The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: The news of this Thursday; then, a look at the awesome task of rebuilding the hurricane-ravaged city of New Orleans; excerpts of today's last sessions of the John Roberts confirmation hearing; the analysis of David Brooks and Tom Oliphant; and a Newsmaker interview with President Talabani of Iraq.

NEWSMAKER

JIM LEHRER: The recovery of New Orleans gained momentum today, and President Bush returned for a national address. Mayor Ray Nagin announced neighborhoods that stayed dry, including the French Quarter, can reopen in phases beginning next week. He said business owners will be allowed into the downtown on Saturday and Sunday.

MAYOR RAY NAGIN: The city of New Orleans started on Monday; starting this weekend, will start to breathe again. We will have life. We will have commerce. We will have people getting back into their normal modes of operation and the normal rhythm of the city of New Orleans that is so unique.

JIM LEHRER: The announcement came as the confirmed death toll in Louisiana rose again to 474. The number for the entire Gulf region is now 711. President Bush flew back to the Gulf region today to unveil a long-term recovery package. He planned to address the nation in primetime from New Orleans. Aides said he'd discuss job training, housing and healthcare, among other things. But a spokesman said the president would not give any cost figures and he had no plans to name a "recovery czar" as some in Congress have urged.

In Washington, Louisiana's senators talked about what they hope to hear from the president.

SEN. MARY LANDRIEU: I'm hoping that he will lay out a bold vision for rebuilding that will take into consideration why our governor and our local elected officials are communicating through us and directly to this White House. A bold vision that will encompass strong accountability measures at every level.

SEN. DAVID VITTER: One thing I want to hear is a focus on that medium and long-term challenge of rebuilding the region, including rebuilding businesses and jobs which are necessary to get people back. So that vision and that commitment is very important.

JIM LEHRER: We'll have live coverage of the president's address beginning at 9:00 PM Eastern Time on most PBS stations. The president's former emergency chief defended his role today in the hurricane. Michael Brown resigned under fire this week. In today's New York Times, he said the real problem was the State of Louisiana failed to mount an organized response. He said he believed the White House was not at fault. Last night, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco addressed the issue, in a speech to the state legislature.

GOV. KATHLEEN BLANCO: At the state level, we take a careful look at what went wrong and make sure it never happens again. The buck stops here. And as your governor, I take full responsibility.

JIM LEHRER: We'll have more on the hurricane story right after this News Summary. North Carolina appeared to escape major damage today from Hurricane Ophelia. The storm made a slow-motion swipe at the state's coast. It dumped up to a foot of rain in some places, and knocked out power to 200,000 homes and businesses overnight. The hurricane was expected to turn back to sea late today or tomorrow.

John Roberts finished testifying today at his Senate confirmation hearings to be chief justice. He says his record shows he's not an ideologue. He says that's not the sort of person we want on the Supreme Court. From there the hearings turned to supporters and critics of Roberts. We'll have more on this story later in the program.

A new round of bombings killed at least 31 people in Baghdad today; 160 people died in similar attacks yesterday. The worst of today's bombings killed 21 people, 16 of them policemen. Later, two more explosions in the same neighborhood killed seven policemen. And a roadside bombing killed three other people. We'll have an interview with Iraqi President Talabani later in the program.

Taliban fighters in Afghanistan pressed their efforts today to derail elections this weekend. Six people were killed in fighting, and a female candidate was wounded while campaigning. Other candidates continued to work crowds, while thousands of troops and police moved out to safeguard ballot sites across the country. Some outside observers said the violence had been less than expected.

PETER ERBEN: I think it has gone much better than we had hoped for partly because we have not had any big security incidents as part of the campaign, no factional violence of significant that had destabilized the electoral environment. Obviously there's been some skirmishes around Afghanistan, but all in all I think we had this campaign in reasonably good style.

JIM LEHRER: The elections on Sunday will choose members of a national parliament and provincial leaders.

Israel and the Palestinians warned today al-Qaida terrorists could slip across Gaza's border with Egypt. People and weapons have poured across that border since Israel withdrew last Monday. At the United Nations today Israeli Prime Minister Sharon told world leaders the Palestinians must get control of Gaza. He said they have a chance to prove their desire for peace.

In U.S. economic news, jobless claims soared last week in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. There were 71,000 new applications for benefits, the most in ten years; 68,000 of those were from people laid off after the storm.

On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained more than 13 points to close above 10,558. The NASDAQ fell three points to close at 2146.

Film director Robert Wise died in Los Angeles on Wednesday of heart failure. He was best known for two celebrated musicals. "West Side Story" won Oscars for Wise as best director and for best picture in 1961. Four years later, he directed "The Sound of Music" and won best director and best picture again. He also received an Oscar nomination as a film editor on "Citizen Kane" in 1941. Robert Wise was 91 years old.

And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to rebuilding New Orleans, the end of the Roberts hearings, David Brooks and Tom Oliphant, and the president of Iraq.

FOCUS - COMING BACK

JIM LEHRER: The return of New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf region. President Bush will address the subject tonight and so are we now, beginning with a report on the day's developments narrated by Betty Ann Bowser.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: It still takes a humvee to navigate some of the water-logged streets of New Orleans, and will for some time to come, but parts of the city are dried out and will reopen for business owners and residents over the next ten days. The curtain goes up in the famed French Quarter on Sept. 26, four weeks after Katrina struck. Mayor Ray Nagin said today New Orleans will thrive again.

MAYOR RAY NAGIN: My gut feeling right now is that we'll settle in at 250,000 people over the next three to six months and then we'll start to ramp up over time to get back up to the half a million that we had before and maybe exceed that, because I envision us building an incredible city that is so livable, so unique with all the New Orleans wonderful things that everybody appreciates, that everybody is going to want to come.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: But coming back to the Big Easy may mean roughing it for a while. The power should be back on, at least in some neighborhoods. But the water won't be safe for drinking or bathing, and hospital facilities remain limited.

MAYOR RAY NAGIN: As far as health care is concerned, we are letting people know that for the most part you are coming back to a city that is not fully operational. And we are providing services, the minimum services that you will need to operate and live comfortably.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: In Baton Rouge last night, Gov. Kathleen Blanco told a joint session of the state legislature that she too wants Louisianans to come home.

GOV. KATHLEEN BLANCO: We will rebuild New Orleans and the surrounding parishes because that is what Americans do. We will drain the water from our neighborhoods, we will clean up the debris and contamination, we will rebuild our levees, roads and bridges, and we will recreate our communities.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: That is a tall and expensive order for a poor state like Louisiana. Blanco has asked the federal government to cover 100 percent of her state's disaster-related expenses.

JIM LEHRER: Now, a closer look at what life in New Orleans is really like right now. Spencer Michels reports from there.

SPENCER MICHELS:There were small signs of renewed life on a few of the downtown streets of New Orleans, mostly Army troops unloading and sorting donated supplies and clothing, people cleaning windows, and repair trucks tentatively attacking the overwhelming problems of the central business district. In the French Quarter, which escaped heavy damage, a few denizens who managed to stay behind during the evacuation of this city of 450,000 started cleaning up.

SPOKESPERSON: It's a mess.

SPENCER MICHELS: And others hung out at one of a few bars that have remained open. But while power was coming back on line downtown and repairs were getting underway, the CEO of Entergy New Orleans, the local gas and electric company, predicted the rest of the recovery would not be easy.

DAN PACKER, CEO, Entergy New Orleans: If it's strictly dependent on the electrical system, it's almost ready to resume trade. But there are a lot of pieces that have to go together. Pretty soon, electricity will be the least of your problems in starting commerce in this city.

SPENCER MICHELS: Like many New Orleanians, Dan Packer wanted to hear hope from President Bush tonight.

DAN PACKER: If Dan Packer were president of the United States, I would say that I'm going to band behind New Orleans. I'm going to do whatever it takes to make it a shinning city that it should be.

SPENCER MICHELS: Whatever the president says about New Orleans, most of its citizens won't be sitting in their homes listening to him on TV, for many parts of this city are deserted and eerie, with military and civilian workers and the media practically the only signs of life.

The air in the city was declared acceptable according to the mayor and much of the water has receded, but many streets are still inundated with smelly, putrid, noxious water. Rescues of stranded residents are now rare, as are body recoveries, but this animal lover risked the pollution to save a stranded cat.

Jimmy Morris is one of very few New Orleans residents who has remained here, living off military rations amid the strangeness of a deserted town.

JIMMY MORRIS: I'm trying to protect my neighborhood, keep it clean. When folks come home, they'll have something nice to come home to. I clean the porches with bleach and cleansers and stuff like that so the neighborhood will smell good.

SPENCER MICHELS: Things are dramatically better than when the water was seven feet deep, looting was commonplace and thousands of the dispossessed were abandoned at shelters and on roofs. But it's not the same town it was.

The fabled New Orleans music scene is tacit. Some of the few local musicians still around decided that the music should never stop. So in a dark auditorium that was flooded just a week ago, they serenaded a handful of National Guardsmen from Oregon - (music in background) -- in a bittersweet effort to keep up the morale of the troops and themselves.

JIM LEHRER: Margaret Warner has more on the rebuilding of New Orleans.

MARGARET WARNER: Tonight, President Bush will lay out his vision for rebuilding after Katrina, but how feasible is it to rebuild the city of New Orleans? And what has to be taken into account in doing that? Those questions are sure to be part of a national dialogue for months to come.

We start our own tonight with three views: Ari Kelman is a professor of history at the University of California at Davis - he's the author of "A River and Its City: The Environmental History of New Orleans;" Joel Garreau has written several books on the geographic and political forces that transform communities. He is also a reporter and editor at the Washington Post; and Christopher Edley, Jr. was a senior budget official in the Clinton administration, overseeing many domestic agencies, including FEMA - he's now dean of the Berkeley Law School. Welcome to you all.

Ari Kelman, is there any doubt in your mine first of all that New Orleans should be rebuilt?

ARI KELMAN: No, there's no doubt at all in my mind. For social reasons I would start off by saying that the people of New Orleans have suffered enough. Right now many of them are displaced and they want nothing more than to get home.

For cultural reasons New Orleans remains one of our historically richest cities. It's got an extraordinary mixture of French and Spanish and Anglo-American and West African cultures, out of which emerges jazz, one of the only art forms that we can truly say is our own, an extraordinary culinary culture, fantastic architecture, and if none of those reasons are good enough, the city remains important economically.

Thomas Jefferson understood that the 15,000 plus miles of the Mississippi River system were going to bring goods from the center of the United States into New Orleans. That remains true today. Geography still matters. Many of those goods have a very high weight to value ratio; in other words, they're very heavy but they're inexpensive and the only economically viable way to get them to market is via the river systems.

Without those I think that our economy would take a very, very serious hit. So for all of those reasons I think we do have to rebuild.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Joel Garreau, what's your view? The president apparently is going to say tonight, this great city will rise again.

JOEL GARREAU: Well, Margaret, I really hope that's true. What I'm about to say is hard headed, but I don't mean to it be hard hearted, because I really am pulling for this city.

But when I started fact checking some of these claims about the importance of rebuilding, I found that the tourist crescent of New Orleans from the French Quarter to the Garden District is important but it's less than 10 percent of the city of New Orleans. It's not the same thing. And the port is less than 20 percent of the port of the lower Mississippi, which stretches for 172 miles on both sides of that river. And the downtown of New Orleans is not the same thing as the New Orleans metro area, which has twice as many people.

When you start looking at where this money is going to come from, you start asking yourself, are the insurance companies ever going to reinsure this place after they pay off? Are the grain companies going to kick in? Are the oil companies going to kick in-- how about the commercial real estate companies? Increasingly, you just don't see too many commercial or business or hard headed reasons why we need a city here. A tourist center like Key West, yes, that's going to get rebuilt. But the question is: Do we want to spend a couple of hundred billion dollars on creating a new Key West?

MARGARET WARNER: Professor Edley, I won't ask to you settle this argument, but do you think it's just a pipe dream to rebuild New Orleans as a really economically viable city?

CHRISTOPHER EDLEY, JR.: No, not at all. There are a number of things to bear in mine. One is who really gets to make this decision. These are not disposable communities, they're not disposable families. And I do have some concern that the people most immediately affected have a strong voice in the outcome of this debate.

The second question of course is who bears the cost. There is state and local but especiallyfederal responsibility in a disaster of this magnitude. Let's remember that while the governors request that the federal government pay 100 percent of the costs of recovery may sound extreme to many, the huge hit that the state and local governments have taken in revenue as a result of this disaster means that they are really ill equipped to shoulder a tremendous amount of the near-term burden of recovery.

There are of course both public and private investments available, and those are all going to be critical. But the third piece of it I think is that as everyone struggles to rebuild a New Orleans, you certainly want to preserve and restore that which was positive about the past. But it's also an opportunity to build a shining New Orleans that takes advantage of what we've learned from the last generation about how to make economic growth real in our hard pressed cities.

So we can create more opportunity, better opportunity for the people in that metropolitan area if we rebuild the right way.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Well, continuing with this theme of challenge, I'll go back to you, Professor Kelman, what are the big questions that really have to be addressed before embarking on this? Just talk to us about your field of expertise, the basic geological, environmental, the physical issues.

ARI KELMAN: Well, New Orleans is a city that's about as precariously placed as any in the United States. A good portion of the city sits below sea level. Over time the city has built up the levees surrounding it so that it's effectively a walled city. It has a Mississippi River that flows in front of it that's well above the level of the downtown, and Lake Pontchartrain, which has been sitting in the city's center for quite sometime now, also is higher than the level of downtown. These make for extraordinarily complicated environmental dilemmas.

There are going to be serious questions raised about whether or not a portion of New Orleans should be allowed to return to sort of a wetland state. There are also going to be equally complicated questions asked about how the levees actually can be improved.

At this point the levees, while their failure wasn't just predictable, it was predicted. Those levees were built to withstand a Category 3 storm. This was a Category 4. To improve those levees is going to create serious land use questions and, as some of the other guests have suggested, real questions about where the financing is going to come from.

Having said that, I think that the political will is there, it's not a particularly complicated engineering problem. The infrastructural investment is already in place, it's just a matter of improving that infrastructure in a way that it hasn't been for some time now.

MARGARET WARNER: Joel Garreau, this could really be a city planner's dream. Are there creative innovative ways, both with the physical layout and also sort of socially, to recreate the city so it's a better city, a more viable city?

JOEL GARREAU: There's quite a few suggestions along that line, Margaret. The trouble is that what these suggestions boil down to is creating a yuppie heaven with a desire swamp around it.

MARGARET WARNER: That's what you mean about the wetlands -- in other words people are talking about, well, we have to restore these wetlands.

JOEL GARREAU: Yeah. I mean, what I'm interested in -- when you talk city, I'm interested in where are we going to put the cops and the teachers and the nurses, you know, where are we going to put the people who were the heart and soul of this place, the 90 percent of this city that made it a city?

You know, what we're talking about now is that New Orleans is not destined to ever again be another top 50 American city. It's going to be a lot more like Venice, a place that's loved and cherished and visited by a lot of tourists, but not necessarily a driver of global trade or change.

MARGARET WARNER: Well, are you suggesting, for instance, that folks who are living in the low-lying areas, who are predominantly poor and minority, that they should be moved, or that's going to have to happen, or are you saying it's a mistake to try to rebuild those areas?

JOEL GARREAU: I'm not talking about what should be. I'm a reporter. I'm just looking at what the driving forces are. I'm asking questions like, okay, affordable housing in this country today means trailers and double-wides. Let's say that we lock up the entire market for the next five years on double-wides. Are we really going to put that in a place that's 25 feet below sea level and going to be threatened by another storm? I'm asking practical questions like that, not theoretical ones.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Let me get Professor Edley's comment on this, because Professor Edley, we're told that the president is also going to at least refer to the severe racial segregation and poverty that existed in New Orleans. Pick upon what everyone else is saying. Do you think there's a way to preserve the city as a viable city that also doesn't recreate those conditions?

CHRISTOPHER EDLEY, JR.: Look, this is a moment for being hopeful and I think there's a way to be both hopeful and pragmatic. We can learn lessons about the importance of de-segregating poverty and de-segregating race to make New Orleans a far more viable city than it was just a few months ago. This is an opportunity to do all of that, but, look, I'd have to say that when I went to work for the Clinton White House back in 1993, with FEMA in my portfolio a couple of weeks into the job, the director of FEMA, James Lee Witt, came over and briefed me on some of the major catastrophes for which they were doing contingency planning, and a Category 4 or 5 hurricane hitting New Orleans was right at the top of the list, and he explained why.

This scenario was knowable, and it is preventable to a large extent if we have the right engineering solutions with respect to levees and the treatment of wetlands and so forth; we can build New Orleans back in a way that will be safer, that will be more sound environmentally, and that will create more opportunity for the residents there. It's a time for being hopeful.

MARGARET WARNER: And Ari Kelman, you have the last word. You spent a number of years living in New Orleans while you researched your book. From the people you got to know there, do you think a lot of people - do you think most New Orleanians will come back?

ARI KELMAN: Well, New Orleans is an unusual city in the United States in that approximately nine out of ten people who live in Orleans Parish were born there. Many of these people don't know anywhere else. I think that they badly want to come back. I think they've suffered a severe trauma, and I think that they want home.

On that point I'd like to address just a couple of earlier comments that were made -

MARGARET WARNER: Briefly if I may ask - just fairly briefly.

ARI KELMAN: -- about fact checking - very quickly, the areas that he's talking about as the tourist center of New Orleans haven't been destroyed. The French Quarter and the Garden District and Fauxbourg Marine are on relatively high ground and they took a hit, but it wasn't that severe. And at the same time, the city is precariously placed, but let's not exaggerate it. It's not twenty-five feet below sea level - five to ten in most cases at the most.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. As we said, it's part of a long-term dialogue and thank you three for beginning it for us.

FOCUS -THE ROBERTS HEARINGS

JIM LEHRER: Now, the conclusion of the Roberts confirmation hearings. Kwame Holman reports.

KWAME HOLMAN: Several Judiciary Committee Democrats who were unsatisfied with answers Judge John Roberts gave them over the previous two days convinced Chairman Arlen Specter to allow them a third and final round of questioning this morning. While Republicans largely chose not to participate, Democrats made clear their reservations about confirming Judge Roberts who, at age 50, could shape the high court for decades to come. New York Democrat Charles Schumer:

SEN. CHARLES SCHUMER: Many of us on this committee, probably every one of us, some more than others, has been wrestling with how to vote on your nomination. I think my colleague from Delaware was on to something when he called this a roll of the dice. But this is a vote on the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. You will in all likelihood affect every one of our lives in many ways for a whole generation. So this isn't just rolling the dice; it's betting the whole house.

So now we must take the evidence we have and try to answer the fundamental question: What kind of justice will John Roberts be? Will you be a truly modest, temperate careful judge in the tradition of Harlan, Jackson, Frankfurter and Friendly? Will you be a very conservative judge who will impede congressional prerogatives, but does not use the bench to remake society, like Justice Rehnquist? Or will you use your enormous talents to use the court to turn back nearly a century of progress and create the majority that Justices Scalia and Thomas could not achieve?

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEN: I think that Sen. Schumer really summed up the dilemmas and not only he has them on our side. Many of us are struggling with exactly that: What kind of a justice would you be, John Roberts?

JUDGE JOHN ROBERTS: That is the judgment you have to make. I would begin, if I were in your shoes, with what kind of judge I've been. I appreciate that it's only been a little more than two years, but you do have 50 opinions. You can look at those.

And Sen. Schumer, I don't think you can read those opinions and say that these are the opinions of an ideologue. You may think they're not enough, you may think you need more of a sample, that's your judgment. But I think if you look at what I've done since I took the judicial oath, that should convince you that I am not an ideologue. And you and I agree that that's not the sort of person we want on the Supreme Court.

KWAME HOLMAN: As they have throughout the week, Democrats again tried a series of strategies to get Judge Roberts to reveal his personal, rather than legal, approach to the law. This morning, Illinois Democrat Richard Durbin cited an answer Roberts gave him yesterday.

SEN. RICHARD DURBIN: Here is what you said. "My practice has been to take the cases that come to me, and if the other side in that case had come to me first, I would have taken their side." I want to follow up on this. You were asked the other day about your participation in the 1996 case of Romer versus Evans, a landmark case that struck down a Colorado law that would have taken away the rights of gay and lesbian Americans.

You gave some legal advice to the lawyer in this case who was trying to uphold the rights of those with different sexual orientation. So I'll ask you, if the other side had come to you first and said, "Mr. Roberts, we would like you to defend this state amendment that took away the rights of gays and lesbians," would you have taken the case?

JUDGE JOHN ROBERTS: It's a hypothetical question. Of course, I think I probably would have, Senator. If a state, in that case Colorado, had come to me and said we have a case in the Supreme Court, would you defend it, I think I might, against I can't answer it without knowing the full details and all that, and I would have to look at the legal issues and I have not and never have presented legal arguments that I thoughts were not reasonable arguments.

SEN. RICHARD DURBIN: When you are defending gays and lesbians who are being restricted in their rights by the Colorado amendment, you are trying, from my point of view, to expand freedom in America. That to me is a positive thing, that's my personal philosophy and point of view.

But then when you say if the state would have walked in the door first to restrict freedoms, I would have taken them as a client too, I wonder: where are you? Is it important enough for you to say in some instances, O will not use my skills as a lawyer, because I don't believe that that is a cause that is consistent with my values and we belief? That's what I've been asking.

JUDGE JOHN ROBERTS: I had someone ask me in this process, I don't remember who it was, but somebody asked me: are you going to be on the side of the little guy? You obviously want to give an immediate answer, but as you reflect on it, if the Constitution says that the little guy should win, the little guy is going to win in court before me. But if the Constitution says that the big guy should win, well, then the big guy is going to win, because my obligation is to the Constitution.

KWAME HOLMAN: That kind of exchange between the nominee and committee Democrats continued for two hours. The committee then adjourned for a final 30-minute closed session with Judge Roberts. The hearings resumed this afternoon. And in Roberts' place at the witness table were legal experts, policy advocates and friends of the nominee. Representatives of the American Bar Association explained why John Roberts received their top rating of well-qualified.

But there were differences on the following panel over Judge Roberts' early writings on civil rights legislation. Democratic Congressman John Lewis of Georgia:

REP. JOHN LEWIS: I was young, too, a few years ago, twenty-four, twenty-five, but I tried to do the right thing. I got in the way and I think Judge Roberts as a young attorney in the administration of President Reagan and others, failed to go with his gut. You don't come back years later and say "oh no, oh no, this was not my view." Sometimes you have to fight; sometimes you have to get in the way. If you can't get in the way when you're twenty-five or thirty, you're not going to get in the way when you are fifty.

KWAME HOLMAN: Former Attorney General Richard Thornburgh, a friend and colleague of Judge Roberts, came to his defense.

DICK THORNBURGH: I don't think any of us could stand a complete and thorough rummaging through the views we expressed when we were twenty or twenty-five years old. But most importantly I think is my conclusion based on the basis of my personal knowledge of Judge Roberts that there's no hostility there to civil rights.

KWAME HOLMAN: Later, Ann Marie Tallman of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund also took issue with some of Judge Roberts' writings and decisions.

ANNE MARIE TALLMAN: The writings and decisions of Judge Roberts place him in positions opposed not only equal justice for Latinos but opposed to the positions taken by bipartisan majorities of this Congress and even by the Reagan administration that he served.

If some of John Roberts' written legal views had been adopted and become settled federal law, thousands of undocumented immigrant children would have been barred from, would have effectively been barred from public schools, left largely illiterate and without hope as members of a permanent under class.

A national system of identification cards might be in place, representing an unprecedented intrusion into the privacy rights of Americans, and placing minorities at much greater risk of racial profiling and discrimination.

KWAME HOLMAN: From Utah State Judge Denise Posse Blanco Lindberg, a Cuban immigrant, the testimony took on a more personal tone.

JUDGE DENISE POSSE BLANCO LINDBERG: I joined Hogan's appellate practice group and I worked with John on a number of cases following his return to the firm. I remember many cases that we worked on, but I specifically remember his support and guidance during my first solo effort at drafting a brief for a case before the D.C. Circuit. It was a pro bono matter and he willingly spent considerable time reviewing drafts, providing feedback, and that was invariably insightful, helpful and courteous.

He analyzed issues creatively without distorting precedent or stretching a point of law beyond what was permitted by the bounds of law. And on top of that, he was an incredibly nice genuine human being, who was incredibly bright but never arrogant.

KWAME HOLMAN: Chairman Specter kept senators and witnesses within their allotted times to speak, toward his aim of ending the hearings this evening. Senate leader now expect a final vote on the John Roberts nomination before the Supreme Court term begins on Oct. 3.

JIM LEHRER: And to the analysis of Brooks and Oliphant, New York Times columnist David Brooks and Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant. First a quick scorecard from each of you: On Judge Roberts himself, how did he do?

DAVID BROOKS: A. I mean I think Democrats were saying I think three Democrats said he was perhaps the best witness, the most brilliant, the best prepared that they had ever seen. I think Dianne Feinstein, Joe Biden, a couple of others said that. He did a fantastic job.

JIM LEHRER: Tom?

TOM OLIPHANT: Temperament, character, qualifications, I'd say A plus.

JIM LEHRER: Okay. On content.

TOM OLIPHANT: Interesting, satisfactory, responsive. He is no less or more forthcoming than any modern Supreme Court justice nominee with the possible exception of the famously closed mouthed Antonin Scalia. He primarily sought to put the fears and concerns of Democrats to rest, understanding that the biggest possible margin creates the best possible atmosphere, assuming he becomes Chief Justice of the United States.

So far, the content of his testimony has succeeded in creating much angst on the Democratic side. I count five Democrats on that committee who are definitely undecided.

JIM LEHRER: What kind of marks did you give him on content, on just what he said about what he would do as a Chief Justice of the United States?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I think the bottom line is I feel as if somebody watched every single minute of this, that I know who he is.

JIM LEHRER: You do know who he is?

DAVID BROOKS: I really do feel that. I feel that he's a modest person who has fervent convictions about the rule of law. That's not to say he has fervent convictions about racial issues or social issues or abortion. I'm not sure he does but he has fervent issues about the rule of law - I mean fervent convictions about the process. And the way I'd put it in our profession is that some people are opinion journalists and we tend to have fervent convictions about what society should look like.

Some people are straight reporters, and the best of them have fervent convictions about being fair and delivering the information. He strikes me as much more like a straight reporter than an opinion journalist, in the way Scalia really is an opinion journalist.

And so when I take a look at him when he talks about modesty and humility, I think that really is him saying I'm going to be fair to the process, I'm going to take each case by the facts, I'm not going to prejudge and I'm not going to be overthrowing things wildly.

JIM LEHRER: In sports and in politics, they always tend to compare people with other people. Oh, he reminds me of DiMaggio, oh, he's just like LaGuardia or whatever. Does John Roberts remind you of any current or past Supreme Court justice?

DAVID BROOKS: I was going to say DiMaggio. (Laughter) Everyone says Rehnquist. He's resisted that and I think he's right to resist that. I can't think of anybody who is quite like him. I would say a couple of law professors said this afternoon that though he's conservative, they doubted he would overturn Roe V. Wade and I share that.

JIM LEHRER: You share that.

DAVID BROOKS: Arlen Specter said they are all gossiping about it in the cloakroom. And I share that sense that he is not someone who overturns things --

TOM OLIPHANT: Let me take that one step further. The person who said he was certain that he never would was someone we both admire, Charlie Freed who was solicitor general during the Reagan administration, now a professor at Harvard --

JIM LEHRER: A political conservative.

TOM OLIPHANT: -- and a critic of Roe on legal reasoning grounds. And because of all that Judge Roberts said about the importance of precedent and super precedent and super duper precedents, to use Arlen Specter's word, he said he was certain.

On the other hand, there was an interesting bit of testimony this afternoon that introduced a note of caution from Marcia Greenburger, one of the women's movements most adept and brilliant lawyers, who had compared Judge Roberts' testimony to Clarence Thomas's in 1991.

And there were two points of similarity that she noted that I think are interesting. Roberts did have a tendency to describe specific case situations without really telling you what he thought. He could masterfully summarize one side, summarize the other side, summarize what the Supreme Court did and yet hadn't said whether he liked it or not, and apparently Thomas did this all the way through his hearing.

Then he would use the phrase, Clarence Thomas did, with a decision. I have no quarrel with that, I have no quarrel with that. Well, John Roberts used that exact phrase. And the things that Clarence Thomas said he had no quarrel with, within a year he was condemning from the bench. So euphoria ought to be held in check. This is a tough vote for Democrats, it was designed to be tough. But the reportable fact is that several Democrats are giving very serious consideration to voting for this guy because there's no Eureka moment. They can't point to a quote, an act or whatever and say that's the reason this guy should not go on the court. That does not exist.

JIM LEHRER: As I've heard David Brooks say many times in the last three days, if Democrats can't vote for this guy, they can't vote for anybody. Do you still believe that?

DAVID BROOKS: I absolutely believe that, he's been as good as they can possibly get -

JIM LEHRER: Get from a conservative Republican -

DAVID BROOKS: -- and the lessons for Republicans - right - if John Kerry had won, they'd get something a little better -- but from George Bush he's as good as they could get. And the lesson for the Bush administration, if the committee breaks down ten to eight, which is along party lines, then the lesson for the Bush administration is, hey, we shouldn't even bother trying to negotiate with these people because they are stuck in stone.

So for the next pick, which will come soon, legal just pick a real conservative because they're not going to vote for somebody who is so impressive anyway.

TOM OLIPHANT: The Democrats are drawing the same lesson, mirror image.

JIM LEHRER: Is that right?

TOM OLIPHANT: Absolutely. They're well aware of that and there are going to be no votes, this isn't going to be unanimous. But all I'm saying is the quandary here is real, and that suggests to me it's going to be resolved in Roberts' favor by several of them.

JIM LEHRER: You mean, if they know they vote against this guy they're inviting a worse candidate --

TOM OLIPHANT: Right. There was some consultation this time around; it appeared to have had some effect on the White House, in terms of how about a confirmation of a conservative, with a big vote. So listen to us, don do this kind, maybe try to think like this. You could do it again if you wanted to.

JIM LEHRER: Okay. New subject: The president speaking tonight, to the nation, from New Orleans, about what he's going to do about rebuilding that part of the country -- what's his mission?

TOM OLIPHANT: Well, his mission is to do what he was unable to do at the beginning of the storm, and that is to grab this problem by the neck and not only take control of it but be seen to be taking control of it. And time is a wasting because the government is almost in as severe a mess as Louisiana and Mississippi are.

The $60 billion that has already been appropriated, I'm told, will run out in two weeks. People in Congress want another request next week. The amount, I think the president may actually say this, but the amount that people are talking about exceeds the cost of the Iraq War.

The revenue flow to the governments of Louisiana and Mississippi has gone way, way down.

JIM LEHRER: It's going to be down to zero -

TOM OLIPHANT: We're talking about not just a reconstruction but ongoing support, so not only in terms of money, but in terms of image and concept, the president not only literally has to take control of the American government's response to this unprecedented situation, he must be seen as doing so.

DAVID BROOKS: Spent $60 million in two or three weeks with the casinos all closed down there. I agree with Tom. He's got to lay out a few things, first what went wrong, --

JIM LEHRER: He's got to talk about that tonight?

DAVID BROOKS: Absolutely -- and he's got to say what my government is doing so we will know what went wrong, specifically. Then he's got to look at the immediate needs of the people who have been evacuated or displaced from their homes, then he's got to have a long-term vision of how we're going to take advantage of this unfortunate opportunity to make New Orleans better than it was.

And he's got to do it, and this is his political problem on the right, he's got to do it explaining why we're spending hundreds of billions of dollars in ways that shouldn't offend conservatives.

JIM LEHRER: But how can that be? I mean, the billions and billions of dollars become billions and billions of dollars.

DAVID BROOKS: I think there are a couple of things he has to do. First - which I think he probably won't do tonight but should do in the future -- explain off setting budget cuts.

JIM LEHRER: Oh, okay.

DAVID BROOKS: But then he has got to explain how he's going to spend it so he'll do it in ways that are consistent with conservative principles, rebuilding communities, government not creating programs but being a catalyst for community programs to rebuild families, tax zones, so there will be more entrepreneurial development.

That sort of stuff is consistent with conservative ideas and does involve an activist government but it won't be sort of an old liberal --

TOM OLIPHANT: But the size of the problem may dwarf all ideologies. I mean, more than 900 separate water and sewage systems in Louisiana and Mississippi are down -- out of action -- all by itself, a huge problem. There is a backlog right now in road construction of something like $120 billion. Think how much has been added by the road and bridge deconstruction here. It's an immense job.

JIM LEHRER: Yes or no from both of you. Is the problem of rebuilding leadership, confidence in his leadership as big as that?

TOM OLIPHANT: Absolutely. The size and the nature of the problem --

JIM LEHRER: I said, yes or no, Tom.

TOM OLIPHANT: Yes, yes.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. I'm a good student.

JIM LEHRER: You're a good John Roberts, right. Okay, thank you both very much and we'll talk later after the president's speech.

NEWSMAKER

JIM LEHRER: And finally tonight, our Newsmaker interview with the president of Iraq, Jalal Talabani. He has been in Washington and New York, meeting with President Bush and attending the U.N. General Assembly. Ray Suarez talked with him this afternoon at the Iraqi Mission to the U.N. in New York.

RAY SUAREZ: Mr. President, welcome to the program.

JALAL TALABANI: Thank you very much.

RAY SUAREZ: These have been two very violent days in Baghdad, after weeks where it was relatively calm. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has said he's specifically attacking Shiites, that his is a Sunni army, almost like he's trying to start a civil war.

PRESIDENT JALAL TALABANI: Well, Zarqawi had said before that he was launching a war of annihilation against Shiites. Zarqawi is not an Iraqi; he's a criminal coming from outside of Iraq. And his forces mainly are not Iraqis. For that there will be no civil war.

RAY SUAREZ: So, the referendum on the constitution is about a month away, you don't think he has the ability or people who sympathize with him have the ability to derail the process?

PRESIDENT JALAL TALABANI: No. He will try his best, but they cannot. The big majority of Iraqis will vote and I think majority will vote for constitution.

RAY SUAREZ: What about the Sunnis?

PRESIDENT JALAL TALABANI: Sunni Arabs in the west part of Iraq -- some of them will against and some of them will for the constitution. Here the majority will vote again, but there is a big minority among them which will vote for constitution. Let us see what will be the result of the referendum.

RAY SUAREZ: In these negotiations, have you seen a greater sense of people feeling that they are Iraqis, that we may come from different ethnic groups, we may come from different religious groups, but we're all Iraqis?

PRESIDENT JALAL TALABANI: Yes -- that -- after liberation, for the first time, many, many Iraqis, they are feeling that they are Iraqis; before there was national oppression, religious oppression, all kinds of dictatorship; the people were deprived of all kinds of democratic rights.

Nowadays, Iraqi people enjoy democracy, human rights -- all kinds of freedoms. And there is a kind of equality among Iraqis that Iraqis feel that all of them are first class citizens -- for that they are really proud to be Iraqis.

RAY SUAREZ: One of the people you'll be meeting on your visit to the United States is the new president of Iran. Iran is a neighbor of Iraq -- has been a friend to many of the people who are the new leaders of Iraq -- yet not a friend of the United States, which helped bring down the Saddam regime. Is this an uncomfortable position to be in?

PRESIDENT JALAL TALABANI: You know, yes, they did something when they let the war of liberation of Iraq, something indirectly for interest of Iranians also, why the Iranians must be against removing the worst kind of their enemy; they must be grateful.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, can you say anything to the new Iranian president about your ally, President George Bush?

PRESIDENT JALAL TALABANI: I am going to see him after finishing with you. And you know, I am proud to say that we could always keep alliances with the United States in one hand and the other with Iranians in the other hand.

RAY SUAREZ: You're a Kurdish leader in addition to being the president of Iraq; you've been a leader of the struggle there for almost half a century. Are you in the position of telling your own people that staying in Iraq is good for them? Are there many of your own Kurdish brothers and sisters who want to be free of Iraq?

PRESIDENT JALAL TALABANI: You know, before becoming president of Iraq, I always called for Kurdish Arab brotherhood for common struggle, against dictatorship, for having democracy, and democratic federal regime in Iraq.

It is something that we struggled for in the past. Nowadays also I can say to the Kurds stay inside democratic federal Iraq, better for you than asking for a kind of independence which is impossible.

RAY SUAREZ: The newly elected Kurdish assembly is very much in favor of an independent Kurdistan.

PRESIDENT JALAL TALABANI: No, the newly elected Kurdistan assembly voted unanimously for the constitution and for remaining within the federal Iraq.

RAY SUAREZ: President Bush is going to speak to the United States to talk about relief for the hurricane here in America. We're also spending in this country a great deal of money to rebuild your country; some senators have expressed some worries about whether we can afford both things. What would you tell Americans about their investment in Iraq?

PRESIDENT JALAL TALABANI: Well, I had meeting with some leaders of Congress, and in press conference, I think the American people is a great people. They have an international responsibility. The American sacrifices in the First and Second Word War, hundreds of thousands of American sons were killed in these wars to liberate Europe from Nazis and liberating Asia from the threat of Japan.

This is the responsibility of big states; this is the responsibility of big nations in the world. I told the American people, you'll have a very good friend and a democratic federal secure Iraq will be a very good friend for the United States of America, and when we will be victorious over terrorism, America will be more safe than before.

RAY SUAREZ: But not only is it expensive, most Americans are now telling pollsters that they're not sure it was a good idea and they're not sure thatthey want to stay.

PRESIDENT JALAL TALABANI: Well, it's up to the American people to decide. I cannot interfere in internal affairs of the United States of America.

RAY SUAREZ: But you're not also ready to say good-bye to American troops?

PRESIDENT JALAL TALABANI: We will be ready to tell them good-bye any time they want to leave. But as I understood that American forces, President Bush has a mind to stay until he will finish the job, until Iraq will be able to train police and security forces, until Iraq will be able to face alone terrorism. I think this is a wise decision and we support this decision of President Bush.

RAY SUAREZ: But would it help Iraq to get on its feet, would it help Iraq to become a more normal place to not have foreign troops on its soil?

PRESIDENT JALAL TALABANI: Well, if Iraq will be able to have forces for defending Iraq from terrorism and foreign interference, then perhaps there will be no need for foreign forces. But it also depends on agreement between the Iraqi government and Americans -- perhaps Iraqi government will see it is in the interest of Iraq to ask some military bases for American forces, even after liberation, liberating Iraq from the threat of terrorism.

RAY SUAREZ: In recent weeks you've talked about specific numbers of troops, you've talked about timetables, and then you've gone back and changed --

PRESIDENT JALAL TALABANI: No. I didn't tell about timetables. Americans can remove forces if they want. But I think within two years we can be able to have our forces, our security forces, army able to face terrorism. But the timetable for removal of the forces depends on the relation between the Iraqi government and coalition forces.

RAY SUAREZ: But are you ready? If they came to you this week --

PRESIDENT JALAL TALABANI: I was misquoted. I said at the end of the next year yes, we'll be ready for many kind of replacement of American forces with Iraqis. But the departure of American forces depends on many factors. First, a kind of agreement between Iraq and United States that show that the departure of American forces is not under the threat and pressure of the terrorists; it is not defeat of American forces - to escape from the country -

RAY SUAREZ: So not just leaving, but leaving the right way.

PRESIDENT JALAL TALABANI: Yes, I think so.

RAY SUAREZ: Mr. President, thanks for speaking with us.

PRESIDENT JALAL TALABANI: Thank you very much. Thank you very much for liberating me as you liberated our country from dictatorship.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of this day: New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin announced part of the city can reopen in phases beginning on Monday. President Bush returned to New Orleans for a nationally televised address on hurricane recovery. Hurricane Ophelia made a swipe at North Carolina, dumping more than a foot of rain, and John Roberts finished testifying at his Senate confirmation hearings to be chief justice. We'll be back a 9 PM Eastern Time on most PBS stations with live coverage of President Bush's address to the nation tonight. We'll see you then, on line and again here tomorrow evening, again with David Brooks and Tom Oliphant among others. I'm Jim Lehrer, thank you and good night.