The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Jim Lehrer is away. On the NewsHour tonight, the electoral upheaval in India, Charlayne Hunter-Gault debriefs NPR's Chitra Ragavan; the face-off on Pennsylvania Avenue, Margaret Warner reports; and Mark Shields & Paul Gigot put it in perspective; where they stand, excerpts from a President Clinton speech; and David Gergen engages Michael Sandel, author of Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy. It all follows our summary of the news this Friday. NEWS SUMMARY

MS. FARNSWORTH: Fourteen soldiers died early this morning when two Marine Corps helicopters collided near Camp LeJeune, North Carolina. Two other Marines were badly injured. The helicopters were participating in a joint training exercise with British troops. No British forces were involved in the accident. President Clinton expressed his sympathy to the families of the casualties. He spoke at a White House ceremony honoring the Air Force Academy's football team.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: For the United States and especially for members of our military family, this is a sad day, for early this morning two Marine helicopters crashed at a massive training exercise at Camp LeJeune in North Carolina. Our hearts go out to the families, the friends, the loved ones of those who lost their lives. Our prayers are with those who are injured for a speedy recovery.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Before today's collision, eight Marine Corps aircraft had crashed this year. Five people were killed in those accidents. Yesterday, four people died when a helicopter intended for Marine Corps use crashed during a training flight in Connecticut. In economic news today, wholesale prices were up in April for the second straight month. The Labor Department reported the Producer Price Index rose .4 percent. The increase was attributed to increased energy costs, and the Agriculture Department recorded a 12 percent drop in this season's winter wheat harvest, making it the smallest in 18 years. The low yield was blamed on record drought in the plains and temperature swings in the Midwest. Winter wheat is planted in the fall and harvested in late spring. In Congress today, the House overwhelmingly passed an adoption tax credit bill. The vote was 393 to 15. The bill provides a $5,000 tax credit to help parents offset the cost of adoptions. The legislation would also facilitate inter- racial adoptions. The bill now goes to the Senate. In India today, Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao resigned after his Congress Party suffered an unprecedented defeat in parliamentary elections. The Congress Party is running third in the vote count. Final results are due this weekend. The Hindu Nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party appeared to win the most votes but not enough to govern alone. The Congress Party has ruled India for all but four years since the country gained its independence from Britain in 1947. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. At the State Department today, Spokesman Nicholas Burns said the United States will not impose economic sanctions on China for selling nuclear technology to Pakistan. Burns said a lengthy investigation found "no sufficient basis for imposing the sanctions." He said Chinese officials agreed to abide by non-nuclear, non-proliferation agreements.

NICHOLAS BURNS, State Department Spokesman: We believe the United States and China have reached a better understanding regarding China's policies towards nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear cooperation with other countries. They will issue a statement that China will not provide assistance to unsafeguarded nuclear programs in any country. We believe the Chinese undertaking represents a significant new public commitment by China with respect to its nuclear cooperation with other countries.

MS. FARNSWORTH: The Chinese government insisted it did not know a Chinese firm had sold uranium enrichment devices to Pakistan. In Hong Kong today, Vietnamese asylum seekers staged a mass riot and break-out at a detention camp. Officials said as many as 3,000 refugees were involved in the incident. Hong Kong wants to close the camps before the British colony reverts to Chinese rule next year. We have more in this report from Mark Austin of Independent Television News.

MARK AUSTIN, ITN: As the colonies' most secure boat people's camp went up in flames, 200 Vietnamese, including women and children, made their break for freedom. What followed were some of the worst disturbances here for decades. Hundreds of riot police were called in and in the ensuing confrontation discharged thousands of rounds of tear gas. During the trouble, 15 prison warders were taken hostage but were released after four hours. As police helicopters tried to put out the flames, the casualties were brought out on stretcher. Both police and boat people were injured. The damage was considerable, 17 accommodation huts and offices destroyed, and more than 40 vehicles burnt out. Many of those who stayed behind began a rooftop protest. There are some 18,000 boat people declared non- refugees here who face forced repatriation before the hand-over to China next year.

MS. FARNSWORTH: In West Africa today, a ship carrying 4,000 Liberian refugees was turned away from Ivory Coast. A spokesman for the Ivory Coast government said the ship was sent away because there were some 2,000 Liberian rebels among its passengers. Aid workers said the fighter was not seaworthy and was unlikely to reach its next destination, Ghana. The Liberian capital of Monrovia has been racked by fighting between militias since early last month, forcing thousands to flee. Back in this country, government scientists report they have discovered a protein the AIDS virus needs to attack healthy cells. Writing in today's issue of the journal "Science" researchers at the National Institute of Algae and Infectious disease say the discovery of the protein may lead to new drugs and vaccines to fight HIV. General Calvin Waller, deputy commander of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf War, died of a heart attack yesterday on a visit to Washington, D.C.. He was second in command to General Norman Schwarkopf in the 1991 conflict. Waller was a combat veteran of Vietnam and Korea. When he retired five years ago, he was one of the Army's highest ranking black officers. General Waller was 58 years old. That's it for the News Summary this Friday. Now it's on to the elections in India, the face-off on Pennsylvania Avenue, Shields & Gigot, where they stand, and a Gergen dialogue. FOCUS - NEW CHAPTER - INDIA

MS. FARNSWORTH: First tonight, we look at election results from the world's largest democracy. Charlayne Hunter-Gault has the story.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Elections this week in India brought to an end the five decades long reign of that country's ruling Congress Party and forced the prime minister to resign. We'll get a perspective on the historic election in a moment, but first this background from Alex Thompson of Independent Television News.

ALEX THOMPSON, ITN: Time and again returning officers announced a swing away from Congress to the Hindu Nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. Congress dominated Indian politics for all but four of forty-nine years since independence, so this is a watershed for the BJP and they know it.

PRAMOD MAHAJAN, BJP General Secretary: For the first time in the history of this country, a non-Congress homogeneous party has emerged as the single largest party and Congress has been pushed back to about 156.

ALEX THOMPSON: That's in a lower house of 545 seats. Small wonder Congress officials appear depressed, for after the years of domination, it's a time for introspection.

V. N. GADAGIL, Congress Party Spokesman: I think the party will have to do some self introspection, find out where we went wrong, and then decide how to revitalize the party.

ALEX THOMPSON: Including its leadership. Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao is in his mid 70's, so are many colleagues. Congress, itself, was for decades more of a movement for independent India from the days of Nehru than Nehru party. Congress's Gandhi dynasty from Nehru to Indira could command a colossal public mandate as if it were a block vote. But from the time her son, Rajiv, was in power, India was democratizing. Dynamic regional and ethnically based parties began to make Congress look a tired and complacent colossus.

DAVID TAYLOR, School of Oriental and African Studies: There has under the surface been a decline in its support. Its policy of trying to appeal to every single section of the population has faded in the face of parties which are much more focused in their appeal in class or caste terms.

ALEX THOMPSON: But the BJP probably won't have a majority either, although the BJP cut its political teeth over ethnic confrontation such as the destruction of the Iodia mosque. During this election it's been shouting from the rooftops that India's 12 percent Muslim minority have nothing to worry about. But the ethnic dangers of a landslide BJP victory have been avoided. As India's Communists are quick to point out, it's all about striking deals and coalescing with the smaller parties.

JYOTI BASU, Communist Party Leader: In that sense, the third force is going to play a very crucial role both in the foundation of the next government and as far as Indian politics in times ahead.

ALEX THOMPSON: So the BJP may well end up as the biggest single party but it'll be a coalition government with little room for maneuver, and then India's electorate of 590 million, the world's biggest, will almost certainly have to go out to the polls all over again in a couple of years or sooner.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: For more on this story, we turn to Chitra Ragavan, a correspondent for National Public Radio. She's just returned from covering the Indian elections. Chitra, thank you for joining us. First of all, tell us briefly about the Congress Party and why it lost.

CHITRA RAGAVAN, National Public Radio: The Congress Party is the party that led India to independence. It's the party of India's most famous dynasty, Jevar La Nehru, the prime minister, his daughter Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv Gandhi. And they were able to dominate Indian politics for most of its 50 years after independence, and ironically, I think, its dominance is what has now led to its downfall. There are many who say that this is an indictment of the Congress Party's centralization of government, that it grabbed power at the center and held onto it, and that it had become so corrupt at the core. At least that's what the voters were perceiving, and that's what all of the public opinion polls were saying, and that's what people were saying to us, wherever we traveled. But the party had become so corrupt at its core because it had been in power so long that its politicians and its leaders were simply in office to line their own pockets. It was time to throw the bums out, and that's what the voters did.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And what about the party that was victorious?

MS. RAGAVAN: The party, Bharatiya Janata Party, ironically rose to prominence in the 1980s even as the Congress Party was in the midst of a huge financial scandal, and many political analysts say that it wasn't as much that Hindus--the BJP or Bharatiya Janata Party is a Hindu Nationalist Party, and--

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: They want to turn India into a national state.

MS. RAGAVAN: They want to turn--yes--they want--

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Into a Hindu state, sorry.

MS. RAGAVAN: Into a Hindu state, where there are uniform rights for all religions. They feel that Muslims get unfair privileges, and they want to be equality but many feel that this is going to be a pro-Hindu governance.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, there are, what, 82 percent of India's 932--930 some million people are Hindu?

MS. RAGAVAN: They are Hindu.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And this is what they said they're going to do?

MS. RAGAVAN: If you talk to the BJP, they will say, all we're trying to do is to promote Hindu culture and the heritage, but many of the nation's minorities, especially the Muslims, feel threatened by it, because, among other things, the Bharatiya Janata Party is asking for a uniform civil code that will guide marriage laws, divorce laws, inheritance laws, because many Hindus have felt that Muslims get unfair benefits. For instance, they're allowed to marry under Islamic code, and so they're allowed to have larger families and that there are many more who are Muslims. All of this may not be true, but this is the perception that many Hindus have felt.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So who voted for them?

MS. RAGAVAN: Most of the support for the BJP has been in the upper Hindi belt, as it's called, in the heartland of India, Maharajdara, those kinds of states. The BJP doesn't have much support in the South, but it was the combination of the BJP's popularity in the North and the Congress Party's tremendous loss in the South--

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Who were also upper class?

MS. RAGAVAN: Who are also upper class, and the--and the desertion of the Congress Party by Muslims, who felt that the party has failed to protect their rights, especially when the mosque was destroyed by provocation from BJP leaders in 1992, so the muslims have deserted the Congress party. The lower castes feel that the Congress Party has not done anything for them in terms of literacy and basic human necessities like water supply and electricity and all of that. And so the combination of this intense feeling that the Congress Party is corrupt, that it had failed the poor people and it had failed the Muslims that allowed the BJP to rise to prominence in the 80's.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Now they didn't get--although the BJP won the victory, they didn't have a majority, so they have to form a government. Tell us a little bit about the dynamics of that and will the poor and the people who felt betrayed by the Congress Party and who were concerned about the upper class Hindus, how will they be involved in that?

MS. RAGAVAN: It's going to be a very complicated process because none of the parties has a majority right now. There are three parties: the Congress Party, the BJP Party, and the coalition of Socialist and Communist Parties and regional parties that represent many of the lower castes, for instance. None of them has a majority, so they have to talk to each other and try to form a coalition. But many of these smaller parties are unwilling to form a coalition with the BJP because they feel that this party will incite communal tensions in the country and upset India's communal harmony. India is a secular country under the constitution and many of these low, smaller parties want it to remain that way. So even though the BJP has the majority of seats, it has to really go out there and rule many of the other parties. The congress Party doesn't want to form a coalition either. So there is a chance that the Congress Party might still be able to form a coalition with some of the smaller parties, which allows many of India's lower castes and classes to have tremendous dominance, at least in power brokering the outcome of these elections.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And what is being said among analysts and the trained observers about the potential for this coalition government to be successful?

MS. RAGAVAN: They're a little pessimistic at the moment. They feel that the coalition will not survive beyond a couple of years, and, therefore, you might see another election in the next two, two and a half years, because they will not have the strength. India has never really done well under coalition governments. They have attempted to--coalition governments have come into power twice before, but they have only lasted a short time, and, and you might see that happen according to most political analysts.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What about the reforms that the Congress Party did start, economic reforms, is that likely to continue?

MS. RAGAVAN: The Indian markets are very jittery right now, especially at the thought of the BJP coming to power, because--

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Why?

MS. RAGAVAN: Many of the BJP supporters are Indian businesses and businessmen who feel that because Narasimha Rao, the prime minister, opened up the markets that indigenous industry is suffering as a result, that the local economy is having too much competition. On the other hand, you also have the socialist groups that feel that Mr. Rao opened up the markets too much and opened up India's socialist economy too much, so you're going to see everybody watching it very closely. But when we were there, we didn't hear a lot about this during the campaign, and you hear a lot--

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Because you talked to a lot of people--

MS. RAGAVAN: We talked to a lot--

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: --throughout the country.

MS. RAGAVAN: --of people throughout the country, and we didn't hear that. What we were hearing, even from businessmen and from political analysts was that the economic reforms seem to have taken on a momentum of their own, even though Mr. Rao, himself, has slowed them down a little bit because his policies have been described as anti-poor. But there are many who say that they're going to continue because they now have their own momentum.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But I saw one analyst who said that without a strong central government the things that need to be done now like privatizing some of the losing state-run businesses and so on, that it would be much harder to do that.

MS. RAGAVAN: It might be, but I think that most people are keeping their fingers crossed and hoping that the momentum that it has picked up will continue and at least in the short run, if the various political parties are trying to jockey for power, that they might be more absorbed in that; however, economic reforms will be one of the negotiating things on the table when the horse trading begins this weekend.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And briefly, what do you expect relations with the United States to be?

MS. RAGAVAN: There are some very sensitive issues at stake because of Kashmir, for instance, where there is a Muslim majority and, as you know, the Muslim majority in Kashmir has wanted to secede from India. Pakistan supports that, and this has led to a lot of tensions even with the United States, and so the United States, for instance, is going to be watching very closely.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: All right. Well, we hope you'll be around to help us watch. Thank you for joining us.

MS. RAGAVAN: Thank you, Charlayne. FOCUS - CAMPAIGN '96 - INCUMBENT FACE-OFF

MS. FARNSWORTH: Next, the presidential campaign so far and why it is so unusual. Margaret Warner reports.

MS. WARNER: It was a rather remarkable Wednesday afternoon in Washington as the two likely presidential nominees held dueling news conferences at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue. First, President Clinton offered the Republican Congress a deal. He'd agree to reduce the gas tax if they'd agree to raise the minimum wage.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: That is how we can break the log jam and then get on with the other crucial work at hand.

MS. WARNER: But Senate Majority Leader and rival candidate Bob Dole wasn't buying unless the deal also included a third measure fiercely opposed by organized labor.

SEN. BOB DOLE, Majority Leader: I'd just say the President will continue to send you common sense legislation, but it's very difficult when the President's own party ties up the Senate floor.

MS. WARNER: It was just another twist and turn in this unprecedented campaign between the White House Rose Garden and the Senate Rotunda. The spring of an election year usually finds the out of power party still trying to sort out who its nominee will be, but this year's front-loaded primary calendar helped Bob Dole wrap up his nomination early, and Dole decided to return to Capitol Hill and wage his campaign against the President from there.

VIN WEBER, Dole Campaign: Sen. Dole came back to run the Senate because that's who Sen. Dole is. He is the premier legislator, maybe of our time, certainly the premier Republican legislator of our time.

MS. WARNER: Former Congressman Vin Weber is co-chairman of Dole's campaign.

VIN WEBER: Sen. Dole doesn't have the capacity to spend a lot of money between now and the convention, and there were not really alternative strategies, and the best thing for him to do now is to be an effective leader in the Senate, while planning and strategizing for the fall campaign.

MS. WARNER: Ann Lewis, deputy manager of the Clinton campaign, says that decision by Dole fundamentally altered the dynamic of the race.

ANN LEWIS, Clinton Campaign: What you have is a contest between two incumbents. You have the incumbent President, President Clinton, and Sen. Dole, who's the incumbent of the congressional party.

MS. WARNER: With the party convention scheduled unusually late this year, the fall campaign will be unusually condensed, so the Clinton camp decided early on that the spring would take on special importance.

ANN LEWIS: I describe this as the campaign for public opinion. In the fall, we'll have the campaign for votes, but we won't have the votes to go out and turn out if we haven't won the campaign for public opinion in the spring.

MS. WARNER: the Clinton campaign seemed to get the early jump on Dole last month when Democrats surprised him with a push to raise the minimum wage.

VICE PRESIDENT GORE: Yesterday the Gingrich-Dole Congress formally said no to a 90 cent raise for the hardest working, hardest pressed American citizens.

MS. WARNER: With congressional Republicans divided over the issue, Dole had difficulty responding, so he tried to take his campaign outside the Senate with a series of tough rhetorical attacks on the President. On April 19th, in a speech to newspaper editors, Dole accused his rival of nominating liberal judges and being soft on crime.

SEN. BOB DOLE: If President Clinton has four more years and appoints just one more Justice to the Supreme Court, we would have the most liberal court since the Warren court of the 1960's.

MS. WARNER: But warned in advance about Dole's plans, the Clinton campaign was ready. Vice President Gore delivered a rebuttal to the same group of editors the afternoon before. Then just before Dole spoke, Clinton aides showed up with research papers for reporters that showed Sen. Dole had voted to confirm virtually all of Clinton's nominees to the federal bench, and the Democratic National Committee quickly provided this TV spot defending the President's record on crime.

ANNOUNCER: [Ad] A hundred thousand new police because President Clinton delivered. Dole and Gingrich vote no, want to repeal it.

MS. WARNER: This quick counter-punching reflects the campaign's determination to avoid the mistakes made by the Democrats' 1988 nominee, Michael Dukakis. Dukakis often let days elapse before responding to Republican charges. The Clinton camp's so-called rapid response operation is choreographed in a 9 AM conference call each day among senior officials at the White House, top campaign aides at the Clinton-Gore headquarters downtown, and party officials at the DMZ's office on Capitol Hill.

ANN LEWIS: With Sen. Dole as the likely nominee, his campaign in the last couple of weeks has set up a very negative series of attacks and criticisms of the President. Well, we believe strongly that if someone tells a lie about us, we are certainly going to tell the truth about them.

VIN WEBER: What the Democrats are doing is the only thing they can do. They are responding very tactically and narrowly to try to de-fuse those issues as much as they can.

MS. WARNER: How well would you say they're doing?

VIN WEBER: They're doing very well. Anybody that wouldn't acknowledge that the White House is executing very well these days, politically and otherwise, has to be keeping our eyes closed or something because they're doing a great job.

MS. WARNER: The low point for Dole came last Friday night when the Senator traveled to Long Island to deliver a long-planned speech attacking Bill Clinton's character and laying out his own reasons for seeking the presidency.

SEN. BOB DOLE: I want to be President so I can return integrity to our government, not a bad idea if you think about it, a little integrity goes a long, long way in America.

MS. WARNER: Dole's message was drowned out by all the media attention given comments made by his New York Chairman, Sen. Alfonse D'Amato. D'Amato had complained to reporters that House Speaker Newt Gingrich's extreme images and views were damaging Dole's candidacy. Over this past week, however, Republicans sense that Dole campaign might be recovering its footing. The issue giving Dole traction is his push to repeal a 4.3 cent gas tax increase enacted by President Clinton and the Democrats three years ago. Though Hill Democrats are resisting the rollback, President Clinton, as he made clear Wednesday, is now ready to sign the Republicans' bill. Still, Dole strategists worry about the President's built-in advantage. He can take bold executive action as he did last weekend with new steps to keep teenage welfare mothers at home and in school.

VIN WEBER: On any given day, the President can command the headlines and can command the attention.

MS. WARNER: Dole's advisers know that the situation is very different for a legislative leader.

VIN WEBER: I think there's an ongoing debate within the campaign and within the Republican Party more broadly about how much of this--the campaign's agenda should we attempt to define on the floor of the Congress of the United States, and my judgment is that at the end of the day, it's going to be decided that not much of it can be defined in the Congress of the United States because you can't control the outcome there, and you can't control the outcome even within your own party.

ANN LEWIS: Well, there is a real contrast right now between the President's record of taking executive action, making a difference, moving forward, and Sen. Dole, who's been trying to lead a Congress that frankly it seems to me right now would just rather take the rest of us over the cliff than move forward.

MS. WARNER: But if the next three months produce nothing but gridlock between the White House and Capitol Hill, no one can be sure which candidate voters will blame more. FOCUS - POLITICAL WRAP

MS. FARNSWORTH: Now, how the Pennsylvania face-off and other matters political appear to Shields & Gigot, syndicated columnist Mark Shields and "Wall Street Journal" columnist Paul Gigot. Welcome. Paul, what do you make of this gridlock?

PAUL GIGOT, Wall Street Journal: Well, I think that the gridlock per se, the issues that they're debating aren't really about those issues. I think they're about bigger things. They're really about setting the stage for the Presidential campaign. Typically, your presidential campaigns where you have an incumbent are about the incumbent. The President doesn't want it to be about the incumbent. He wants it to be about the Congress. What Bob Dole is trying to do is trying to reframe the debate to remind voters what this presidency has been all about. That's what the gas tax is really all about, that debate. I mean, that's not a big deal in terms of motorists around the country, but it's a symbolic way Republicans feel they can begin to make taxes an issue, begin to remind people what the President did in his first year when he passed that first tax increase in the budget. The President, on the other hand, wants to make this issue, and it wants to make the election, if at all possible, about the Congress, so you're seeing that tension there as they try to maneuver.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What do you think?

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: I think Paul put his finger on it, that the Republican Congress is the problem for Bob Dole. Bob Dole has been thrashed, bashed by Republicans ever since he secured the nomination. The criticism has been rife. He's accused of being not conservative enough, not having a vision. The reality is that the most unpopular public figure in the United States is the Speaker of the House, who is the Churchill of this movement. Add to that the fact that there is nobody in the Republican Party as popular as Bob Dole, with the exception of Colin Powell, whom nobody is urging Bob Dole to get close to, at least on the right side of the equation is urging him to get close to, so this is the- -this is the problem. As long as Bill Clinton can make it a referendum on the Republican Congress, Bob Dole is stuck. It is a Congress that, especially the House of Representatives, that is held in disrepute. It's now--if Bill Clinton had not lost control of the Congress in 1994, he would be in big, big trouble for reelection today, but the very fact that he has been able to position himself against Newt Gingrich and implicitly against Timothy McVeigh after, after the Oklahoma City bombing--

MS. FARNSWORTH: Explain that.

MR. SHIELDS: Well in this sense. I think two people secured Bill Clinton's political rebound: Timothy McVeigh and the blowing up of the Oklahoma City federal building. It drove an anti-government stamp of extremism. The Republicans found themselves unfairly, illogically, however you want to put it, identified just as anti- war Democrats had been with blowing up laboratories when the movement went too far in the 1970's. So Bill, Bill Clinton sort of became this reasonable alternative to the anti-government movement, and he positioned himself against Newt Gingrich, the threats, the perceived threats to the elderly, to education, to the environment, that Bill Clinton was going to defend the nation against this onslaught, and it's worked. It has worked to the point where he has an enormous lead.

MR. GIGOT: Boy, do we have a different reading of 1995. As I read the, the polling data, I mean, the Republican Congress's unpopularity is--didn't start with Timothy McVeigh. It remained quite popular, frankly, right until late summer.

MR. SHIELDS: I said Bill Clinton's restoration after '94 began with Timothy McVeigh.

MR. GIGOT: Well, he--well, that, to some extent, I agree with. He hasn't had to stand for anything. He has been able to play off of the Congress, but I mean, the association with Timothy McVeigh and all that I don't agree with. In fact, in the polling data, I mean, Bob Dole's behind by fifteen to twenty. The Republican Congress and Democratic Congress, the generic vote is actually only fair to close. It's only two to four points difference, so the other thing that's, I think, going on here is that the President has kind of got a great benefit from being able to be for Republican goals even as he opposes the Republican means of achieving those goals. What the Republican--you know, for welfare, for the balanced budget, whatever, and his vetoes have blocked it, but he hasn't had any blame for those vetoes. What the Republicans are trying to do is break out of the balanced budget, lock and key, and say, look, make 'em veto on taxes so we can see, the voters can see between our taxes, make 'em veto on welfare and so on, and that's what this skirmishing is all about.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Margaret reported on the rapid response operation in the White House. Do you agree with Vin Weber that it's quite successful?

MR. SHIELDS: It's been successful. Republicans are totally unprepared to run against a popular Democratic incumbent President. Most Democrats, Presidents that have paced in the past, have been reeling from either a fight within their own party, from an unpopular war or something of the sort, and Bill Clinton has-- not only has a big lead, but he thrives in the campaign environment, and so do his people. So they're just totally unprepared for this, but just--one point on Paul's point--the gas tax--I mean, I just think tactically the Republicans have just been caught at every turn this past week. I mean, Charlie Rangel, the ranking Democrat in the House Ways & Means Committee, or soon to be, offered yesterday a very simple amendment on the gas tax, and that was that the gas tax repeal, the 4.3 cents a gallon goal, be cast directly to the consumers, and the Republicans in the Ways & Means Committee voted against it. Now, this is the kind of thing that I mean, you don't have to be a political scientist, you don't have to be the chairman of the party in California to understand, oh, oh, got you, and that's exactly what happened to the Republicans yesterday. And this is, this is the sort of thing where I think they just haven't got their footing. They do not know, quite frankly, what to do. Paul's point about only being two to four points behind, the last poll I saw was the "LA Times" poll, they were 7 points behind, which is a bigger margin in, in the congressional vote than there was when the Republicans took over control, in other words, in 1994. So I mean, they're hurting badly.

MR. GIGOT: That's an outsider--out-rider poll--I think they're a lot closer.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What about Mark's other point, the committee vote?

MR. GIGOT: The committee vote. I think that any time Republicans are talking about taxes, any time we can remind voters in this election that Bill Clinton raised them when in 1992 he promised to cut them, they are going to talk about that from here to November every single day, and, in fact, if the gas tax were such a great idea, the President wouldn't have decided--said he's going to sign its repeal. I mean, essentially, he's already done what the Republicans have done on the minimum wage, which is essentially roll over for it, so there has to have been a good initiative.

MS. FARNSWORTH: And what do you think about the rapid response operation? Do you think that the Republicans are as far behind as Mark does?

MR. GIGOT: Tactically, the Clinton administration has it all over the Dole team right now.

MS. FARNSWORTH: How do you--

MR. GIGOT: There's no question about it.

MS. FARNSWORTH: --explain it, right now, I mean, besides the fact that he's in the White House, he has the executive power?

MR. GIGOT: Well, part of it's been there, done that. I mean, they learned a lot from 1992, and they've got some of the same people in place, partly they didn't have a primary challenge, so they were able to plan all of this as soon as they could see Bob Dole. They've expected Bob Dole to get the nomination for a long time, so they have been ready for him. Their opposition research is ready. The Dole campaign came off a very spirited, close-run primary, and then you had this long trough. So they weren't--they have been up to speed and prepared. I think you'll see that turn around, and it had better, because this election is going to be close enough that the Dole campaign will have to run at least even on the tactics if they're going to win on a much bigger strategy and direction for the country.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Okay. We just have a little bit of time left, but what's most significant about President Clinton's testimony yesterday in Little Rock, or the taped testimony that was played in Little Rock?

MR. SHIELDS: That there wasn't a major story saying there was a discrepancy, a contradiction. Probably the fact that on many newspapers around the United States today it was inside. It was on page 12 or page 6. It wasn't a front page, screaming story in a number of major newspapers, so I think they feel they dodged that bullet. It's not a good thing when you're the first President in the nation's history to testify in a criminal case where there's even a tangential relationship to one of the defendants. That, that is not helpful, but I certainly think that the bullet was dodged yesterday.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What do you think?

MR. GIGOT: The President was trying to do himself and the defendants down there a favor with crocodile tears that we really didn't want to be there. Sure, it's not a great sound bite, but the one thing the White House desperately wants is acquittals in these cases because they feel if they can get acquittals, that will essentially end independent counsel Kenneth Starr's investigation. And the President--it's interesting--the defense called two witnesses down there. One was Jim McDougal, one of the defendants, and the other was the President of the United States. That's it. They folded up their case right after that. They were hoping he could be a character witness for the defendants and impugn the testimony of one of the prosecution witnesses, David Hale. And if he can get the jury to believe him, they feel this is going to put Whitewater to bed politically right through the election. On the other hand, if you get a conviction, then it's a different story. So it's a high risk, but I think he wants--he wanted to do himself a favor.

MS. FARNSWORTH: How about Travelgate? It reared its head yesterday. What do you think about that? A House committee voted to cite some couple of White House officials for contempt, three officials, or one current and two ex, and it has to, of course, be voted on by the House, but is that going to be a bigger issue in the next couple of months?

MR. SHIELDS: I don't know. I think it's, it's an unhelpful issue because it does--it involves the unfair sacking and unceremonious publicized cruel firing of, of career public employees, and I mean, I think that's the kind of thing people can identify with, and that it was an act of hubris and exercise of power that was I think most people find not at all attractive and quite unappealing.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Just very briefly on that.

MR. GIGOT: I don't understand why the White House would allow the Republicans to be able to make the case of--remind people of an issue called executive privilege. U.S. V. Nixon would not seem to be a good precedent for a White House trying to defend that principle, and yet--

MS. FARNSWORTH: Okay.

MR. GIGOT: --they've opened it up.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Got to go. Thank you both. SERIES - WHERE THEY STAND

MS. FARNSWORTH: Still to come, "Where They Stand" and a David Gergen dialogue. "Where They Stand" is our weekly presidential campaign feature. Between now and the nominating conventions in August, President Clinton and Sen. Dole will be speaking regularly on issues of major concern to the electorate. We will each week carry extended excerpts of some of those speeches. We began with Sen. Dole's foreign policy address yesterday. Today, it's President Clinton's commencement address at Penn State University.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: As my wife says in her book, I really believe it takes a village of all of our people working together to make the most of our lives. To build that kind of America, we have to be able to honestly meet our challenges and protect our values. We have to find ways to create these opportunities for all Americans. We have to find ways to build strong communities, and we have got to find ways to get more personal responsibility from all of our citizens, opportunity, responsibility, community. These are values that have made our coun d strong, that have built great institutions like Penn State, that guide my actions as President. I believe they must guide our nation as we prepare for the tomorrows of the 21st century. And so what I'd ask you today is to think about that. What is the role of the individual citizen in making the America of our dreams in the 21st century? What is the role of the individual citizen in making sure that we will move into this global society, with everyone having a chance to live up to his or her dreams? It is clear to me that government alone cannot solve this problem. [applause] If you look at any society's most fundamental requirements, strong families, and safe streets, and you ask yourselves what are all the causes for the stresses on those things in our country, you may come up with a whole laundry list of things that government can do about them. I know I have, but in your heart of hearts, you know that many, many of the things from which we suffer are caused by the lack of personal responsibility on the part of millions of American citizens: the teen mother who leaves school for a life on welfare, a father who walks away from or abuses a family, a criminal who preys upon the rest of us, the neighbors who turn their backs upon the children in need. I say to you we cannot tolerate this anymore if you really want your vision of the 21st century to become real. We have to be willing to give people a chance to escape lives that are destructive for them and costly for the rest of us. That is our responsibility, but we must also insist that people help themselves and assume responsibility for making their own lives and the life of this great nation better. Nearly a third of our babies today are born out of wedlock, a whole lot of 'em end up on welfare. A few days ago, we took an action which should force more responsibility. Every state will have to require teen mothers to stay in school unless--and to sign a personal responsibility contract and to stay at home--unless the environment is abusive, so that they must work to turn their lives around if they want to keep those benefits. I'm still working with members of Congress and both parties to pass legislation to overhaul the entire welfare system. And I hope we can do it, even though this is an election year. There is really no call for a work stoppage, and by the time November comes around, you'll have more politics than you can stand. Meanwhile, we ought to be working to give those people what we want for ourselves: independence, work, and responsible parenting. [applause] The harsh truth is too many of our young people don't have the kind of discipline or love, guidance or support that it takes to grow up into responsible adults. Church groups and neighbors and parents all need to send a clear message to all children, not just their own. We care about you, but you have to take care of yourself. Don't get pregnant or father a child until you're ready to take responsibility, but if you do, we'll help you as long as you are responsible. [applause] There--[applause]--and you can't walk away from that responsibility. If you do, we'll make you assume it. [applause] Helping children on welfare to move off of welfare, helping communities to reduce the crime rate, these are not the only areas in which we desperately need more citizen involvement to make America the place it ought to be. Let me just suggest three other things that we could do to get more young people involved. First, I've asked Congress to increase funding for work-study programs for students so that we can have a million students earning their way through college by the year 2000. [applause] Today I'd like to ask Penn State and every other institution of higher education in the country to consider using more of this money to promote service, to put thousands of college students to work in community service. If it's good for students to earn money by putting books back in library shelves or working in the dean's office, surely it makes sense for them to earn money helping teen mothers handle their responsibilities, helping older people get around, helping young people to look to a brighter future. [applause] Second, I challenge every high school in America to make service a part of its basic ethic. Every high school student who can do so should do some community service. There are some schools, both public and private, that require community service as a part of their curriculum. I say good for them. Commitment to community should be a ethic we learn as soon as possible so we carry it throughout our lives. [applause] And, third, I challenge every community to help those high school students answer the call of service. Today I'm prepared to make an offer and challenge any school district or civic organization in the country to match it. If you will raise $500 to reward a high school student who has done significant work to help your community, the federal government will match your $500 and help that student go on to college. [applause] That would cost us, by the way, about $10 million if every high school in the country did it. It would be the best $10 million we ever spent. We'd get hundreds of millions of dollars in improved quality of life in service to people as a result of it. We should make service to the community a part of every high school in America and a part of the life of every dedicated citizen in the United States.

MS. FARNSWORTH: President Clinton speaking at Penn State University's graduation exercises. Our coverage of major policy speeches by candidates Clinton and Dole will continue next week and each week until the August political conventions. DIALOGUE

MS. FARNSWORTH: Finally tonight, a Gergen dialogue. David Gergen, editor at large of "U.S. News & World Report," engages Michael Sandel, professor of government at Harvard University and author of Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy.

DAVID GERGEN, U.S. News & World Report: Professor Sandel, in your new book, you argue that our current discontents in our democracy are rooted very much in the changed public philosophy; for most of our history from Jefferson and Lincoln to Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt, we had a public philosophy that believed that we should cultivate good citizenship, those habits of the heart that De Tocqueville found when he was here 130 years ago or so I guess, in the 1830's that said, in effect, people through their local associations, their churches, their township meetings, and the other things, became good citizens, they acquired good moral character,and that's what made our democracy vibrant and workable, but now we've abandoned that.

MICHAEL SANDEL, Author, Democracy's Discontent: Yes.

MR. GERGEN: Say in the 20th century. Tell me where we've come, in your judgment.

MICHAEL SANDEL: Well, I think we've come to a public philosophy that says government should be neutral with respect to controversial moral and religious conceptions; government shouldn't try to cultivate civic virtue or form the character of its citizens. That would be legislating morality. That would risk coercion; government should simply provide a framework of rights and entitlements within which people can choose for themselves. And while that's very attractive in some respects, it also has certain defects, and the defects are showing up in our public life now.

MR. GERGEN: What are those defects, in your judgment?

MICHAEL SANDEL: Well, I think that the defects are reflected in discontent that is swirling about us and has afflicted American politics for the last few decades. One aspect is a sense that despite the expansion of rights and entitlements, we're less and less in control of the forces that govern our lives, a sense of disempowerment. The other has to do with the erosion of community, the sense that from families to neighborhoods, to the nation, the moral fabric of community is unraveling.

MR. GERGEN: So that--help me understand the connection between good citizenship and a feeling that we've lost control, the loss of mastery.

MICHAEL SANDEL: Well, throughout the American tradition, one important strand of public philosophy that you referred to, the civic strand, or the small or Republican strand, says that to be a citizen is more than just voting every four years, it's more than just registering your self interest in politics. It's deliberating about the common good. It's participating in shaping the forces that govern the collective destiny, and the civic voice of American politics, the one that attends to that aspiration, has dropped out and given way to a kind of procedural republic, as I call it in the book, that tries to keep moral and civic questions at a certain distance from politics.

MR. GERGEN: So the people feel they have a sense, they have rights, but they no longer have anchors in their lives. They feel that they're drifting?

MICHAEL SANDEL: Yes, yes, and the civic tradition always emphasized the importance not only of having a say and having a control collectively but having a sense of belonging, a sense of identity with the particular political community because only in that way do people have a sense of responsibility for a whole that's larger than themselves.

MR. GERGEN: All right. Why do you think we walked away from--was it growth of big business and the growth of big government that followed--that--that--in which during that time people lost their moorings?

MICHAEL SANDEL: I think that was a big part of it, because the first expression of the discontents that we find so powerful today showed up really in the early 20th century when suddenly big business and the national economy and monopolies and trusts organized economic power and social life on a vast scale and people felt disoriented, displaced, because political community was still oriented toward small cities and towns and local centers, and for much of the century, our politics has struggled to, to ease that gap, to enable bigger government, national government and also a national sense of citizenship to catch up to the scale on which economic powers is exercised.

MR. GERGEN: Now, it's interesting to me that you believe that even though we have this reign--this new reigning public philosophy, the emphasis upon individual rights and this rampant individualism in our society, and a government that is morally neutral, that there are voices up there both on the left and the right that you wrote about sympathetically, favorably. It's not often one hears from deep within the academy words of praise for cultural conservatives like Bill Bennett and George Will, but your book very much speaks to there and says that they very much are on the right track in your judgment.

MICHAEL SANDEL: I think they are on the right track, and they speak about the culture, the popular culture, the educational system, the erosion of values. They want to restore virtue to public life, and I think they're on the right track, but I disagree with them, and I think they're only half right, because it isn't just big government, and isn't just the consumer culture, though that's a big part of it, that have contributed to the erosion of communities, values, and civic virtue, it's also, in my view, the effects of economic power organized on a vast scale, the dislocating effects of the global economy and of capital mobility, these forces, economic forces, market forces have also powerfully undermined the forms of community and civic life that civic conservatives rightly worry about. So what I would like to argue for and I try to in the book it's a politics that is a progressive politics, small "d" democratic politics, that attends to questions of virtue, civic virtue, character formation, but that looks both at the market and at the culture.

MR. GERGEN: Well, some argue with regard to the economic arrangements we have today, especially the economic--the inequality of wealth--you point out for example that between the early 70's and the early 90's, about 98 percent of the new wealth generated in this country went to the top 20 percent. Some argue that the problem with that is that the people in the bottom half don't have an equal chance at the starting line, that what we ought to do is give them and train them in a way, give them an equal chance at the starting line. Your argument goes further.

MICHAEL SANDEL: Yes.

MR. GERGEN: Your argument is that there is really something corrupting about that much inequality in and of itself.

MICHAEL SANDEL: Yes. It corrupts the civic character of our public life. Liberals, for the most part, have emphasized, as you point out, the issue of fairness to individuals that is, is violated by a growing gulf between rich and poor, but those philosophers in the civic tradition, the small "r" republican tradition, have also said that in order to have a civic life where people can be oriented to a common good, rather than merely private pursuits, there has to be a certain rough equality, a condition economically. And if a society is too deeply riven with rich and poor leading really separate lives, then it's very difficulty to have the sense of community and identity and belonging and the mixing in ordinary life across classes and various groups to be able to have a common life and a kind of politics oriented to a common good.

MR. GERGEN: What is the responsibility of us, those of us who have privilege who've had education, within this social order? What--how do we encourage the civic virtues among us?

MICHAEL SANDEL: Well, I think maybe the biggest responsibility is, is to focus not so much on the redistribution of income, though in my view that would be desirable, it's very difficult to sustain politically, and to worry more about building public institutions from the public schools to other forms of public institutions, libraries, museums, public transportation, city centers that are vibrant, places where men and women from different walks of life, different economic classes, different religious and ethnic groups can mix or thrust together in the normal course of life, bump up against one another in the hope not that they'll agree--because we'll never agree and democratic politics depends on disagreement- -but we'll share a sufficiently common life so that we can deliberate together about the purposes of political community.

MR. GERGEN: All right. We can talk about creating a stronger morality within the country and the higher level of civic virtue. For many who have been on the fringes of our society, gays, for example, blacks, working women, that could be threatening. There are many--a good many Americans, for example, who believe that the moral codes of a Jerry Falwell are proper for this country and we need to restore them. For others, they would be very, very uncomfortable. How do we--how do we build civic virtue without imposing or coercing people who feel those are not their values?

MICHAEL SANDEL: Yeah. That's a good question. There's one impulse which has to do with the procedural liberalism I criticize that says Jerry Falwell and the like prove we have to banish religious argument and moral argument from public life. I think that's a mistaken impulse. The answer isn't to flee moral and religious discourse in politics, it seems to me, but to engage it, deepen it, to contest it, because otherwise there will be a kind of moral void and emptiness in our political discourse that will open the way to the most intolerant, narrow moralisms, and I think democratic politics can't be sustained in a way that's value neutral, for without allowing contending moral and religious concepts to inform politics, the question is how to do it in a way that's pluralistic and cultivates an appreciation of differences rather than narrow intolerance.

MR. GERGEN: I wish we could go on, but thank you very much.

MICHAEL SANDEL: Thank you, David. RECAP

MS. FARNSWORTH: Again, the major stories of this Friday, fourteen soldiers were killed when two Marine Corps helicopters collided during night maneuvers at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina. And a State Department spokesman said the United States will not impose economic sanctions on China for selling nuclear technology to Pakistan. We'll be back Monday night. Have a nice weekend. I'm Elizabeth Farnsworth. Thank you and good night.