The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

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

MR. LEHRER: And I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington. After our summary of the news this Tuesday, our regional editors and commentators assess the Million Man March, we have excerpts from Senate hearings on sending U.S. troops to Bosnia. Senators Nickles and Rockefeller debate tax cuts, and David Gergen has a dialogue about Abraham Lincoln. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MAC NEIL: A bomb exploded in the Paris subway today, injuring 29 people during the morning rush hour. French police said the device was characteristic of the Algerian terrorists who've been waging a bombing campaign in France since July. We have more on this from Hywel Jones of Independent Television News.

HYWEL JONES, ITN: The bombers chose a soft target at its most vulnerable time, a commuter train in the rush hour. The injured had all been packed into one carriage as it ran through a tunnel under the center of Paris. The terrorists' bomb had been placed underneath a seat in the second carriage. Those in its blast had no protection. In the seconds and minutes after the explosion, the train filled with smoke and the smell of gunpowder. Those who could clamor to safety saw gravely injured passengers lying unconscious. As the counting of casualties began, police suspicion immediately fell on an Algerian terror group responsible for a wave of attacks. Officers took one man from the scene. "He's just a witness," they said. For the French prime minister, Allain Juppe, another terrorist outrage, another domestic problem. The authorities here are by now well practiced at dealing with these emergencies but seem unable to prevent further attacks in what is a sustained campaign of terror, a campaign which is driving away tourists. Police here are still on alert but still unable to halt the attacks in the heart of their capital.

MR. MAC NEIL: The two million travelers who use the Paris Metro found their evening commute went pretty much as usual. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: The Secretaries of State and Defense presented their case today for sending U.S. peacekeeping troops to Bosnia. They were joined before the Senate Armed Services Committee by General John Shalikashvili, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He told the Senators a U.S. contingent would take a calculated risk.

GENERAL JOHN SHALIKASHVILI, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff: I agree that vital interests are at stake and that American casualties might occur but that the cost of not doing that could be higher and could eventually result in deeper American involvement and more casualties.

MR. LEHRER: Shalikashvili said the U.S. would most likely send about 20,000 troops, but they would not stay for more than a year. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, questioned the ability to limit the commitment.

SEN. JOHN McCAIN, [R] Arizona: I think we'll find upon examination those that will be expected to do the fighting will be primarily the U.S. forces in case hostilities ensue. 80 percent of the air power and most of the air capability is still being provided by the United States. This smacks a little bit to me as if the United States is doing what we made a conscious decision not to do, and that was to involve ourselves militarily in this conflict.

MR. LEHRER: We'll have extended excerpts from today's Senate hearing on Bosnia later in the program. In Bosnia, the cease-fire continues to hold. U.S. negotiator Richard Holbrooke and his Russian counterpart went to Belgrade today to brief Serbian President Milosevic on the details of a peace plan.

MR. MAC NEIL: A group of House members today urged President Clinton to establish a bipartisan commission to look at race in America. They said yesterday's Million Man March in Washington reinforced their concerns about two separate Americas, white and black. The last panel to study race in the United States was the Kerner Commission appointed 27 years ago by President Lyndon Johnson. New York Congressman Charles Schumer spoke at a Washington news conference.

REP. CHARLES SCHUMER, [D] New York: What unites us here is the fact that we know we have to come together. We know we can't keep talking past one another. I'm a patriot; I love this country. And I feel worried about its future, truly worried about its future, because of the divisiveness of race. And one of the solutions, it seems to me, or one step on the road to solution, because it's not a solution, is another commission that will talk to us honestly, straightforwardly, and prescribe solutions.

MR. MAC NEIL: We'll discuss the subject of race in the aftermath of yesterday's rally with our regional editors and columnists right after this News Summary.

MR. LEHRER: There will be a State Department investigation of charges the U.S. spied on Japan during trade talks in Geneva. A Department spokesman made the announcement today. The "New York Times" reported Sunday the CIA eavesdropped on Japanese officials and car company executives. The United States was pressing for greater access to Japan's auto market.

MR. MAC NEIL: The Israeli cabinet today authorized freedom of action for its soldiers in Lebanon to retaliate against Shiite Muslim guerrillas. The cabinet also condemned Syria and Iran for enabling Hezbollah to attack Israeli troops in Lebanon. Nine soldiers have been killed. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said Syria allowed terrorists to transport arms through its territory. He warned that Syria's involvement jeopardized the stalled peace talks between the two countries.

MR. LEHRER: South Korean troops shot and killed a suspected North Korean spy today. The man was killed at a military site along the Imjin River, about one and a half miles from the Demilitarized Zone that has separated the two Koreas for the past forty-two years. South Korea set up road blocks near the border and threatened to retaliate if there are more border violations. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to Million Man March reaction, Bosnia hearings, cutting taxes, and a Gergen dialogue about Lincoln. FOCUS - A NEW BEGINNING?

MR. LEHRER: We go first tonight to our panel of regional editors and columnists for reaction to and commentary on yesterday's Million Man March in Washington and the man who called it, Louis Farrakhan. With us are our regulars, Clarence Page of the "Chicago Tribune," Lee Cullum of the "Dallas Morning News," Pat McGuigan of the "Daily Oklahoman," and Cynthia Tucker of the "Atlanta Constitution." They are joined tonight by Bill Wong of the "Oakland Tribune," and Mike Barnicle of the "Boston Globe." A.M. Rosenthal, Cynthia, who does for the "New York Times" what you all do, wrote this morning, "The black man's march in Washington was a blow to the American dream and the goal of unity. It can turn out to be as demeaning and damaging as the Civil Rights Movement was decent and hopeful." Do you agree, Cynthia?

CYNTHIA TUCKER, Atlanta Constitution: [Atlanta] Well, I certainly share Abe Rosenthal's concerns about Louis Farrakhan's leadership of this march. Louis Farrakhan is a hate monger. He's a demagogue, and the march is tainted by his central role in it. I disagree wholeheartedly that many of the black men who went to the march, however, have separatism as their aim. In fact, many black men participated in that march not to endorse Louis Farrakhan or his separatist views but rather to stand and acknowledge black men's responsibility to their families and their communities. And I think that that could only aid unity in America. I think Abe Rosenthal would agree that there are some problems in black America that only black Americans can solve, and so many of the black men went to that march in testimony to that.

MR. LEHRER: Pat McGuigan, how do you feel about Rosenthal's sounding of the potential harm that could come from yesterday?

PATRICK McGUIGAN, Daily Oklahoman: [Oklahoma City] I essentially agree with Abe Rosenthal. I do think that it's been interesting to see a kind of moral blindness on the part of some otherwise admirable people. Here in Oklahoma, a man named Reverend Wade Watts, who's the uncle of one of our congressman, is kind of a legend in the state.

MR. LEHRER: J.C. Watts.

MR. McGUIGAN: Yes.

MR. LEHRER: He was on our program last night, as a matter of fact.

MR. McGUIGAN: Yes.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah.

MR. McGUIGAN: And Wade is, you know, kind of a legend in the state because he led the early Civil Rights Movement. He did participate in the march, and I was kind of surprised that he did, because as he put it, you know, he's a black Baptist minister, he'll go to Washington that way, and he'll return from Washington and still be one. So I do find that inability to understand the anguish that a lot of Americans like Abe Rosenthal and Pat McGuigan feel on the part of some otherwise very admirable people. I think they don't understand the depth of the fear, the concern, and a lot of other things I could express that Minister Farrakhan brings out in people, and it's simply the goodness of some of the things yesterday simply does not trump the central role that that man has played in creating divisions in our current society.

MR. LEHRER: Bill Wong, do you agree, no trump, the goodness does not trump the evil of Louis Farrakhan?

WILLIAM WONG, Oakland Tribune: [San Francisco] No, I don't agree. I think that despite Farrakhan's native and hateful rhetoric, I think America should look beyond, beyond that, and, and see in the amazing pictures that we saw yesterday, those of us at least in California and who were not able to be there, of hundreds of thousands of black men who were standing peacefully, listening, rejoicing, hugging, holding hands, and really feeling good about themselves. Now, that may simply be a feel-good situation, but the sense I got was that many of the men there were not there to endorse Farrakhan's brand of black nationalism and black separatism but to really affirm themselves as valid human beings and to try to look inwards with regards to how they might be able to create a better world for themselves, which really is a very conservative and Republican message, if you will. So I'm surprised that conservatives--white conservatives in particular--are so critical of the message from this march.

MR. LEHRER: Lee Cullum, how do you feel about that?

LEE CULLUM, Dallas Morning News: [Dallas] Well, I tend to agree with those who think that the march did hold a great deal of promise. I am as alarmed as anybody by Farrakhan. I think he has no place in our public life. I agree with Abe Rosenthal completely about that; however, I thought there was much in the march that was heartening. I thought that some of Rev. Jackson's remarks were heartening. His exhortation to African-American men to look after their children, visit their schools, sign their report cards, meet their parents, this day-to-day assumption of responsibility is terribly important. It's the key to success of, of the African- American community and any community. And I do think that the best way to encourage the behavior that's desirable is through ritualized honoring of that behavior. And this was a terribly important ritual, I believe, to black men, although I think that Farrakhan's dominance there certainly did taint it, as Cynthia Tucker suggested.

MR. MAC NEIL: Mike Barnicle, how would you assess the taint, if any, from your perspective that Louis Farrakhan put on this event?

MIKE BARNICLE, Boston Globe: [Boston] Well, Jim, I think that Abe sounded nearly as paranoid and as calm this morning as Louis Farrakhan did yesterday afternoon and does, indeed, every time he speaks. I didn't get the impression from speaking to anyone today who went to the march they paid a great deal of attention to what Farrakhan said. He went on too long. He sounded, in part, like the archaeologist at the beginning of the "Indiana Jones" movie sounded like, talking about oblongs and numbers and the sun flashing over the Washington Monument, and all sorts of odd things going to happen. I think the important thing that happened was that a huge number of American males, black males, went to Washington and came back instilled with a greater sense of pride and dignity about themselves and their lives than they had before. I don't see how that could ever, ever be a negative in this country.

MR. LEHRER: And you do not--in other words, you agree that Farrakhan's message of separatism--

MR. BARNICLE: Farrakhan is a nut. Everyone knows he's a nut, except the handful of people around him who swear allegiance to him. The more exposure he gets, the more lunatic he sounds. Now, the exposure that he got yesterday was, I think, through the eyes of white America. It was the TV networks; it was the national newspapers; it was all sorts of columnists writing about him. But the massive numbers of people who went there are not the eye of the television camera. And they were not there specifically to see and here Louis Farrakhan so much, I think, as they were there to make a statement for themselves, their communities, their neighborhoods, their families, their children, their lives.

MR. LEHRER: But, Clarence, Rosenthal and many others said today all of that said, as Mike Barnicle just said and others just said, you have to acknowledge that yesterday was Farrakhan's day in the huge sun. Would you acknowledge that?

CLARENCE PAGE, Chicago Tribune: No question about it. No question it was Farrakhan's day, and he deserves to have it, but as Scarlett O'Hara said--

MR. LEHRER: Why does he deserve to have it?

MR. PAGE: Let me say as Scarlett O'Hara said, "Tomorrow is another day." And we can get to that.

MR. LEHRER: Sure.

MR. PAGE: Well, he deserves to have it, Jim, because it's not an original idea. Folks have talked about a men's march to Washington before. This man Bill McCartney, the Promise Keepers, predominantly white Christian men gathered in big stadiums, they've talked about a march to Washington. Louis Farrakhan did it. He stuck his neck out and said, "I'm going to bring a million black men to Washington," and he darn near did. He certainly got close to 1/2 million by the official count. Had he not, had he got say 100, that would have been the end of Louis Farrakhan. Mike Barnicle's right when he says Farrakhan is a nut. He's a demagogue. He's an extremist, but he's not stupid. He is not totally crazy. He may have a paranoid streak, but he understands something about black America today. Louis Farrakhan did not create racial division in America, Jim; it was there. The division created Louis Farrakhan. Let's face it. More than half of white folks in Louisiana voted for David Duke for governor a few years ago, let's remember. I mean, if David Duke wants to call for a march of white men to Washington, that is his right. But white men are already running Congress. We all know the realities of race in this country. And I think we need to really talk about--about why were those black men there yesterday. I was out there, Jim, and I tell you, it was kind of like a big black version of Woodstock or a Robert Bly--Iron John meeting, if you will. I mean, black men don't get a chance to bond very often.

MR. LEHRER: Were they ignoring what Farrakhan said? Everybody seems to think--everybody on this panel--

MR. PAGE: Well, let me say this. The "Washington Post" did something that more newspapers ought to do. They sent pollsters out during that march and, and polled over a thousand of the folks who were there and asked, "Why are you here?" You know, only 5 percent named Louis Farrakhan as their No. 1 reason, 5 percent. The rest of them said they wanted to be there primarily to help rebuild the black community, to build black unity, to do something to help their folks. Also, they found they were largely middle class, factory workers, they were government workers, they were police and firemen I talked to out there, for example, as well as college students, fraternity fellows, church-going people. A lot of church buses were bringing people here to Washington. The fact is, Jim, we do have divisions in our country and white folks are perceived by many blacks as having abandoned the black, black problems, or the black agenda in the country. This is the era of the angry white male. I had more fellows tell me that. They also said they wanted to come and present an image of the black men through the media we don't normally see very often. We usually see rappers, or we see criminals. We don't see the invisible African- American, the ordinary working guy who's holding his family together, and going to church. A lot of folks came just because of that. It wasn't because of Louis Farrakhan.

MR. LEHRER: Pat, that doesn't gel with your perception from Oklahoma.

MR. McGUIGAN: Well, no, it doesn't, and I don't think you have to have a Million Man March and have Louis Farrakhan at the center of it in order to have worthy, upright, righteous people in the black community who are saying the right things. You know, this organization that Clarence referred to, Promise Keepers, is multi- racial, and one of the advertisements they use a lot features a black minister--I'm afraid I don't know his name--says, you know, we all came over on different ships, making a very specific allusion there to the issue of slavery that Farrakhan spent so much time on it. We all came over on different ships, but we're all in the same boat now. That is not the message that Louis Farrakhan is conveying. And as long as we're talking about percentages, it was two and a half hours out of eleven hours that was devoted to Minister Farrakhan and his message. There's a pastor up in Tulsa who's just as worried about this as I am. His name is Carlton Pearson, and he endorsed a lot of things that were said yesterday about African-American males, but he also said rat poison is 90 percent good corn; it's the 10 percent strychnine that makes it lethal. I think that's a fairly good assessment from the perspective of people who didn't participate in the march in terms of how they view its potential consequences with Farrakhan at the middle.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. Bill Wong, what--how can Farrakhan now be ignored? How can he not be acknowledged as a man who created this huge event?

MR. WONG: Well, I certainly think that this was a huge public relations victory for Farrakhan, and there's no way for me or anyone else to tell whether or not many of the men in the crowd will now subscribe to the Nation of Islam's creed or become members of his sect. We may not be able to ignore him. What I see in his place in American society today is that he certainly is a hateful extremist. There's no question about that. But he also taps into a chord in parts of the black community that few of us who are not black and who are not black men in particular do not simply understand. And I don't think that because of the extremes of our racial divisions and the depth of the problems within certain parts of the black community we, we just have no clue as to what's going on there. And I think for, for us to really try to understand we have to begin looking beyond--not discounting and not, not just swallowing the rhetoric that's coming from him, but look beyond it and see what--why is he tapping so deeply into parts of the black community, because there are some very deep problems that I believe that white America and other parts of America, especially governmental America right now, are ignoring.

MR. LEHRER: Lee Cullum, do you agree with that, that we, we white people just do not understand the appeal of Louis Farrakhan?

MS. CULLUM: Yes, I do agree with that, Jim, and I also want to say I thought that Roger Wilkins had a point, the historian at George Mason University, when he said that there is a great chasm between the races in America today and there is a vacuum. Russell Baker said the same thing in the "New York Times" this morning, and Farrakhan has rushed into that vacuum. I think it would be a very good idea to have the commission that was mentioned today. We haven't had a commission in 27 years. It will at least call to our attention again in an urgent way the unfinished business of racial reconciliation in this country.

MR. LEHRER: Now, Mike, when we talked here last week, you said that you didn't know what it was like elsewhere but in Boston, there was already a separate society, a black society and a white society. Do you think what happened yesterday is going to change that in any way, enforce it, whatever?

MR. BARNICLE: Well, you know, I think, I think not just in Boston, I think there are separate societies in this country in every city, in very state, black and white, and of other colors as well, but what we're doing here again tonight is what we have done so often after the past ten, twenty, thirty years. We're focusing on the negative. We're giving all sorts of time and emotional energyand throwing all sorts of verbs and adjectives at a megalomaniac. Everyone knows he's a megalomaniac. But the fact is, take him off that stage yesterday and look out in that Mall, and you had nearly 1 million black men gathered peacefully for a wonderful demonstration of solidarity, of what was in their heart, what was in their spirit, and what they are trying to tell America. That's the positive aspect of what happened yesterday. And yet, continually, all throughout the day today, we've walked around talking about Louis Farrakhan, asking, you know, what happens now?

MR. LEHRER: Well, in all fairness to those who have asked the question, including myself, the question I'll ask Cynthia, Cynthia, would those people have come yesterday if it hadn't been for Louis Farrakhan? Would somebody else had the ability or the, or the drive to organize that?

MS. TUCKER: I would like to think that what Louis Farrakhan did was tap into a feeling, a mood in black America, particularly with black men. Now, Louis Farrakhan is certainly going to claim from now on that he is the only black man in America who's able to assemble 1/2 million black men. Certainly, this is was a major public relations coup for him. But it is also true that Louis Farrakhan is a flake but a savvy flake. He had a brilliant idea at just the right moment, that black men are feeling, are in despair about their community, about the state of their families, the fact that one in twenty black, young black-- excuse me, one in three young black men are under the jurisdiction of the criminal justice system. I think what is important now is what happens next week and next month. When those black men go back home, will they, in fact, get reinvigorated? Will they join in volunteer activities? Will they do as Rev. Jesse Jackson suggested and get involved in their children's schools? If all those things happen, it will not really matter, I don't think, who called this march and whose idea it was.

MR. LEHRER: Do you agree with that, Clarence?

MR. PAGE: Yeah, I agree. I think Mike Barnicle hits on a good point. We have a lot more in common than we have different in this society. Bill Clinton hit on it too in his marvelous speech when he talked about issues like crime, for example. One thing most blacks and most whites have in common is we want to do something about crime; we want to do something about the black face that has been put on crime in modern-day society, because of a disproportionate number of black lawbreakers that are, but the vast majority of black folks are still law abiding, and, and are too often the victims of crime. Why aren't we working together across racial lines on issues like crime, welfare dependency, unemployment, bad schools? The reason why is because that race card has been played long before Johnnie Cochran came along by our political system for the last several decades. That's led to a widespread despair, and that's why a lot of black folks are so desperate they will march to Washington even if it's behind Louis Farrakhan.

MR. LEHRER: Pat McGuigan, in fact, Newt Gingrich made that very point today, that maybe what Louis Farrakhan has proven is "how bad the rest of us are as leaders," is what he said. Could he be right?

MR. McGUIGAN: I think there's something to that. There's a legitimate thought there. I guess my challenge would be to those of us in the press. Maybe we haven't been doing our job, because you've got guys like Wayne Singletary, the former linebacker for the Chicago Bears, a very admirable human being who for a long time has been talking about the fatherhood issue. You've got people like Tim Johnson, who's playing for the Washington Red Skins right now, who refused to participate in the march the other day for some of the reasons I've articulated, and he's put the focus on individual conversion and change of life in order to bring about this renaissance not only in the black community but in the rest of the country--Justice Clarence Thomas, who's a controversial figure to some people but who has been talking this kind of message through most of his public career and yet was excoriated for it at the time of his confirmation in 1987. We don't have to look to Louis Farrakhan to find the kinds of models we need for American leadership, let alone for black leadership.

MR. LEHRER: Before we go, I want to apologize to Bill Wong. What I did tonight was what we talked about a week ago, Bill. You said, hey, all of this is seen in black and white, and I came right out of you and went right into that--into that a moment ago. I should have--at least I caught it, but I caught it too late. But anyhow, Cynthia, Lee, gentlemen, thank you all very much.

MR. MAC NEIL: Still ahead, troops for Bosnia, a Senate debate on tax cuts, and a Gergen dialogue. FOCUS - DEPLOYMENT?

MR. MAC NEIL: Next tonight, Bosnia. The Clinton administration today began to make its case to Congress for sending U.S. troops to help enforce a Bosnian peace agreement once it's achieved. The White House has still not said whether it will seek congressional authorization to send troops but top officials began the appeal for congressional support in the Senate today. Kwame Holman reports.

MR. HOLMAN: Secretary of State Warren Christopher, joined by Defense Secretary William Perry and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General John Shalikashvili, went before a skeptical Armed Services Committee this morning. Christopher said the U.S. and its troops would be vital to reaching and maintaining a peace agreement in Bosnia.

WARREN CHRISTOPHER, Secretary of State: There will not be a peace agreement in Bosnia unless NATO and the United States, in particular, take the lead in its implementation. The Bosnian government has said to us quite directly that it will not sign a peace agreement without a commitment by the United States and NATO to help implement it. If we ask NATO to act in Bosnia, the United States cannot fail to contribute troops to the mission. The United States is the bedrock of NATO's strength and resolve. We cannot say to our allies we've come this far together but now you're on your own. That would mean abdicating our leadership of the alliance; it would genuinely impair the future of NATO and the stability of Europe.

MR. HOLMAN: Defense Secretary Perry said U.S. troops would comprise about 20,000 of the 60,000-strong peace implementation force to be called IFOR.

WILLIAM PERRY, Secretary of Defense: We are not going over there to fight a war. All of the warring parties will have signed a peace agreement before this force goes in. But after almost four years of conflict and the hatreds that are fanned by that conflict, and also recognizing there's a lack of central control of some of the paramilitary forces, we recognize that peace implementation will not be easy, and IFOR will not be risk-free.

MR. HOLMAN: But Senators questioned what level of peace would exist in Bosnia once agreements are made and the IFOR is deployed, possibly as soon as Thanksgiving.

SEN. DAN COATS, [R] Indiana: But doesn't a real peace agreement include agreement by the three warring factions to certain pre- requisites?

SEC. WARREN CHRISTOPHER: Yes.

SEN. DAN COATS: And if they agree to that, then why--"if" they agree to that, why is there the need then to put a peace implementing force in place consisting of 60,000 troops?

SEC. WARREN CHRISTOPHER: Well, Senator, even though parties agree to things, history has shown that frequently they need some help in implementation.

SEN. DAN COATS: And history has shown that they need an extraordinary amount of help in the Balkans, isn't that true?

SEC. WARREN CHRISTOPHER: Yes. That's certainly one of our great worries here, Senator, is the Balkans have been the seedbed of conflict in the past, and that's one of the justifications and perhaps the most important justification for ensuring that this is done right. We won't go there unless there is a real peace, but we'll go there to help the parties make sure that they implement and achieve a real peace.

SEN. DAN COATS: Well, see, that's where I have a problem. We won't go there unless there is a real peace, but we're going to go there to ensure that there is a real peace. The two seem contradictory to me. If there is a real peace, we wouldn't need 60,000 troops.

MR. HOLMAN: Only one member of the Armed Services panel expressed support for sending U.S. troops to Bosnia without prior congressional authorization. Part of Congress's reluctance is concern about American casualties.

SEN. JAMES INHOFE, [R] Oklahoma: I'd like to have any one of you tell me if we're going to have hundreds of young Americans dying over there, is the mission as you described it in your opening statement justification for their deaths?

SEC. WILLIAM PERRY: The U.S. has vital political, economic, and security interests in Europe. The war in Bosnia threatens those interests, and the U.S. vital security interest is served by stopping this war, and to do that, we require U.S. participation in IFOR. This will not be without risks. It will not be without costs. But allowing the war to continue also has risks and costs, and in my judgment, those risks and costs would be greater.

MR. HOLMAN: Then there were questions about the length and conditions of the proposed U.S. deployment.

SEN. SAM NUNN, [D] Georgia: Can we--if this peace agreement takes three, two, three, four months to be able to finalize, are we capable of militarily being able to deploy this force in the middle of the winter?

GEN. JOHN SHALIKASHVILI, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff: Obviously, it becomes more complex, but we--I don't want to be cute about it--but we are not a fair weather force. We have operated in harshest of winter conditions in our history, and we will be able to deploy that force and sustain that force and do it and ensure it does its job even if winter conditions exist.

SEN. CHARLES ROBB, [D] Virginia: I come back, however, to the question of the one-year timeframe. What military justification do we have for that kind of constraint, other than political concerns and the pressure placed upon you and others by Congress?

GEN. JOHN SHALIKASHVILI: From a military perspective, as I evaluated the tasks we wish this force to accomplish, it was my judgment that it, in fact, can be done in 12 months or less. Secondly, when tied to the equipping and training issue, it was my judgment that that too can be accomplished in less than a year. And so I felt it was important that we, therefore, set a target of one year and then bring the force back. In the absence of that, you just find yourself staying there and that's how very often mission creep comes in. The force needs to be brought home, and theyneed to resume normal training, and be ready for, for other operations, and I just think one year--I saw no military justification for that force to stay longer than one year. And that's why that was my recommendation.

SEN. DIRK KEMPTHORNE, [R] Idaho: Sec. Christopher, just a final question to you. Do you feel that to date, the administration has made a compelling case to the American people to support this deployment of U.S. troops?

SEC. WARREN CHRISTOPHER: We obviously have that obligation. We're beginning to fulfill that obligation. I assume there will be additional hearings. This is really the kickoff of the implementation hearing, so no, I don't think that we've yet made the case, but I think the case is there to be made, and we intend to make it.

MR. HOLMAN: Administration officials will begin making that case to the House of Representatives tomorrow. FOCUS - TAXING MATTERS

MR. MAC NEIL: Next tonight, a new tax-cutting plan in the Senate. Tomorrow, the Finance Committee will vote on a Republican tax plan, the next move in the effort to complete an overall balanced budget and tax bill. The GOP plan would create a package of $245 billion in tax cuts over seven years, including a permanent $500 per child tax credit--that credit would go to single-earner families making up to $75,000 and two-income families making up to $110,000; a capital gains tax reduction for both individuals and corporations; the expansion of traditional individual retirement accounts for IRA's, so that higher income earners could contribute; and the creation of a new individual savings account that could be used for such things as first home purchases, college education, or catastrophic medical expenses. We're joined now by two members of the Senate Finance Committee. Don Nickles is a Republican from Oklahoma, Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat from West Virginia. Sen. Rockefeller, you Democrats have made no secret of your opposition to this family tax credit. Explain why.

SEN. JAY ROCKEFELLER, [D] West Virginia: [Capitol Hill] The child tax credit?

MR. MAC NEIL: Yes.

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: The reason--my basic reason--is because I think it fits in with so many of the other Republican tax break suggestions. It's not available to so many. 40 percent of the children in America would not be eligible for the full tax credit, and that's because it's something called nonrefundable, and that means that that's very complicated but it has to do with let's say a family that's making $20,000 a year, has four children, they may be paying $600 in taxes, and that's all they'd get, as opposed to a family that got--had four children, would get $500 per child, so they'd get $2,000. And once again, as in everything, it's-- Republicans tend to tilt it towards those that have money and away from those that are working hard and don't have money.

MR. MAC NEIL: Sen. Nickles, how do you respond to that?

SEN. DON NICKLES, [R] Oklahoma: [Capitol Hill] Well, Robin, I take issue with that. It is a tax cut for taxpayers; it's family- friendly. It basically says, if you have kids and if you're an individual making $75,000 or less or families less than $110,000, couples, joint return payers, that you get a $500 tax credit for each child under the age of 18. So it's family-friendly. It's a tax cut for taxpayers, and really what we're trying to do is tell families that we think that they should be able to spend money better than Washington, D.C.. We're trying to slow the rate of growth in federal spending, which we're doing through our budget package, so-called reconciliation package, and we're also trying to say to families we think you should be able to keep some of your own money, instead of us taking more and more money. My good friend and colleague, Sen. Rockefeller, wants to use the tax code to redistribute income and say, well, let's write checks to individuals. We're not saying that. We're just saying we're going to eliminate the tax liability for the family that has a $20,000 income and maybe that a family of four with income less than $30,000 they would have zero federal income tax liability. So we're giving them a real break. We're saying you don't have to pay taxes; you take care of your families first.

MR. MAC NEIL: Sen. Rockefeller, what is wrong with a tax cut for taxpayers?

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: There's nothing wrong with it, and it is better than not having anything at all. I mean, the National Commission on Children, which I chaired for four years, came out with a, with a nonrefundable--a refundable tax credit for children, and but we made sure that, you know, that everybody got to have that $500 per child.

MR. MAC NEIL: Just so that I understand it, a refundable tax credit of $500 per child would mean that even if you didn't earn enough to pay that much in income tax for each child, you will still get the $500?

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: You would get the $500.

MR. MAC NEIL: And that's called a refundable tax credit.

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: That's a refundable tax credit. The nonrefundable is if you don't make enough income tax so that what you're paying doesn't get you that break, then you don't--

MR. MAC NEIL: So would you support it if it were refundable?

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: I would come--yes, I would.

MR. MAC NEIL: And Sen. Nickles, why don't Republicans make it refundable and get all the Democrats voting with you?

SEN. NICKLES: Something tells me, Robin, they probably wouldn't support the final package anyway, but really, it should be a tax cut for taxpayers, not another federal excuse to redistribute income. It shouldn't be a welfare program.

MR. MAC NEIL: You think a refundable tax plan would be simply a way of redistributing income?

SEN. NICKLES: Well, no question about it. You're going to have Uncle Sam writing checks. That's what we do right now under the so- called "earned income tax program." We write checks. 85 percent of that program is Uncle Sam writing checks up to $3,100 right now, so my point being we want to have a tax cut for taxpayers for families. We are family-friendly. We've designed this package, this $245 billion package, to where about 2/3 of it goes directly to families--middle income and low income families, in some cases totally eliminating their income tax liability. So we're trying to be family-friendly. We're trying to also do some things in the package that would encourage savings investment, create jobs, make the United States more competitive in, in world markets.

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: Robin, can I comment on the earned income tax credit?

MR. MAC NEIL: Right.

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: Because that's a classic. The earned income-- take each word--the earned income tax credit--this is the working poor. And what the Republican tax package does is cut $43 billion out of the earned income tax credit to help pay for capital gains breaks for the wealthy and other programs of that sort. But you cannot say that the earned income tax credit is, is a redistribution of wealth if at the same time you're saying that if you play by the rules in America, if you stay off welfare, if a family earning just above the welfare limit, which is earning income, but they'redeclining Medicaid, they're declining the chance to have their children on public medical assistance, that they should be able to keep more of what they earn. That is a good thing. The Republicans are saying, no, that's not a good thing; that's redistribution of income.

MR. MAC NEIL: Sen. Nickles, may I just ask the question about that earned income tax credit, although it's not part of this bill before your committee, it is true that other parts of the Republican budget plan would reduce the money--

SEN. NICKLES: That's true.

MR. MAC NEIL: --so the earned income tax credit would not apply to as many people or would not be as generous?l

SEN. NICKLES: Well, that is true, and we have to. If you're ever going to balance the budget, you have to curb the growth of entitlements. This is the fastest growing entitlement in government. Robin, this is the program that cost $2 billion in 1986 cost $23 billion in '95. It's exploded in cost. The maximum benefit today is $3100. In 1990, it was $950. So it's more than tripled in just the last few years and scheduled to continue to increase, and these cuts that Jay was talking about, we allow the maximum benefit to continue to increase. It goes from $3100 today under our proposal, still goes up to $3800. We just reduce the rate of growth in the program because it is a cash outlay program. 85 percent of the benefits under this program is Uncle Sam writing a check. It's what Jay would call a refundable tax credit. It's a negative income tax, and it's exploding in cost. So we say let's curtain its growth. It still grows under our proposal. It just doesn't grow quite as fast.

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: But don't you want to give people a chance to- -encouragement to stay off of welfare?

SEN. NICKLES: Well, I don't see this--as a matter of fact, I would say in many cases the earned income tax credit is a great name but is mis-titled. It's income redistribution. It's an exploding entitlement program, and in many cases, it's a disincentive to work, because a lot of people want to have their income at a certain level, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen thousand dollars, so they can maximize their credit, because right now, Uncle Sam says hey, if you have your income in this range with a couple of kids, we'll write you a check for $3100.

MR. MAC NEIL: Sen. Nickles, doesn't it provide the Democrats with some justification or ammunition for arguing that the Republican tax cut plan is taking from poorer members of the, of the American community so as to help less poor or better off?

SEN. NICKLES: No. I totally disagree. If you look at our tax package, you're going to find, Robin, that 2/3 of this package are very family friendly. It's a tax cut for taxpayers. It's not a scheme to redistribute wealth. It's a tax cut for taxpayers, and many cases, for low income families, middle income families. We're going to eliminate the federal income tax liability, totally eliminate it, so they won't have to pay taxes, but we shouldn't be using the tax code as just another excuse or method to rob Peter to pay Paul. In many cases, that hasn't worked. It's had disincentives for work. We need to change that. We're trying to change it.

MR. MAC NEIL: Senator, back to you, Sen. Rockefeller, what is your objection to the other main part of this proposal, which is to lower capital gains tax?

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: My objection to it is that if you spend your time and your money in investment and you get your income through investment as opposed through let's say working in a, in a grocery store, working at day care center, working at a steel factory, something of that sort, you can't--you're not going to have capital gains. And, in fact, in the Republican proposal, 28 billion of the $33 billion in, in capital gains tax reduction which goes to individuals goes to individuals who are making $350,000 or more. And I have fundamental objections, because I think that is income redistribution, it's just done in the classic Republican tradition of taking care of their wealthier friends, while shutting out folks who just can't avail themselves of that kind of opportunity.

MR. MAC NEIL: Senator Nickles, what is the purpose of the, of the--of lowering the capital gains tax cut--tax?

SEN. NICKLES: Well, Robin, it is two- or three-fold. One, history has proven every time we've lowered capital gains taxes, we've had an increase in revenues to the federal government. Now, some people want to demagogue that, but John Kennedy's done it. Every time it's happened revenues to the federal government have increased, because capital gains tax is really a tax on a financial transaction. And if somebody wants to move assets--and Jay mentioned, well, this is going to help the wealthy, but it is going to help the economy. It's going to help create jobs. It's going to create incentives for people to invest and to save and create jobs, and so this is a very positive thing that's going to be lifting a lot of people economically, and it's not just the wealthy. This is--we cut the capital gains rate for all individuals. Low income people that pay 15 percent tax, if they are selling a piece of property, maybe it's a farm, maybe it's a little equipment that they have or whatever, they would pay a capital gains tax of 7 1/2 percent. So we--we make this tax cut really to, to say we don't want the federal government to be going in and punishing investment. And the United States has one of the highest tax rates on capital gains of any of our industrialized competitors, makes us less competitive. We need to encourage in savings. We're still saying that 2/3 of this tax cut is going to go directly towards low and middle income families, but we're taking 1/3 of it and saying let's create some jobs and savings and invest.

MR. MAC NEIL: Sen. Rockefeller, with the votes in the committee the way it is, the Finance Committee, should we assume that this proposal is going to go through, the next stage?

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: I'm afraid to say to you, Robin, two days before your final day, that that is the case. And it'll probably go through on your final day.

SEN. NICKLES: Well, Robin, we want to give you a special going- away present--

MR. MAC NEIL: Oh, I see, okay. Well, thank you very much.

SEN. NICKLES: --and pass a very good tax bill.

MR. MAC NEIL: Thank you, Senators. DIALOGUE

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight, a Gergen dialogue. David Gergen, editor-at-large of "U.S. News & World Report," engages David Herbert Donald, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian at Harvard University, author of "Lincoln," a new biography of the 16th president.

DAVID GERGEN, U.S. News & World Report: There are an estimated 5,000 books written about Abraham Lincoln, more surely than about any other figure in our history. Why does Abraham Lincoln have such a hold upon our imagination?

DAVID HERBERT DONALD, Author, Lincoln: Well, there are I think a number of reasons we can put together about this. First of all, he was the President in the nation's most serious crisis and say of the union. Second, the Emancipation Proclamation and what it meant for African-Americans everywhere is such a major accomplishment that it would cause him to be such a person as that. But added to those accomplishments, of course, there is the assassination, and Americans have a fascination with assassinations and their legacy. And this was the first American President, alas, to be assassinated. But having said all of that, that still doesn't account for a lot of the increase in popularity which stems, I think, from Lincoln's personal characteristics. This is the first time an American President appealed directly to citizens, and people began writing thousands of letters in the Lincoln Papers. They would write to him, "Father Abraham." This is the first time--you never thought of say Father George Washington and Father Thomas Jefferson, Father Millard Fillmore, for example. He was somebody who belonged to them, and that sense of being a people's President, I think, makes Lincoln such an enormously appealing, as well as enduring, figure.

MR. GERGEN: Well, it's interesting that the number of historians who placed him or treated him as an icon, put him on a pedestal, sometimes on a cross, and one historian called him the "Christ figure of democracy's passion play." It was a lovely quote.

DAVID HERBERT DONALD: Yes.

MR. GERGEN: You've really looked at him as a person and tried to treat him in terms of what he was seeing as President, what letters were coming in, what he was reading in his legal papers. You're the first really who had the opportunity to do that.

DAVID HERBERT DONALD: What I thought we ought to try to do in a book like this is to focus closely on Lincoln, himself, to see what he knew, how he knew it, how he came to make the decisions that he did, and how he implemented them. I didn't think it was terribly important for me to stand on the sideline cheering and say, oh, what a grand thing that was, my wasn't that statesmanlike--we all know that. That isn't important here. What we need to see is how leadership works, how a man with very poor training came to be such a skilled, adroit leader in a terribly troubled time.

MR. GERGEN: You've described him as having a passive personality. And I wonder whether your reviewers have misunderstood or whether you have not communicated sufficiently to the reviewers what it is you're talking about when you talk about having a passive personality.

DAVID HERBERT DONALD: What I was talking about was not laziness. Goodness, this was the hardest-working President we ever had. It was not lack of ambition, as Herndon said quite correctly, his ambition was a little motor that knew no rest. But I'm talking here about a reluctance for deep inner psychological reason stemming mostly from one's youth to take the lead to go out on a limb to do something that's sort of daring, to be the kind of leader who pokes his standard out in front and says this is where we're going, and then looks over his shoulder to see if his army is following him. This was never Lincoln's--

MR. GERGEN: He stayed very close to where he thought the country's mind was, the mind set of the country was.

DAVID HERBERT DONALD: He was very cautious about these matters, and fortunately, he was very cautious. Had he gone out in advance, had he early in the war stated we're going to emancipate all the slaves, the union would have been destroyed.

MR. GERGEN: He would have lost the border states.

DAVID HERBERT DONALD: He would have lost the border states. The war would have been lost. Now,it was this kind of caution that exasperated his opponent, people like stately Sen. Charleson of Massachusetts, who said that in terms of dithering, there's never been such a ruling in the world since Louis XVI, and you know what happened to him. Sumner would have gone out and said, this is where we're going, everybody has to follow me. Lincoln was exactly the reverse of this. Let's all work together, slowly, incrementally, to get into this direction.

MR. GERGEN: Yeah. The closest analogy of other Presidents might be Franklin Roosevelt.

DAVID HERBERT DONALD: I think that's a very good analogy in so many different ways, Roosevelt's close attention to public opinion like Lincoln, Roosevelt's willingness to experiment, his flexibility. He understood, like Lincoln, that you try one thing, it doesn't work, you try something else; if that doesn't work, you try again. Another one, you're not absolutely fixed as to means to getting where you want to go.

MR. GERGEN: I love the quote that you used from Lincoln about how--comparing himself essentially to the men who were out in the rivers in the West, and they steered from point to point so that there was a zig and a zag as they went, while all along, they were going downstream, they were heading in a certain direction.

DAVID HERBERT DONALD: Exactly right.

MR. GERGEN: And that seemed to be--characterize the way he tried to feel his way through it.

DAVID HERBERT DONALD: A very good way, and Lincoln ought to have used it more often than he did. His phrase that he more often used was my policy is to have no policy. And this infuriated people. What's do you mean, a President's supposed to have policy, but if he'd used the analogy that he did use on occasion of the steamboat- -the river boat man--he had been a river boat man, after all, he knew these things, and when you get on the river, you don't--the Mississippi River--you don't simply say I'm headed South. If you head South, you'll run into a Cyprus Tree, into a riverbank within 15 minutes. And so you zig and you zag and you go back and forth. And this is where he was going. He knew where he was going.

MR. GERGEN: It reflects your Mississippi heritage too.

DAVID HERBERT DONALD: Yes, I think it does. [laughing]

MR. GERGEN: [laughing] Tell me about Lincoln's lessons for leadership today. What lessons did you draw from him?

DAVID HERBERT DONALD: Well, it seems to me Lincoln, I suppose, is kind of a model of a particular sort of presidency, a presidency that first of all is elected by a minority of the votes. They can get, after all, a little more--about 40 percent of a total huge electoral popular vote, so he had he had no mandate that he could follow and capitalize on immediately. It reflects the kind of leadership also of a President without much experience in Washington who did not have strong ties with leaders of his own party, many of whom were almost unknown to him. He had met Seward, he had met Chase, then most of the others in his cabinet, he didn't really know them. Many of the leaders in Congress he didn't know at all. And so he had to forge connections with them in a very slow, careful kind of way. So this combination of a cautious personality, of a lack of a mandate, of unfamiliarity with the circumstances makes, I think, for the model of a Presidency that has to proceed very slowly, very cautiously, but on the whole, in the end, successfully.

MR. GERGEN: And there were two other elements about it that struck me in reading your book. One was his capacity for personal growth. You said he grew into greatness, and he seemed to do that, in particular, in working with his generals, going from McClellan in the beginning, a man who wouldn't listen to him and wouldn't fight, going to Grant in the end, a man he convinced where he ought to go and would fight.

DAVID HERBERT DONALD: That's exactly right. At the beginning, Lincoln was so inexperienced he had reverence for military expertise, not realizing that there wasn't any military expertise, that the most anybody had commanded up to that point had been somebody, some troops in the Mexican War, and it had been years ago. Nobody really knew how to command an army of a hundred thousand people, but he believed that they did, and so he deferred to them. And they said, no, we can't go this way, we've got to go down the Potomac and land on the peninsula, he said, okay, I don't think it's a good thing, but that's the way we have to do it. Then by the time Grant came along, he was so shrewd that he knew exactly what he wanted, namely, he wanted his army to make the Confederate Army their object, not seizing territory, not seizing capital, but the army. And when Grant came in, he was clever enough to let Grant think that this was his idea, and Grant in his memoirs boasted, this was my idea, the President didn't understand it at all, and in fact, it was Lincoln's plan that he'd exactly laid out prior to that.

MR. GERGEN: The other thing was Lincoln--a man with only one year of formal education--became certainly the most eloquent of all of our Presidents, and his capacity to speak to the country, to go back to your point, to speak to the citizens and to--and to speak to public opinion too, and he learned how to influence public opinion--I thought was very, very striking. You know, there's no anthology of American literature today that's not--it's filled with quotes from Lincoln over the years, and his understanding of language, of figurative language and metaphors and of stories--I'm curious. Do you have a favorite Lincoln story?

DAVID HERBERT DONALD: Oh, I do. My favorite Lincoln story is one that Lincoln himself told very often, and it shows something about the way he perceived--he told the story--in those days one always told ethnic stories--he told the story about the Irishman who had been drinking much too much and had sworn off the liquor, and so the parade was going through town and the Irishman shows up at the bar, and he goes to the bar and says, "Bartender, give me a glass of lemonade." The bartender looks at him, curious at him, and he says, "If you put a drop of whiskey in it unbeknownst to me, I wouldn't mind." Lincoln didn't mind for things to be done unbeknownst to him. RECAP

MR. MAC NEIL: These were today's top stories: A bomb exploded in the Paris subway, injuring 29 people. It was the eighth such bombing in France since July. The armed Islamic group based in Algeria has claimed responsibility for most of the other bombings. The Secretaries of State and Defense told Senators on Capitol Hill that 20,000 American troops would be needed for a year to help keep peace in Bosnia. Good night, Jim.

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