The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, Elizabeth Dole's departure: We have excerpts from her announcement, plus a Gwen Ifill-led discussion among Mark Shields, Paul Gigot and Elizabeth Arnold. Then, Ray Suarez takes a look at the new president of Indonesia, Elizabeth Brackett reports on a military public school in Chicago, and David Gergen talks about mentors with Marian Wright Edelman. It all follows our summary of the news this Wednesday.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: Elizabeth Dole quit the presidential race today. The former Reagan cabinet secretary cited fund-raising shortfalls in her campaign for the Republican nomination. She said it would be futile to continue. Her withdrawal left Texas Governor George W. Bush, Publisher Steve Forbes, and Arizona Senator John McCain leading the Republican field. Dole made the announcement in Washington, joined by her husband, former Senator and '96 GOP nominee Bob Dole.

ELIZABETH DOLE: The bottom line remains money. In fact, it's a kind of catch-22; inadequate funding limits the number of staff at headquarters and in key states, it restricts your ability to communicate with voters. It places a ceiling on travel and travel staff. Over time, it becomes nearly impossible to sustain an effective campaign.

JIM LEHRER: We'll have more of her departure statement, plus some analysis, right after this News Summary. U.S. stocks rose for the third day in a row. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 187 points, at 10,392. The NASDAQ Index was up 99 points at 2788. The Commerce Department reported America's trade gap narrowed in August by 3.2 percent to $24.1 billion. It was the first drop in four months despite record imports from China, Mexico and other U.S. trading partners. Budget negotiations resumed today at the capitol. Budget Director Jack Lew met with congressional staff. A meeting between congressional leaders and the President adjourned last night with everyone vowing not to touch the Social Security surplus. Republicans said Mr. Clinton withdrew his idea for a 55 cent-per-pack increase in the tobacco tax. Mr. Clinton said a smaller levy was still an option. He spoke at the White House after signing a bill to fund housing, veterans, and space programs.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: What I said was I was well aware that they were not going to raise the tobacco tax 55 cents, as I had originally proposed. I still believe that it would be good health policy to have a more modest increase, or at least a look-back provision to protect kids from smoking. We're seeing all over the country an absence of those kinds of efforts, even in the states that have gotten a lot of money. Some states are doing it, some states aren't. So I think it would be good policy.

JIM LEHRER: The stated aim of the President and Republican congressional leaders is to reach an overall budget deal by next Tuesday. A Florida appeals court today upheld a crucial ruling in a tobacco class-action liability suit. It said a jury could determine punitive damages against tobacco companies in a lump sum. The industry wanted it done on a case-by-case basis. A half million Florida smokers are represented in the lawsuit. In Indonesia today, the parliament chose a Muslim leader to be the country's next president. He will replace B.J. Habibie, who was appointed 17 months ago when Indonesia's ruler for more than 30 years resigned. After the vote, supporters of a defeated candidate rampaged on the streets of Jakarta. Dozens were injured. Two people were killed in an apparent car bomb explosion. We'll have more on this story later in the program tonight. Also coming, the leaving of Elizabeth dole, a military public school in Chicago, and a David Gergen dialogue.

FOCUS - BOWING OUT

JIM LEHRER: Elizabeth Dole drops out. We begin with her announcement this morning in Washington.

ELIZABETH DOLE: I've tried to run a nontraditional campaign rather than a traditional one, bringing countless first-time voters into the political process, as we have sought, together, to make history. It's confusing to many Americans who are part of my huge crowds and share my enthusiasm that this is not a measure of success. But this is not all that I've learned. I've learned that the current political calendar and election laws favor those who get an early start, and can tap into huge private fortunes, or who have a preexisting network of political supporters. Steve Forbes has unlimited resources. Governor Bush has raised over $60 million and has about $40 million on hand. Both are starting to run TV ads next week. Already, I've attended over 70 fund-raising events. My schedule through early December would have taken me to a total of 108 fund-raising events across America. Even then, these rivals would enjoy a 75- or 80-1 cash advantage. Perhaps I could handle 2-1 or even 10-1, but not 80-1. All my life I've been accustomed to challenging the odds, but the first obligation of any candidate is to be honest-- honest with herself and honest with her supporters. Last Sunday, the five-hour flight from Seattle, gave me an opportunity to do some hard thinking. I thought about the rumor I had had to answer for two weeks that I was dropping out and the damage it had done to my fund-raising. I thought a lot, if there was any other avenue not yet explored for raising money. When I arrived home, I told Bob that this time the odds are overwhelming. It would be futile to continue, and he reluctantly agreed. God willing, there are many arenas in which to fight, many ways to contribute. So while I may not be a candidate for the presidency in 2000, I'm a long way from the twilight. (Laughter) Thank you all. (Applause) One more sentence! Thank you all, everyone here, for your friendship, your encouragement, and above all, your willingness to dare mighty things. God bless each and every one of you and God bless America. Thank you for joining me this morning. (Applause)

REPORTER: What do you think it says about the Republican Party, that it could not or did not support the number two-ranked person in the race?

ELIZABETH DOLE: George Bush, I think it's fair to say, really began his effort in 1996, and he quietly but effectively pulled in all of the traditional money-raisers in the Republican Party lot of the endorsements. I was in a non-partisan organization, the American Red Cross. It was a mission field for me. I believed in following the fundamental principles of the Red Cross, and I did not make a call to Iowa, New Hampshire, until I left the Red Cross. So literally, my campaign was beginning about February 1st. The endorsements were gone by that point, but I think clearly here you have a situation, it's a phenomenon. It's never happened before in politics, it may never happen again, where you have a person who has...there's a vast political network of supporters, and this goes back through the years, plus I think certainly being a governor, a sitting governor, a brother who's a sitting governor, you've got a lot of the governors with their vast state organizations involved. And so it really... I don't think, you know, anyone could have anticipated, at the time that I left the Red Cross, that there would be that sort of most unusual phenomenon which has occurred.

JIM LEHRER: Gwen Ifill has more about Elizabeth Dole.

GWEN IFILL: And we get more from Shields and Gigot, plus Arnold, that's syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Wall Street journal columnist Paul Gigot. Joining them tonight is NewsHour regular Elizabeth Arnold, political correspondent for National Public Radio.

Mark, Elizabeth Dole says it was the money; that was all it was. What really happened?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, she said it was the money, and money certainly was a factor, but it was a reflection. I mean, this is a unique year; she's absolutely right. The dilemma is this: Everybody is for George Bush. Why is everybody for George Bush -- because he can win. Why can he win -- because everybody's for George Bush. I mean, that's the circular argument that all the other candidates -- she's not the first person out of this race. I mean, we have a governor of Tennessee and former cabinet officer leave, chairman of the Budget Committee, of the House of Representatives, an energetic and charismatic fellow leave; we had the former Vice President of the United States, a two-time U.S. Senator leave. I mean, this is a phenomenal year, and I don't think there's any question that what she spoke today was the truth. I don't think that Elizabeth Dole ever developed a message that was salient to voters.

GWEN IFILL: Well, that was my point to you, Paul, which is, is any of this her fault at all?

PAUL GIGOT: I think so. I mean, in some ways I think she ran the most disappointing campaign of any -- of any of the candidates so far. She started with so much enthusiasm, the novelty factor, the first woman -- a lot of people wanted to go out and hear her. But when she left the Red Cross earlier this year, she left without a plan; she left without a staff; she left without an agenda really for what she was going to do. And she had to build all those; she had several false starts. She got rid of one campaign manager. And, as Mark says, she never developed a real rationale for running, other than, I'm the first woman candidate; let's make history. And you have to have something other than your resume to run on. She never found that.

GWEN IFILL: Elizabeth, you've been out there with Mrs. Dole at various events, big trials, lots of women, lots of people who are not necessarily active Republicans at her events. Why didn't that translate into a winning campaign?

ELIZABETH ARNOLD: Well, it's interesting. You know, she said she made the decision flying home from Seattle, where she spoke to the National Federation of Republican Women, Gwen, and the average age of that group is about 50. And these women don't get involved in politics until after they've raised their families. When I went to her events, the people that showed up that I was most interested in were these young, single congressional women, short black dresses, people you never see at these events, and they looked really out of place at Republican functions, and I'd ask them, you know, what are you doing here, are you a registered Republican -- no, never voted before. What are you doing here? Well, I'm interested in this woman; she's a woman; she's running for President, so there was that phenomenon. And Elizabeth Dole talked a lot about that today, that she was getting these young, first-time voters interested. And that's great for the party; that's really great for the party, and it'll be interesting to see whether they switch allegiances and stay involved. But, again, you know, it's the chicken and the egg question. It's not necessarily about money. Money flows when contributors respond to the message, and they believe that the messenger can win; and that just wasn't happening.

GWEN IFILL: But the money gap, Paul, was a huge one; there was -- she said it was something like eighty to one for her to catch up; that was true. But was her candidacy symbolic, or was it about substance?

PAUL GIGOT: Well, I think she stressed the symbolism too much. Identity politics in this country is important.

GWEN IFILL: Did she stress it, or did we?

PAUL GIGOT: I think she stressed it. When I saw her on the stump, I saw her make a lot of the fact that you can make history. That was her theme in Iowa, that was her theme. In fact, I kept looking for other themes, and there weren't a lot there. You know, I think that's what she stressed too much. In the Republican Party -- I mean, Jack Kennedy ran and won as the first Catholic, but he first had to persuade people that he was presidential caliber, that he had something else he wanted to do, then people would say, "oh, well, I like the fact that he's a Catholic, too." Elizabeth Dole stressed the fact that she was a woman so much, that I think a lot of people were saying, "well, what are you going to do as President? Where are you going to lead the country?"

GWEN IFILL: Elizabeth Dole said she was for some gun-control law, she said she was some liberalization at least of the Republican position on abortion. Did that help or hurt her, Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: I think the only time she made any news, quite frankly, was in May in New Hampshire and she was booed for her gun control position. And there's two things you have to remember here, Gwen, about Elizabeth Dole: First of all, she had never run for office before. She had been encouraged to run, people said in '96, gee, if you had run, Elizabeth instead of Bob, you know, he's -- he's sort of solemn, he's not much fun, are you -- and it's a lot tougher. And the presidency is not an entry-level position in American politics. The only person that that's been an exception to, quite frankly, was Dwight David Eisenhower, one of two individuals in 1,000 years to lead a successful cross-channel invasion. I mean, that's a fairly unique credential. And so I think that's the thing. But she did... to follow up on Paul's earlier point, she did have a favorable, unfavorable ratio. There's two measures of any candidate: Do you view the candidate favorably or unfavorably, are you going to vote for that candidate? And the two are sometimes disconnected. Even on days she got out -- in the field poll in California today, she has the highest favorable-to-unfavorable rating of any candidate in both parties, including George W. Bush, but her vote support, which is again coming back to both Elizabeth and Paul's point, you don't have to give people a reason to vote for you. What is the compelling message that says, "yes, I like her. Now I want to vote for her and work for her." That's what was missing.

GWEN IFILL: Elizabeth, we saw Bob Dole standing on the stage today with his wife. It was a rare occurrence during her campaign. Did being married to Bob Dole hurt her or help her?

ELIZABETH ARNOLD: Well, I'd say that her husband didn't necessarily help with the public assessment of her candidacy early on, a very candid assessment of her candidacy and then suggesting that he would contribute to John McCain. It's interesting that the campaign has really been stressing in the last couple of days that it was her husband that was the last person to be convinced that she should step down, and pull out of the race. And I think in large part that's because they wanted to portray him as her most loyal supporter, and he was probably feeling pretty bad about the early start.

GWEN IFILL: Why is it that Elizabeth Dole, who started off with such a bang, who came back after the straw poll, and everyone said this was her second chance, why is it that she is dropping out of the race when less well-known candidates, less charismatic candidates, dare we say, are still in it?

PAUL GIGOT: Well, some of those people have rationales that are ideological, for example. Steve Forbes is trying to run as the conservative. Gary Bauer is trying to run as the -

GWEN IFILL: With a gazillion dollars.

PAUL GIGOT: With a gazillion dollars - that helps too -- that helps, too. John McCain has a compelling personal story, a war record and so on. He also avoided Iowa, so he hasn't spent a couple of million dollar, spent a lot of his money. He saved it for New Hampshire and South Carolina. Gary Bauer's trying to run at that slot in the Republican primary race for the anti-abortion candidate. So they have rationales. She was trying to run as George Bush -- I'm the candidate of everybody who can win, and George Bush just sucked all the oxygen right out of that side of the primary electorate.

PAUL GIGOT: Can you conceive of another Bush-Dole ticket? Is it possible she could be considered at this point for Vice President, Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: I don't think she was hurt by her experience. I mean her favorable-unfavorable ratings are exceptionally high. I think there are doubts about her political skills, her ability to take a punch, all of those questions that come up in a vice presidential choice. It was fascinating today to watch the other candidates when she did get out and how they... you always view someone, a candidate getting out of the race through that candidate supporters and admirer's eyes. And George W. Bush was fulsome in his praise of her, I mean more than generous, as was John McCain. The Forbes campaign stumbled. The Forbes campaign treated it as a political opportunity, "well, this gives us a better chance because of" -- they didn't even wait for the body to get cold.

GWEN IFILL: John McCain did say that this was a dearth of ideas, not money, his response.

MARK SHIELDS: He said - I thought he said he would have been preferred that it be the rejection of ideas, rather than the failure -

GWEN IFILL: Rejection of her ideas.

MARK SHIELDS: That she lost because of her ideas rather than money.

GWEN IFILL: Elizabeth, what's your sense about the Vice President question?

ELIZABETH ARNOLD: Well, you know, I'd agree with the point that Paul made and that is that - and I talked to a number of women who study women politicians today who said, you know, what was there that was identifiable about Elizabeth Dole, except for the fact that she's a woman? When you think john McCain, you think campaign finance reform. I would argue that I don't think she has helped her vice presidential chances. She didn't prove that she could move large numbers of voters. She argues that she could attract crossover Democratic voters, Democratic women, but that goes against historical fact as well because generally women will pick, if they do vote as a block, women will pick the Democratic man over the Republican woman, they'll vote party over gender.

GWEN IFILL: Paul, who benefits, any of the people who are left standing besides George Bush, say?

PAUL GIGOT: I think John McCain probably benefits the most. They appeal to similar parts of the Republican electorate, moderate, liberal Republicans. And if you haven't been... if you're not for George Bush already, say, in New Hampshire, you're probably looking for somebody else. So I don't know that you're going to necessarily go to him. You're probably looking... and John McCain looks like somebody who might be the alternative. Now, the Forbes campaign argues that it helps them in Iowa because John McCain isn't running in Iowa, so they get some of those votes and maybe that's true.

GWEN IFILL: You think so?

MARK SHIELDS: McCain and his people were apprehensive that she would catch fire in Iowa because they've stopped... they're out of Iowa -- they were fearful that she would come out of Iowa, Mrs. Dole, as the challenger, as the upstart, as the underdog with all the media attention. But I don't... I guess I take exception to Elizabeth, those people in the black, short dresses you mentioned with the pearls and whatever else, I think it makes it a lot more sense for the Republican Party to nominate a woman on the ticket than it does for the Democrats -- I mean because if you're going to close that gender gap, which has dogged the Republican party, a woman on the ticket has to help.

GWEN IFILL: Final word, Elizabeth.

ELIZABETH ARNOLD: Final word: I'd say that I talked to a number of people at her rallies and her fund-raisers, and generally they're weighing the decision between Bush and Dole, so I'd say most of her following goes over to George W. Bush.

GWEN IFILL: Thank you. Shields, Gigot and Arnold, thanks for coming by.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, changes in Indonesia, a military school in Chicago, and a David Gergen dialogue.

FOCUS - ELECTION TURMOIL

JIM LEHRER: Indonesia picks a new president. We start with two reports from Jakarta, the first by Mark Austin of Independent Television News.

MARK AUSTIN: This evening Jakarta is once again a capital in chaos. Riot police firing into rampaging crowds, and as a day of violence and death draws to a close, one of the city's biggest buildings, the convention center, is burning. The hope was that democracy would bring peace to Indonesia, but in the event on the streets outside the country's parliament today, there were running battles with police. These are supporters of the defeated presidential candidate Megawati Sukarno Putri, supporters who had threatened violence if she lost, and carried out their threats within minutes of the vote being announced. Hundreds of police were brought in to confront the angry mobs, but neither tear gas nor rubber bullets could contain them. One policeman was singled out for attack bythe crowd, and his life in danger, he was pulled to safety by security men. Amid the mayhem, several explosions. This car bomb is reported to have killed two people and injured dozens more. There were two other bomb blasts in Jakarta throughout the day. Earlier it had all looked very different for the Megawati camp. With President Habibie out of the race, she looked to be favorite. The ruling Gulcar Party didn't even field the candidate. Instead, they threw their weight behind Abdur Rahman Wahid. The near-blind cleric heads Indonesia's largest Muslim organization. He's a charming, wily man who once supported Megawati, but after suffering two strokes, he hardly looks like presidential material. The ballot was tense and close.

IAN WILLIAMS: Wahid's victory was quickly celebrated by the Muslim parties. They dislike the idea of a secular woman as president. Riot police were deployed to the gates of parliament. Thousands of Megawati supporters had flooded into the city. To them, their Mega had a moral right to the presidency, her party having won the majority of the vote at the general election. At first, they thought she had won; any other result seemed inconceivable. But then the grim reality set in and there was anger. Megawati has appealed to her supporters to clear the streets and accept the result. But right now, that's the last thing on the minds of those who feel they were robbed of the presidency. The violence didn't prevent the swearing in this evening of Wahid as president. Most agree he's a moderate and honest man. He won widespread respect during the harsh Suharto era for standing up to Indonesia's old dictator. The violence was continuing tonight. Political stability looks as elusive as ever for the world's fourth most populous country.

JIM LEHRER: And to Ray Suarez.

RAY SUAREZ: For more we get the views from three people who know Abdur Rahman Wahid, the newly elected president of Indonesia: William Liddle is a professor at Ohio State university specializing in Indonesia, and Southeast Asia; Sidney Jones is executive director of Human Rights Watch Asia-- she lived and worked in Indonesia and has been going there often over the past 20 years; and Jeffrey Winters is an associate professor of political economy at Northwestern University.

Well, Jeffrey Winters, how did it happen? This was a man who, up until a couple of days ago, wasn't even running for president. And just a few moments ago we saw him being sworn in.

JEFFREY WINTERS, Northwestern University: Well, it happened because there's a disconnect in Indonesia between what happens in the voting in June and what happens in the national assembly. The national assembly is only partly democratic. It had a huge number of appointed people, and it turns out that in a direct election, clearly someone like Megawati was favored. Her party, which she was the identified leader of, won by a 12 percent margin over the next contender behind. But the MPR, the People's Assembly, is a very different kind of institution that disfavors someone like Megawati. It favors someone who is a deal-maker, someone who is infinitely malleable, someone who can cut deals with... and also compromise principles, and that would be someone like Gustur and not someone like Megawati. She simply, at a certain point, was unwilling to cut some of the deals that she would have had to in order to win in that assembly. So her strong principled stand on a number of issues that gave her the victory in the general election proved to be a liability in the People's Assembly.

RAY SUAREZ: At the White House, Joe Lockhart and the President called this a victory for democracy. Was it?

JEFFREY WINTERS: It's a partial victory for democracy. I mean there's no doubt that today, October 20, 1999, the new order is finally finished, and Indonesia has had an election and they've gone through the constitutional process. There's no doubt that it is a democratic step forward. But it is a diluted one in the sense that -- and we saw it with the anger in the streets-- in the sense that there's a disconnect between what the people expected and what they hoped, the direct sentiment of demanding change and demanding someone like Megawati, and what happened in that assembly, where the opportunities for bringing in all kinds of interests and groups who don't necessarily represent people across the society, it was an opportunity for them to really take the lead and determine the outcome.

RAY SUAREZ: Sidney Jones, you know Abdur Rahman Wahid, maybe you could tell us what Americans should know of him.

SIDNEY JONES, Human Rights Watch Asia: Well, he's now 59, and as you saw, he's very frail after two strokes. But he's somebody who all of his life has had a record of taking a very independent, very pluralist, very open stance, both toward religions, other religions in Indonesia, especially Christians, but also toward other minorities, including Chinese. And that's a rarity in Indonesian politics. He's someone who's the leader of an organization called the Naktulama, which has 30 million members and because he's kind of a traditional leader of that organization, he brought with him a huge number of votes that could be used in this kind of political dealing that Jeff was talking about. He's somebody who will have political debts to pay to some of those who put him in power, and some of those people have ties to the whole Suharto and Habibie era. But the kinds of stance he's taken in the past are ones that give us hope that human rights will be a priority on his agenda. But he's got with a huge number of problems, obviously, that he's got to confront.

RAY SUAREZ: By all accounts, William Liddle, a defender of democracy, a champion of minorities, but also someone called erratic. Why?

WILLIAM LIDDLE, Ohio State University: Well, he is erratic. I think for his whole career, actually, he's been such a skillful political infighter a good deal of the time, that sometimes he outfoxes himself and takes some positions that get him into trouble with his most basic supporters. In recent years, and especially in the last couple of years, since his stroke in January of 1998, most of the people who are close to him, when you ask them how Gustur is doing these days, they say that his thought processes are not as clear as they used to be. So he can make some decisions that baffle people. An example just recently, just a few days ago, is that he said that he is going to sue the news magazine "Tempo" for misquoting him. And I looked at the quote and it's quite a harmless quote, so I don't know what he's reacting to but it's that sort of thing that he's done quite frequently recently.

RAY SUAREZ: Just a few days ago when B.J. Habibie was still a candidate, General Wiranto took himself out of the running for vice president. Now that Abdur Rahman Wahid is president, can we see General Wiranto rise again as vice president?

WILLIAM LIDDLE: Well, we could see him rise again. Basically, I think the greater probability is that Akbantagu, the leader of the Golkar Party, many of whose votes I think went to Abdur Wahid in this presidential election, I think that there's there is a greaterchance that Akbar will be asked to be the vice president, but Abdur Wahid has pretty good relationship with the Indonesian military in the 1980's and it's conceivable that he will think that a good course to follow is to make Wiranto his vice president.

JEFFREY WINTERS: I think I would throw in that -

RAY SUAREZ: Go ahead.

JEFFREY WINTERS: -- if he does do that, the kind of outcry that we saw in Jakarta today and tonight could multiply and become government destabilizing because this would really rankle the students in particular who have demanded clearly and consistently that the armed forces not be given a position in the government. And it would be, I think, a fatal mistake on Abdur Rahman Wahid's part if he does go ahead with Wiranto, who by the way was one of the architects of the scorched earth policy in East Timor and could face in the future war crimes hearings and so on related to what happened in Timor. So that would severely complicate his relations with the... the government's relations with outside parties, like the United States, Europe, Australia and so son, and it would also I think severely compromise his position domestically.

SIDNEY JONES: And it's not just a question of who he has as a vice president, which to some degree is out of his direct control because that's an election process that will take place tomorrow and there are other candidates whose names may come up, including Megawati and there are even some dark-horse candidates whose names have been mentioned. But it's going to be more interesting to see who he brings into the cabinet because there's a good chance that Wiranto would be kept on as commander of the armed forces. Even that would cause the some kind of outrage that Jeff was talking about before. There are key positions in foreign affairs. Who will be the foreign affairs minister? Who will be the defense minister? Who will have the very key position of home affairs minister at a time when there's a major effort to decentralize power in Indonesia and where there are major rebellions underway now that are challenging the central government in Jakarta? And then of course there's the Justice Ministry, which is also going to be key for transforming Indonesia's legal system into something more akin to that we see in democracies.

WILLIAM LIDDLE: I agree with Sidney. I think it's going to be very interesting to watch out this cabinet is formed. Abdur Rahman Wahid himself said before he was elected president that there were only three cabinet positions that he wanted his own organization to have, one of them is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; one is the Ministry of Education, and the third is the Ministry of Religion. So there are 30, 40 cabinet positions up for grabs. And I suspect that what he is going to try to do is to put together a broadly based coalition government by bringing in people from various political parties.

SIDNEY JONES: But there's another factor that's quite interesting because he has been saying this, that he wants those three ministries for a long time, for at least since the early 1980's. I don't think he ever dreamed that the presidency was a real possibility. That's clearly the best of all, but what he wanted those three ministries for was that he wanted proof that people of a devout Muslim background, what they call a Santri background in Indonesia could rise to political power. They've always been excluded from those key positions, except for the Ministry of Religion. And now he's got the ace, he's got the presidency, and it's going to be interesting to see what he does with it.

RAY SUAREZ: President Wahid's Muslim Party finished in third place in the national elections. It is mostly a party that's put its heft behind religious issues; by common consent this man is no economist, and before all the turmoil in Indonesia began, there were terrible problems with the IMF. Where will they stand in the shakeout of the next couple of months?

JEFFREY WINTERS: If I could jump in here, I'd like to point out that one of the things underlying what my two colleagues have just said is that, with the selection of Abdur Rahman Wahid, we're talking about a major unknown in terms of where this man is going on economic policy, foreign policy, domestic policy. I mean he did not contest the election himself, as a presidential candidate. There has not been talk in the newspapers for weeks or months about who his ministers would be. He has not put forward an economic plan of how he's going to jump-start the economy. Meanwhile, Megawati's team, of course Habibie was in government so we sort of knew what he was doing-- Megawati's team was well-known internationally, had recently attended the IMF meeting, had been putting together materials about what they were going to do across a broad range of policy areas. And so at a time when what Indonesia really needs is political and economic certainty, what they've gotten is someone who never even really contested the presidency in the first place and someone who we're going to have to spend the next several weeks guessing about. That is an inauspicious way, I think, to be coming out of this process. And it could spell trouble. One of the immediate reactions in Jakarta was a fall of the rupia and of the stock market upon the announcement of Abdur Rahman Wahid's victory. We have yet to see how the international community is going to respond.

SIDNEY JONES: But my guess is that he's going to...

RAY SUAREZ: Let's go to William Liddle for a final comment.

WILLIAM LIDDLE: I'd like to start with the glass half full, rather than the glass half empty. I guess the sense that Jeff is exaggerating the nature of the problems that the Wahid government is likely to face. I think Abdur Rahman Wahid, compared to Megawati, I think we have to realize that Abdur Rahman Wahid has a very long history here, as Sidney was saying before, of religious tolerance, of a commitment to democracy and indeed to a commitment to a kind of democratic socialism. So he has egalitarian goals for his society and so forth. I think we also have to remember that he's a very sophisticated fellow who's traveled around the world quite a bit, studied abroad and so forth. He's been a player also, a major player, which Megawati was never was in the political system for the last 20 years. So that I think he's fully cognizant of the demands that the IMF and the World Bank and other international, financial institutions have been making on Indonesia. He's aware of the Bank Badi scandal; he knows that he has to act quickly in response to that, and so forth. So I'm optimistic that he will pick the kinds of ministers who will be able to restore that economic confidence.

RAY SUAREZ: A brief final comment, Sidney Jones?

SIDNEY JONES: No. I just think that we need to wait and see. But everything he's done in his past history as head of the Muslim organization I think gives us hope that we'll be in the right direction, and we just hope that he can physically stay strong enough to keep it up.

RAY SUAREZ: Sidney Jones, guests, thanks for being with us this evening.

FOCUS - DRILLING FOR SCHOLARS

JIM LEHRER: Mixing public education with military discipline. Elizabeth Brackett of WTTW, Chicago reports.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Delareese Jackson's day begins early. The teenager is out of bed at 4:00 A.M. It's still dark when she leaves the house on the south side of Chicago for the 45-minute ride on two buses to her high school.

SPOKESPERSON: Forward, march.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: What makes Jackson willing to get up and get to school by 6:30? The Chicago military academy, Bronzeville, the nation's first public high school run by the Army's Junior Officer Training Corps.

SPOKESPERSON: Left, left, right, left.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: The Chicago military academy was a dream of many in Chicago, but the guiding force was the current superintendent, Retired Brigadier General Frank Bacon.

BRIG. GENERAL FRANK BACON (RET.): We're not training soldiers here, we're training students. Our goals here is 100 percent graduation, 90 percent of that group go to college, and 90 percent of that group will graduate from college, and 70 percent will go on scholarships that we are able to identify here at this school.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: If this first class of 148 cadets-- so far, only freshmen are enrolled-- can meet those goals, they will be far ahead of other Chicago high schools. Only 33 percent of Chicago high school students read at the national average, and the dropout rate is 42 percent. School CEO Paul Vallas sees the military model as one answer to Chicago's troubled high schools.

PAUL VALLAS, CEO, Chicago Public Schools: I think the military model is beneficial because it places young people in a training environment where academics is not only stressed, but also where discipline is stressed. It places them in an environment where they are put through programs and put through exercises that are designed to help them develop a sense of self-esteem.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: The discipline was one thing that drew Delareese Jackson to the academy.

SPOKESPERSON: Very good.

CADET DELAREESE JACKSON: I like it. I mean, I feel that we should have discipline or... you know, because some kids, their parents didn't discipline them as well as they should have. So for some kids, this would be a good break.

SPOKESPERSON: Left, left, left, right, left. Left, left, left...

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: George Washington's self- esteem went way up after his recent promotion to cadet first sergeant.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: What do you like about it?

CADET GEORGE WASHINGTON: The chance to be a leader over the rest of the 148 cadets, and teaching them what to do and how to do it, and taking responsibility for what they do.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Even those who have opposed military recruiting in high schools and colleges in the past have come out in support of the academy. That's partly because the academy has taken steps to head off such potential critics by being very clear in its goals. Colonel Charles Fleming is the commandant and principal of the academy.

COLONEL CHARLES FLEMING, Principal/Commandant: We are not a recruiting ground for the military. There is no military obligation at the end of their tour with the Chicago Military Academy, Bronzeville. But we're using the military methodology to teach kids.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: The 13 staff-members are Chicago public school teachers. Five have military backgrounds, and two of them pick up a check from the military as well as the school board. Students take a standard college preparatory curriculum, along with military history and military science. All classes emphasize the military method.

COLONEL CHARLES FLEMING: In the military, we're required to taken an M-16 apart and put it back together in a certain amount of time. If you do that, you get a goal. If you don't do that again, or if you don't do it, you would get retrained, and you would get retrained to the point of the time that, you know, you get that mission accomplished, that task accomplished.

SPOKESPERSON: You pray, Dana.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: There are no special entrance requirements for the academy. Any eighth-grade graduate can apply. 75 percent of the academy cadets come from homes with incomes below the poverty line. 79 percent are black, 16 percent Hispanic, 5 percent white or Asian. English teacher Barbara Vines:

BARBARA VINES, Teacher: That's the essence of the school, is to not make it selective. We want to take your average student, the student that comes out of anyone's home every day, and make him a successful student.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Parental involvement is key at the academy. Though it is a public school, parents are required to sign contracts saying their children will follow the rules of the academy. Melanee Debro has been amazed at the changes in her daughter.

MELANEE DEBRO: I see her in the morning, and she has this green military uniform on, and she's a totally different person when she puts it on. She really seems to be military. From a child that's coming from eighth grade that wore blue jeans and gym shoes and T-shirts, and now she's straight-laced, creased, and all that, it's kind of weird, but it's a good weird.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Debro had thought of a military academy for her daughter Brittany several years ago.

MELANEE DEBRO: She had gotten kind of out of hand, and I called about Howe Military Academy... I think it's in Indiana somewhere, and found out that their military academy is $25,000 a year, okay? So Chicago public school military academy is a much better opportunity.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: The general agrees. How is this different than, say, St. John's military academy?

BRIG. GEN. FRANK BACON (RET.):$26,000 cheaper. We charge nothing here.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: As these young cadets march, General Bacon also hears the footsteps of past soldiers. The Eighth Regiment Armory Building that houses the academy first opened its doors in 1915.

BRIG. GEN. FRANK BACON (RET.): It was the armory, the armory that the black troops were assigned to and were able to drill in and to have their units stationed in. Prior to that, they had no place to be.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: The eighth regiment sent black troops off to war right through World War II and Korea. And it was the dream of the community to save the historic building that had been so much a part of African-American history in Chicago.

BRIG. GEN. FRANK BACON (RET.): It was the center of the social fabric for the entire Chicago south side.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: The armory event historian Dempsey Travis remembers was on June 27, 1937: The battle of the big bands.

DEMPSEY TRAVIS, Historian: There must have been 5,000 people. The lead band was Roy Elridge, and then Goodman moves in with his 16 pieces, with Krupa on the drums and Harry James, and just tore the place up with "King Porter Stomp." He opened it up, and it looked like the roof literally lifted up into the skies.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Forty years later, much of the roof was opened to the skies, but neglect, not music, was the cause. After the armed forces were integrated in the 1950's, the armory was no longer needed. Numerous renovation plans were put forward, but the armory's deterioration continued. Finally, General Bacon and others convinced school CEO Paul Vallas to buy the armory.

PAUL VALLAS: There was a tree growing out of the ceiling. At the top of the armory, at the roof of the armory, there was a tree. So, you know, I said to myself, "oh, God, did we bite more off than we could chew?" I said, "we're never going to be able to restructure this."

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: It took a year and $14 million to renovate the building. Now some of the proudest families of the new academy are those with ties to the old 8th Regiment.

SPOKESPERSON: World War II, they were with the 92nd Division.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Cadet Lavin Curry's father, retired Colonel Melvin Mabry, joined the army in 1941, and remembers the armory.

COLONEL MELVIN MABRY (RET.): The armory itself was sort of like a... it was like a Disney, you know? It was polished and shiny. The floor was shining and spotless. I saw it fall in disarray and all, and really I thought it was gone forever.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Curry has heard the tales of the old armory.

CADET LAVIN CURRY: I hear that it has been in the army for segregated colored troops. So they're really trying to build it up. That's why people really shine when we say we go to Bronzeville. They think back to the armory, and how it used to be, and they built that back up.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Mabry thinks the experience at the academy will change his son's life.

COLONEL MELVIN MABRY (RET.): It took him out of one world and put him in another world. You know, where you see the kids with the trousers almost down to their knees and their shirt hanging out? Well, he's in a different environment now, and that should mold him into good leadership.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: School administrators see the academy as an option for changing urban school systems.

SCHOOL ADMINISTRATOR: This is a model that we're going to continue to expand throughout the system. (Trumpet playing)

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: The Chicago Military Academy will add a new class every year. When this class graduates in 2003, all four classes will be in place, and this public school military academy will have brought back much more than a building to Chicago's south side.

DIALOGUE

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, a Gergen Dialogue about another form of education. David Gergen talks to Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children's Defense Fund and author of "Lanterns: A Memoir of Mentors."

DAVID GERGEN: Marian, your new book is about the way caring adults can help and shape, inspire the lives of young people. That's happened in your own life, and now you're trying to carry on that tradition. Tell us about some of the people who inspired you.

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: Well, this is a book about the great natural mentors in my life, my parents, my community co-parents, and some of the most important people were well-educated, but some didn't have a whole lot of education formally, but who really were like community elders who cared for kids as if they were their own. I have portraits in here of Ms. Tea Kelly and Ms. Lucy McQueen and Ms. Kate Winston, who were community women and women of faith who instinctively knew what Walker Percy wrote about, and that is that you can get all A's and still flunk life. And they cared for me as if I was their own child, and the other children in the community. They were like Ms. Oseola McCarty, who died not too long ago, and everybody was so surprised that this black washerwoman would give $150,000 to the University of Southern Mississippi to educate children who didn't, to give them a chance that she didn't have. But I knew Ms. Oseola in less dramatic ways all of my life, and it's so wonderful to be able to say thank you in this book to them.

DAVID GERGEN: Those are the people who helped you in your early days when you were in South Carolina, a segregated town. Then you went on to Spellman, and you had new mentors who came into your life.

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: I had great mentors during my college years, most of whom were men, though there were great women, like Ella Baker and September Clark. But Dr. Benjamin E. Mays was the president of Moorehouse College and a great educator and man of faith, who was Dr. King's mentor. And I had Dr. King, who was a very integral part of my life. And the diary that I kind of discovered 40 years later talked about the first time of hearing dr. King in the chapel at Spellman College, and what I remembered about him was that he was a great prophet and a wonderful man who led the Civil Rights Movement, but he was also a man who was not afraid to tell young people he didn't know what he was going to do next, and how afraid he was. But I had two messages that came through from him and Dr. Mays that keep me going a lot today, and that is keep moving. He used to preach in the chapel and elsewhere that, you know, if you can't fly, drive. If you can't drive, run. If you can't run, walk. If you can't walk, crawl. But keep moving. Dr. King used to always say, as well, and Dr. Mays' life reflected it, that you have to walk by faith and not just by sight. And because you can't see the whole stairway doesn't mean you don't stop, and you start and let God do the rest. And so these were wonderful voices of faith, but who spent time with us translating that faith into action and into the Civil Rights struggle. And one of the striking things about this diary that prompted this book is how much time young people spent with adult mentors like Dr. King and Dr. Mays in changing the world around them.

DAVID GERGEN: Can you tell us about the diary?

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: I lived with William Sloan Coffin when I was a Yale law student, and I left that diary and a lot of other things in the basement of his house, or the attic of his house. And the successor to him, his chaplain, his wife, discovered this book, couldn't read my writing, took it with them and kept it for a number of decades, but then one day sat down, figured out who it was, sent it to me, and what a gift of memories it was.

DAVID GERGEN: And that became the basis of this book?

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: That became the basis of this book. And I hope other young people will keep journals because it was a wonderful outlet, and you forget so much that you want to remember and need to remember.

DAVID GERGEN: How do you think about mentoring today?

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: Well, I hope that there are enough adults of faith and in our homes who will remember the sense of what's important in this world that now tells young people that it is about money, it is about power, it is about extrinsic measures. And we've got to go back and say, well, there are some enduring values that come out of our Judeo-Christian, Muslim, Islamic traditions, that what's important is really what's inside. I think that we have, and hope we can stop and think about the spiritual anchors our children need, because so many are struggling with all the violence around them, all of the incessant focus on materialism. They don't know that life can be more than an appetite for more and more things. I think that that lack of a sense of purpose to something beyond self is why so many young people are committing suicide, so many Americansare alienated. And so because of the depersonalization, all of the external changes, the more we need to reweave the fabric of family and spirituality and community.

DAVID GERGEN: You've undertaken an effort on your own part to help mentor young people today. Can you tell us about that?

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: Well, the Children's Defense Fund is really concerned about training a successor generation of leaders. We have got to create the same kind of opportunities for service, for advocacy, to give them a sense that they can change things. You know, life seemed rather impossible back then in terms of changing segregation, but again leaders struggled with us, our parents struggled with us. And so we've got to do that today. And through the Haley Farm, which the Children's Defense Fund bought, we are training hundreds of young leaders, connecting them to each other, and they are in turn going out to serve children in disadvantaged areas every summer in freedom schools.

DAVID GERGEN: Now, the Haley Farm is about 150 acres in Tennessee.

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: Uh-huh.

DAVID GERGEN: And people come there during the summer.

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: People come there year-round, thousands, and we are trying to connect all of these people who are doing good all over this country, but who need to form a community with other people who are doing good. We bring young people, we bring people of faith, divinity students, we bring juvenile court judges. And we try to bring them all together so that we can begin to sow the seeds for, I hope, the next movement of the 20th century, which is to leave no child behind and to see that all of our children get the healthcare and education that they need.

DAVID GERGEN: Now, you went back and looked at your diary 40 years later, and you said how striking it was that people like Martin Luther King spent as much time with you, and personal time inspiring you. Now, here's Marian Wright Edelman, head of the Children's Defense Fund, and she's in demand all over the country, indeed all over the world. How do you spend time with... how do you make time to nurture young people today?

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: Well, we try to be accessible through Haley. We bring Andy Young, I go down, Fred Shuttlesworth, other great leaders of the Civil Rights Movement come, and we spend time. Howard Zen, my old mentor, and John Eggerton, we come and we have workshops and spend weekends telling stories. I've been bringing back a lot of the great mentors here-- Ms. May Bertha Carter-- so that children can hear those stories. They don't know their history, they don't know all the things that went before them, and so we are bringing adults and young people together to learn from the past. And I try to engage in that, and we have many interns at the Children's Defense Fund, so that they can be engaged with us in change.

DAVID GERGEN: Do you have any counsel for those people who don't have the opportunity to start up a place like that, who are out in a...you know, living out in a mid-sized town in America and would like to be...you know, have a relationship with young people, would like to nurture someone? How should they go about it?

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: Well, I think the first thing is that everybody should understand that the most important mentoring role is as a parent, and we need to live what we preach. And we need to be good neighbors, because children watch us, and if we're people of faith, we need to practice that faith in action. And so being a good moral example is the first thing, because I think that the numberone problem in America is adult hypocrisy. Children are confused because we adults, in our homes and our churches and synagogues, tell them one thing and then we do another. Secondly, I think that we can try to figure out a way to take responsibility for one child not our own. Some of us can mentor for an hour a week. That's good. But if you can't, then support a mentoring program. Support youth development programs, support those folks who are working. Sponsor a child to come to a freedom school, to buy the books for that freedom school. Everybody can find a way to make the life of a child different. I also hope that we will all think, whether we run a corporation or we are a lawyer or we are in public life, whether the decisions that we make every day in our professional roles, if we've taken care of our personal example, is going to make it easier for an eight-year-old or nine-year-old to grow up healthier or educated or not...or less well so. And we've got to learn how to begin to say that voting for our children and making sure that we are providing the things that they need to carry on the values and institutions of this country are being put into place. Let's value our children by our actions.

DAVID GERGEN: Marian Wright Edelman, thank you.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Wednesday: Elizabeth Dole quit the race for the Republican presidential nomination, citing fund-raising problems. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up for the third day in a row, and Indonesia's parliament elected a Muslim leader to be the country's next president. We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.