The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening, I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, Ray Suarez interviews a top space official about the landing on Mars; Kwame Holman and Margaret Warner, with David Sanger of the "New York Times," note the wind- down of the trade talks in Seattle; Mark Shields and Paul Gigot comment on Seattle; and on last night's big Republican debate in New Hampshire; and then David Gergen talks about voter distrust, with Gary Wills. It all follows our summary of the news this Friday.

NEWS SUMARRY

JIM LEHRER: A stable unemployment rate caused the stock market to rise today. The Labor Department said the jobless rate was 4.1 percent In November, a 30-year-low, for the second month in a row. The report said there was no sign of wage inflation. That news sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average to an 11,286 closing, up 247 points. And the NASDAQ closed up 67 points at 3520, another new record. President Clinton said at a White House event that the economy has now created 20 million jobs since he took office.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Those 20 million new jobs have benefited not just one race or class of Americans, but all Americans. Unlike the end of the last economic expansion in the 1980's when average wages went down, wages during the last four years of this expansion have gone up across the board in all income categories, with some of the biggest gains coming to some of our hardest pressed working families.

JIM LEHRER: On this day of the trade meetings in Seattle, negotiators worked on an agreements for future talks. Their disputes centered on labor rights, agriculture, and electronic commerce. Outside, it was mostly quiet after days of sometimes violent protest. There was a peaceful march last night, and other small demonstrations. We'll have more on the WTO later in the program tonight. There was no sign tonight that the polar Lander touched down safely on Mars. The $165 million probe was scheduled to land near the Martian South Pole this afternoon after a journey of 11 months and 470 million miles. The spacecraft did not immediately contact ground controllers, but scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California told reporters they were optimistic about making contact with the Lander.

RICHARD COOK, Mars Project Manager: This is not an unexpected thing. I'm very confident that the Lander survived the descent. As you saw from our discussion prior to landing, we had a very accurate entry, right exactly on the desired entry corridor. Everything looked very good. So I think we're a long way from getting concerned.

JIM LEHRER: We'll have more on the mission right after this News Summary. Republican presidential candidates campaigned across New Hampshire today, after appearing together last night in Manchester. It was the first time Texas Governor George W. Bush had debated with his five opponents. They meet two more times this month in the run-up to the New Hampshire primary, February 1. We'll have excerpts, and some Shields and Gigot analysis, later in the program tonight. Casualties mounted in Chechnya today as Russian forces pushed toward the capital city, Grozny. An official in a neighboring republic said Chechen rebels killed 250 Russian troops near the city. A Russian commander denied the claim, but refugees reported seeing the bodies of soldiers at the scene. Refugees also said soldiers attacked a civilian convoy and killed at least 40 people. Washington, State Department Spokesman James Rubin said Secretary of State Albright spoke with Russia's foreign minister about the violence.

JAMES RUBIN: She also made very clear in that conversation our strong opposition to a military solution -- our concern that the costs of Russia's approach are rising, that there are high civilian casualties, there are refugee flows, and that there is the potential to harm the U.S.-Russian relationship if this path continues.

JIM LEHRER: And back in this country, President and Mrs. Clinton lit the first candle of the White House Menorah at sundown this evening. It marked the first day of Chanukah, the celebration of the Jewish Festival of Lights. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the Mars landing; the winding down of the WTO meeting; Shields and Gigot; and a David Gergen dialogue.

FOCUS - MARS MISSION

JIM LEHRER: Ray Suarez has the Mars story.

RAY SUAREZ: Another opportunity to find a signal from the surface of Mars passed a short time ago, with no success in locating the polar Lander. This was one of several windows this evening. For the latest, we're joined by NASA's associate administrator for space science, Edward Weiler. Well, Mr. Weiler, when was the last time the JPL had some contact with the craft to know that it was intact and heading where it was supposed to be heading?

EDWARD WEILER: The last contact we had with the Mars polar Lander was about half an hour before it actually landed. At that point in time, the last radio contact we measured its position, basically, its trajectory and everything was looking absolutely perfect. It looked like we were going to hit the spot we wanted to hit on Mars, a very smooth spot with little rocks or anything like that. So we're very confident we landed successfully. It is a matter of getting the antenna on the Mars polar Lander pointed at the earth.

RAY SUAREZ: As I understand it there were a series of steps that had to be taken by the craft in these initial phases once it reached Mars. Tell us about those and how you can figure out whether those actually happened or not.

EDWARD WEILER: I think even though we were hoping that we'd hear the first signal at about 12:39 this afternoon California time, we all knew that an awful lot of things had to happen just perfectly for that to occur. For instance, as the spacecraft settled down and touched down, it was going to... it had to find its orientation in latitude or... longitude, or azimuth, if you wish, and it does that with a gyro system. As it was touching down, it does that. If after it touched down it started to sink a little bit or settle even a few millimeters, it would throw off the calculation. That's critical because that azimuth calculation, that longitude calculation then is used to tell the high gain antenna where to point toward the Earth. Right now the best guess is that we're probably not looking that... that antenna is not looking right at the earth. But at 8:00 tonight California time, that antenna will start being commanded; it will actually start moving around in the sky. We'll be listening here in California. And when we hear it, we can then tell the craft on the ground stop there. That's the right spot. From that point, it could be a nominal mission.

RAY SUAREZ: There are so many variables that you obviously can't control for. I'm wondering if the craft itself can respond. For instance if one leg sinks deep into the surface or indeed if the whole craft is on its side, can it make the necessary adjustments to still get you some data?

EDWARD WEILER: Well, the craft has the capability of moving its antenna in quite a wide range, like 60 degrees in azimuth and 30 degrees in longitude. If it's on a slope, it can take that problem into account. There is another solution, and that is it has a so-called low gain antenna or omni directional antenna. On Sunday if we still haven't heard from the craft, what we'll do is get signals sent up from the craft up to the Mars global surveyor which is a Mars satellite in orbit around Mars right now, and that satellite will relay the signal from the landed craft to the earth. So that's actually another back-up system we have in place.

RAY SUAREZ: Right now you are still looking for this signal. And we're told by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that windows open and close. Why does that happen? Does it have to do with the position of the earth and Mars? Is it a power question?

EDWARD WEILER: No, it's actually what you said at first. The position of Earth and Mars. Mars of course is rotating around its axis. So for half of a Martian day, 24 hours roughly, the spacecraft is pointed toward Earth. Our antennas on Earth, which are in Australia, Spain, and California, are also rotating. It's a complicated set of trigonometry when the windows of opportunity occur.

RAY SUAREZ: Can you gradually eliminate places in space where the signal might be or eliminate patches of Mars and sort of narrow down your search as you look for this signal or do you just have to keep listening until you hear it?

EDWARD WEILER: Well, actually, starting at around 6:30 tonight California time, we will command from Earth -- we'll send a command from the Earth to the Mars Lander and tell it to start rastering its antenna. What I mean by that, you can almost think of it as taking your digital antenna outside and trying to find the communication satellite up in the sky. It will move the antenna a little bit, and send a signal; move it a little bit more and send a signal. We're listening. If we see the signal, we'll know what to tell the Mars Lander as to what is the sweet spot in the sky to stay pointed at.

RAY SUAREZ: There have been missions that haven't gone well in the past in our efforts to reach Mars. At what point do you start to speculate on things having happened to the craft, start to rule out the possibility of a error-free landing?

EDWARD WEILER: I think right now we're not even, you know, speculating that far because we have several opportunities tonight. We have more opportunities on Saturday and Sunday. Again, you know, one of the best opportunities is when we actually use the Mars global surveyor satellite as a communication link, so to speak. Then there are several opportunities Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. So I'd say over the next week -- we still have a lot of reason for hope.

RAY SUAREZ: There's a second piece of equipment that went pounding into the surface of Mars. Do you need the main Lander to be working and sending you data in order to get the things that that second craft is picking up?

EDWARD WEILER: That's an excellent point. I'm glad you brought it up. There are three spacecraft on Mars right now as we speak. We know these things came down. In addition to the polar Lander, there are two basketball-sized probes which also landed on Mars although landed is a strange term because they crash landed on purpose. They came in at ballistic velocity 400 miles per hour. And they hit the ground at about 50,000 G's. But they were designed to do that. As they hit, a probe goes down about 30 inches or 36 inches or so. Those are two separate probes. They have two separate communication systems. And we expect to... the earliest we can hear from them is 7:30 tonight, again Pacific Time. So there are really three different probes on Mars at this point in time.

RAY SUAREZ: So to be clear, the wonderful things they could be finding out about water, about the make-up of gases in the Martian soil, we can still get that even if you don't get your pictures from your main frame?

EDWARD WEILER: Excellent point. The two so-called deep space probes are independent from the Lander. They do not depend on the Lander whatsoever. Their communications are with the Mars global surveyor, which is a currently operating spacecraft around Mars.

RAY SUAREZ: So does everybody go into sort of overdrive at this point? Are you handing on duties to Spain and to Australia that you didn't have to expect to have to do because you just haven't heard from the craft yet?

EDWARD WEILER: No, right now, actually long before launch, we had a very well laid out plan for contingencies. All these radio contact times were already set up with Madrid and Spain and Goldstone in California. It has been preplanned. Nobody is changing anything. Everything is proceeding in a very ordinarily fashion.

RAY SUAREZ: NASA's Associate Administrator for Space Science, Edward Weiler, thanks for being with us,

EDWARD WEILER: Thank you.

UPDATE - COLLIDING WORLDS

JIM LEHRER: The world trade meeting in Seattle is finally about to end. Kwame Holman begins our report.

KWAME HOLMAN: On the fourth and final day of the World Trade Organization meeting, law enforcement authorities took to streets that mostly were quiet for a second morning in row. Still, Seattle residents looked back on a long week of protests that resulted in an estimated $10 million in property damage and lost revenue.

PROTESTERS: We'll not be silenced.

KWAME HOLMAN: And later today, protesters staged a small demonstration in the convention center press room. A half dozen eventually were arrested. Inside the trade meeting, there also were signs of discord, as yesterday's session lasted through the night. WTO ministers scrambled to draft documents that, if approved by member countries, would be the starting point for a new round of global trade negotiations. Meanwhile, representatives from many developing nations continued to complain of being shut out of substantive talks dominated by industrialized countries and big business.

CLEMENT ROHEE: We suspect people are cutting deals, and we are going to be faced with a fait accompli at the 13th hour and say "look, this is what we are presenting to you," and therefore we don't have a chance.

SIR SHRIDATH RAMPHAL: I'm concerned that a real tragedy is being played out in Seattle in a very important area of internationalism. This should not be a game about enhancing corporate profits. This should not be a time when big countries, strong countries, the world's wealthiest countries, are setting about a process designed to enrich themselves.

KWAME HOLMAN: At a press conference, U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky said if discord prevents the 135 ministers from reaching consensus, she would invoke her authority as chair of the talks to negotiate with a smaller group of nations.

CHARLENE BARSHEFSKY: If we are unable to achieve that goal, I fully reserve the right to also use a more exclusive process to achieve the final outcome. There is no question about either my right as the chair to do it, or my intention as the chair to do it.

KWAME HOLMAN: Today, WTO ministers raced against an evening deadline. Among the outstanding issues: Agriculture: Notably complaints the European Union subsidizes its exports, even as it limits imports of genetically modified foods from the US; labor, specifically an American proposal to link free trade with minimum worker standards around the world; electronic commerce -- whether transactions eventually will be subject to taxes, or remain tariff-free, as the US prefers; and reform of anti- dumping laws. Japan and others complain the US should ease fines on imports, such as steel, that are sold in America at allegedly below-market prices. A new round of trade talks, if approved, would last at least three years.

JIM LEHRER: Margaret Warner has more.

MARGARET WARNER: And joining us again from Seattle, as he did twice earlier this week, is David Sanger, economics correspondent for the "New York Times."

Well, David, you're less than three hours away from the deadline for agreeing on an agenda for this new round of trade talks. Give us a sense of the atmosphere.

DAVID SANGER: Well, Margaret, first, I think that there's a good chance that that deadline will slip. There is still continuing discord on a number of major issues: agriculture, the labor rights issues that we've been discussing all week. And you can sense a bitterness among a number of the negotiators. The developing countries are very bitter that they feel left out of the process. The Americans are quite angry at how many of the negotiations are going. The Europeans and the Japanese still seem to be bickering. Now, some of this, of course, is tactical. As a trade negotiation, sometimes it pays to seem angry. But this has also been an extraordinarily difficult week here for the negotiators, as well as, of course, down in the streets.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, I understand there is a draft document out and circulating, and I assume you've seen it. How does the US fare on the issues that it cares most about on that?

DAVID SANGER: On the draft document it doesn't do so well, but the draft document is already dated or time stamped about 10 hours ago, and, of course, there's been a lot of negotiating going on since that time. But in that document, for example, the US is forced to allow a discussion of the American anti-dumping rules. You will remember, Margaret, these are the rules that are often invoked by the Commerce Department in order to deal with under-priced steel from say Japan or China or Russia or Korea. This is a subject the US did not want to be discussing at all. There's no mention yet of labor rights, although it seems likely that there will be in the final draft some dealing with labor, probably a committee that involves the World Trade Organization and a number of other groups - the World Bank, the IMF, and so forth. That's the compromise, of course, that the Europeans have been pressing for some time.

MARGARET WARNER: And on the agriculture issues any hint yet of where they're headed?

DAVID SANGER: I just ran into some of the negotiators that told me that agriculture, which looked like it was going pretty well a few hours ago, is, of course, the sticking point now. And in every one of these negotiations agriculture has always been a big sticking point because it is a huge political issue in Europe and in Japan. European and Japanese farmers are subsidized very heavily by their governments. That's something the US has been trying to get rid of for decades now, and, of course, at every turn governments want to protect that constituency.

MARGARET WARNER: We had several foreign trade ministers on the show last night, and in comments they've made and other comments they've made in newspaper articles, they seem to suggest - or the subtext seemed to be that in a way President Clinton's big emphasis on these worker rights might have been counterproductive. Do you get that sense?

DAVID SANGER: You certainly do. The question is this: Counter productive for whom. The President was certainly speaking to a domestic constituency - the labor unions who very much want some discussion of labor rights built into any trade negotiations. And remember, after the deal to get China into the WTO a few weeks ago, which labor vociferously opposed, the President at this point and certainly Vice President Gore have an interest in placating the unions. On the other hand, by playing out his hand so much in public, the President certainly alienated a number of the developing nations, the Pakistani ministers were standing up yesterday saying they would rather walk out of the talks, blow the whole thing up rather than allow this to go ahead.

MARGARET WARNER: But in your piece this morning in the Times, I thought I had it right here, you were suggesting that you saw a lot of suspicion among a lot of the foreign ministers there about US motives in general, not just on the labor issue.

DAVID SANGER: That's right. They believe that the United States, as the world's largest economy, is trying to rewrite the rules of the road through these negotiations to benefit the US. What's that mean? For example, the US is interested in no tariffs on e-commerce. Of course as one of the Japanese ministers said to me yesterday, you're the Microsoft economy. Of course you don't want tariffs on e-commerce. A number of other areas: The environment in tariffs for other high-tech goods...the sense is that the US is very much trying to set the rules in a way that will most benefit American industry. Now, of course, every country tries to do this but because the United States is so large, it generates a lot of resentment when it does it.

MARGARET WARNER: But you've been to a lot of the meetings. The theme of US as big bully throwing its weight around is not new. Does it seem worse to you or stronger feeling this time?

DAVID SANGER: It is, Margaret, because you certainly hear it here. You hear it in the context of the most successful economy on the globe now by far, and you're also hearing it from some degree from the people on the streets. That's certainly been one of the complaints of this rather disparate group of protestors. And of course the French, the Japanese, others, have used selective elements of what they've' been hearing in the streets in order to bolster their own case.

MARGARET WARNER: Finally, David, if something that either the US wants or Europe wants is not included in this official agenda that this meeting is suppose to come up with, just say on labor or genetically modified foots, does that mean then that for the next round of trade talks, it is just off the table period?

DAVID SANGER: Well, that is what it means for these trade talks. Of course there are always other venues. There are bilateral deals you can try to strike and so forth. But that's why this is being fought so tooth and nail and down to the last minute here, because it is from these documents that the next three years of talks take off. And while this document resolves nothing, if you can't get agreement on what will be discussed, then of course, it limits your options down the road. And that's what the US is concerned about.

MARGARET WARNER: So in other words if in this final agenda it does say that the US will sit and negotiate about reducing its anti-dumping laws, the US has to do that?

DAVID SANGER: They've got to sit and talk about it. That doesn't necessarily mean they have to give in.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Well, thank you David very much. And thanks for your help all week.

DAVID SANGER: Thank you, Margaret.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, Shields and Gigot on the WTO meetings, and the big Republican debate; plus, a David Gergen dialogue.

FOCUS - POLITICAL WRAP

JIM LEHRER: And to syndicated columnist Mark Shields, and "Wall Street Journal" columnist Paul Gigot.

Paul, how do you read the domestic political fallout from Seattle if any?

PAUL GIGOT: Well, it looked like a big fissure opening within the Democratic Party, Jim. Usually on this program mark and I are on... We trade places. I support the President's trade policy and Mark is a skeptic, to say the least. I think it's one of his great achievements, open trade. He took on some of the protectionists in his own party for NAFTA and GATT. I think this week he risked giving it all away.

JIM LEHRER: And why? How?

PAUL GIGOT: Because you saw the organized interests of the liberal Democratic Party, I mean these were not a rag tag bunch out there. This was the AFL-CIO, this was the Machinists, this was the Sierra Club, this was Ralph Nader - these are people who are going to support Bill Clinton and are going to support the Democrats next fall. Fall. And they were out there saying about Bill Clinton's trade policy, hell no, we won't go. And Bill Clinton instead of saying you're wrong and this has helped our prosperity and resisting them, he said "I sympathize. You got a point. We're going to bring you in. Who cares if you're demonstrating in the streets. I'm going to give you a policy victory by trying to get your agenda into the world trading organization." I think it is going to do damage his agenda and the free trade cause.

JIM LEHRER: Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: I could not disagree more emphatically. I think the President reflected the reality of this country. I think, Jim, I'll make a prediction which I very rarely do in this show -- the WTO will return as a major political issue in this country within the next election cycle.

JIM LEHRER: Why?

MARK SHIELDS: Why? Because what we've done is we've come to a decision with no public debate, none. I mean, there really... this has never been...this is a major thing, Jim. We're talking about the World Trade Organization is a clash with American ideals. Those were American ideals we're talking about where the six-year-old kids in Pakistan are going to be at looms and lathes and whether we have no interest in that, we have nothing to say about it. We're going to turn that over... our own hegemony, our own national values system to an institution that's unelected, that have private meetings, doesn't allow spectators or reporters? I'm telling you, this is made for a political, political issue.

JIM LEHRER: But what do you say to the Pakistani trade minister and the Brazilian trade minister who were on this program last night who told Margaret, hey, wait a minute -- the AFL-CIO doesn't care about our poor workers; they care about protecting their jobs in the United States?

MARK SHIELDS: I think that is crassly cynical. I don't think the Vatican cares about protecting the AFL-CIO's position. I don't think the AFL-CIO... these are American ideals. We're not talking about... the people who are there in the streets, not the nihilists or anything of the sort or the ones who were just blowing up Starbucks. I'm talking about people who brought to it a passion and point of view about what American values really are.

JIM LEHRER: American values, Paul?

PAUL GIGOT: It's the third world is now saying look, we want to get into the American value system of free trade and open trade and one buyer-one seller, and you're closing us off, just when we want to do -- just when we want to get our people up to your living standards, and you're doing that in order to pay off a domestic constituency that are your voters. And a lot of these people aren't the working class, these environmentalists. These are well-to-do middle class people who have their own agenda about spreading our environmental laws to Mexico and Bangladesh when they don't want to pass those laws.

MARK SHIELDS: I will debate that any precinct in America, any precinct in America, with Paul or anybody else and American values are real values. They're authentic values. This has nothing to do with protecting jobs. This is a question of what kind of a world do we want to... we're in on the creation of a brand-new world. Do we want it built on the carcasses and the broken backs of six and seven-year-old children? I don't think so. That is not the kind of American prosperity we want to see exported.

PAUL GIGOT: Well, I think we're seeing right here the debate that is going to develop. You know, I've been to some of those factories. I spent six years in Asia. I've seen the NIKE factories and Gap factories. Those exports here, the people working are a heck of a lot better off than before the factories came. And that's what the kind of development and the kind of increase in the standard of living and prosperity that they want to share in -- and that the United States, as the global leader, has a responsibility to help them share. And until this week, Bill Clinton was on the side of that prosperity. Now he's saying we want to create rules as part of the WTO, that begin to block that.

MARK SHIELDS: Bill Clinton has been undoubtedly a pioneer, the strongest voice we've ever had.

PAUL GIGOT: I give him credit.

MARK SHIELDS: But Bill Clinton is basically saying you can't have free trade on slave labor. And that's what we're talking about. You've got to... we are the biggest market in the world. If they can't sell here, they can't sell anywhere. We're saying and Americans are saying, I believe, that, look, if you want to come here, you have to do it on a somewhat humane terms. You just can't do it the old way.

JIM LEHRER: Speaking of Bill Clinton, there are several people who would like to replace him next year and that's a segue to the debate last night in New Hampshire. And it was Texas Governor George W. Bush's first appearance with the rest of the Republican presidential field. And first, here are some highlights, as selected by Mark and Paul.

FOCUS - DEBATE

BRIT HUME, Fox News: Good evening, Mr. Forbes.

STEVE FORBES: How are you?

BRIT HUME: You've got an ad on the air now, quickly put together, with a telephone call in which you accuse Governor Bush of a betrayal on Social Security because he has considered raising the age. Is it fair to criticize someone simply for considering an option that is on nearly everybody's list of what to do about that program?

STEVE FORBES: Concerning Social Security, it's typical of the political culture today to make promises and then break the promises. Governor Bush, the other day, on Meet the Press, said he would consider raising the retirement age. It's already been raised from 65 to 67. That's a betrayal. Now what are they going to raise it to, Governor? 70, 75? That's not fair to the people. They're made a promise and it should be kept. And that's why I've put forth proposals to take it out of the hands of the Washington politicians and return it to we the people-- bold proposals.

BRIT HUME: But, Mr. Forbes, you yourself acknowledge all he has said he would do is consider that. How could mere consideration of an option be a betrayal?

STEVE FORBES: Well, Brit, you know in politics, especially on Social Security, where they raised the retirement age, taxed benefits when they weren't supposed to-- you know that's code for "we're going to do it." Guarantee you it's going to happen. That's why the place to attack it and fight it is now. And that's why we should have a real debate on getting a new system where we take it out of the hands of Washington politicians. And if you want to retire at 65, if you want to do it at 85, you can. Put it in your hands. Have your Social Security taxes, the vast majority go to your own retirement account. This is one of the fundamental differences, I think. I don't want to play by Washington's rules. I want to do it for the American people.

KAREN BROWN, WMUR-TV: Good evening, Governor Bush.

GEORGE W. BUSH: Karen.

KAREN BROWN: I'm going to give you a chance to respond to that. Is this code for "we're going to do it?"

GEORGE W. BUSH: I was asked a question about my plans to make sure Social Security was safe and secure. I said we needed to take all the payroll taxes aim it for Social Security and dedicate it only to Social Security. I said we need personal savings accounts for younger workers. But what I said on that show was that we are going to keep our solemn commitment to people who have retired, and near retired, and as far as their benefits go. And they asked me about younger workers. I said I hope we are able to keep the benefits the same for younger workers, as well. But the key thing is to have somebody who knows how to lead to bring people together to solve the Social Security system. We need leadership in Washington, DC, to make sure there is a sound Social Security system. Let me say something. I want to read something real quick. "At last, the unaffordable promises have to be scaled back. And the best way do that is to gradually raise the age in which one may collect his full benefits. Those now in their 20's would not be eligible until they were 67 or 68." The author of that: Mr. Steve Forbes.

BRIT HUME: Mr. Forbes, the quote Governor Bush read during the last round appeared to have you, if it is a correct quote, proposing or suggesting you would do the very thing that you have ads criticizing him for. What do you say about that?

STEVE FORBES: That quote, I think, was written 20- some-odd years ago when the system was in crisis. And as a result of that crisis, I decided to look where the system is always getting in trouble, where they propose raising the age, cutting benefits, putting taxes on people.

KAREN BROWN: Senator McCain, in your home State of Arizona, and in Washington, DC, fellow Republicans make an issue of your temper. It is one thing to feel passionate about the issues, but why is it that those who know you best seem to like you the least?

JOHN McCAIN: You know, a comment like that really makes me mad. (Laughter) The fact is, I have very close and dear friends in Arizona and in the Senate and in the House, and very dear friends all over America, I'm happy to say. Do I feel passionately about issues? Absolutely. When I see the Congress of the United States spend $6 billion on unnecessary wasteful pork barrel spending, and we have 12,000 enlisted families, brave men and women on food stamps, yeah, I get angry. And, you know, a lot of young people come up to me and say "thanks for fighting for me."

BRIT HUME: Governor, a great number people have said they couldn't have done any better on the pop quiz on world leaders than you did, but it seems, fairly or not, to have raise the issue of your knowledgeability of the world, and your interest in that. Can you tell us, sir, what do you read every day?

GEORGE W. BUSH: What do I read?

BRIT HUME: What do you read for information?

GEORGE W. BUSH: I read the newspaper.

BRIT HUMES: Which?

GEORGE W. BUSH: I read the "Dallas Morning News," I read the "New York Times," I read the "Wall Street Journal," and I read the "Austin American Statesman." I'm not sure I get a lot of knowledge out of there, but I read them every day.

BRIT HUMES: And what else?

GEORGE W. BUSH: Well, I read books all the time. I'm reading a book on Dean Acheson right now. I like to read mysteries, I like to read novels. Here's the test of a leader. A test of a leader is when given responsibility, can you perform? And I've got a record of leading. It's the second biggest state in the union. If it were a nation, it would be the 11th largest economy in the world. And I've had confirmation about my leadership style. The people of Texas overwhelmingly voted for me for the first time, for a person to be elected for the first time in back-to-back four-year terms. I've been able to reach across racial lines in my state. I got nearly 50 percent of the Hispanic vote. I got a significant part of the African American vote. People appreciate the fact that I know how to lead.

KAREN BROWN: Mr. Forbes, set aside your flat tax for the moment, if you would. What would you advocate as President to keep us away from inflation, and out of economic recession?

STEVE FORBES: Well, that's very easy, and that is to have a Federal Reserve that keeps the dollar sound. And unfortunately today Karen, we have a Federal Reserve that is starting to tighten up, raise interest rates, because of a bogus economic theory that says that prosperity causes inflation. So unlike George Bush, I'm not sure I'm going to reappoint Alan Greenspan, if he's addicted to that theory. It's a destructive one. It has already done immense harm to agriculture in America. And if he continues in that course of action, it's going to do real harm to the economy.

BRIT HUME: Senator McCain, where do you come out on this question of the stock market as high as it is, and on the issues that have just been asked of Mr. Forbes relating to Mr. Greenspan, who seems at times alarmed by the level of the stock market? Do you think it's a bubble? Do you think we should be afraid of this? What?

JOHN McCAIN: I share Mr. Greenspan's concern. By the way, not only would I reappoint Mr. Greenspan, if Mr. Greenspan happened to die, God forbid, I would do what they did in the movies "A Weekend at Bernie's." I would put sunglasses on him and prop him up and keep him going as long as he could. The fact is, he deserves great credit - great credit -- for this economic recovery. He's been a steady hand. He is unintelligible, but he is a steady hand on the tiller. I'm a great admirer and an advocate of his policies and programs.

BRIT HUME: Mr. Bauer?

GARY BAUER: Yes?

BRIT HUME: If you could only do one thing as President, what would it be?

GARY BAUER: My goodness. What a great question. I'm tempted in a lot of different areas to answer that. Obviously, my strong position about the sanctity of life is something that... I don't think we'll get anything else right in America if we don't get this right. We've only made a mistake like this once before, Brit, and that was way back in the 1850's in the Dread Scott case, when the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, said that black men and women had no rights that the rest of us were bound to respect. And we look back on that and we are astonished that the court would say such a thing. The poison of that decision still keeps Americans apart today. But I believe that 26 years ago, the court did it again. They took a whole group of Americans, our unborn children, and they said you have no rights, that you have no place in the American family. So if I could say one thing, it would be to set a place at the table for those children, to include them in the protections of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

BRIT HUME: Senator McCain, if you could be remembered for one thing as president and only one thing, what would it be?

JOHN McCAIN: Healing the breach that exists between the American people and the government today; restoring confidence in government by young Americans, so that I, as President of the United States, can motivate them to serve causes greater than their self-interest.

FOCUS - POLITICAL WRAP

JIM LEHRER: And again to Mark and Paul.

Mark, George W. Bush clearly was the man on the spot last night because this was the first time with the other candidates. How did he do - overview -- in your opinion?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, he was the man on the spot. A good spot it was for him. I mean, the format which we saw in condensed version here, you were insulated. There weren't asked questions back and forth between the candidates. You were insulated. There was time between answers and so forth. So it was tough to really land a punch. And I think in that sense it was a format that worked for him. I thought he did well in the sense, Jim, that he was... he had his script down. I don't mean that pejoratively. He knew what he was going to say. Everybody goes into it with a strategy. Maybe he had it down too pat, because instead of simply returning a theme, he returned exact language several times.

JIM LEHRER: Exact language that he had used before.

MARK SHIELDS: In other debates, yes.

JIM LEHRER: What did you think, overview?

PAUL GIGOT: He was adequate but barely so. The conventional wisdom is that he didn't make a mistake and therefore helped himself but I think that when you're the front-runner you, when you think a lot of people think you may be the next President, you have to reach a little higher standard.

JIM LEHRER: What is that high standard?

PAUL GIGOT: Well, he seemed a little too programmed to me, too controlled too scripted, as Mark kind of suggested. I think he was trying to sit on his lead obviously and not make a mistake. He was sitting on his personality and his vision. His answers were so clipped and so short, it looked like he wanted to get out of there from the minute he was there. He has got to relax a little bit, be a little bit more expansive and share with people what it is he actually wants to accomplish. There was an awful lot of I as well in his answers. I know how to lead. Don't tell us you know how to lead. Show us where you want to lead us.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree with that?

MARK SHIELDS: That is a good point. The other good point where I thought he did deliver the knock to Mr. Forbes on raising the Social Security retirement age -- I thought that was well done. And I thought it was well done in a couple of respects. One, he did it very easily. He did it in a way that said look, I'm serious. You're going to take a punch at me, pal, I'm not Gandhi. I'm not going to stand here and just take a punch. I'm coming back at you. Secondly, he did it in a way that did not affect negatively the tone or tenor of the evening. I mean, it was just kind of done as a matter of fact.

JIM LEHRER: Just by reading Forbes' words.

MARK SHIELDS: By reading Forbes' words. The one thing about the 11th largest -- this is a straight steal from Ronald Reagan. When Ronald Reagan ran in 1980 -- Ronald Reagan didn't know what was going on in the world -- if California were a separate entity, it be the sixth largest Gross National Product in the world. George Bush has Texas as the 11th. I checked today, Jim. South Korea is tenth. Do you think George Bush knows what's ninth?

JIM LEHRER: I'm not touching that one. What about McCain? The -- going in all you pundits said that McCain also had some things he would have to prove if he wanted to move even closer to Bush, he had to do well last night. Did he?

PAUL GIGOT: My guess is McCain helped himself here. I mean on matters of personality he was more relaxed. He tried some humor. Some worked, some didn't. But he tried. The Weekend at Bernie's worked pretty well.

JIM LEHRER: Unscripted humor?

PAUL GIGOT: Well, I'm not sure it was unscripted...

JIM LEHRER: That's not a fair question. I'm sorry.

PAUL GIGOT: It came off a little better. He was more relaxed. He has a fluency on foreign policy clearly that none of the other candidates do. I mean, he worked on Chechnya, gave a really good solid answer that he didn't look like he was reading from cue cards. I think his weakness right now is some domestic policy -- because he kind of has a big bang theory of domestic policy, which is if you pass campaign finance reform, all of our problems will somehow be much easier and much more solvable. I think that's a vulnerability. He's not as fluent on those issues as he is on foreign policy. But I think his demeanor, his presence probably helped him.

JIM LEHRER: What do you think?

MARK SHIELDS: He's right on campaign finance reform, of course.

JIM LEHRER: We've been through that many times, guys.

MARK SHIELDS: Let me say he appealed to idealism, to the young people I thought as I worked for him very strongly the sense to motivate young people -- to heal the breach between the American people and the government I thought was good. I thought his appeal to independents -- his identification with Barry Goldwater, Morris Udall, the temper question turned to his advantage, independent, these are the things that make me angry. I thought all of that worked but I thought there was something missing in John McCain last night. I think, in the final analysis last night Jim, a campaign is about differences. And for the first time last night I got the feeling that John McCain was very comfortable with George W. Bush. I mean, it almost seemed like a love-in at times between them. George W. Bush put in that line, and that was a programmed line about Senator McCain is a good man because why? The allegations that his allies and supporters have been dropping a dime, poisoning the well about John McCain that somehow he's unstable, wouldn't make a good President because he spent five and a half years in Hanoi - and George W. Bush was going to inoculate himself against any of those charges. And I just didn't think that John McCain knew the kind of differences that were necessary in a race where he still is very much the underdog.

JIM LEHRER: You're talking a policy differences -- personality differences?

MARK SHIELDS: Policy differences between himself say - this is where Governor Bush and I disagree.

PAUL GIGOT: Let me give a good example. Internet taxation, for example, he is for a permanent ban. George W. Bush thinking like a governor is not. McCain mentioned that issue. He didn't mention that George Bush's position is different from his. So if you didn't know -- if you weren't doomed to do this for a living like I am, you wouldn't know that. And he didn't take that opportunity.

JIM LEHRER: What about this temper issue, Paul? Is it hurting McCain? Is it ever going to go away? I mean, is it just part of what he has to deal with?

PAUL GIGOT: I think it's part of what he has to deal with. I thought he handled it well last night but I think there are certain stereotypes that were formed about candidates that the media gets in their heads, are not going to let go. That's the one forming about John McCain. The one that's formed about George Bush that he's going to have to resist is he's not smart enough for the job. So he's going to get questions like tier two desulfurization standards in Houston which no sane individual would know anything about.

MARK SHIELDS: You can do the temper, you can do it in terms of Dwight Eisenhower had a hell of a temper and Harry Truman had a hell of a temper. I'll take them as President. You can't answer the lightweight. I mean, you can't say I'm reading a lot of books.

PAUL GIGOT: No. But you can show mastery.

MARK SHIELDS: That's right but I think it becomes a tougher thing to deal with. I wondered if the temper charges against John McCain maybe inhibited him a little bit last night from drawing the differences.

JIM LEHRER: Because he didn't want to show...

MARK SHIELDS: Didn't want to show any meanness. I don't know.

JIM LEHRER: What about the other candidates? Did any of them make a dent in the kind of Bush-McCain tandem?

PAUL GIGOT: I don't know if they shook either of these two from their pedestals but I think that Gary Bauer, as a debater and as a speaker was the most articulate man on the stage. I thought that his answer on abortion which we excerpted was about as civilized and reasonable and eloquent a statement that anti-abortion cause could have. And he probably helped himself with those voters in Iowa for whom that is a very important subject. Steve Forbes, I thought, was... scored some points on taxes, as you would expect him to do - but, boy, he stepped into it on that question about the eligibility age and George Bush really hurt him with it.

JIM LEHRER: What do you think?

MARK SHIELDS: I thought Gary Bauer had a coherent world view and I thought he presented it well. I agree with Paul. He was quite articulate. He almost seems perhaps to have established himself as the conscience. He's going to remind the Republican Party in that sense. I thought Steve Forbes, you can always tell with the second day story of the debate. He was hurting today on that exchange with Governor Bush. So he charged today that Governor Bush at least in the 70's, he, Steve Forbes was writing editorials. We don't know what Governor Bush was doing in the 70's, of course, -- sort of a very, very subtle pitch on perhaps the alleged drug use. I mean I think that Forbes felt that he was hurt by the performance last night.

PAUL GIGOT: The problem with Forbes is that critique of Bush wasn't authentic because in 1996, he was the one who put Social Security reform on the table and got beat up for the issue demagogued by Bob Dole. Forbes.

JIM LEHRER: Forbes did.

PAUL GIGOT: Now this time George Bush is putting it on the stable and Steve Forbes is saying look, it doesn't sound real.

JIM LEHRER: All right. We've got to go. And that is real. Thank you both.

DIALOGUE

JIM LEHRER: And finally tonight, a Gergen dialogue. David Gergen talks with Garry Wills, Professor of History at Northwestern University, author of "A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government."

DAVID GERGEN: Garry, in your new book, you write that Americans have been distrustful of government since colonial days but that over time, we've so invented myths about our past, about our founding, which helped to justify this distrust.

GARRY WILLS: That's right. We had the idea at the Constitution was set up deliberately to be ineffective, to be inefficient. And the way it achieved that was to set up branches of government that were meant to check a balance each other, to keep each other from acting, and that we had sovereign states that were going to keep the federal government from getting out of hand, so that it had a stalemate. We actually have had Supreme Court decisions based on the idea that the American government should not be efficient. Now, governments are dangerous. They can get out of hand. You have to keep them accountable. But to start out with the idea that it is so bad that it has to be kept from doing any kind of efficient work is extremely dangerous. For one thing, government is d in itself, you can't make it good; it doesn't many sense to try to reform it. So the only thing you can do is either be apathetic and try to ignore the government, or be actually oppose to the government in various ways, including armed resistance, if you're in militia.

DAVID GERGEN: And your argument is that in 1787 in Philadelphia, when people came together to write Constitution, they were actually trying to put more energy in the executive --

GARRY WILLS: Absolutely. They wanted it to be efficient . And in order do that they had to give it the right parts. After all, we say "we the people in United States, in order to form a more perfect union. "Perfect" didn't mean just hunky dory, or dreamy, or nice. It meant having all its parts. That was the classical meaning of perfect. Greek gynecologists said you had perfect baby if he had the right number of toes, fingers, and ears, and that kind of thing. Well, under the articles of confederation, there was only one branch of government, totally checked, because you could recall anybody from the legislature anytime you wanted. But the legislature had to do all the administrative work of an executive, had to set up all the boards for judicial action. And so the first thing that they had to do was give executive power to act apart from the legislature, so that it could do its work, and the executive could do its work. So these were put in for efficiency's sake.

DAVID GERGEN: Well, given that, what were the checks and balances all about?

GARRY WILLS: Well, first of all, the anti-Federalists, the opponents of it, said there are no checks and balances, because they thought that meant recall and instruction, and all of that. What Madison says is... he never says there are balances between these things, because they're not equal in his mind. As he says, "the legislative authority is necessarily predominant in a republic." He said that there will be a kind of checking of office against office; that is, if the legislature tries to do what it did under the articles, and again be an executive, the executive has the power to say "hey, wait a minute, that's not your job. That's a job that's been given to me." But all it's doing is defending its turf, as it were. It's not check the legislature in any sense that it's going to influence the way it makes laws or anything that's its turf. So in the Constitution, the other two branches report to the Congress. It is the supreme one. There is no equality. The Congress can dismiss a President. It can dismiss a justice. They can't do that to the congress. It sets up the federal government. It sets up the federal court system.

DAVID GERGEN: Congress was intended to be the primary branch.

GARRY WILLS: Absolutely. Well, it just makes sense. If you make the law, and the others administer and apply it, they're reporting to you.

DAVID GERGEN: Right. You had another strong argument in your book that we have misunderstood the role of guns and the role of militias in the early founding. It's been used by a lot of NRA advocates today. You think there's a myth... there are myths about that.

GARRY WILLS: Oh, many, many. For one thing, we all have kind of grown up with the idea that everybody had a gun in colonial America. Well, they didn't. Guns were expensive. They didn't work well. They were hard to repair. They were no good for hunting. You can't hunt with a musket, or a dueling pistol. And even a long rifle, once you've shot it, you have to get it down and put that long ram thing in and reload it. You get one shot. So most people netted animals, insofar as they didn't eat domesticated animals like pork. But anyway, now people have gone back and looked at insurance rates, and wills, and that kind of thing, and they find that there were very few guns. None of the militias were fully armed. They all complained about that. None of the Revolutionary troops were fully armed. They all complained about that. When we had no imports from the British people, we had to depend on the French. There was very little domestic manufacture. So this whole romance of the gun arose in the 19th century, with the Industrial Revolution, Colt and Remington pouring out these guns-- new kinds of guns, more accurate, and the myth then of the frontier led to this. But the idea that the Constitution had anything to do with private ownership of guns is nonsense.

DAVID GERGEN: And I was astonished by how few guns you said there were. Scholarship now finds like one out of every ten people had a gun.

GARRY WILLS: Yeah, very few. And that's against one out of every ten men, whereas now there are three guns per adult male in America. You know, there's a gun for every man, woman and child in America. There are more gun dealers than gas stations. If you it's easier to get a gun license than to get a liquor license. You know, it's madness. It's just totally out of control. And so they're trying to go back in history and invent these roots of our love of the gun. And they come up with really bogus arguments and bogus history.

DAVID GERGEN: How much difference does distrust of government in America mean for the operation of our nation-state, and of governments in general here in this country?

GARRY WILLS: Yeah, it makes a tremendous difference. In fact, people from other governments can't understand why we can't control guns; why we are the only industrialized advanced democracy that has no comprehensive health care plan for its citizens; we can't control campaign finance spending. There are all kinds of things we can't do, because the minute you try to do it, people say "the government's coming, the government's coming. We can't let the government in. If the government takes away

your gun take away all your liberties. If the government gets into medicine, you'll have no freedom to choose a doctor. If the government tells you whom you can give money to in a campaign and how much, then you are going against freedom of expression." In all of these ways, all you have to do is say government, and it just totally freezes the action. You know, this began... I can remember when I was in high school, when Harry Truman was trying to bring in some health care plans, and all you had to say was "socialized medicine," and that ended it. We got no further in the Clinton health care plan. All the people had to say was "government."

DAVID GERGEN: And yet people do turn to government in times of crisis, as Franklin Roosevelt was able to enlarge government, and other Presidents since then have done it from time to time when people really thought they needed it. How do we strike a balance between trying to remain the dynamism of the country, individualism of the country, the liberty of individuals, which has been so precious to us, and also achieving our common purposes?

GARRY WILLS: Well, I think the way we have to go is to say government is dangerous, so we have to control it. But it's not a necessary evil, it's a necessary good. It's like marriages can go awry. All things can go awry. If we do that, then we will stop the absurdity of a politics in which people run for office saying, "I hate politicians. I hate the beltway, I hate Washington, I hate Congress. So put me there." And, of course, when you're put there, then you do try to do something. Just... what else are you going to do? And when you do that, then of course people can say, "he lied to us. He said he hated it and now he obviously loves it. He said he would limit his term and now he's there. He wants to stay." So if we would stop this nonsense of campaigning always against government, government in itself, that would be a big step forward.

DAVID GERGEN: You've been writing about that as a scholar and a journalist for a long time. We will look forward to more.

GARRY WILLS: Thank you.

DAVID GERGEN: Thank you, Garry wills.

JIM LEHRER: FYI, that was the last of the Gergen dialogues, at least for awhile. David's role will be changing for the duration of the political season. He'll be part of our ongoing analysis and commentary team. We will continue to have dialogues with authors. But they will be conducted by our various senior correspondents.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: And, again, the major stories of this Friday: Stocks rose after the government said unemployment remained at a 30-year low in November, with no wage inflation. Negotiators worked on an agreement for future talks on the last day of the world trade organization's meeting in Seattle. And NASA waited for a signal that the Mars polar Lander had touched down. We'll see you online, and again here Monday evening. Have a nice weekend. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.