The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

INTRO

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. It was a busy news day. Space shuttle Discovery made a happy landing after six days in space. Soviet leader Chernenko made his first public appearance since July. Another new share-the-power deal for a unity government was announced in Israel; and Canadian voters swept a new Conservative government into office with the largest parliamentary majority in history. Robin?

ROBERT MacNEIL: Politics is the principal fare on the NewsHour menu tonight. With two senior experts we join the debate that's heating up between Reagan and Mondale over military preparedness and arms control. Then the Reagan-Bush campaign manager, Edward Rollins, discusses the President's strategy for re-election. And we explore the significance of yesterday's landslide victory by Canada's Conservatives.

LEHRER: Space shuttle Discovery is back home with its astronauts safe and sound, its mission accomplished. The shuttle landed at sunrise on a lakebed at Edwards Air Force Base in California, completing its six-day flight in space. The five-man, one-woman astronaut crew did all they were supposed to do, launching three communications satellites, running tests on solar power and on making a drug in space. Here's how the landing went this morning.

NASA OFFICIAL: -- gear is down. Altitude 300 feet. Just 800 feet from the end of the runway. And the main gear are down. Nose gear securely down.Touchdown at mission lapsed time of six days, 56 minutes, four seconds. Nose gear down at six days, 56 minutes, 16 seconds. Discovery is safely back on earth after having traveled 2.17 million nautical miles in six days and 57 minutes. This is Mission Control, Houston; crew egress here. First down the ladder is mission commander Hank Hartsfield, then pilot Mike Coats, mission specialists Mike Mullane, Steve Hawley, Judy Resnick and payload specialist Charlie Walker.Being greeted by George Abbey, director of flight crew operations from Johnson Space Center in Houston. And the [unintelligible] crew making an inspection of their ship after 2.17 million miles of time in space.

LEHRER: The successful conclusion of this three-times-delayed shuttle mission was a relief to NASA officials, who now hope the shuttle program will get back on schedule. Program director Jesse Moore said today that starting in October they plan to launch a shuttle mission each month for the rest of the year. Robin?

MacNEIL: Astronauts, or, as the Soviets call them, cosmonauts, were also in the limelight in Moscow today but were upstaged by the reappearance of Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko. In his first publicappearance since July, the 72-year-old president officiated a ceremony in the Kremlin honoring three cosmonauts, including Svetlana Savitskaya, the first woman to walk in space. Chernenko's long absence from the public spotlight had caused speculation that he was not well.His appearance today was scrutinized very carefully. Chernenko walked into the ceremonial room without assistance. He was greeted with a bow from the waiting cosmonauts. As he delivered a four-minute speech, he appeared somewhat flushed, but he spoke steadily in a soft, firm voice. There was no sign of the wheezing and halting delivery that had been observed in some of his earlier speeches. He did appear to have lost a little weight, and some observers thought he looked a bit frail.

In East Germany a Soviet deputy prime minister, Leonid Kostandov, died of a heart attack today while he was visiting an international trade fair in Leipzig. He was last seen in public on Sunday when he appeared to be in good health.

Jim?

LEHRER: Israel may finally get a new government. Labor Party leader Shimon Peres said today he and Yitzhak Shamir, the leader of the Likud bloc, have once again agreed on a policy that would make it possible to form a joint government. Shamir was a bit more reserved, saying a Labor-Likud coalition was almost a certainty. They spoke after a 90-minute meeting in Jerusalem. Later, an anonymous member of Shamir's staff was quoted as saying the principal problem remaining was to find a compromise policy on Jewish settlements on the West Bank, which Peres wants to restrict and Shamir wants to expand.

In Santiago, Chile, a curfew was imposed last night after anti-government rioting in which three people were killed, more than 50 wounded, and 280 arrested. Here is a report from John Arlen of the BBC.

JOHN ARLEN, BBC [voice-over]: At dawn this morning the fires were still burning from a night of violence in this poor suburb. There were three deaths and many wounded. This woman's 12-year-old son was taken away by police and beaten. On the street, the remains of a young man's hair. He's been literally scalped with a knife. Among those killed was a French priest. Members of the security forces were not always in uniform. This man was later seen talking to police. In the poor suburb of Victoria, where Father Andre was shot, followers marched with a fellow French priest. There were angry accusations against the military regime. Later, a mass was held. Throughout the day the police were a constant threat and lobbed tear gas against youths and a group of journalists. Priests tried to persuade the police to leave the area. Despite the violence in outlying areas, central Santiago was quieter today, but more protests are expected tonight.

LEHRER: In South Africa, violence continued in the black townships around Johannesburg. The police fired rubber bullets at young men throwing stones at cars, and a gas station was set afire. A large power station was damaged by a bomb and electricity was cut off for a large region of the Transvaal province. In Sharpeville, the center of the recent rioting, there was almost another outburst today, but it was avoided.Here is a report from Michael Burke of the BBC.

MICHAEL BURKE, BBC [voice-over]: For the third night running, buildings in the black townships were ablaze. By this morning there seemed little left but rubble and desolation, the aftermath of anger. There was little left for the looters. The best things had been taken, but people still picked through the wreckage of shops and businesses for anything they thought of value. In everybody's minds was the memory of 1960, when a similar crowd menaced the police here and nearly 70 blacks were shot dead. The police and their guns were ready. Helicopters swept in and reinforcements were put on standby. But the police, who have been criticized for their heavy-handed response to the riots, kept back in the hope of resolving the trouble peacefully. The crowd felt the same way.The rioters of the last two days were marshaled into peaceful protest. From amongst them emerged delegates to demand the rent increases that sparked the trouble and the clampdown by police should be revoked. For awhile it seemed they had won their demands, but they hadn't. The authorities said they had no power to reduce the rents. Nothing for now would change.It was a moment when violence might have broken out again in Sharpeville. It didn't. The crowd, angry and disappointed, drifted away peacefully.

LEHRER: And in this country, with both houses of Congress back in session today, Democrats called for a full accounting in the deaths of two Americans in Nicaragua. One House member wrote to the CIA Director William Casey inquiring whether the agency was directly or indirectly involved. A Senate Democrat said he wants to know whether the Americans had been flying missions from any of the American-built air bases in Honduras. Nicaragua has charged that the two Americans were CIA agents, but an American paramilitary group says they were unpaid volunteers with no connection to the CIA. Robin?

MacNEIL: As Jim indicated, the Congress returned to work today after a recess for the Republican convention and Labor Day. And House Speaker Thomas O'Neill had some stern advice for Walter Mondale. O'Neill told reporters that the Democratic nominee is being pushed around by President Reagan and must fight back harder if he's to win in November.

Rep. THOMAS O'NEILL, (R) Massachusetts: When the President of the United States makes a faux pas which frightens the world by saying on his Saturday broadcast that, "I've signed a bill outlawing Russia" and bombs away in five minutes. His comment was the president of the United States should be cautious in what he'd say. Well, that wasn't the feeling around Europe. That wasn't the feeling around the world. The President should have been repudiated and repudiated by our candidate for that statement. And any time they attack us, we ought to be out slugging back. I know that's what I'd be doing, and that's what I'm going to tell Mondale in the morning.

MacNEIL: Mondale meets tomorrow morning in Washington with Mr. O'Neill and other House and Senate Democrats to talk about campaign strategy.Judy Woodruff talks strategy now with one of the campaign directors. Judy? Reagan's Strategy: Edward Rollins

JUDY WOODRUFF: Robin, because it's the first week of the fall election season, we've invited the heads of both presidential campaigns to come in for interviews. Last night we talked with Jim Johnson, who is chairman of the Mondale campaign. Tonight, Ed Rollins, the director of the Reagan-Bush campaign, joins us.

EDWARD ROLLINS: Good evening, Judy.

WOODRUFF: Thank you for being with us.

Mr. ROLLINS: My pleasure.

WOODRUFF: Well, who do you agree with? Speaker O'Neill and Mr. Mondale? Which one is taking the right tack?

Mr. ROLLINS: Well, I think the truth of the matter is, if the rhetoric has been harsh, it's mainly been coming out of the Democratic side. I think the President has been pretty much doing what he's done for the last 44 months, and that's creating a sense of optimism, a sense that this country is being led effectively once again, and if we're pushing Mondale around, I think the Speaker has done his share of pushing Mondale around, too.

WOODRUFF: Do you think there is any way you could lose this campaign? I mean, you are so far ahead, according to virtually every national opinion poll. I mean is it now at the point where it's impossible for you to blow it, do you think?

Mr. ROLLINS: Oh, I don't think any election is ever impossible to blow, Judy, but I do think that the nine weeks that are remaining -- this President has, in 44 months, I think, as I said earlier, led this country effectively. In the nine weeks of the campaign, there'll be a lot of charges made by Mr. Mondale and the Speaker. I'm not sure the American public is ready to believe that. They've seen the results of this President, this administrative, and I think they feel very positively towards him.

WOODRUFF: Well, I hear you saying that you're not going to be criticizing, and I think you were quoted the other day as saying you were going to ignore Mr. Mondale and run on your record. And yet the entire Republican convention was virtually a non-stop attack on Mr. Mondale and former President Carter. Vice President Bush is going around saying Mondale would create another recession, and we've got some pretty harsh language coming from some other folks, including the President. Do you think a negative campaign is really what we're going to end up with?

Mr. ROLLINS: Well, I certainly don't think on our side that we're going to run a negative campaign, and we don't desire to run a negative campaign. I think the convention itself, some of the speakers may have been trying to set the record straight based on the rhetoric that came out of San Francisco, including the illustrious speaker there. But from our perspective, we think this president has a very, very strong record, and we're very proud to run on it.

WOODRUFF: Including Senator Laxalt's statement that Mondale was a born loser?

Mr. ROLLINS: Well, I don't think he was a born loser.He may have developed some of those habits as he moved through the course of his campaigning over the last 18 months.

WOODRUFF: Speaking of the convention, the party platform that was adopted there calls for about $130 billion in tax cuts, in additional tax cuts, including doing -- or rather, doubling the personal income tax exemption and some other changes in the tax code. Now, some people are saying that this is going to add up to a deficit by 1989, the end of a Reagan -- second Reagan term, of somewhere between $300 and $400 billion. How in the world does President Reagan propose to do something about that?

Mr. ROLLINS: Well, first of all, Judy, I think the platform of the Republican convention represents the viewpoints of the party, which is always -- it's their ambition to cut taxes. That doesn't necessarily mean it's the administration's policy. I think the President has made it very, very clear that he desires to cut spending, that he wants to work on the deficit and until such a time as the deficit is reduced and reduced substantially, I don't think at this stage we're realistic about talking about any kind of increase in tax reductions. We certainly don't want to raise taxes, which Mr. Mondale has already stated and promised that he's going to. He's got a lot of promises he has to pay for in the course of the last 18 months of campaigning.

WOODRUFF: So you're saying despite the platform language you really don't have any plans to follow through on it.

Mr. ROLLINS: The bottom line is the President has asked the Treasury Department to come up with a series of recommendations to him to help reduce the deficit in the fall, post the election, and I think anything I say at this stage would be a little premature.

WOODRUFF: Will the President be any more specific, though, before the election, about how he plans to bring down the deficit?

Mr. ROLLINS: I think the President has been very specific in how he wants to bring down the deficit. I think that he wants to make spending cuts in some programs, that he wants to lead this country more effectively and have some better management put into some of the agencies. I think the Grace Commission that made thousands of recommendations on how to reduce wasteful government -- some of those things he'd like to have implemented by the Congress. He'd like to have a balanced-budget constitutional amendment passed by the Congress, and he certainly would like to have a line-item veto that more than 40 governors have --

WOODRUFF: But hardly --

Mr. ROLLINS: -- and you give him line-item veto and he'll do a pretty good job of reducing --

WOODRUFF: But hardly anybody believes that just by cutting programs can you bring the budget into balance.

Mr. ROLLINS: Judy, we also feel that the economic growth that's sort of unprecedented over the last year has certainly reduced the deficit more than anybody predicted. So I think our feeling at this stage is let you see what the economic growth does in the next several months. Let's see what the projections are for the future, and let's in the fall and early next year basically look at the deficit and see how we can tackle it.

WOODRUFF: All right, let me ask you about this whole question of religion. The President went before a prayer breakfast group in Dallas and said that, in essence, that politics and religion are inseparable. Now, this week he's been going around saying that government shouldn't be trying to tell people what religion to practice. Are you all really trying to have it both ways? I mean, are you trying to appeal to the Christian fundamentalists on the one hand and then on the other hand to lure in Democrats --

Mr. ROLLINS: No, I think very definitely the President has had some very strong personal beliefs and he's advocated those beliefs over the last 20 years -- things like prayer in school and what have you. He has always believed in a separation of church and state. I think the President has some very, very strong personal religious beliefs, and I think this whole issue got raised by Congresswoman Ferraro, who early in her campaign stated that she didn't think the President was a very good Christian. And I think the rhetoric has just kind of gone downhill from there. But I think -- I think very clearly the President has made his stances known over the years, and he has some very strong supporters among a lot of Christians.

WOODRUFF: But you don't see any contradiction in what he was saying a few weeks ago in Dallas and what he's saying now? I mean, it certainly appearsd as if he's trying to come down off of the language that he was using there.

Mr. ROLLINS: I think that there has been some misinterpretation, and I think yesterday he attempted to larify what he stated. As I said, I think that this campaign should be on the record of the incumbent. We don't want to raise the religious issue. We certainly appreciate the support of many, many Americans who have very strong religious beliefs in this country, but we want the support of all Americans.

WOODRUFF: You don't want to raise religion as an issue, and yet your campaign chairman, Senator Laxalt, sent a letter to thousands of Christian ministers asking them to get involved in the voter registration effort.

Mr. ROLLINS: Well, I think -- I think that that's a very legitimate thing. I think Jesse Jackson has gone into churches and he's asked the religious leaders to go out and register voters. What Senator Laxalt did was invite religious leaders from all over this country to have some sort of a voter registration program. We're not necessarily advocating that people register as Republicans. They can register as Democrats, independents, whatever, just as long as they support Ronald Reagan.

WOODRUFF: All right. Thank you, Ed Rollins, for joining us. Jim?

Mr. ROLLINS: Thank you, Judy. Who's for a Better Defense?

LEHRER: Also, the war over war has become a major item in the campaigns for president and vice president. Today it was the Democrats on the counterattack. In Salt Lake City, Walter Mondale told the American Legion convention Reagan administration policies had resulted in an excessive buildup of nuclear weapons and a weakening of conventional military forces. Yesterday President Reagan told the same group his policies had restored America's overall defense capabilities.Today, in Portland, Oregon, Geraldine Ferraro said Mr. Reagan had done nothing to bring peace and stability to the world. Yesterday, in College Station, Texas, Vice President Bush said Mondale was responsible for the failure of arms talks with the Soviets, not Mr. Reagan. For the next few minutes we're going to air this defense argument with key defense players from each side. We begin with the question of readiness and, as our text, we take these excepts from the back-to-back Reagan-Mondale speeches in Salt Lake City.

Pres. RONALD REAGAN [yesterday]: We've come a long way in the past few years in restoring our margin of safety. I mentioned at this convention in 1980 that we needed this. Today every major commander in the field agrees that America's military forces have better people who are better armed, better equipped, better trained, with better support behind them. Now, besides moving to restore the strategic balance, we've added tanks, fighting vehicles, combat aircraft, and we've also added some 70 ships to the U.S. Navy. We will have 600 ships four years from now if the Congress honors our budgetary requests. In the past three years we have added to our sea-lift capability more than in all the years since World War II. And our 1983-85 budgets reflect a 100% increase in sustainability funding, which will significantly increase staying power for all our armed services.

WALTER MONDALE, Democratic presidential candidate: But today our conventional forces are not what they must be. A trillion dollars spent on defense has not given us a trillion dollars of military preparedness. The Reagan administration's increased defense spending has been strongly tilted toward nuclear weapons and away from conventional preparedness. Procurement of strategic nuclear forces has grown three times faster than conventional arms. This administration has refused to make the choices between costly weapons systems. Their defense program is designed by people whose performance is measured by how much we can buy, not how well we can fight.

LEHRER: We look at those two different views of the world of defense now with Richard Allen, President Reagan's national security adviser in the first year of his administration. He is now a Washington consultant and head of the Republican National Committee's International Affairs Committee, and with Walter Slocombe, deputy undersecretary of defense under President Carter, now a Washington attorney and defense policy adviser to candidate Mondale. Mr. Allen, candidate Mondale says that the trillion dollars that the Reagan administration has spent on defense has not given us a trillion dollars, worth of defense.

RICHARD ALLEN: That's, of course, Mr. Mondale's opinion. Actually, beginning with the base that the Reagan administration inherited, a great deal of progress has been made. A great deal of important progress. The slide in which we found ourselves in 1980 has been reversed. President Reagan has led a prudent, balanced and I think very necessary military buildup in order to rectify the imbalance that exists and continues to exist between us and the Soviet Union today. By no means do we need to have weapon-for-weapon superiority.And the Republican Party doesn't call for that, nor does President Reagan. But what we are about is rectifying this horrible imbalance, particularly after four years of the preceding administration. In other words, the legacy that was given to President Reagan and to the nation in the field of defense was a disaster.

LEHRER: Do you agree with that, Mr. Slocombe?

WALTER SLOCOMBE: Well, I certainly don't agree about the crack at the end. For example, most of the ships that the President referred to were ordered during the Carter administration. It's certainly true that we do need to spend more on defense, and the Democratic Party is in favor of doing that. The issue is where you spend, what are your priorities? Defense isn't different from other fields. You have to make choices.You have to decide what's important. This administration has overweighted spending on nuclear programs --

LEHRER: In what way? Spell that out.

Mr. SLOCOMBE: They've followed a whole series of particular big nuclear programs. B-1 is probably the most outstanding example. B-1 is a good airplane, but it is not worth the extra cost for the short period of time that it'll be survivable against improved Soviet air defenses. The MX in silos is a vulnerable system. There is a problem in that area, but it's not going to be solved by putting more missiles in holes that are just as vulnerable as the Minuteman holes that they replaced. What we need is to give more emphasis to conventional forces, more relative emphasis to operations and maintenance, to training, to readiness, to procurement relative to the acquisition of hardware. The President talks about what every military commander will agree to. I think it is true, things are better than they were four years ago. They were better four years ago than they were before that. But I think you will also find most military commanders, as the House subcommittee found, are not satisfied with the readiness picture, and the Pentagon's own readiness experts so stated to Secretary Weinberger.

LEHRER: Well, let's take the issue of priorities. You heard what Mr. Slocombe said, same thing Mr. Mondale said, that the Reagan folks have put all their money in nuclear rather than conventional -- not all of it, but too much of it.

Mr. ALLEN: That simply isn't so. Of course we have had now a dramatic improvement --

LEHRER: Now, how can you say it is? Let's go at that particular issue.

Mr. ALLEN: Well, it's easy to say that. The question is how you prove it.

LEHRER: Right, okay.

Mr. ALLEN: We've had a dramatic increase, I think, across the board in readiness. We've had a dramatic increase in retention. Morale went way up, That is to say retention of key personnel in whom thousands -- hundreds of thousands of dollars, in some cases, had been invested are retained. The reenlistment rate is tremendous. The Navy and some other services are meeting more than 100% of recruitment --

LEHRER: What do you attribute that to?

Mr. ALLEN: I think an increased sense of confidence that the nation is led by a president who really cares about the life of the military, the quality of life in the military, a president who believes that we shouldn't be ashamed to demonstrate that we are a great power without being overly boastful or braggadocious about it. But to the charge that we're spending too much on nuclear weapons. After all, it was the Carter administration that had a very profound scheme for the MX.They were going to base it in sort of underground deceptive silos and run it around on railroad cars. Of course that scheme was unworkable. I don't happen to be a proponent of the MX, never have been, probably won't be in the future. But this administration is going to build fewer MXs, perhaps too few MXs, than the previous administration. A lot of eggs have to be put in the nuclear basket because that's where the Soviet Union is spending a lot of its money, but we're doing much better overall in the conventional field as well.

LEHRER: Now, Mr. Slocombe, isn't that right? I mean, as long as the Soviets continue to put money in the nuclear basket, don't we have to do the same, whether we want to or not?

Mr. SLOCOMBE: We do indeed. We do indeed, and that's why Mr. Mondale is in favor of the Trident II, that's why he's in favor of the air-launch cruise missile program, the Stealth bomber and a survivable mobile Midgetman ICBM. There's no question that we need to maintain an adequate deterrent. It's also true that we can help that by arms control progress. But relatively our problems are greater in the conventional area --

LEHRER: Like where?

Mr. SLOCOMBE: -- and they're greater with respect to readiness and sustainability than they are even with respect to conventional hardware.

LEHRER: Give me an example of a serious readiness problem, something that all of us can understand.

Mr. SLOCOMBE: In the most -- I think the gravest weakness in our forces today is airlift and sealift, the ability to get the forces where we need them when we need them and as fast as we do.

LEHRER: Do you agree with that, that's a problem?

Mr. ALLEN: Yes, of course, but that is precisely what the Reagan administration has addressed. We're coming in with a follow-on C5A in order to get that kind of lift?

LEHRER: C5A is a big transport?

Mr. ALLEN: Big transport plane.

LEHRER: Right.

Mr. ALLEN: Secretary Lehman has --

LEHRER: Secretary of the Navy.

Mr. ALLEN: Secretary of the Navy Lehman has had a massively innovative program designed to get transport, to move people and things from one area of the world to the other. For example, a 600-ship Navy was the goal of the Republican platform of 1980, and we're well on the way to that 600-ship Navy.

Mr. SLOCOMBE: All right, a 600-ship Navy hasn't got anything to do with sealift because the Navy doesn't --

LEHRER: Let's go back to the -- what would Walter Mondale do about that particular problem that you just outlined, that President Reagan is not doing, as Mr. Allen just said?

Mr. SLOCOMBE: By cutting back on some of the big-ticket procurement items, especially in the nuclear area, money would be available for some of the less glamourous, less sexy things that don't show up in 600-ship Navy counts.

LEHRER: Like helicopters, you mean? Transport planes?

Mr. SLOCOMBE: Helicopters, ammunition, more training time, more operations, better maintenance. The maintenance backlogs in some areas have grown alarmingly. The military are not satisfied with the number of, to take a particular example, of aircraft training hours, Army pilot training. We've got more pilots in the Army more than any other service because of helicopters. Army pilot hours, everybody acknowledges, are unacceptably low levels. That's the -- those aren't attractive. You can't go to big rollouts out on the West Coast and see a beautiful airplane rolled out.

LEHRER: Which that is a reference to the B-1 that rolled out yesterday, I assume?

Mr. SLOCOMBE: But it is very important and it's what counts for real readiness.

Mr. ALLEN: You know, it was precisely the Carter administration, which canceled every major strategic program set up by the five-year Ford defense program shortly before President Reagan --

Mr. SLOCOMBE: You know that just isn't true. They didn't cancel the Trident I, they didn't cancel --

Mr. ALLEN: You canceled the MX, the B-1 --

Mr. SLOCOMBE: It didn't cancel -- first of all, you said "every." They didn't cancel --

Mr. ALLEN: Should I say "nearly every significant;" would that be better?

Mr. SLOCOMBE: No, no. They didn't cancel the air-launched cruise missile, the sealaunched cruise missile, the Stealth program, the Minuteman improvements. And they didn't cancel MX. You don't happen to like, and the people -- Senator Laxalt and so on -- didn't like the survivable basing system that was proposed. But let's cut out some of this foolishness about --

Mr. ALLEN: The net balance of power between the Soviet Union and the United States was drastically in favor of the Soviet Union, and unalterably, say, opposed to long-range American strategic interests by 1980. That is not entirely the fault of the Carter administration, in my view, but the Carter administration was the accelerator that made all of that possible, made all of that happen. And what we're engaged in now is a long-range rectification system, if you will, a process, and hopefully that system and process, will go on far beyond the second Reagan administration and to whoever succeeds him.

Mr. SLOCOMBE: There's no dispute that we need a survivable deterrent. How will having a survivable deterrent be helped by, one, an MX system which is as vulnerable as what it replaces, and a B-1 which is very expensive and will become subject to Soviet air defenses at the minimum within a few years of when it's deployed?

Mr. ALLEN: Long before the Stealth bomber will ever be available --

LEHRER: Are B-52s -- excuse me for interrupting. That's in about 1990?

Mr. ALLEN: 1990. It's in the early 1990s, in the early 1990s. It could have been much sooner, of course, if the program had not been canceled. But the B-52s --

Mr. SLOCOMBE: The Stealth program was never canceled. It was in fact accelerated under the Carter administration.

Mr. ALLEN: Yes, it was a slowed down under the Carter administration. It could have been accelerated at a much greater pace. Why, for example, didn't the Carter administration make the decision --

Mr. SLOCOMBE: Now what you're saying is that -- go ahead. I'm sorry.

Mr. ALLEN: Well, I just wondered why didn't you make the decision to accelerate and procure when you knew -- you, that is you and the Carter administration, knew that the B-52s were aging? They are becoming vulnerable. This is one of the most important elements of our --

Mr. SLOCOMBE: You haven't answered my question about how the survivability and effectiveness of the deterrent will be improved by non-survivable MX and a B-1 which will only be available in significant numbers a couple of years before the date you give for when Stealth will be available.

Mr. ALLEN: I've already indicated that I'm not a proponent of the MX, so I'm not going to argue your case for you.

Mr. SLOCOMBE: But the administration is.

Mr. ALLEN: I'm not going to argue that case.I will argue, however, that the administration, in procuring the B-1, has taken a prudent step to carry us over into that time when we will have Stealth, and I believe that Stealth will be able to fill a major gap.

LEHRER: Let me ask you both something. Is this a legitimate issue for a presidential campaign, or is simply politics? Is this something that the American people should get worked up over and really look at the numbers and follow you all and the other experts, or is this simply politics?

Mr. SLOCOMBE: The American people should not be misled into believing that there was a difference between the parties on who is in favor of an adequate military strength. Both parties are in favor of that. There is a difference in whether people think the priorities of this administration are correct, and there is an important difference about arms control, which I think we're going to talk about.

LEHRER: We're going to talk about arms control in a minute.

Mr. SLOCOMBE: Okay.

Mr. ALLEN: We're glad to see that, if you represent former Vice President Mondale in this regard, candidate Mondale, that Mr. Mondale now does support -- now does support in 1980 a strong defense.That certainly wasn't a characteristic of the Mondale that we knew earlier. I think that the administration has done a very important --

LEHRER: He's not going to leave you alone.

Mr. ALLEN: I think that our administration, this administration has done a very important job in arms reduction, that has shifted the entire emphasis onto getting meaningful reductions, and because the Soviets have been somewhat more recalcitrant than we might have expected or wished should be no reason for the administration to flag in its efforts in this area as well.

LEHRER: That's what we want to talk about now. Robin?

MacNEIL: Yes. The Reagan-Mondale argument has extended beyond readiness to fight to readiness to wage peace. Yesterday President Reagan said the groundwork had been laid for real arms control treaties and defended his conduct of U.S.-Soviet relations. But today Walter Mondale charged that Reagan had flunked a crucial test of leadership in arms control by his failure to sit down with the Kremlin leaders. Mondale said the day he took office he would try to meet the Soviets. Again, here are excerpts from the two relevant speeches.

Mr. MONDALE: As a first step, I am announcing now that on my very first day as President I will call upon the Soviet leadership to meet with me within six months in Geneva for a fully prepared, substantive negotiations to freeze the arms race and to begin cutting back the stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

Pres. REAGAN [yesterday]: We have completely reoriented American foreign policy, imbuing it with a new energy and moral purpose. And in the process we have rallied our friends throughout the world. Even as we have successfully resisted Soviet expansionism, we've opened a wide series of diplomatic initiatives that will eventually bear fruit not just in arms control treaties, but in arms reduction treaties.

MacNEIL: To pursue that part of the debate, we're joined again by Richard Allen and Walter Slocombe. Mr. Allen, why should American voters believe that President Reagan, who was a late convert to the idea of pursuing arms control treaties with the Soviets, would achieve more in his second term than he has in his first?

Mr. ALLEN: Robin, I think that the -- your question was posed a somewhat tendentious way. President Reagan was by no means a latecomer or a late convert to the idea of arms reduction. All during the preparations for the 1980 campaign, throughout 1978, '79 and '80, more time was spent by that candidate on the question of arms control than on any other single issue, domestic or foreign. So he had an idea in mind when he conducted the campaign of 1980, and that was an idea that would shift from arms control of the SALT II-type variety that was rejected, I think, by -- well, it wasn't rejected decisively by the Senate, but it was rejected implicitly, to arms reduction.

MacNEIL: Well, since you called my question tendentious, I just wanted to point out that what I was referring to was that it wasn't until two years in office, under a lot of pressure from European allies and the nuclear freeze movement, that he appeared to take aggressive moves towards negotiating with the Soviets.

Mr. ALLEN: Well, permit me just to correct that. It was in October of 1981 that President Reagan first put on the table the zero-option proposal for the INF discussions. So -- and it was all during the campaign and during the primary season that he had substantial things to say about the subject.

MacNEIL: Well, let's go back to the question. Why should voters believe that Mr. Reagan would achieve more with the Soviets in arms control treaties in his second term than he has in his first"

Mr. ALLEN: I think they should believe that because President Reagan has put in motion the defense restoration program that I spoke of. We will now no longer negotiate from a position of weakness. We will now no longer postpone the deployment of systems in the hope or even the expectation of having an arms control agreement relying on Soviet good faith to come to the table and to negotiate reasonably. We now have some bargaining chips, and that was what the President's approach was all about.

MacNEIL: Mr. Allen, what's your comment on my question about the likelihood of Reagan achieving more in the second term than the first? I don't mean Mr. Allen -- Mr. Slocombe, I'm sorry.

Mr. SLOCOMBE: Well, I think that's a very good question, which people have every reason to be skeptical. I believe the President is sincere in his desire for peace. I don't think he has pursued arms control with the kind of serious, high-level leadership that it requires. It's perfectly true that it was a long time into this administration before the talks that they like to call the START talks -- although in a sense they really haven't -- for strategic arms reductions began, and the proposal which was advanced there, while a clever one, which would probably be a good thing if the Russians accept it, is so one-sided in favor of the United States, in favor of severe cuts in Soviet programs with minimum impact on America that it has not proved to be a viable basis for negotiation. President Reagan has never met an arms control agreement that was quite good enough for him to support. Arms control agreements that were negotiated by all of his predecessors since Kennedy, including Kennedy, he has opposed. I believe he is sincere in wanting them. I don't think he's shown the kind of leadership that's necessary to get them.

MacNEIL: Mr. Allen?

Mr. ALLEN: Well, President Reagan has indeed been a skeptic, particularly of recent arms control treaties, as I mentioned, such as SALT II. His idea is to get real arms reductions.Now, I don't think it's wise to call the American proposal one-sided, the START proposal, the strategic arms reduction talks proposal. The idea is to get reductions, and the only way you'll come about with succeeding in getting reductions is having the Soviets reduce more of their inventory than we have in inventory. If you want to have balance and you want to have roughly equivalent security, it's very clear that the Soviet Union is going to have to dismantle some systems. That, of course, was the essence of the zero-option proposal that President Reagan tabled in 1981.

MacNEIL: Mr. Slocombe, let me ask you the question the other way around. Why should voters believe that Walter Mondale would be more effective in getting the Russians to reach effective treaties than Mr. Reagan?

Mr. SLOCOMBE: Partly for a reason that I think is connected with what we were talking about earlier.I believe it is a serious disservice to this country to make defense a divisive issue. And that is one of the unfortunate accomplishments of the Reagan administration in its first term. I think the Russians are impressed by a serious American consensus on defense. I think this administration has shaken that consensus. I think a Mondale administration that was able to bring a better sense of priorities and more focus to defense would produce the kind of public consensus on defense we have had historically in this country, and that's very important in dealing with the Russians. That's more important than unworkable particular programs that don't help our security. Second, I think he would be prepared to do the detailed work, to learn the facts. Supposedly President Reagan didn't learn until sometime early this year that the Soviets have a much larger ICBM program, ICBM force, than the United States -- something like two-thirds of their force is in land-based missiles, and only about a third of ours. He'd be prepared to give the kind of presidential leadership and attention to detail and the follow-through that is required. This administration is very badly split at the working level on what our arms control proposal ought to be, what our arms control posture ought to be. And I don't think the President has shown the kind of leadership to get those debates within this administration resolved, get the kind of leadership and the kind of proposals on the table that we need.

MacNEIL: Mr. Allen, what's your comment on Mr. Mondale's likely effectiveness as a negotiator?

Mr. ALLEN: Well, I have to believe that any American president, in sitting down with the Soviet Union, is going to defend the best interests of the United States as he interprets those interests. And I'm sure that's exactly what Mr. Mondale would do. I'm not entirely certain, nor am I comfortable with the notion that Mr. Mondale has a keen appreciation, the keenest appreciation, of the long-range implications of the Soviet threat to the United States. Mr. Mondale says, as he announced today, that on his first day in office he will take dramatic steps. I don't think that that's very wise, and I don't think that that supports a bipartisan initiative, for example, in the field of support for arms control. I believe that Mr. Mondale will again revert to type, and we willbe faced with a Walter Mondale who will be more interested in having results at the table than he is in looking carefully at all the implications of the concessions that he might make in negotiating with the Soviet Union.

MacNEIL: Let's get Mr. Slocombe's comment on that. And let me add to that Vice President Bush's comment yesterday that Mr. Mondale would give away the store in the negotiations.

Mr. SLOCOMBE: I am informed by Mr. Allen that that isn't really what the Vice President meant. It seems to be what they managed to get across to the press. Mondale understands the Soviet threat. A part of the speech which you didn't run includes a very clear statement, a realization of how serious the threat to freedom around the world the Soviet Union is. Neither in the Carter-Mondale administration nor any other time of the other American presidents -- Ford, Nixon, Johnson and Kennedy -- who have negotiated arms control agreements, and Eisenhower, who got the process started, have we given away the store or been more interested in results than in advancing American interests. That's not going to be true of a Mondale administration any more than it's been true of the previous presidents who have negotiated useful arms control agreements.

MacNEIL: Mr. Allen, Vice President Bush said today there was no point in Mr. Mondale being ready to sit down with the Soviets. he said the Kremlin is not ready to talk. If the Kremlin isn't ready to talk, why would Mr. Reagan have any more success in the second term?

Mr. ALLEN: Well, I don't believe the Kremlin is prepared to talk. But President Reagan has indicated time and again that he would sit down with the Russians at any time at any place for as long as necessary to negotiate balanced, meaningful, equitable, verifiable arms reduction agreements. Obviously the administration feels that the conditions for achieving that have not yet been reached. So I can't comment specifically on Vice President Bush's comment of today, but I do believe that President Reagan is sincere. I personally saw, read, reviewed the correspondence that began between him and Leonid Brezhnev at the ouyset of the administration. I have no doubt about the President's sincerity in this regard, but what he wants is an agreement that he can bring home that will achieve reductions, that will be accepted by the Senate of the United States and that will be supported by the majority of the American people.

Mr. SLOCOMBE: If I could interrupt just a second. On this subject of enthusiasm for reductions: if the administration, which has wisely decided to follow the SALT treaty, had also gotten it ratified, we would face less -- we would face 250 fewer Soviet missiles and bombers than we now face. The issue is not reductions, pure and simple. Everybody is in favor of reductions. Everybody is in favor of stopping the arms race.Sixty-two percent of the delegates to the Republican convention say they're in favor of the freeze. The issue is putting together a package of arms control proposals and a sustainable defense program that will get us the kind of arms control and stability we need.

MacNEIL: Finally, let me ask you each a quick political question. Mr. Allen, is the calculation in the Republican camp that talking about making America strong again is a more effective appeal in this election than talking about arms control?

Mr. ALLEN: I should think both would be very important, but the notion of restoring lost American strength, the margin of safety, is indeed very important in the political calculus of the Republican Party. I don't speak for the administration, but I wholeheartedly applaud the emphasis on strength plus the readiness to sit down with the Russians to negotiate reductions.

MacNEIL: And how does Mr. Mondale see that equation politically, his camp, Mr. Slocombe?

Mr. SLOCOMBE: I don't know about the politics of it, but I know where he stands and what the Democratic Party stands for, and that is, neither party in this country has a monopoly on patriotism or the flag. But the idea we need military strength, there's no question about that. That's why the Democratic Party is in favor of sustainable real growth in the defense budget. But in the nuclear era you cannot attain national security by arms alone. You do also need a serious arms control program, and you need to realize that talk about margins of safety and superiority and so on, unless they're matched with a vigorous arms control program, are just not going to slove the problem in the long run.

MacNEIL: We have to leave it there for now. Mr. Slocombe, Mr. Allen, thank you both for joining us.

Jim?

[Video postcard -- New London, Connecticut] Landslide: Tories Triumph

MacNEIL: In Canada today political pundits were still shaking their heads over the stunning victory in yesterday's election by the Progressivee Conservative Party. Under their new leader, Brian Mulroney, they swept the ruling Liberal Party from office after virtually a generation in power. The Conservatives won in all 10 Canadian provinces and emerged with a crushing majority in Parliament, winning 211 of the 282 seats, to 40 for the Liberals and 30 for the New Democratic Party. President Reagan telephoned Mulroney, who will become the next prime minister, to offer his congratulations. Here's a report on the election aftermath by Christopher Wamlsley of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

CHRISTOPHER WALMSLEY, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation [voice-over]: As Brian Mulroney walked out of his private chalet last night, even he didn't seem to quite believe what had actually happened.

BRIAN MULRONEY, Prime Minister-Designate of Canada: Mr. Walmsley.

WALSLEY: How are you?

Prime Min.-Designate MULRONEY: It's a pretty big sweep.

WALMSLEY [voice-over]: Minutes later, across town at the Baie Comeau arena, Mulroney could not stop his supporters cheering. When the prime minister-designate finally did get a chance to speak, he told this audience his first priority would be jobs.

Prime Min.-Designate MULRONEY: Our objective and our mandate is to create jobs and to get the economy of Canada moving again.

WALMSLEY [voice-over]: And then it was a time for celebration. It lasted through the night until dawn, here in Baie Comeau, a small mill town on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, that town that Brian Mulroney grew up in. This morning Mulroney left Baie Comeau to being the process of taking over the reins of government. He's already talked to the Prime Minister John Turner about that takeover.

Prime Min.-Designate MULRONEY: I spoke with Mr. Turner and with his wife, and Mr. Turner and I agreed -- Mr. Turner and I agreed that we would be meeting at an early moment to discuss matters. Meanwhile this government is in his hands.

REPORTER: Can you tell us how it feels the morning after?

Prime Min.-Designate MULRONEY: Feels fine. Feels just great.

WALMSLEY [voice-over]: As Mulroney's campaign plane left Baie Comeau this morning, plans for the swearing in of the new Progressive Conservative government are proceeding. It is expected Member of Parliament Brian Mulroney will become Prime Minister Brian Mulroney on September 17th.

MacNEIL: In Washington officials at the State Department said they expect a Conservative government led by Mulroney to be more friendly than the one led by former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who was sometimes openly critical of American policy.

In one of his campaign speeches Mulroney said the time had come for Canada to honor more fully its responsibilities to the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance. Mulroney's party has promised to increase defense spending by 6% and to enlarge the armed forces. Jim?

LEHRER: The United States dollar broke all records against European currencies, including for the first time an exchange rate of more than nine francs to the dollar in France. The dollar hit new highs of worth also against the currencies of Britain, Italy, Spain, Denmark and Norway. Analysts said it was because the U.S. economy was good, but mostly because there is a belief U.S. interest rates will remain high, so money people overseas want their money in U.S. dollars. Robin?

MacNEIL: Once again, the main stories of the day. The space shuttle Discovery landed safely at Edwards Air Force Base after a successful six-day mission.

Konstantin Chernenko, the president of the Soviet Union, made his first appearance since last July, ending speculation that he was seriously ill.

President Reagan telephoned congratulations to Brian Mulroney, who led the Conservative Party to a landslide victory in Canada.

And leaders of the Labor Party and the Likud bloc said they had agreed in principle to form a coalition government in Israel. "Strike Up the Band": Lost Musical Found

It's hard to believe that a Broadway musical written by George and Ira Gershwin with a script by George S. Kaufman could ever be classifed as lost. But that's just what happened to a show called "Strike Up the Band." It opened in Philadelphia in 1927 and caused something of a stir at the time because it's typically Gershwin melodies were wrapped around a serious antiwar satire. A revised, some say watered-down version, made it to Broadway in 1930, but wasn't much of a hit there. No one, it seems, saved a complete copy of either version. When ten American Music Theater Festival decided to revive "Strike Up the Band" recently in Philadelphia, it took a real music detective to hunt down all the missing pieces.

[voice-over] The man responsible for the revival of "Strike Up the Band" is Eric Salzman, a composer and writer. His first task was to piece together what remained of the two different versions of the musical.

ERIC SALZMAN, artistic director: So we ended up with a script without a score for one version, and a score without a script for the other. So the problem was how to put this all together, and it turned out to be quite possible. First of all, a lot about, maybe almost two-thirds of the score were just moved bodily from one version into the other. Some of the other material was published early on and so forth. But really the most interesting part of the story to me is that all the missing material turned up in the possession of Ira Gershwin, who, before his death, cooperated with us and helped us to put it all together. [cast singing and dancing]

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Aside from the familiar rousing patriotic title song, Salzman's revival includes some less familiar tunes, like "Meadow Song," a pastoral love poem that even Ira Gershwin had forgotten about. [actor singing "Meadow Song"]

Mr. SALZMAN: Kay Swift, who was a lifelong friend of George Gershwin and who is a wonderful songwriter, composer and lyricist herself and who is very much alive, was visiting Ira and apparently the subject of this song and perhaps some other material came up as well. And she said, "Oh, the Meadow Song." Ira said, "I can't find any copy of it." And Kay said, "Oh, I remember how that goes," and she went to the piano and played it, and that's how it survived, and that's how we have it in the show.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: Boy meets girl was the story of most musicals in the '20s, but "Strike Up the Band" set its simplistic love affairs in the context of a biting political farce.

Mr. SALZMAN: We're talking about a piece with dark overtones. I won't go so far as to say Brechtian, but certainly an antiwar farce with some of the biting edge and darker moments that this piece has was not an obvious thing to do in 1927, two years before the Depression and several years before the first rumblings of World War II.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: In the story, American cheese magnate Horace J. Fletcher steers the United States into a war with Switzerland to protect his tight grip on the American cheese market.

CAST [singing]: "And Fletcher's American cheese makes bigger and better citizens for the U.S.A."

DAVID SABIN, actor: There is something to me still, to men of my generation and before, something innocent about the American dream, which Fletcher verbalizes in the play as hard work, stick-to-itiveness and ambition. You see, that was the American dream. And of course what these three eggheads from New York, the Gershwins and Kaufman, were saying was that there was a worm in that apple.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: But what was biting political satire in 1927 fell flat with some Philadelphia critics in 1984.

CHARLES LEE, WFLN Radio: Now, I think it was an important musical. I think it's importance, however, is historical and not aesthetic. So that what you're recreating is a historical moment and not an aesthetic excitement.

FRANK CORSARO, director: My feeling about shows like this is that they instruct us a lot about the way we have thought in the theater and how we have arrived to where we have arrived. And, if you'll pardon me for saying so, I mean, I defy you to find a better score than this in the modern musical. And that alone would be worth the revival.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: By the end of the play, America has defeated the Swiss, but the returning American soldiers find they've lost their jobs to machines, so cheese tycoon Fletcher finds work for them -- fighting in yet another war.

"FLETCHER": Are we ready to fight?

SOLDIERS: No! No!

FLETCHER: Work! Come on. Let's show 'em what we're made of!

Mr. SALZMAN: Well, I don't feel that it's a historical exercise, but I do think that we have a throwaway culture, and one of the things that we seem to throw away is sometimes our own best artistic stuff. I mean, once it's used up then it disappears, or if it is brought back it's trashed and modernized. This is where "Strike Up the Band" fits, in is to look back at our heritage and say great things were done in the past and things that were not necessarily totally conventional but were forward-looking or have tried to say something, even before the public was perhaps ready to fully accept it.

MacNEIL: Good night, Jim.

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