The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

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

MR. LEHRER: And I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington. After our summary of the news this Friday, we get four views of the political war between the Russian parliament and the Russian president. David Gergen and Mark Shields offer their regular Friday night analyses, and Betty Ann Bowser reports again from Waco, Texas. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: The Defense Department today proposed closing 31 major military installations, trimming or reorganizing 134 others. Seven are in California, where more than 31,000 military and civilian jobs will be eliminated. President Clinton talked about the military cuts as he visited the USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT. The aircraft carrier was about 70 miles out to sea when the President came aboard. It left its home port of Norfolk, Virginia, yesterday for the Mediterranean. Mr. Clinton spoke to the ship's crew about what he called the raging debate about defense policy.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: You hear us talk of roles and missions. You will see news about bases and budgets. But as we reduce defense spending we will not leave the men and the women who helped to win the Cold War out in the cold. As bases close, and they must, we must not close our eyes and our hearts to the need for new investment to create opportunities in the communities with the old bases.

MR. LEHRER: House Armed Services Committee member Sonny Montgomery, a Mississippi Democrat, said the military was being cut too quickly. He said this is a serious mistake we're all making. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Boris Yeltsin's fight for political survival intensified today. The Russian president and hardliners in parliament are locked in a power struggle over economic and political reform. This afternoon, Yeltsin stormed out of the chamber after lawmakers voted to sharply curtail his powers. Yeltsin wants to put the issue to a public referendum next month. President Clinton was asked about the political turmoil in Russia this morning.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I support democracy in Russia and the movement to a market economy, and Boris Yeltsin is the elected president of Russia. He represents that reform. They're having a parliamentary dispute over there which as far as I can see is within the bounds of legal authority, and I hope whatever is done in Russia is consistent with that. I'm going to continue to work toward my meeting with him and to work toward bolstering what he is trying to do because I believe it is the right thing to do.

MR. MacNeil: President Clinton is due to hold a two-day summit with Yeltsin in Vancouver, Canada, next month. The State Department said Yeltsin assured the U.S. today that he remains committed to democratic reform and civil order in Russia. In his message, Yeltsin also stressed his belief that the Russian people should have the right to express their views through the ballot box. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary.

MR. LEHRER: In economic news today, the Labor Department reported wholesale prices rose .4 percent in February, the biggest jump in more than two years. Fuel, tobacco and new car prices were the main reason. Janet Reno became the nation's first woman attorney general today. The 54-year-old former Florida prosecutor was sworn in by Supreme Court Justice Byron White at a White House ceremony. Her niece, who is also named Janet Reno, was at her side. Afterwards she called it an "extraordinary moment."

MR. MacNeil: Nearly 200 people were killed and hundreds more injured in a wave of terror bombings across Bombay, India, today. We have a report by Glenn O'Glaza of Independent Television News.

GLENN O'GLAZA: The bombs devastated Bombay's business district and a city still reeling from the recent Hindu Muslim riots which also left hundreds dead. The first car bomb rocked Bombay's stock exchange, sending glass through the surrounding streets, killing and maiming both workers and passers-by. The bomb was planted in the building's basement car park. Other targets included banks, hotels, a cinema and Bombay's main railway station. Around 800 people have been injured, at least 150 of them seriously. The main city center hospital is packed. The scene here was one of utter pandemonium as doctors and nurses struggled to cope. It is believed religious extremists may have planted the bombs. But India's interior minister is blaming an international conspiracy, usually code for India's Muslim rival, Pakistan, and the Indian army has been placed on full alert.

MR. LEHRER: The second man arrested in the World Trade Center bombing appeared at a court hearing today in Newark, New Jersey. A judge ordered Nidal Ayyad held without bail. He is expected to be moved to New York City within the next few days. State Department officials said today there has been a disturbing emergence of radical Islamic groups willing to use terrorism. Thomas McNamara, the State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism, spoke at a hearing on Capitol Hill.

THOMAS McNAMARA: Let me state what should be obvious to all. The problem is not with Islam. It is with those extremists, few in number but very dangerous, who use violence and terror to advance their objectives. While terrorist incidents are fewer than several years ago, the threat continues to be significant, and we cannot drop our guard. Just as we are facing the contemporary threat, we must continue to be vigilant to detect these new and emerging patterns, the new threats, before they pose a major risk to U.S. national interests.

MR. MacNeil: Communist North Korea announced today it was withdrawing from an international accord limiting nuclear weapons. The country long suspected of building atomic weapons said it took the action today to defend its supreme interests. The move came as an international monitoring group was set to inspect two secret military sites in North Korea. Late today, Sec. of State Christopher indicated the U.S. might push for U.N. sanctions against North Korea if it doesn't reverse its decision. Khmer Rouge guerrillas are being blamed for a massacre of 36 ethnic Vietnamese living in Cambodia. Yesterday's attack was carried out by more than two dozen gunmen who fired automatic weapons into a floating village of houseboats and rafts. Scores of children were wounded in the attack. Ten children were killed, some execution style. U.N. investigators said today there was evidence implicating the Maoist Khmer Rouge, which was ousted from power when Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1978.

MR. LEHRER: And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to Yeltsin versus the parliament, Gergen & Shields, and more from Waco, Texas. FOCUS - STRUGGLE AT THE TOP

MR. MacNeil: First tonight, the political war in Russia and what, if anything, the U.S. could do about it. Our coverage begins with a report on today's tumultuous session of the Russian parliament. The correspondent is Ian Williams of Independent Television News.

IAN WILLIAMS: A fierce blizzard engulfed the Kremlin this morning. For a while it stifled the voices of protest from the usual small group of Communist demonstrators. Deputies had to struggle against the gale force wind and driving snow across Red Square to Congress and to the decisive stage of their battle for power against President Yeltsin. The president arrived looking strained. Unusually he walked through the hall past the deputies who had yesterday proposed to strip him of much of his power. In a brief speech, he appealed to Congress to amend their resolution so as to preserve the balance of power, dropping a hint of the consequences if they did not.

BORIS YELTSIN, Russian president: [speaking through interpreter] If my proposals are not accepted, I shall definitely have to think about additional measures to maintain the balance of powers in the country, to safeguard the shaky equilibrium which, nevertheless, exists today. All the branches of government must be preserved and strengthened so that we can get down to economic matters in 1993 to the strengthening of our economy and to the raising of our people's living standards.

MR. WILLIAMS: Yeltsin's proposals were put to the vote and thrown out by a majority of more than 150. The President rose in disgust and walked out of congress. There was mayhem in and around the hall. Yeltsin's aides said that irrespective of what congress said, his camp would now press ahead with their own referendum, probably on April the 25th, to ask the Russian people who should rule. Congress disintegrated into hastily convened meetings of factions who set about determining their own positions on the latest acrimony. Democratic Russia, Yeltsin's supporters, urged the president to now act decisively. But the real power brokers are the regional bosses who have on several occasions been called to urgent consultations with parliament chairman and Yeltsin's rival Ruslim Katsbulotov. Alexander Morozov is typical. He's the head of Volgograd's Supreme Soviet. He is a reformer. His city has Russia's most ambitious privatization program but his loyalty here is to congress. To succeed, any referendum needs the support of such regional heads. His main fear though is that a referendum and the shambles in Moscow will accelerate moves towards the break-up of Russia, itself.

ALEXANDER MOROZOV, Volgograd Deputy: [speaking through interpreter] There is such a danger. There's a growing desire amongst people, especially in the regions, to distance themselves from Moscow.

MR. WILLIAMS: Back in the hall, the most passionate attack on congress came from the man the deputies themselves had voted in as prime minister last December and who was seen by many as a safe pair of conservative hands. "You've got to give the government the power to work," Viktor Chernomyroin complained.

VIKTOR CHERNOMYROIN, Prime Minister: [speaking through interpreter] I'm asking you. Let me do my job. What sort of reform government is this when we have no power over many economic branches?

MR. WILLIAMS: Deputies continued to discuss their resolution on the balance of power and the new proposal for early elections of both parliament and president. They adjourned until tomorrow, waiting on the president's next move.

MR. MacNeil: We now examine this latest clash between Yeltsin and the Russian parliament with four people. Adrian Karatnycky is an assistant in Russian affairs to the president of the AFL-CIO. Fred Bergsten is the director of the Institute for International Economics, a Washington research group. He was a Treasury Department official during the Carter administration and has written 20 books on international economic issues. Dmitri Simes is chairman of the Carnegie Center for Russian and Eurasian Programs in Washington. He recently returned from a trip to Russia with former President Richard Nixon. Robert Strauss was U.S. ambassador to Russia until last November. He's returned to his Washington law practice, and tonight he joins us from Miami. Mr. Karatnycky, given the American stake in democracy and reform in Russia, how serious a crisis is this?

MR. KARATNYCKY: This is a very serious crisis. The parliament is really a relatively old order. It is operating under an article of the old Brezhnev constitution that basically makes it a living constitution. Whenever it meets, the Congress of People's Deputies has an article that says that it can decide any matter on the territory that pertains to the territory of the Russian Federation. Boris Yeltsin is attempting to counter this article by arguing that in December when the parliament decided to vote for a referendum, it ceded the right to determine Russia's constitutional future to the Russian people. So this struggle is a very important one which will shape the kind of government we have and the pace of reforms in Russia.

MR. MacNeil: Do you agree with that, Dmitri Simes, a very important struggle?

MR. SIMES: It is a very important struggle but we have to be clear what is going on. What the congress decided to do today was to take away from Yeltsin emergency powers which were granted to him in December, 1991. These emergency powers, not basic powers which were granted to him by the Russian constitution, even if he is stripped of his emergency powers, Boris Yeltsin would still have more authority than President Lech Walesa of Poland, President Vaclav Havel of Czecha, and I would argue certainly more power than President Mitterrand of France. In short, it is going to be a serious blow to the Yeltsin government, but it would not mean that Boris Yeltsin is out and that he has no real power.

MR. MacNeil: Amb. Strauss do you see democracy and reform threatened by what's happening in Moscow?

AMB. STRAUSS: I think reform is going to continue to move forward even if we had anarchy there. I think that while we don't see anything very positive on a macro basis, there's certainly a lot of micro things going on that gives me some insurance that reform is going to continue. Will it continue better if we can have some semblance of order and if President Yeltsin can retain the kind of power he needs? Yes, it's very important. We have a big stake in President Yeltsin. This country does, as well as the Russian people certainly do.

MR. MacNeil: Fred Bergsten, how do you see the situation? How serious a crisis is this given the U.S. interest in reform and democracy?

MR. BERGSTEN: Well, the economic situation is very critical at the moment. Russia is on the brink of hyperinflation. Inflation is running at 25 to 30 percent monthly. It could easily jump to 50 percent. That simply leads to anarchy in an economic sense. Production is down by over 30 percent. The economy is reeling. Real economic activity is down enormously, and third, real economic reform has not yet begun. The central bank has been bailing out the state enterprises. Defense conversion has not really gotten underway so there's an enormous agenda on the economic side. Unless that can be pursued effectively, the political side has got to be uncertain.

MR. MacNeil: Let's just go around on the democracy question first, starting with you, Mr. Karatnycky. We keep referring to these hard-liners in parliament, and a lot of them are former communists and elected under the old system. What do they want? Do they want to go back to -- are they threatening democracy -- do they want to go back to a dictatorship?

MR. KARATNYCKY: I think they're threatening three things. They're threatening the triple revolution that Yeltsin wants, the resolution against the empire. Many of these deputies have irredentist attitudes towards other republics. They want the assertion and reassertion of Russian hegemony. And that seems to be a majority sentiment or a very strong sentiment within that parliament. They want to reverse economic reforms. And thirdly they want some curtailment of the democratic process. They don't like what Yeltsin has done with the media, the opening up of the media. They wanted earlier in the parliament attempted through its parliamentary commission on media rights to seriously curtail the rights of the press. So if the parliament retains or takes back powers that it has ceded to Mr. Yeltsin, it can move against this triple revolution that he has attempted to effect.

MR. MacNeil: How do you see what the parliamentarians want who are against Mr. Yeltsin, Dmitri Simes?

MR. SIMES: Robin, I remember how during the attempted coup, August 1991, it was Ruthlem Hosbolotov, the speaker of the Russian parliament, who stood next to Yeltsin, and a lot of people who today are critical of Yeltsin and the Russian parliament were his original supporters and who elected Boris Yeltsin, as a matter of fact, to be chairman of the Russian Supreme Soviet before he was elected president, that very parliament. You have to be very careful not to oversimplify the struggle which involves personalities, which involves a conflict between executive and legislative branches, and you should not reduce it just as a struggle between democrats and reactionaries. It's much more complex. I would say that on the whole the parliament is more conservative than the Russian president, and I agree with Amb. Strauss that to give Yeltsin enough power is very much in the American interest. At the same time, a separate distribution of power against Yeltsin, while unfortunate, would not be in the name of the Russian democracy. In my view, it's more important to preserve Russian constitutional process than to make sure that anybody could individually remain on top.

MR. MacNeil: Let's go on that point, that there are people in the parliamentary movement who were with Yeltsin at the barricades when they beat the military coup.

MR. KARATNYCKY: I think that the issue then was the division of power between Russia and the Soviet Union and many of these aparatchiks who were elected to parliament simply want to aggrandize power for themselves as Russian deputies. They had been locked out of the process in the all union, USSR parliament, and so they've made common cause with Yeltsin in that struggle. I would disagree with Simes' assessment of the strong support or the support that that parliament gave to Boris Yeltsin. It was a very grudging support. It was a very bitter battle for the chairmanship of the Russian parliament. Yeltsin barely squeaked through, and it was at a time when his popularity was immense, so that parliament only grudgingly gave him some support. And what has happened in Russia and in the Russian parliament is very interesting in the sense that democrats have split. Democrats have split on the questions of empire, i.e., the question of Russia's role vis-a-vis the other republics, and Yeltsin has lost many of his supporters who have been anti-communists, who have drifted over into the hard- line camp because they oppose Yeltsin's more accommodating role with the other republics and his attempt to go it along and to put Russia on a post imperial path.

MR. MacNeil: Let's look at what U.S. and Western options are in this in order to help, which PresidentClinton has made it clear he wants to do and would like the other Western nations to do. Amb. Strauss, what can and should the United States be doing in this situation to further American interests as it sees them in the Russian situation?

AMB. STRAUSS: Before I answer that question, Robin, let me add one thing to what's previously been said. This is really a fight, the reformers control the government, obviously, and the reactionaries control the parliament, and this is a raw power struggle for raw power primarily between Hosbolotov who wants to get his hands on it and Yeltsin who wants to obtain it and use it. And you have to keep that in mind. And for President Yeltsin to cope with that, he has to regain the political initiative some way, and --

MR. MacNeil: Let me interrupt you, Amb. Strauss, for a moment. What was intriguing about the report we had from Moscow is that the leader from Volgograd, which is apparently a center of privatization, in other words, reform as we know it in one sense, was for reform but is for the parliament or the congress and against Yeltsin in this situation so they aren't all anti-reform.

AMB. STRAUSS: Oh, no, there's no question about that. If you'll recall, I said earlier that reform will go forward, in my judgment, whether President Yeltsin is there or not. The pace and nature of it would be different with President Yeltsin than without him. He's our horse and he's the leader of it and he's committed to it.

MR. MacNeil: I'll just come back to the question I asked you in a moment. Let me just continue the interruption and go to Dmitri Simes. How do you explain this, this apparent, that some of the people who are against Yeltsin are reformers like that man we saw in the report Morozov?

MR. SIMES: There are a lot of practical people who are as much in favor of reform as Boris Yeltsin, and I'm sure that Amb. Strauss, who was in Moscow, knows a lot of these people personally who are deeply committed to reform. They also believe that you have to obtain a certain modicum of order, political stability and to retain a unity of Russia. If you go with the referendum, in the situation when the public is ready with solutions, when Yeltsin's popularity rating today stands at its lowest, when the economic situation is difficult, when a number of constituent republics like Tatarstan already said that they don't want any referendum and would not take any part in it, you are running a serious risk that you would accelerate centrifugal trends in Russia and Russia may collapse the way the Soviet Union collapsed before. I don't want to disagree with Bob Strauss that Yeltsin is our man. He is also unilateral president of Russia and as a matter of government policy, U.S. official policy, we certainly have to support Yeltsin. What we should not do is to go overboard and to pretend that everybody who is disagreeing with Yeltsin in the parliament is reactionary. It is a debate not just between reactionists and reformers but also between those who believe in parliament, in more power for legislature and between those who want a strong authoritarian procedure. It is not black and white.

MR. MacNeil: How do you explain, Mr. Karatnycky, this man from Volgograd? I'm using this as an example because he's said to be a pro reformer in favor of privatization of industry in his area but against Yeltsin in this case. What is your explanation?

MR. KARATNYCKY: One man's privatization is another man's plunder. We should look at why there is this passionate opposition that has emerged this month in the Russian parliament and why the speaker of the parliament is attacking Anatoly Chubise, the deputy prime minister in charge of privatization. Yeltsin is proposing a form of privatization that will basically end this attempt by a segment of the old Red Directorate to lease to themselves parts, the most profitable parts of their enterprises and to accumulate colossal amounts of wealth. He is proposing that the state take over majority control for three years of the privatized large enterprises as he proceeds with a rapid privatization of both middle and larger scale enterprises. If the government has a controlling packet of shares over a three-year period, it can then block the stranglehold that directors have held on the economy because although directors are formally servants of the government they are not subject to the discipline of the ministries because they are subject to some, to a relatively old communist order called the labor collective which normally elects them, which they control and use to insulate themselves from government influence and to block reforms and to plunder the enterprises that they run.

MR. MacNeil: Okay. Let's come back to my question, starting back to you, Amb. Strauss, on what President Clinton and the U.S. and West should be doing, what can it do that would be helpful?

AMB. STRAUSS: Well, there are any number of things that we can do and should be doing and will be dong. And President Clinton, I might add, is on top of them, and that I know personally, but one thing we can help them do in a hurry and we should help them do, I think, is help 'em arrange their affairs, Ukraine and Russia arrange their affairs where we can, once they get their argument settled over their assets, we could help restructure their debt. It's very important that they get their external debt put in shape and the Paris Club would fall in place if they ever get their business together. We could be an honest broker in that. Secondly, we could develop any number of, of border arrangements where they would barter commodities that they have in abundance to go in our stockpile here, various stockpiles, and we in turn could ship them some of the foodstuffs that they need desperately. We could encourage the energy field. We can do things in energy. It isn't too difficult to do some things in energy that would create some hard currency for them. We could, oh, we could do some things like legislative things. We could give the President the authority to waive these restrictions we have on creditworthiness and any number of things like that.

MR. MacNeil: Fred Bergsten, the G-7, officials of the G-7 --

AMB. STRAUSS: Excuse me. May I, one more thing I was trying to add, Robin, we have foodstuffs, great foodstuffs, for example, butter, that we could barter our way in there, that we could put a lot of food in there, which soaks up money.

MR. MacNeil: Okay. I get that point. Fred Bergsten, the G-7 officials are meeting this weekend in Hong Kong with this as their subject. What can the West do? It was only a year or so ago that it promised Russia something like 24 billion in aid.

MR. BERGSTEN: Of that 24 billion dollar promise a year ago only about 10 billion ever got dispersed mainly because there was no Russian reform program to support. But the aid was not very well- structured either. A lot of it was export credit really helping our own farmers, for example, more than it was aimed to help the Russians. And it was not linked to Russian reforms. Any external aid to be really helpful has to be conditional. It has to be tied to meaningful Russian reforms, dispersed as those reforms occur. I think there are three areas where we could help now. I mentioned the hyperinflation is an enormous risk. Russia needs a stabilization fund that would help it stabilize its currency, get its inflation down. In addition to debt relief, we could put up a stabilization fund of the type that has worked in Poland once there was a Russian plan to support. Secondly, they have to get going on industrial restructuring, defense conversion, getting rid of these big enterprises, which are huge dinosaurs in the economy. We could provide an industrial restructuring fund that would give them the wherewithal to do that in an orderly way over a period of a year or two once they get a plan in place, and third, there's enormous personal hardship. They need funds for unemployment compensation, food on the shelves, the kind of social infrastructure fund that we could help as well. I think the outside world could put together a three-part resource program of that type probably on about the same order of magnitude as last year's that was promised but it has to be conditioned and dispersed as the Russian reform program occurs. That strengthens the hands of the reformers within Russia. It gives them a demonstrated payoff to their people, helps keep them in power, affects the outcome of the political struggle now going on in Moscow.

MR. MacNeil: Well, Fred Bergsten and Dmitri Simes, Bob Strauss, and Adrian Karatnycky, thank you all for joining us. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, Gergen & Shields, and an update from Waco, Texas. FOCUS - GERGEN & SHIELDS

MR. LEHRER: Now some Friday night analysis from Gergen & Shields, David Gergen, editor at large of U.S. News & World Report, and syndicated columnist Mark Shields. First, Mark, today's military base closing announcement, that's just the price of peace in this economic climate, correct?

MR. SHIELDS: It is, Jim. We talk glibly in Washington about the peace dividend and all that that means, and all of a sudden it has a human face on it when entire communities are hit with lost jobs, lost paychecks, lost professions, lost futures, and California, of course, has been the biggest hit. It had the biggest number of installations as showed on the NewsHour this week with the story on San Diego, but it is, it is a tough, tough decision for the President, a tough decision for the Congress. There's a couple of exceptions today. I noticed that New London and Sacramento seemed to escape the big ax. Congressman Sam Gejdensen, a Democrat from Connecticut, and Congressman Vic Fazio and Bob Matsui from Sacramento maybe had a little juice at the White House.

MR. LEHRER: Is that what it smells like to you, David, or is this thing almost clean because it's across the board, or what's your reading of it?

MR. GERGEN: Well, everybody who lost a base thinks it's politics playing a big role in it and everybody who saved a base thinks, oh, this is pure as it can be, you know. It's ever thus. I think as it's ironic -- a couple of ironies in this -- one is that we're discussing this the very night that Yeltsin is fighting for his life and the force of reaction they're trying to take back over there we're stripping down our military.

MR. LEHRER: You just can't have it both ways?

MR. GERGEN: You can't have it both ways.

MR. LEHRER: You can't cut back on the military and not close some bases, and the question is always: Where?

MR. GERGEN: That's right. But that makes our stake in Yeltsin's survival in making sure the authoritarians don't come back all that much higher.

MR. LEHRER: I got you.

MR. GERGEN: So that you don't have to rebuild. I mean, that's the point that Nixon has been making all along, that you don't want to have -- this is going to save us a lot of money if the democratic forces survive in Russia. The other thing I find interesting in addition to California, a lot of southern states are being hit and the connection has always been between southern states that were always pro military which got a lot of military bases, and then the elected representatives and senators became quite powerful barons within the Congress, and I think the irony is that a southern President is now going to preside over the dismantling of a lot of the military. And I would argue that the south is probably going to lose some political power over time because it's going to become more like the rest of the nation, and you won't have people elected from those defense base areas and won't stay in as long.

MR. LEHRER: Does that make sense to you, Mark?

MR. SHIELDS: It does, Jim. I think California -- I mean, you look at -- talking about the new power in the political equation, we're talking about 54 electoral votes, two Democratic Senators, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, with a Democratic President, and the key to a new Democratic majority, if there is to be one, electorally at the presidential level in the country. You've got to do that Pacific Rim. You've got to do Washington and Oregon and California, and this is a state with 9 percent unemployment, with, it's lost 1 1/2 million jobs, 1 1/2 million of the 9 million Americans out of work live in that state, lost 800,000 jobs in the last year and a half. So there are, there's a political price to be paid as well as a human price, and I think there's no question that the days of Mendell Rivers, the legendary chairman from Charleston and his ability, Carl Vinson, as David pointed out, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee from Georgia, Richard Russell from Georgia, Sam Nunn is a respected influential fellow but those salad days for Dixie are over.

MR. LEHRER: On Janet Reno, David, she was sworn in today as attorney general, is she likely to be a very different kind of attorney general than what we're used to?

MR. GERGEN: Well, her testimony this week was quite striking. I think it illustrates the kinds of changes in perspective we're seeing as more women come into positions of prominence and power.

MR. LEHRER: She now becomes the fifth member of the Clinton cabinet to be a woman.

MR. GERGEN: Absolutely. And her testimony this week when Sen. Biden asked her about street crime and what should we do to stop street crime, she immediately said, let's talk about violence in the home before we talk about violence in the streets. The macho response is put 'em all in jail, arrest all the people in the streets. She said, no, let's go back to childhood and look at what's happening to children, how they're abused by their parents, how a child sees the father hit a mother, and how that introduces violence in the child's life, and then they grow up and become violent on the streets, and that's really the core of the problem. That's a perspective that I would argue that a male attorney general doesn't typically bring to that job. A female attorney general for the first time is. I think it'll be welcomed by many and some police forces are probably going to be a little opposed to that. They're going to think that's a little too sociological for them.

MR. LEHRER: Also, Mark, just politically at a news conference today, she said that she was going to look for ways to see if the federal government has a role to play in protecting abortion clinics, which is just diametrically opposed from the positions of the Justice Department of the last two administrations.

MR. SHIELDS: Well, I think, Jim, that Janet Reno brings to the Justice Department, brings to the attorney general's job something missing in the first two nominees. Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson, Lyndon Johnson was a Vice President, Sam Rayburn was Speaker of the House and his tutor and mentor and great friends. Johnson came to Rayburn and was rhapsodizing about the, the elegance and brilliance and genius of the Kennedy cabinet, and Robert McNamara, and Dean Rusk and Douglas Dillon, and Sam Rayburn listened and he said, Lyndon, I just wish one of them had ever run for sheriff. Well, they finally got somebody who'd run for sheriff. Janet Reno's run for sheriff. She's been in a tops-tumble-down real world of Dade County politics. The adversarial where somebody's going after you with negative research, she brings a political dimension to this that's been missing in the earlier pursuit of the Clinton people in looking for attorney general. The one mistake I think Bill Clinton made today was not going to the Justice Department to swear her in. The Justice Department. I think the Justice Department of the United States has been the crown jewel of our federal government for so long it's a place that needs its morale lifted, it needed a lift, and I think that is a ceremony that could have been done somewhere outside the White House, and it would have been more effective, appropriate and helpful to be at the Department, itself.

MR. GERGEN: Can I have that, Mark? While he may have been making a mistake, I think that the right to life forces have also made a mistake this week in the way they responded to the shooting of that doctor in Florida. Now this is a group that was trying to occupy the moral high ground about killing, and then when one of their own, a mad person, went out and shot this doctor, this abortion doctor, and killed him, instead of condemning it forthrightly and very toughly and saying it's, it's just as bad to take the life of a doctor as it is for the doctor to take the life of a child, it seems to me they were, you know, they tried to have it both ways. We don't like it, but we're still going to send 'em money, and by the way look at how many people this doctor was killing. I just thought this is, you cannot win this kind of argument. If you want to be on the moral high ground, you've got to be consistent in that.

MR. LEHRER: David, back to President Clinton, is the final word his economic proposals as over, as it appears to be suddenly?

MR. GERGEN: What have we got to talk about? Isn't it amazing! In just four weeks' time I think he's conquered the city. He's basically won the public. When he won the public, he won the Congress. And as we talked about it a couple of times before, the Democrats in the Congress came back and has strengthened his program, added in more spending cuts. It still doesn't go far as far as most Republicans would like to go in the spending side, but he basically now has a united Democratic Party behind him. I think the fight is basically over. Both Budget Committees, House and Senate this week passed by large, the Democrats lining up behind the President passed the President's basic program.

MR. LEHRER: Do you agree, Mark, the fight is over, hands are up over their heads?

MR. SHIELDS: I'm not ready for any post game champagne at this point. I'll be very frank with you. The budget part is the easiest part of it. With all due respect, the Budget Committee members have worked long and hard on this. All you're doing then is setting the limits. You never really get down to who's paying, where it's coming from, and who's going to suffer. It's just exactly like base closings at large except everybody has a base. It isn't just some districts that are going to be affected, so I don't think it is, I don't think it is over. I think Bill Clinton's made enormous progress. I think he does have the key element and the key political group in this is just like it was in 1981. Then with Ronald Reagan it was southern and moderate fiscally conservative Democrats, and Bill Clinton has to hold them because he isn't going to get many Republicans. They were the swing group in '81 for Reagan. He's got to keep them comfortable in the Democratic, under the Democratic tent, and to do that, he's got some people out there in the left of his own party who put 12 years in waiting for a Democratic President so that they can fulfill what they hope is their mandate.

MR. GERGEN: But Mark, I would say that the squabble, the fight over the frame work is basically over. Within the frame work there are going to be a lot of squabbles about individual programs. But we know that essentially the big program about what it's going to look like, and it's interesting to me I think the argument within the country is moving on to health care. As I travel around the - -

MR. LEHRER: You mean, you believe that the country's accepted a stimulus package, some kind of tax increases, and then the argument is over where to cut on spending?

MR. GERGEN: Yes. Well, there'll be, I think the stimulus program is in better shape than I thought it might be at this point, and I think he's going to get most of it. I think he's going to get most of his investment program. I think he's going to get most of his tax program. There will be some minor adjustments within that, and I think that now it's reasonably clear something may happen. It's reasonably clear the package is going to go. I find a lot of people in the public though are now focusing much less on the budget, the economic program, than they are on what they anticipate coming in the health care fight, and that'll be a much more contentious fight.

MR. LEHRER: Do you agree with that, Mark, that if we think this was something, the big one is yet to come?

MR. SHIELDS: That's big casino. I mean, it really is. There's no doubt about it. It's going to affect more people, Jim. It's going to, you know, we're talking about what's close to a fifth of our gross national, Gross Domestic Product. It's touching all kinds of lives, the way we live. It's going to be a lot more expensive. It is, and it's going to be big. I would say just as a lesson on this economic plan it seems to have been, be more bold rather than less bold. I think the same is true on health. Don't nibble at the edges. Don't come into tentative and halfway. Don't stick your toe in, jump right in, and with a bold, dramatic change.

MR. LEHRER: Fortunately, we've got a lot of time to talk about it. So thank you both, not tonight though. Thank you very much. FINALLY - WACO - TARNISHED IMAGE

MR. MacNeil: Next tonight, an update on the situation near Waco, Texas. FBI negotiators talked to cult leader David Koresh for the first time in more than two days today. He said he was still in pain from wounds received during a shootout with federal agents 15 days ago, and another woman left the compound today. She's the 21st person to come out since this standout began. There is still no end in sight, but as Betty Ann Bowser reports, people in nearby Waco are worried about what the whole situation is doing to the image of their town.

MS. BOWSER: Radio Station WACO is the No. 1 country music station in Central Texas, but lately the air waves have been filled with talk.

JOHN: [radio show] WACO 100 Texas, No. 1, country. I'm John Alee, along with Ann Harder, and the question again, Ann, that we are putting out this morning --

ANN: Has Waco gotten such a black eye from all this happening at the Branch Davidian compound that we're going to have a hard time overcoming it? That's the question. We have someone on the line.

JOHN: All right. Let's go to the phone lines. Waco 100.

CALLER: It's not going to give us a black eye. I think it's just, the process is just getting everybody upset and everything. I just wish they could have gone in there and got 'em out and got away with it.

ANN: Okay. Thanks. Thanks for calling.

JOHN: We thank you for call.

ANN: I talked to a fellow last night who said his daughter's best friend is coming to Baylor as a freshman and she's freaking out. Got the media briefing coming up at 10:30 this morning, and we presume that will come off as planned. We'll air that live on WACO AM 1460.

MS. BOWSER: The daily briefings for international press, scenes of packed journalism, stories of wild sex, child abuse, and guns inside the Davidian compound have created what Waco Mayor Bob Sheehy freely admits is a public relations nightmare.

MAYOR BOB SHEEHY: In my wildest dreams in flights of the imagination I could never have come up with what has occurred. The whole world is looking at us. The media is making us a focal point of something we had nothing to do with.

MS. BOWSER: City fathers tried to paint a picture, the quiet Brazus River town, the quality of life. But this is the picture that comes through when the story of the numbers is told. More Texans die from gunshot wounds than from accidents on state highways. In the city of New York, 16 percent of the handguns traced to violent crime come from Texas, and the deadliest massacre in U.S. history took place in 1991 at Luby's Cafeteria, just down the road in Killeen. A lone gunman shot and killed 22 people with a high-powered rifle he bought in Texas.

MS. BOWSER: What could I buy from you today, walk out of the store with, that would be perfectly legal if I had the money to buy?

JEFF DONNELL, Gun Store Manager: As far as a handgun goes, or anything?

MS. BOWSER: A handgun, anything, tell me what I could buy today.

MS. BOWSER: Jeff Donnell is the manager of Praco's Pawn Shop in Waco. We asked him to show us a sample of what weapons we could purchase under Texas and federal law. They included an AR-15, semiautomatic assault rifle, a 44 magnum handgun frequently called a "Dirty Harry special," a 45 caliber sigauer pistol and a 12 gauge shotgun.

JEFF DONNELL: To purchase this rifle today no more than you have to prove to me that you're 18 years of age, that you are a resident of the state of Texas, you have a picture, a valid picture driver's license or a valid picture ID, fill out a government form, this particular form right here, and pay me for the rifle.

MS. BOWSER: Here's my Texas driver's license with my picture on it, so all I have to do is fill this out, and I'm out of here. How would you feel about selling me all these guns today knowing I don't know one of these from another and I don't know how to use any of them?

JEFF DONNELL: Well, if you don't come in here with alcohol on your breath or you've been, you know, doing some kind of drugs or something else like that and acting kind of out of the ordinary, then there'd be a problem and I wouldn't sell you the gun to begin with.

MS. BOWSER: Across town at Waco's Texas Ranger Museum, visitors can see one of the most valuable collections of antique firearms in the state.

TOM BURKS, Curator, Texas Ranger Museum: In the line of duty we probably killed more bad man with this one old pistol than any other gun in the place.

MS. BOWSER: Curator Tom Burks keeps all of the guns in working condition and is quick to say that historically firearms have a prominent place in Texas history because people needed them to survive.

TOM BURKS: Guns have been such an important part of Texas history and up to modern times, you know, people don't realize but the old oil booms that lasted up to the '50s, very dangerous places, you know, unrestricted travel in those days, and you know a thug could come from any place in the world and they did. They marched around where there was a boom, and there was always a boom in Texas, but the Texas, the Texans are not any more violent than anybody else. A lot of them are a little bit quicker to defend themselves, but I don't think that you could say that being in a room full of Texans is any more dangerous than being in a room full of Danes. It's, you know, we're not gun nuts like people like to say.

MS. BOWSER: When you ask folks about local gun lore, they invariably tell you about The Chicken Shack. The story goes that the famous outlaws Bonnie & Clyde ate lunch here a few days before they were shot down by pursuing Texas Rangers. Some of the regulars have been thinking about gun control ever since the shootout between federal agents and the Davidians.

CHUCK CUNNINGHAM: Why hurt the innocent people? You know, there's a few crazies out there. Dillon was one of 'em. He's another one. Why penalize me for what they're doing?

JIM WRIGHT: The answer is, there's going to have to be some responsibility, you know, people taking responsibility to, or accepting responsibility. I think that's what's lacking in our country today is the lack of the acceptance of responsibility.

MS. BOWSER: Can you legislate something like that?

JIM WRIGHT: No. It has to be taught, you know, in the schools, and actually in the family too. The family is probably the root of it all.

BETH HARDING: I do definitely and have for a long time thought that there should be a longer waiting period for any kind of gun.

MS. BOWSER: Why do you feel that way?

BETH HARDING: I feel like it would weed out the people who should not have guns.

MS. BOWSER: The government says some of the guns David Koresh has inside his fortress were purchased legally, and that has left even Texans who consider the right to bear arms a sacred trust wondering where to draw the line between the Second Amendment and new laws to restrict it. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Friday, the Pentagon released a list of 31 major military bases to be closed. It now goes to the President and Congress for final action. President Clinton downplayed the power struggle in Russia between the parliament and President Yeltsin, saying it was a parliamentary struggle within the bounds of legal authority, and Janet Reno was sworn in as attorney general of the United States, the first woman to hold that job. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Jim. That's the NewsHour for tonight. Have a nice weekend and we'll see you on Monday night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.