale campaign on the abortion issue. And since then, the American bishops, themselves, have gone on record to state, you know, to keep out of that partisan political arena and not to focus -- not to adopt a one issue approach to political campaigns. And here we're back doing it again.

MS. WARNER: Well, Mr. Novak, why do you think that the Vatican attacked the Vice President by name, and do you think it was a smart strategy?

MR. NOVAK: The Vatican spokesman mentioned the Vice President's name. I think on the whole it would have been better if he hadn't done that.

FATHER McBRIEN: He called him a liar, Michael.

MR. NOVAK: But what he said was that the Vice President was not giving an account of what had gone out from the State Department in the preceding months. As a number of columnists have pointed out, if you look at the record, that is the case. The Vice President skipped what the administration had been saying, what even the President of Norway said at the conference, namely that they were for an international right to abortion. The Vice President skipped that in an attempt to give a reconciling speech. He was reaching out a reconciling speech, and I thought Bishop McHugh's answer to the Vice President was that he heard some new notes in that speech and he would want to explore them further. I think that was a very helpful note.

MS. WARNER: And what do you think Bishop McHugh was trying to say on "Meet the Press" last Sunday when he suggested that Catholics, American Catholics, would walk away from the Democratic Party?

MR. NOVAK: I think he was expressing the view of a certain percentage of Catholic voters. He's an American citizen, and he has a right to do that.

SISTER MAUREEN FIEDLER: A very small percentage of Catholic voters.

MR. NOVAK: We'll see.

SISTER MAUREEN FIEDLER: Minuscule.

MR. NOVAK: I think that's quite wrong. American Catholics differ in their vote for Democrats between 80 some percent for Kennedy and Johnson to 40 some percent for McGovern and Dukakis and others. So there's a huge 40 percent swing there. We'll see if enough people will move one way or the other, depending on all the issues before them.

MS. WARNER: But you don't think he meant it as a threat?

MR. NOVAK: I don't think he meant it as a threat. I think it's something that the White House, itself, has been worried about and concerned about, that a lot of writers have been talking about. The Catholic vote for Clinton was the strongest of his votes, and it's a very important one to him, as it is to other Democrats.

SISTER MAUREEN FIEDLER: I think, though, Bishop McHugh needs to look at the polls because 87 percent of the Catholics in this country support the right to artificial contraception, in spite of the opposition of the Church.

MR. NOVAK: That's the issue, Sister.

SISTER MAUREEN FIEDLER: Well, that's what he was talking about.

MR. NOVAK: I'm sorry, not in that speech, he was not.

SISTER MAUREEN FIEDLER: When you look at the polls on abortion, Catholics look like the rest of the population.

MR. NOVAK: And most of the rest of the population --

SISTER MAUREEN FIEDLER:There simply is no difference. And most of the rest of the population favors legal abortion, as a matter of fact, the way the polls are today.

MR. NOVAK: But they don't favor abortion on demand. This is the most permissive country in the entire world. The Vatican sees that, and most of the American people don't want it to be that permissive.

MS. WARNER: Let me give Father McBrien one last word before we go. Father McBrien, what impact do you think all of this fracas has on average American Catholics?

FATHER McBRIEN: Well, they break down into three categories. Active, conservative Catholics who are very strong in the pro-life movement will be happy and have their views reinforced. That's fine. Liberal, active Catholics, especially women, feminists, will be very upset and annoyed and angry and see this as an anti- feminist bias. The great majority of Catholics, I think, will be largely indifferent but to the extent that they know what's going on, there's something in the American Catholic soul that says, bishops ought not to be getting involved in partisan politics and no bishop is going to tell me how to vote. I vote on my own interests. Abortion may be one of the issues I vote on, but there's a lot of other things, especially the economy and crime, that I'm going to be concerned about when I go into that polling booth.

MS. WARNER: Well, thank you, Father McBrien and Sister Maureen, and Michael Novak. Thanks for being with us. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, empowering women in India, a conversation about the Clinton presidency, and a Roger Rosenblatt essay. FOCUS - BREAKTHROUGH

MR. LEHRER: Now, the connection between empowering women and public health. A recent study conducted in India concluded there was such a connection. Fred De Sam Lazaro of public station KTCA- Minneapolis-St. Paul reports from a village in India.

MR. LAZARO: Contrary to the stereotypical pictures of overcrowded cities, 80 percent of India's 850 million people live in the vast countryside, as do most of its economic and social problems. The lifestyle here is one of subsistence. There is little leisure time for anyone, especially people in the lower rungs of India's age- old caste system. It's a social segregation that has virtually enslaved people in occupations involving any manual labor. And life is that much harder for women. [baby crying] All this hard work doesn't even earn the typical rural family the assurance of food year round. In many cases, laborers work their entire lives to pay off loans from the owners of land they work, loans that have typically been used for a marriage or a dowry. The consequences of this impoverishment are disastrous for public health, high infant and maternal mortality, severe malnutrition, and epidemics of diarrheal disease and measles among others. It was into such conditions that Dr. Mabelle Arole arrived 24 years ago to set up practice with her husband, Rajanikant. They settled in the remote Western Indian town of Jamkhed.

DR. RAJANIKANT AROLE: Our criteria were to go to the area which was very backward, very poor, and where there were not other facilities. And so we found Jamkhed was ideal for that.

MR. LAZARO: Not the typical move for a pair of physicians whose alternative could have been a lucrative career in American medicine. But the Aroles were brimming with ideas to improve rural health, ideas they developed while at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

DR. MABELLE AROLE: When we first came, they murmured among themselves, "Who are these doctors? Possibly they didn't, couldn't make it in the USA, that's why they have returned. They couldn't make it in Bombay. They couldn't make it in the big city. And so they have come to us."

MR. LAZARO: So the first task for the Aroles was to establish credibility as doctors. They did this by offering the usual clinical and curative services which were later expanded to a full hospital. Then slowly, they launched into a much larger public health game plan, to improve nutrition, water quality, and personal hygiene and health practices.

DR. MABELLE AROLE: As you know, this is a male-dominated society, and when we went into the villages, we were mainly talking with the men's groups. But most of the problems, health problems, are related to women, to mothers, and it is mothers who take care of the children, and it is women who ultimately are in charge of nutrition. They are the ones who use water. And it became quite evident that unless the knowledge reached the mothers, the women in the villages, not much change would take place.

MR. LAZARO: Thus was born the idea of village health workers. Women from surrounding villages were trained in nursing and midwifery. For a group with virtually no formal schooling, it was a common sense curriculum in basic prenatal care, hygiene, and nutrition for mothers and children. It was also a way to track immunizations and general health, knowledge health workers like Reminabyh took back to their villages. The results are readily evident in the faces of healthy children. In this village, people told us they used to bury about 12 infants and children each year. They haven't witnessed a child's death in five years. The Jamkhed area's infant mortality rate has been more than halved in the past 20 years. When the project began, about 5 percent of children were vaccinated against common diseases. That figure is closer to 80 percent today. Public health gains aside, what astonishes many here about the village health workers is who they are. From the outset, the Aroles sought people from lower castes, especially the so- called "outcasts" or "untouchables," people who traditionally weren't even allowed to enter village walls. Today, that seems a distant memory in villages like Goreghaon.

DR. MABELLE AROLE: This rubble belongs to the village wall which separated village from the Harijans, the untouchables. So now that the wall has been broken down, the village people decided to use the rubble to build a school. So they have used the stones for the foundation.

MR. LAZARO: How long ago was the wall broken down? Is this the last of it?

DR. MABELLE AROLE: This is the last part. It started being broken down about, I would say, about twelve to fifteen years ago.

MR. LAZARO: The transformation did not come overnight, and Dr. Arole says it took some forced interaction. For example, during a severe drought in the 70's, feeding programs were held in the so- called "untouchables" area of villages, as were outpatient clinics. Wells were also dug here, forcing people of higher castes who needed water or health care to come to get it. Then, inevitably, there were incidents, like one in this village, where an anemic high caste woman received blood from a Harijan, or outcast man.

DR. MABELLE AROLE: And, of course, the woman survived. Then our village health worker took that example and said, if the blood of a Harijan can be mixed with a high caste and actually give life to a high caste person, why are we practicing this discrimination?

MR. LAZARO: There's other evidence of the long way villages like this one have come. Turns out its recently elected mayor, Mr. Sitaram Gawale, belongs to the so-called "untouchables" caste. Mr. Shahaji Patil, a man from the ruling landowner caste, also confessed to some early apprehension about the social changes. But he says in time he became coaxed, that changes were both socially desirable and in his economic interest. As for the village health workers, these men say they're just as important as doctors.

SHAHAJI PATIL: [speaking through interpreter] We actually live the village health workers better than doctors because doctors treat you after you have fallen sick, but in giving knowledge to people about diseases that come from unclean water or the environment, in teaching people how to prevent disease, the person who's able to prevent disease is far better.

DR. RAJANIKANT AROLE: In the beginning, the husbands were suspicious. I think they were more suspicious of what this one is doing, you know, is she getting in trouble with some men, it's that kind of a thing, but as the time went by and the men realized that their knowledge is bringing more money than what they are used to, then they encouraged them. Also, the status of these women in the village gradually went up because they have saved so many children, they delivered so many women, and they took care of illnesses.

MR. LAZARO: In fact, financial stability has a huge impact on maternal and child health. So the Jamkhed program helps women launch businesses, selling bangles, a few chickens for an egg business, or a small store, for example, things that allow women to stay close to their children, especially nursing infants. It's that kind of help that allows Suman Dharulkar to take time off from the fields to see to the health needs of her baby boy and three older daughters. Under a government land distribution program, she was able to obtain a plot of her own on which she grows sunflowers. Her husband, with his family, meanwhile, opened a small store in Goreghaon. "Things are considerably better for my children," she says. They have good clothes, food, and many other things, things she, herself, barely had as a child. And even though her lifestyle to an outsider still seems incredibly arduous, women like Suman Dharulkar are optimistic about the future for perhaps the first time in history around here. Although she had more children than planned in order to have a son, Mrs. Dharulkar has high hopes for her daughters who have traditionally been viewed as financial liabilities in India.

SUMAN DHARULKAR: [speaking through interpreter] My daughters need to be educated so they don't have the same problems that I did. I did not have any schooling at all. My oldest daughter is in the fifth grade, and I'm going to see that she goes much farther, even gets a vocation.

MR. LAZARO: Although boys still predominate, girls are sent to school in far greater numbers than before. Even more significant in the larger context is the total number of children in the village.

DR. MABELLE AROLE: Because mothers are assured that children born have a fair chance of living and reaching adulthood, women are prepared to curtail their families after they get one son. And so we are seeing, there is a visible change of the number of children that we see in the villages, in the birth rate. The birth rate is now twenty per thousand as against forty per thousand.

MR. LAZARO: It's the kind of progress that years of government family planning programs haven't come close to matching. Yet, the Aroles' approach has been almost startling in its simplicity.

DR. RAJANIKANT AROLE: As they say, you invent a simple mousetrap and the whole world will come to you. And this is what it is, a simple mousetrap.

MR. LAZARO: Indeed, dozens of similar projects have been launched elsewhere in India, and scholars, public health, and social workers, have come here from no fewer than 95 countries to study the success of the Aroles. CONVERSATION - THE CLINTON PRESIDENCY

MR. LEHRER: President Clinton returned to Washington from vacation today, and now we go to the third in our series of conversations about how he's doing as President of the United States. Tonight's is with Michael Beschloss, an historian who specializes in the presidency and international relations. He's written books that dealt with the Franklin Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Bush presidencies. Those of Roosevelt and Truman are part of his current project, a history of modern Germany. He's also a senior fellow at the Annenberg Washington Program, where he's director of the Project on Television and Foreign Policy. Michael Beschloss, welcome.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Thanks, Jim.

MR. LEHRER: How's Bill Clinton doing as President, in your opinion?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: I think if I'm an historian 30 years from now in the year 2024, I'll probably think he's doing a better job than I would think in 1994. Though his poll numbers down in the high 30s and the fact that there is likely to be a very Republican surge in Congress this fall don't suggest a very good sign for the Clinton presidency, I think what historians will say in the future, they're going to give him a lot of credit, I think, for the fact that this is perhaps one of the most intelligent presidents of the 20th century, someone of great optimism and someone who made a great effort to address a lot of very controversial domestic programs that others have not addressed for a long time. I think historians and Clinton's own generation will scorn him, however, for the fact that this is a President who has not done very much to build a power base that can get those programs through. He came in in 1992 really a provisional President almost on probation; 43 percent of the vote, less than Michael Dukakis got in 1988. Instead of looking on it that way and trying to build on this very narrow beachhead, I think there was a lot of lack of discipline and self-indulgence, especially in the first eight months, that in a way that have led to what we are seeing today.

MR. LEHRER: You used the word, you said he's one of the most intelligent Presidents we've had. Flesh that out. How do you measure the intelligence of a President based on the ones you have studied in detail?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: I think you have to look at things like capacity to grow. This is a President and a governor when he was governor of Arkansas, who made an effort when he saw that things were going badly to turn things around and learn from the experience that he was having. One of the signs, I think, of an intelligent President is how much a President is able to see things going wrong and retool. One thing that I think George Bush will be criticized for will be that in 1992 despite so much going wrong Bush did not see the need to change very much. That was one reason for that very thundering defeat.

MR. LEHRER: Now, today, this very day, as the President goes back to work, his press secretary said that -- I'm paraphrasing here - - but she said that -- Dee Dee Myers said that the President is going to concentrate more on the larger themes than he is on legislation, he's going to be speaking out more about general things, rather than specifics. Does that signal to you something along the lines you're talking about, that he may retool, he may see something there about what's gone wrong?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: I think we'll see it. I think we'll see the kind of effort that was made in June of '93, when he had his first period of buffeting and when he was defeated for governor of Arkansas in 1980, but I think it probably will be too late. This is someone who when he came in in 1993 was vulnerable, I think, probably one could say, on forefronts. Americans were looking for the signs that this was an ideologically leftist President, someone more left than the man they had voted for. They were looking for --

MR. LEHRER: In other words, they voted for -- they bought into the new Democrat act?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Absolutely.

MR. LEHRER: And you're suggesting that he got elected, even though with 43 percent of the vote, he got that vote based primarily on the fact that he, he appealed to them because he was a new Democrat and then he came in and didn't act like one?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Based largely. I think getting back to this idea that Clinton was a provisional President at the beginning, one of the things that people watching him very carefully for, were signs that this was someone who was a liberal or leftist in sheep's clothing, and he gave a lot of signs early on, beginning with gays in the military, that suggested that this was true. A couple of other things I think he was very vulnerable on and didn't recognize it. One was inexperience, when you have a governor coming from a small state, Americans are very much on tender hooks to what were signs of lack of competence, lack of experience. Another thing was character. Throughout '92, in a way they gave him a pass in the election of '92 after seeing signs of such things as the draft and the Gennifer Flowers business, but I think in a way Americans still did not know this man, they didn't know him certainly for the most part before '92, were very much on guard for things about Bill Clinton that might distress them, and then the final part of all this puzzle, I think, was foreign policy. Any Democrat in recent times coming into office comes in under the suspicion that a Democratic President is not as competent in managing foreign policy as a Republican.

MR. LEHRER: What does that come from?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: It comes from the mid 70's, and I think in a way from the Carter experience, having a Democratic President, the first since LBJ in 1969, who had absolutely no foreign policy experience, and in 1976 did not campaign, despite that we were still in the Cold War primarily on foreign policy. Bill Clinton in '92, I think to a degree, assumed that because the Cold War was over and because domestic concerns were so pressing that not only could he get away with neglecting foreign policy but he would get a lot of support for focusing like a laser beam on the domestic because he would seem to be liquidating the policies of '92. I think now that we look at in September of '94, that was probably a pretty big mistake.

MR. LEHRER: A mistake in what?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: A mistake in that Americans went he came into office were looking for signs that this was a President who might not take foreign policy seriously and who might demonstrate that subliminal suspicion that they had about Democrats, and despite the fact that there have been enormous successes in Russia, democracy, peace in the Middle East, and I might say, by the way, that years from now an historian might say that the most important things that happened during this period were Russian democracy and peace in the Middle East.

MR. LEHRER: And now even Northern Ireland is coming around.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Very much. Yes.

MR. LEHRER: All under -- in the watch of a President who's considered not with it on foreign policy.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Very much. And so that demonstrates what I'm suggesting, which is that the current generation sees things very differently from an historian much later.

MR. LEHRER: Now, why is that? Why is it that just back to your first answer -- why is it that you would say you know that you're - - well, you'll probably still be around in 30 years, Michael -- but historians are going to say different things about Clinton than you and others are saying about him now. Why? Why can't these things - - why are these things, these positive things not being recognized now?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: It's an iron law of presidential history. Harry Truman, when he left office, Dwight Eisenhower, both were seen as very minor Presidents. Now we look back on Truman, for instance, and see --

MR. LEHRER: You mean, when Truman left office, he wasn't considered much?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Poll numbers much lower than Bill Clinton's today, not taken seriously by historians for about 20 years. Only when you had Richard Nixon in the depth of Watergate in 1973 did Americans begin to be attracted to a President with as much as integrity as Truman who made great decisions in the Cold War.

MR. LEHRER: And what about Eisenhower, what was the experience there?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Eisenhower at the time in the late 50's was seen, as you remember, as a somewhat inarticulate, rather disengaged fellow. Twenty or thirty years later we got to see the private documents of that administration, and we saw that he was a lot more intelligent and manipulative than we knew. We also saw, for instance, that Eisenhower did a lot of things not appreciated at the time. For instance, he kept the defense budget down in the late 50's much more effectively than anyone who might have become President.

MR. LEHRER: Michael, what's your reading of the, of the apparent ferociousness of the attacks on Bill Clinton and his presidency? Based on your reading of recent history, is there new venom here? Is there special venom for him?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: We've always seen Presidents criticized, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Johnson, and Nixon, very obvious examples. There is a little additional venom now, however, and I think that comes from this very anti-incumbent -- I would say -- rage that you see among the public. I think we will see that demonstrated in the election this fall. It's going to make it very tough for Bill Clinton in 1996, of course, campaigning as an insider. The other element is that when a President like Bill Clinton comes in who was not a national figure, there's an additional risk. If you had a figure like Lyndon Johnson, for instance, who became President in 1963, he had been on the public scene for almost 30 years. People knew him, had a very sharp idea of him. They knew who they were voting for in 1964. Nowadays, it's so much more frequent than a rather unknown figure is nominated for President but we're still learning about him in the first or the second years of his presidency, and that creates a much greater potential for someone to be criticized and for people to look at him askance.

MR. LEHRER: What about the press's attacks on President Clinton? Those are also considered to be a little tougher specifically right now than in the past. Now, the question I asked you, I meant generally, both the opposition -- in this case the Republican Party -- but also now the press. Do you agree with that, that he's being treated unfairly?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: It's tough, and it is, I think, I hate to use the word unfair but I think that there is a degree of not excess but energy that perhaps you haven't seen before, however, it has not gotten to the point of some of the really awful things said, for instance, on Johnson and Nixon. But I think perhaps the most important element of this is that we're living in a very anti- heroic age. The presidency these days is a very weak office. It is weaker than it was in 1980, 1960, or 1940, and what all that does is put great emphasis on whoever happens to be elected President to very carefully use his political skills, build that power base so that he can get things through Congress and get the public to accept them.

MR. LEHRER: Based on his performance up to this point, what would you, in your knowledge of him, what would you anticipate that he would do these next two years? What has he come back from Martha's Vineyard and his vacation all geared up to do? What would you expect?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: It's going to be very tough. I think probably the best model for it would be 1983, when he came back to the governorship after being reelected after a bad defeat. He's going to have to govern in a much more bipartisan mode. That's something he's suggested he might do in his first press conference after the election in 1992, appoint Republicans to high office. It didn't happen. In a way, he is going to have to go against the grain that we saw in early 1993, which was rather partisan. In a way I think he probably has to hope that in 1996 that there might be a Republican who is weak, and Ross Perot might take away some of the anti-incumbent vote, and that Bill Clinton can seem someone who is a tested port within the storm.

MR. LEHRER: A lot of people have suggested that, that Bill Clinton is also the most political of the recent Presidents and that there -- the book -- the Woodward book, and there are other books coming out that portray the people around him, pollsters, political consultants, and that he's still running rather than governing. Is that a legitimate comment?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: I think probably so. Our Presidents have always been combinations of idealists and brokers, and I think you see the same combination in Bill Clinton. But I think in a way something that would suggest that he's not that political is that if this had been someone who at the beginning of '93 had seen how in many ways undermined his situation was as President, he would have used his skills to build a base, build a breadth of support in the country that would have led to a situation somewhat more shining than the one he finds himself in today.

MR. LEHRER: What does history tell us about the ability of Presidents who are down low as President Clinton is now in the polls and the conventional wisdom, the pundits and everybody else, to spring back?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: They do come back sometimes. Harry Truman in 1946, as you remember, had this very bad congressional defeat, came back to win in 1948. In Bill Clinton's case, you've got a President who is actually accustomed to these hairpin turns, able to sort of come back to power and authority in a way that we could not have expected before. But I think in a way it's tougher for an incumbent President because Americans have now seen this man, they have a very fixed idea of him. It's going to be very hard for him to manufacture a new Bill Clinton for the next two years of this presidency.

MR. LEHRER: Another comment that's been made is that what he does have going for him is also an opposition, the Republicans continue to make their own case against Bill Clinton worse than it should be made. In other words, they are their own worst enemies, and he has that going for him as well. Is that true?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: I think that's true. I think if the Republicans seem that obstructionist that that will be helpful. But in a way, a President should not be in a situation where you're depending on the weakness or the lack of skill of an opposition to take hold of the American public. And in a way that's going to be one of the signs that's going to make Bill Clinton's next two years very, very tough.

MR. LEHRER: But he has the ability, you think, to do it?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: I think he does. And one of the most optimistic aspects of this is that during the last two years this was a President who in many ways has had a very strong legislative record, had a very controversial budget bill based, NAFTA. I need not run through the litany. This is someone who not only promises but in many cases performs. And I think if he can somehow get through this very difficult situation that we anticipate of a probably, if not Republican Congress, a Congress that is dominated by the Republican Party, then if he can continue to perform during the next two years, he could be much stronger in '96 than we see him tonight.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Michael Beschloss, thank you very much. Urban League President Hugh Price will be our conversationalist here tomorrow night. ESSAY - COWBOYS AT THE BAR

MS. WARNER: Finally tonight, essayist Roger Rosenblatt explains why lawyers have suddenly become so popular.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Look closely, and you may notice that the American lawyer has replaced the American cowboy, as a representative national figure, I mean, as the embodiment of the complex but basic entity with which the country's identified. Evidence in the extra legal sense of the word is everywhere: In John Grisham's immensely successful novels where lawyers are everything from killers to crooks to noblemen; in Scott Turow's novels, where lawyers sometimes take the place of the old hard- boiled detectives, in Court TV, of course, where lawyers strut their stuff and their profession as budding TV stars. In shows like Law and Order or LA Law, faded but not forgotten as the display of the lawyer as good guy or as neurotic or nebbish or conniver. Today's lawyer is everything really. The only difference between him and his cowboy predecessor is that the cowboy did right and the lawyer simply does. Some lawyers, like Lloyd Cutler, whose trail these days is the Clinton White House, don't look like national emblems at first glance, but when they start to take charge of a difficult situation, even from a sitting position, the streets are suddenly cleared. Some lawyers, like O.J. Simpson's Robert Shapiro, or the ubiquitous Alan Dershowitz, less regal in appearance, are nonetheless men of the hour when the hour comes round. Women lawyers, no less than men, are achieving the American cowboy status. The Menendez Brothers were successfully defended by Leslie Abramson, whose nerve made Calamity Jane seem like Betty Crocker. And Marcia Clark, the woman prosecutor in the Simpson case, can clearly hold her own with fast gun in the West. What's odd about all this is that everyone can recall not all that long ago when the word "lawyer" was so synonymous with liar you'd hear both words in one. It certainly isn't that lawyers have grown less central to America's litigious leanings. If anything, they've increased their sway and numbers. In fact, it is because of that very increase of power that their increase in social stature has occurred. Contempt for ambulance chasers has evolved to adulation specifically because these people seem to have the solution to everybody's problems in their pockets. They do and do. When the President of the United States is in trouble, call a lawyer. When a football star is in hot water, do the same. When you're in trouble, or merely inconvenient or annoyed, call Jacoby & Meyers, or F. Lee Bailey, or best of all Gerry Spence, who looks like a real cowboy as well as a legal one. The next time I murder somebody the first guy I call is Gerry Spence. The question of morals, strangely, has been turned aside, even though it was once common to think of most lawyers as shady and money-grubbing. Maybe it still is, but clearly both sins have been forgiving. The fact is that lawyers are ingrained in the culture now. They have grown way beyond questions of propriety and redemption, two old cowboy traits. Only a few years ago, they made a half good movie called "Regarding Henry" with Harrison Ford playing a brilliantly rich and ruthless lawyer who had to get shot in the head to regain his moral equilibrium. If they made that movie now, Henry might get shot to boost his amoral ferociousness instead and who'd complain? It's nice, if odd, to see a character in American folklore change from an object of contempt to a figure larger than life, approved of merely because of his power and brain power. If that can happen to lawyers, it may mean that it can happen to anyone. Who knows? Dentists one day may evolve to be considered the saints of oral health. Insurance agents may rise to the status of the guardians of our future. Real estate agents may become likable, congressmen trustworthy, journalists lovable. Well, maybe that may be wishing too much. But the lawyers have done it. They may not always do right, but they always do. And you can smile when you say that. I'm Roger Rosenblatt. RECAP

MS. WARNER: Again, the main stories of this Wednesday, the U.S. and Cuba put their refugee cuffs on temporary hold as Cuba's chief negotiator went back to Havana for consultation. Sec. of State Christopher said the talks had been productive and useful and would resume shortly. At the Population Conference in Cairo, several Catholic nations joined the Vatican in opposing draft language on abortion. Good night, Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Good night, Margaret. We'll see you tomorrow night. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you, and good night.