The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington.

MR. MacNeil: And I'm Robert MacNeil in New York. After the News Summary this Tuesday, we have a report from Charlayne Hunter-Gault in Somalia, then a Newsmaker interview with the commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Carl Mundy, then we have excerpts from President Bush's review of his own foreign policy. Finally, day two of the Clinton economic summit with excerpts and analysis by Paul Solman and Elizabeth Drew. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: For the second straight day Bill Clinton met with top business leaders and scholars on ways to revive the nation's economy, but he got more unsettling evidence of just how difficult it will be. Computer giant IBM today announced it plans to cut 25,000 jobs next year and may be forced to lay off workers for the first time in its history. The company already eliminated 40,000 jobs this year through voluntary buyouts and early retirement. Big Blue, as it's called, also said the move will result in a $6 billion charge against fourth quarter earnings, and it may have to cut its dividend. On Wall Street, IBM's stock tumbled nearly $7 a share on the news. At the economic conference in Little Rock, Gov. Clinton reacted to the announcement. He spoke after hearing some cautiously optimistic assessments about the economy.

PRESIDENT-ELECT CLINTON: To try to reinforce the let's don't get too rosy thing, and I basically am positive, but I just think you all ought to know just to illustrate the points that have made that just this morning IBM announced they would cut their work force by 25,000, and for the first time in history we'll have to use layoffs unless the economy picks up. Product development will be cut by a billion dollars, the exact thing we don't want them to be cutting.

MR. MacNeil: We'll have much more on the economic conference later in the program. There was some good news on the nation's overall trade deficit. The government said it shrank by 20 percent in the third quarter just over $14 billion. The Commerce Department attributed the improvement to a rising service and investment income from overseas. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Hundreds of U.S. and French troops headed today for Baidoa, one of the Somalia towns hardest hit by civil war and famine. They started from Mogadishu and tonight are reported to be about halfway to an air base at Bale Dogle. We'll have more on that right after this News Summary. President Bush said today U.S. involvement there represented the kind of role the United States should play in the post Cold War era. He said it in a foreign policy address at Texas A&M University.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Our choice as a people is simple. We can either shape our times, or we can let the times shape us, and shape us they will at a price frightening to contemplate. A failure to respond to massive human catastrophes like that in Somalia would scar our, the soul of our nation. There can be no single or simple set of guidelines for foreign policy. We should help.

MR. LEHRER: We'll have more excerpts from that speech later in the program.

MR. MacNeil: Vice President Dan Quayle was in El Salvador today for a ceremony formally ending that country's 12-year-old civil war. Quayle announced the U.S. would forgive most of El Salvador's $600 million debt. He said it would help El Salvador through its first stages of recovery from war. As many as 75,000 people died in the conflict. A kidnapped Israeli border policeman was found dead today in the occupied West Bank. Israeli Prime Minister Rabin vowed to strike back against the fundamentalists who abducted him two days ago, but he said the killing would not derail the Mideast peace talks. Israeli officials arrested a Palestinian reporter for Reuters News Agency today. State-owned Israeli Radio said he was detained because he received a phone call from the policeman's kidnapper. News organizations and human rights groups protested the action to Israel.

MR. LEHRER: The 52-nation Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe called today for U.N. Security Council consultations on enforcing a no-fly zone over Bosnia. The meeting was in Stockholm, Sweden. Serbian warplanes are reportedly violating a U.N. ban on flights over Bosnia almost every day. Russia's new prime minister pledged to deepen his country's free market reforms. Viktor Chernomyrdin told reporters, "There is no way back." But he also said there would be some unspecified changes in emphasis. He and President Yeltsin met with German Chancellor Kohl today. Yeltsin told Kohl the reforms were safe with the new prime minister.

MR. MacNeil: The so-called "suicide doctor" helped two more terminally ill women to kill themselves today in Michigan today. Dr. Jack Kevorkian has assisted in the deaths of eight women. Previous murder charges against him were dropped because Michigan had no law against assisted suicide. Today's deaths came just hours before Michigan's governor signed a bill making assisted suicide a felony.

MR. LEHRER: There was another riot in south central Los Angeles last night. Fifty-five people were arrested for throwing rocks and bottles and for looting a gas station. They had gathered to demonstrate support for four black men accused of beating a white truck driver during the April riots. Police said the neighborhood was quiet today. A student at a small Massachusetts college went on a shooting spree with an automatic rifle. He killed a teacher and another student and wounded four other people. Wang Lo from Billings, Montana, was arrested. He pleaded innocent to the shootings at Simons Rock College in Great Barrington. Police said they knew of no motive.

MR. MacNeil: That's our News Summary. Now it's on to Somalia with Charlayne Hunter-Gault and the Marine Corps commandant, Bush foreign policy, and Clinton's economic summit. FOCUS - SOMALIA DIARY

MR. LEHRER: We begin tonight with the man in charge of the U.S. Marine Corps, the commandant, General Carl Mundy. A force of his Marines landed in Somalia six days again on a humanitarian mission aimed at saving thousands of people from starvation. Today they passed by an abandoned air base at Bale Dogle on the way to Baidoa, where death and fear rule supreme. Charlayne Hunter-Gault went with them, and here is her report.

SPOKESMAN: It's the cutoff here. This is the last vehicle that's going out there with the convoy.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: The first Marine convoy to deploy to the interior of Somalia is lining up now, getting ready to go.

SPOKESMAN: We have authorization for, if you see a technical, for, if they're hostile towards us, you can shoot back at them. That's only if they are pointing their weapon at us, we can shoot at them, all right? Is everybody clear on that? All right.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What are your expectations for this mission?

LANCE CPL. MATT CAIN, U.S. Marine Corps: Well, you know, you always expect the worst, you know. We really don't know what's out there. Like, you know, there's a lot of people, undisciplined people with rifles and guns and ammunition. No telling what they might do, you know. A lot of hungry people out there and it's their country. It's their territory. So you always got to just be alert, expect the worse.

SGT. KEVIN LEACH, U.S. Marine Corps: I think it's going to be a good mission. It's a good cause, you know. I think we're going to do a lot of good, see a lot of suffering maybe, but I think it'll turn out good.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: The whole town, it seems, has turned out for this deployment. I haven't seen this many people on the streets of Mogadishu since we arrived last week, but they're generally in a joyful mood, as you can see along the streets, business as usual, people getting haircuts and shaves and commerce going on, and it's almost as if there were two separate cities here and two separate realities.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Major, we've been a little more than three and a half hours on the road. What is this?

MAJ. KEN ROBERTS, U.S. Army: What this is, is an old MiG airfield here in the town of Bale Dogle. It was one that we've just recently gone into. This is a distribution center. One of the things that took place here was prior to the arrival of the U.S. Marines, the ambassador met with the city, the town elders, and basically worked out a food for arms exchange, so as a result, when the Marines came here, it was just a matter of coming in, gathering up those arms, assisting in the food distribution, and there was no actual confrontations of any type.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Who, whose region is this?

MAJ. KEN ROBERTS: I don't know. I don't know which faction --

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Controls --

MAJ. KEN ROBERTS: -- controls this area. I can't say for sure.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But people turn in weapons in order to get food?

MAJ. KEN ROBERTS: Yes. The bottom line was they were tired of fighting.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: How secure is this place?

MARINE: It's pretty secure. Just got to watch out where you walk out. Got a lot of unexploded bombs out here and stuff like that. Got to keep your eyes on the ground, walk in the pathway of the trucks that they walked in and just keep on watching where you step.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What are you guys doing?

STAFF SGT. DAVE JAMISON, U.S. Marine Corps: Well, we're just moving out to a staging area right now, is what we're doing.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Your job has been to secure this airport?

STAFF SGT. DAVE JAMISON: It has been, yes, ma'am.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And how long have you been down here?

STAFF SGT. DAVE JAMISON: We've been here two days.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What was it like?

STAFF SGT. DAVE JAMISON: Well, it was pretty simple for the most part, no major problems at all, no resistance whatsoever, so it's really smooth sailing so far.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Was it scary coming in, not knowing what you were going to face?

STAFF SGT. DAVE JAMISON: Well, we didn't know what to expect, but for the most part all the intelligence reports said it was going to be a pretty benign environment. We didn't have much to worry about as far as that goes.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So what are you all going to do, just dig in and stay here?

STAFF SGT. DAVE JAMISON: Well, all we're doing, all we're doing is just moving right now to a staging area. We've dug in already. Our job is done here basically. The army's going to take over for us now.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: As we have heard, the military people here feel that this area is very secure and many of them we've spoken with feel very secure about going on to Baidoa. We'll reach Baidoa sometime very late tonight, and we will be reporting from there tomorrow. NEWSMAKER

MR. LEHRER: Now to General Mundy, the commandant of the Marine Corps. General, welcome.

GEN. MUNDY: Thanks, Jim. Good to be here with you.

MR. LEHRER: What happens when this force arrives in Baidoa? What are they expecting, and what are they supposed to do?

GEN. MUNDY: Well, I think they're expecting to see the situation that we have all seen on television for the past few days, a lot of people that are starving and that are in need of help. They're expected to create a stable environment there in which we can assist those people and get some food stuffs to them, medical treatment, that sort of thing.

MR. LEHRER: Why is it taking so long to get U.S. troops to Baidoa?

GEN. MUNDY: It hasn't really taken so very long. This is a deliberate move, and it follows the necessary build-up of the sustaining base and the logistics and the capability to getting the vehicles ashore and that sort of thing, to get people inland. I think it's worth remembering as we look at the time that it takes us to build up in this particular operation that we have one port. We have only the ability right now to offload to ships there as compared with other places, for example, going in the Persian Gulf, where we had unlimited port facilities. We have one airfield currently that has been accepting the strategic airlift.

MR. LEHRER: That's the one in Mogadishu.

GEN. MUNDY: That's in Mogadishu. And then, of course, we're opening up Bale Dogle. That'll give two airfields capable of receiving flights. But it just takes a while to build up that type of capability. This is a very austere environment. There is not a lot of host nation support there. If you want a forklift, you bring it with you in order to be able to move things around airfields or to get things off ships.

MR. LEHRER: There were -- there are 4,000 American troops there now, is that --

GEN. MUNDY: Four thousand on the ground. I think Gen. Johnson was talking in terms of his whole --

MR. LEHRER: He's the Marine commander on the ground.

GEN. MUNDY: Lt. Gen. Bob Johnson, who is the unified task force commander. About 11,000, but that includes the people that are out on the ships, so there are about 4,000 on the ground.

MR. LEHRER: The expectation of -- probably a mistaken one -- but the expectation among the American public, the lay public was, hey, wait a minute, 1800 Marines were there six days ago, or within a very brief time suddenly there were 1800 Marines, now we're six days later and it's only double the number of troops. Why is it going so slowly? Why is that -- tell me why that isn't slow.

GEN. MUNDY: Well, I think it's slow in terms of what you, you come to do. We came to again create stability in and around Mogadishu to begin with, and that's occurring, as the reports that we've just seen indicate that people are getting haircuts and things like that, that return -- indicate a return to normalcy. In talking with Lt. Gen. Johnson today he tells me that the sounds of gunfire that he heard when he first got into Mogadishu have dissipated, have gone away for the most part. We see some activity in the markets around there, so in other words that stable environment is occurring now, and into that we now introduce the, the logistics elements that enable us to sustain forces to go as far out, for example, as Baidoa. It's about 160 miles from Mogadishu to Baidoa. You've got to have fuel. You've got to have supplies. You've got to have sustainment. We've got to have the ability to keep people out there.

MR. LEHRER: Well, as you know, representatives of the various relief agencies were upset and were saying things public. Where are the Marines? They were supposed to come to Baidoa. They didn't come. People are dying every day and some of the relief workers felt that their lives were in jeopardy and all of that. What is it that they didn't understand?

GEN. MUNDY: I think maybe that we all become impressed by things like Rambo movies where Rambo flies in and shoots up the place and gets back on his helicopter and, you know, saves somebody and takes 'em out. Nobody ever stops to ask where did the helicopter come from, where does gas come from, and where did he get his ammunition resupply from. So I think there's an expectation that, that we can insert United States force and immediately begin to operate widely. You know, Somalia is the size of Texas, in fact a little larger than the size of Texas. It just takes time to build up a sustaining base to enable us then to be able to employ the combat forces. Now, Gen. Johnson has been very wisely bringing in his logistics and his support forces, and then he will flow in the bulk of his operating forces. The 10th Mountain Division that has some of the finest flight infantry in the world is beginning to now arrive. It is a joint operation, and we'll se more combat capable forces that will be the types of organizations that you want to send out to Baidoa.

MR. LEHRER: In general terms though, is it correct then to say that from -- at least from the Marine Corps point of view or the U.S. command point of view -- that things are going just about as well as could be expected?

GEN. MUNDY: I think things are going very well, and I believe that that would be the U.S. view from any quarter that you ask today. Just, again, it's a very deliberate operation, and it's moving according to schedule and going very well.

MR. LEHRER: No surprises?

GEN. MUNDY: No surprises at this point.

MR. LEHRER: Were you surprised by the lack of resistance, the lack of armed combat against the Marines when they first came and the others now?

GEN. MUNDY: No. As a matter of fact, I expected -- if there were surprises, and they were mild surprises, but I thought that there would probably be a period where everybody would withdraw, and that the, you know, the cowboys or the lawless elements that's running around out there would not fire on us or fire at us. And that took place within the first couple of days that we were there when the helicopter was fired on. And there was a lot of gunfire. So I thought there would be a period in which that would cool down, and then it might start back up in the form of snipers or people shooting at helicopters. So --

MR. LEHRER: It hasn't happened?

GEN. MUNDY: To this point, it has not happened substantially but, again, I think that is the creation of the stable environment in and around Mogadishu, and as we move out of Mogadishu, it's reasonable to expect that, you know, we're now going back out among where some of those people have withdrawn, but remember that the faction leaders have stated publicly and have to the best of our knowledge, have informed their elements that they do not seek confrontation with the United States forces.

MR. LEHRER: In the interest of stability, I'm sure you're aware of the fact that Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the U.N. Secretary General, said there will be no real peace, there will be no real stability in Somalia if the Marines, or if the American force or the U.N. force does not, in fact, disarm these warring gangs and the other people with guns. Do you agree with that as a basic premise?

GEN. MUNDY: Well, I understand Mr. Boutros-Ghali's position and, in fact, believe that his representative is over with Mr. Oakley right now in Somalia so that they're, I'm sure, discussing that. Remember that as Generals Hoar and Johnson have been stated our mission is to create a stable environment. It will take some time for us to be able to create that as part of a unified task force comprised of the U.N. forces as well as our own forces. And the United States forces have the complete authority to exercise that degree of action that they need to to disarm people that pose a threat to them or pose a threat to those that they are there to assist or to protect. So I believe if we need to disarm immediately that they have the authority to do that and the commanders on the scene will exercise that authority. Now in the longer context, whether or not we would need to disarm Somalia is a larger question, and I think that it's a longer-term question, and there is time for the political leadership to consider that.

MR. LEHRER: Are there enough American troops in there to do that sort of thing if, in fact, they were ordered to do it?

GEN. MUNDY: Not at the present time.

MR. LEHRER: How many would it take?

GEN. MUNDY: Four thousand -- we've talked about, about twenty- eight thousand would be the force --

MR. LEHRER: But I mean, could 28,000 people, 28,000 U.S. troops, disarm the country of Somalia?

GEN. MUNDY: Again, Jim, Somalia's a big place.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah.

GEN. MUNDY: There are a lot of factions. My inclination is that it perhaps could be done if it wanted to be done, but that would be a very slow and deliberate pursuit, and also it would depend on how it was done because there are incentives. I think there was some mention here in your report tonight of people turning in weapons for food. There is an incentive to do that, or some sort of bounty for your weapon. We've done that before. It's worked successfully. Now there are a lot of weapons over there, so it might take a long time to do that, but it really is not at this point our intent to go up against any of the organized factions. The Somalis, you know, as a nation have the right to bear arms right now, and if they are a threat to us, then we need to do something about it right now. In the longer-term, there might be a need to continue, and we would hope that that could be accomplished peaceably if that decision is made.

MR. LEHRER: General, when you see reports like Charlayne's just now, and you see your young Marines, you know, talking about what it's all about, do you get a little nervous when you think that the U.N. can pass all kinds of resolutions, there can be all kinds of decisions about presidents and prime ministers, and generals and commandants, but in the final analysis it all comes down to the lance corporal with an automatic rifle in his hands to decide whether or not that person standing across the road is friendly or an enemy?

GEN. MUNDY: Yeah. I -- I don't perhaps get as nervous. I get filled with pride and I get filled with confidence. It's always been that way. Generals and politicians have always made policy, but it ultimately is the grunt, as you would not the expression, on the ground that has to make the decision. And the good thing about that is that we have never had any better force in the United States arsenal than we do today in all of the services to be able to make those, those judgments. So I have confidence in them.

MR. LEHRER: As a Marine commandant, are you comfortable with this role for your, for your service, to go in in this kind of operation?

GEN. MUNDY: Yes. It's not the first time that we've done it. It has been, if you will remember back only a short year and a half or so ago that we were in Bangladesh for humanitarian assistance operations after floods ravaged that country. We went into the Philippines for Mount Pinatubo, certainly a little bit less hostile environment in terms of the armed factions that are there, but this is, this is a good use of United States Marines.

MR. LEHRER: But the impression, the image of the Marines is they are the advanced combat unit, it's, it's shoot first, ask questions later kind of thing, and that this seems kind of out of character, at least for the public image, but that's wrong, right?

GEN. MUNDY: It is wrong I think because Marines have -- historically because we are Naval persons and we are around the world, we have been diplomats in a variety of scenarios. Now if you need to go in shooting, you can go in shooting. We have that capability and we have the training to do that, but at the same time, we don't have to do that, and I think this type mission young Americans are concerned, they're compassionate, and they will be interested in helping all they can, so I don't see this as any loss of combat capability for any of the armed forces that are in there in this joint operation.

MR. LEHRER: And so you're comfortable with it. Let's say this thing is successful. In the final analysis, the United States with the U.N. mandate, et cetera, and the U.S. Marines play their role in this, and the people of Somalia are saved. You are comfortable then with somebody then saying, well, the Marines did it in Somalia, the Marines can do it here, the Marines can do it there, that is a legitimate thing from your point of view?

GEN. MUNDY: Well, yeah, because I think generally Marines over time have been used for that. One of the characteristics not exclusive to the Marine Corps, but one of the characteristics of our corps is utility and versatility in a wide variety of things, whether it be going in northern Iraq and helping Kurds, or now in Somalia, or previously, as I mentioned, those other places around the world, or kicking down somebody's door if you need to do that. We can do that too. So there's a lot of, a lot of flexibility in the forward operating forces that you keep out there with, you know, as a Naval forward presence force.

MR. LEHRER: There are a couple of overall defense issues that are, of course, part and parcel to any military action right now, including Somalia, and one of them has to do with -- I'll just ask you directly -- is there anything the male Marines are doing over there in Somalia that a woman Marine could not do?

GEN. MUNDY: Well, male Marines, again, you're in a different -- we are not right now in a combat situation, other than there is some shooting there. I think that the women that are there of all services are performing within those assignments that we --

MR. LEHRER: Are there female Marines there?

GEN. MUNDY: Yes, there are.

MR. LEHRER: What kind of jobs are they doing?

GEN. MUNDY: For the most, they are communications. They are in the logistics elements. They are in the headquarters elements, and generally speaking, where we assign women into about 80 percent of the occupation fields that we have in the Marine Corps.

MR. LEHRER: But they're not, they're not carrying rifles, they're not in that convoy going to Baidoa, and all of that?

GEN. MUNDY: If there are, if they are in that convoy, they're in there as drivers or as vehicle operators or something, but they're not in there as infantrymen or reconnaissance personnel for those, so to speak, direct combat organizations into which we don't as a matter of policy assign women.

MR. LEHRER: And you, you support that policy?

GEN. MUNDY: Which policy?

MR. LEHRER: The police that does not assign women into combat roles?

GEN. MUNDY: Well, yeah. It's my policy in the Marine Corps, so I guess I do support it.

MR. LEHRER: Sure.

GEN. MUNDY: But I support it nationally, yes.

MR. LEHRER: How about -- do you support the, the additional policy, the ban on homosexuals in the military as well?

GEN. MUNDY: I do, Jim. I've thought long and hard about this, as I think all of our military leadership has, and it's a tough issue to address, but on balance, we believe that in terms of good order and discipline and the effectiveness of the force, the team, the cohesion, the camaraderie, all of those things that go into building a very tight military organization, that we are best served by continuation of the ban on homosexuals and gays.

MR. LEHRER: Let's say that President-elect Clinton goes ahead with his stated intention to remove that ban, how will the Marine Corps implement it, and what effect do you think it will have on the Marine Corps?

GEN. MUNDY: Well, remember, first and foremost that President- elect Clinton will be the commander in chief, and that under the Constitution of the United States that I serve under that Constitution subject to the orders of the commander in chief, so I, I acknowledge that responsibility. As to how we would implement it, I at this point would just rather not speculate on that because it would be important first to know precisely what policy we would be operating with. So I think it better to defer any speculation on that until we get a clear --

MR. LEHRER: Is it your view that that would be harmful to the Marine Corps?

GEN. MUNDY: It is my view that it would be counter to good order and discipline in the Marine Corps.

MR. LEHRER: Now, you plan to go see the Marines in Somalia at Christmas, is that right?

GEN. MUNDY: I'll be traveling over in that direction. Yes, I will be there at Christmas.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Well, General, thank you very much for being with us.

GEN. MUNDY: Okay, Jim. Thank you for having me.

MR. MacNeil: Still ahead on the NewsHour, President Bush on his own foreign policy, and the Clinton economic summit. FOCUS - VALEDICTORY

MR. MacNeil: We turn now to some valedictory comments from President Bush. While President-elect Clinton focused on economic issues at his conference in Little Rock today, Mr. Bush assessed some of the foreign policy challenges facing the new President. He spoke at Texas A&M University in College Station, the future site of his presidential library.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Today by the grit of our people and the grace of God, the cold war is over, freedom is carried today, and I leave the White House grateful for what we have achieved together. [applause and cheers] Today we're summoned again, and this time we're called not to wage a war, hot or cold, but to win the democratic peace, not for half a world as before, but for people the world over. The end of the Cold War, you see, has placed in our hands a unique opportunity to see the principles for which America has stood for two centuries, democracy, free enterprise, and the rule of law spread more widely than ever before in human history. For the first time, turning this global vision into a new and better world is, indeed, a realistic possibility. It's a hope that embodies our country's tradition of idealism which has made us unique among nations. Some will dismiss this vision as no more than a dream, and I ask them to consider the last four years when a dozen dreams were made real, the Berlin Wall demolished and Germany united, the captive nations set free, Russia, democratic, whole classes of nuclear weapons eliminated, the rest vastly reduced, many nations united in our historic U.N. coalition to turn back a tyrant in the Persian Gulf, Israel -- [applause] Israel and its Arab neighbors for the first time talking peace face to face in a region that has known so much war, and each of these once seemed a dream. Today they're concrete realities brought about by a common cause, the patient and judicious application of American leadership, American power, and American -- perhaps most of all - - American moral force. And yet, from some quarters we hear voices sounding the retreat. We've carried the burden too long, they say, and the disappearance of the Soviet challenge means that America can withdraw from international responsibilities. And others assert that domestic needs preclude an active foreign policy, that we've done our part. Now it's someone else's turn. We're warned against entangling ourselves in the troubles that abound in today's world, to name only a few, clan warfare, mass starvation in Somalia, savage violence in Bosnia, instability in the former Soviet Union, the alarming growth of virulent nationalism, and it's true, these problems, some frozen by the Cold War, others held in check by communist repression, seem to have ignited all at once, taxing the world's ability to respond. But let's be clear. The alternative to American leadership is not more security for our citizens but less. History is summoning us, once again, to leave. Proud of its past, America must once again look forward, and we must live up to the greatness of our forefathers' ideals and in doing so, secure our grandchildren's futures. And that is the cause that much of my public life has been dedicated to serving. And in -- [applause] -- let me just say this, that in 36 days we will have a new president and I am confident, I am very confident, that he will do his level best to serve the cause that I have outlined here today. And he is going to have my support. [applause] And he will have my support, and I'll stay out of his way, but it is -- and I really mean that -- but it is more important, it is more important than my support, it is more important that he have your support. You are our future. And God bless you.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Bush is expected to deliver at least one more summing up speech before the Clinton inaugural. FOCUS - SETTING THE AGENDA

MR. MacNeil: Finally tonight, the Clinton economic summit, where more than 300 people from all walks of American life have spent two days in non-stop talk about the country's economic problems and how to address them. This morning the question was how to use government spending to help the economy while also tackling the budget deficit. Business Correspondent Paul Solman and Washington columnist Elizabeth Drew will give us their reactions after excerpts from Little Rock. President-elect Clinton again ran the discussion. He heard first from Nobel Laureate James Tobin.

JAMES TOBIN, Yale University: The problem is the demand side problem, that is, there's not enough spending going on by whoever spends, that's consumers, foreigners buying our exports, governments buying goods and services, businesses making investments, so is there a case for stimulus to create the jobs we need by 1996? I think there is.

ALLEN SINAI, Economist: Would investment in short run growth conflict with the goal of reducing the federal budget deficit in the longer run? Not necessarily. It must be noted that faster growth produces additional tax revenues and less government spending on unemployment benefits. Fiscal measures that raise deficits and growth thus will help pay for themselves, although not fully.

CHARLES McMILLION, Economist: Let me say in summary that I believe that our structural problems are more serious than people realize. I think that there is no obvious engine to get us out of this ditch, and I think that the time is now to have a coherent economic strategy for jobs and income growth.

PRESIDENT-ELECT CLINTON: We didn't get into this -- this declining productivity's been going on 20 years. So to say that we ought to have a 30 billion dollar short-term stimulus in year one and then from year two through six we're really going to crack it and cut this debt in half, which turns out to be 100 billion dollars bigger than we thought it was for a year nearly, means that if you sacrifice investment, you still may not get growth, and if you don't get growth, I don't care what our budget plan says, the deficit will be bigger than we estimate because the revenues won't come in to support the new budget package. What we've got to decide to do is what to do, how much and when. And, you know, and I just -- as specific as you can be, you can say, well, if you do this, this is what I think will happen, I'd really appreciate it.

WILLIAM BRANDON, American Bankers Association: If you want to increase lending in the banking system just 4 percent, which we can do, Mr. Sinai, with no effect on safety and soundness, and we can demonstrate that, you would increase the amount of capital coming out $86 billion, which would be a tremendous input back into small business in this country.

PRESIDENT-ELECT CLINTON: You heard the $86 billion figure. I mean, I've just been sitting here all day thinking of this. I went all over the country talking to people who couldn't get loans from banks anymore. They're still the main source of small business credit. If you don't do anything about that, you can run the deficit up another fifty, sixty billion dollars, and we'll still have a very restricted impact I think. Who was next? Ron and Elaine.

SPOKESMAN: I think Barbara wanted to stay on the banking subject.

BARBARA DAVIS BLUM, CEO, Adams National Bank: I just wanted to say one thing. I am the chief executive officer of a bank in Washington, D.C., and the -- you're absolutely right -- banking regulation is holding us back. We're not talking about doing away with prudent banking regulation, but let me give you an example. I think that our loan officers who are our front-line people are afraid to give small business loans now because the requirements are such that you have to do the same kind of write-up and work-up that you do for a Fortune 500, $2 billion back-up line of credit for a $50,000 small business loan, so [a] they're afraid to invest the time [b] because they feel that they'd be, they have an inherent risk, they're afraid to go on the line, because they're afraid they're going to be rapped up the side of the head by regulators. It is true, and these policies affect our cities, our rural areas, and the partially disenfranchised women, minorities, and people who live in the inner-cities and small businesses.

BRUCE LLEWELLYN, Coca-Cola Bottling Company: It's very, very upsetting to me in a way that here we are in 1992, talking about discrimination in loans and mortgages. The Federal Reserve did a study of this the other day to show that minorities still get discriminated against. It's not new. It needs to be looked at once and for all with some commitment about changing the way we go about doing business, and the final thing I would say to you people is the fact that it might seem very smart to talk about law and order, and we're going to put the bad guys in jail, but in New York City it costs about $75,000 a year to lock up people and put them on Rikers Island next to LaGuardia Field. It would be a hell of a lot cheaper to send them to Harvard. And as you see, there's a lot of Harvard people around here so it'd be a good investment. But being a very poor fellow, I went to City College in New York, and I think City College in New York is really what America is all about, and I think if you don't think much of me, I know you'll love my first cousin, Colin Powell. Thank you. [applause]

PRESIDENT-ELECT CLINTON: I wouldn't mind having you in the desert either.

ELAINE KAMARCK, Progressive Policy Institute: Mr. President, Mr. Vice President-elect, I would like as we wrap this part of the discussion up, I'd like to change from the discussion of economic capital to a discussion of political capital because I think, in fact, that's extraordinarily relevant. There's two topics on the table, short-term stimulus and long-term deficit reduction. The first one requires very little political capital. The second one requires enormous amounts of political capital. What we know historically is that presidents come in and they have a honeymoon. That honeymoon lasts six months, if they're lucky. Everybody right now in the country, in Washington, loves you guys, even the Republicans are saying nice things about you. I would suggest that when you have your maximum political capital is in the first six months of this year, you also have a hundred members of Congress, they have come to Washington, they have heard the concerns, the long-term concerns about the economy. They're concerned about cutting the deficits. I think there is an unprecedented opportunity in the first six months of this year to make good on these long- term trends. If you don't do it, what history tells us is that you can't have that time back.

PRESIDENT-ELECT CLINTON: I just want to make one point about this. We're all talking about this stimulus package in the area. Let's just take the low side number, $30 billion, as if the whole future of the republic depended on it. You just heard Mr. Brandon say that a 4 percent increase in bank loans is $86 billion. If you go back and look at why the value budget deal fell on its face it's because we didn't control health care costs and reorganize the health care system, and you can gut these entitlements all you want to but don't forget the Social Security tax is producing a $70 billion surplus. It is a regressive tax. We're already soaking the middle class and the small business community of this country, and they're not overspending in Social Security for the income stream that's going into it. And the truth -- I'm just making the point if Elaine is right -- and I think she is -- then we've got six months to do something on health care. We are kidding each other - - we are all just sitting here making this up if we think that we can fiddle around with the entitlements and all this other stuff and get control of this budget if you don't do something on health care. It is a joke. It's going to bankrupt the country, you know, and the stimulus is peanuts compared to increase in bank loans. So we have to look at -- I don't mean we shouldn't do the stimulus - - I haven't made the decision about how much and what, but I'm just saying, let's don't get fixated on stuff that is not as big as the stuff that's also out there that has to be dealt with. On the spending side it's health care and on the stimulus side it has to be something that gets the private sector more active too. The rest of this government expenditure is just a part of it, I think.

MR. MacNeil: Joining us now are economics and business correspondent Paul Solman of public station WGBH in Boston and Washington columnist Elizabeth Drew. Paul, as a business reporter, what's the story you feel you go away with after watching two days of this?

MR. SOLMAN: Well, the personal story is that even I can take only so much economics on television. Yesterday I think the story was it was diagnosis day. We heard that growth was too slow and unequal, and therefore we have to create jobs, we'd have to invest right away and in our future, but we have deficit, the deficit overhang, and the global economy is in terrible shape. We didn't talk about this last night but Rudy Dornbush of MIT was talking about how bad shape Western Europe is in, Eastern Europe, Russia, Japan, Latin America, very depressing yesterday; today much more encouraging. We have an activist President who's going to intercede in the economy, who seems to have a tremendous grasp of the complexity of the issues, is going to do something aggressive about health care, you've just heard. He's going to invest, although we don't know exactly what he's going to invest in, and neither does he, and he's a President who can talk and listen apparently until the cows come home.

MR. MacNeil: Elizabeth, from a political writer's point of view, what's the story of the Clinton summit, do you think?

MS. DREW: It's a political success. I think it's also probably a success for the country. A lot of people, including I, took a very dim view of this. A lot of Clinton's own aides took a very dim view of this mainly because these people are just stretched so thin now, they have so much to do to get ready to take office, and all the transition activities go well beyond naming people. They're tired. They're overloaded, and we really thought, well, Clinton knows all this. He doesn't really need more briefing. He had briefings out of his ears all year. He's been very serious about it. Well, I was wrong, not that he doesn't know it, but that there wasn't much point in holding this. First of all, I think it showed him at his best, that he's heard all this, he's thought about it, he's processed it, he's serious about the issues that Americans care about most, that he allowed people to feel that they could talk directly to the President of the United States about these things, and he got, I think, Robin, two other things. He got a consensus. There was a consensus over those two days over what are the priorities, and I think that put steam behind his first economic proposals when he makes them.

MR. MacNeil: Paul, did you see a consensus there, a consensus emerging in two days?

MR. SOLMAN: Yeah. I guess -- you know, it's a little hard to tell because it's a stacked deck in a sense. As I said yesterday, he doesn't have right wing economists there, but yeah, there's certainly a sense -- I get the sense anyway that a national leader who's strong can make a difference, you know, a guy who's effective, that you have to invest, that these are hard problems that are no quick fixes to, that you have to attack health care very aggressively. I think there's a consensus around all of those things. He's got some elbow room to maneuver, because he's got inflation -- but he's got --

MR. MacNeil: Do you think there is a consensus on a stimulus package now? Because that's been one of the things in which there hasn't been, and a lot of the, the Bush economists were saying up through the election that the recession -- things were going to improve pretty well on their own.

MR. SOLMAN: You couldn't tell. We heard him say he didn't even know what he was going to do. As between 20 billion a year or 60 billion a year, it looks like it's more likely to be 20 billion. He said today something -- he's talked about deficit reduction. He said, you've go to lock in a commitment so that the markets believe us. He said, Gramm-Rudman didn't do that, you should change Gramm- Rudman somewhat. So he's talking about making a commitment but you can't tell if he's going to do it yet or not, and even we talked to Felix Rohatyn right afterwards, Susan Adams did in Washington, and she said that Rohatyn said, I'm not sure they're going to do stimulus yet. So I don't think he's made up his mind on this.

MR. MacNeil: Elizabeth, do you come away with a clearer sense now from two days of listening to this what, what you think Clinton is really going to do in this, immediately about the economy?

MS. DREW: Well, I think he knows more than he let on in the conference, but if you listen carefully you could hear it. I think we came out of it with a sense that there will be some sort of a stimulus, part of this. The size of it I think they'll decide as late as they can, till they see what the economic figures are. But it won't be your basic old pump grinding stimulus. It won't be Carter's very unsuccessful idea of $50 rebates. It will be stimulus through public works projects that mean something, transportation, things like that, that will -- what they talked about a lot was there are things you can do that are both a short-term stimulus and a long-term economic investment so that they do, they do you some good at both ends of it, and he also intends clearly, he has to bring down the budget deficit and he's been advised, and he's accepted the advice, he has to say that right out front with Congress or they won't approve the rest of his package.

MR. MacNeil: As Paul just said, in an enforceable way.

MS. DREW: Right. He said right there that the Gramm- Rudman-Hollings enforcement mechanisms don't work, and he's right. And I was quite struck over the two days how much he banged on and on and on about health care costs. Now, [a] he's right and [b] it's good politics; [a] he's right that this is the spiraling cost. This is what's making the entitlements, the automatic payments programs, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and so on, spiral out of sight. He also pointed out we don't need to touch Social Security because it's in surplus. True, and also good politics. And instead of whittling away at the medical program, saying you can have less of this and we're going to count how many days you can do that, he's going to tackle the health care costs, and he feels strongly that that is probably the biggest problem in the budget deficit. It's also good politics to focus on that.

MR. MacNeil: I was also struck, and Mr. Clinton himself emphasized it, they've -- with how much emphasis there was on private sector stimulus, and particularly that if you eased up a little bit on the banking regulations and encouraged, pushed the banks, Paul, into lending more freely, he used the figure 87 billion dollars could be released as stimulus into the economy.

MR. SOLMAN: Actually, John Reid, Citicorp, said 100 billion, but that was his independent number. You get a little worried about this. At one point, Laura Tyson, who's going to be the head of the Council of Economic Advisers, said something, that she was a little worried about the idea that you would suddenly just relax bank regulations, a very sort of Republican notion, and that you could get back into the very same problems that got us into the banking problems of the 1980s, but there certainly seemed to be a lot of agreement that you should loosen.

MR. MacNeil: How much real debate have you heard over the last two days? Take today. Has there been a lot of real debate?

MR. SOLMAN: This is not about debate, unless I missed 42 hours of watching this thing -- this is about building consensus. He's got some debate going on there about the budget deficit, for example, about the stimulus package. I think in order to provide credibility, to show he listens to all sides and so forth, but that's not what this is about. He's trying to build a consensus. He's got 329 ambassadors to go out there and now try to promote the program, really the program he talked about in the campaign. He hasn't gone very far from that, same kinds of issues that he's talking about here today, and this reinventing government stuff which we haven't talked about --

MR. MacNeil: I'll come back to that in a moment. Is that how you see it, Elizabeth, that it's really creating consensus, and these people will then go out as, as committed salesmen for, for Clinton's ideas?

MS. DREW: I think it's very much so. Other ways -- I'll come back to that -- other debates were avoided, probably very intelligently. You saw no big fractious debates on how we're going to cut the deficit, other than Clinton's insisting that we have to cut health care costs. You didn't see an argument over whose taxes are going to get raised and when. It was noticeable to me that several times people mentioned raising the gasoline taxes and nobody said anything. It's supposed to be so politically difficult, but even last week Clinton didn't rule that out, but you had -- you didn't have any right wingers there. You didn't have a Republican convention represented there. But you had everything from the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, the centrist wing of the Democratic Party, and quite tellingly, a number of very significant business people who ended up supporting Clinton. Bush could have had these people I think had he shown this kind of attention to domestic issues, but they went over with Clinton. You could see how proud Clinton was to have some of these CEOs there, and this is part of how you build consensus. You have this conference, a lot of people saw it, more people will hear about it. These people will go back to their communities. These are communicators. These are the people who will help build the political backing for what he wants to do.

MR. MacNeil: What -- Paul, you mentioned the reinventing government which was a theme of this afternoon, but what were the most -- maybe that was part of it -- what were the most interesting solutions to some of these problems that you heard put forward?

MR. SOLMAN: I wouldn't say I had -- there were a whole bunch there that, you know, kind of jumped out at you. There was one about soldiers coming back from Europe, let's say, and becoming community service officers, police officers in the inner city. That was one that I read about, but this is the first time I ever heard anybody really talking about it. Michigan planned to give workers a voucher, a smart card, so that they could buy their own job training. Those are two. But in the general category sort of what goes under the rubric mandate for change, the Progressive Policy Institute has put out this book, and it has maybe 140 of these kinds of very innovative ground up economic ideas empowering people working with markets, no more command and control, micromanagment of the economy -- that's a phrase that Clinton used today. Instead, it's ground up, using markets, and that's the way he's going. We didn't see that on the tape, but that was coming up later in the afternoon and there was some testimony to that effect. And I think that's when Elizabeth talks about what's he got that he's not talking about, I think that's, that's a large part of it in that book.

MR. MacNeil: Do you want to comment on that, Elizabeth?

MS. DREW: Well, I think it -- Clinton just loves that stuff. That's when he, I think of all the two days when he sort of reverted to his wonkishness. He just loves to talk about these ideas. I think though if you look at what the agenda of the conference was, you just know that the great bulk of his energies and ideas and thinking and struggling are going to go into these big, hard economic questions. We haven't mentioned foreign policy, but obviously they're going to occupy more of his time than he had hoped, and it also came out in this conference, and he mentioned it, that you can't just try to fix the American economy. You have to try to stimulate the European economy as well. So he has a full plate before he gets to reinventing government.

MR. MacNeil: Elizabeth, I wonder if you were as struck as I was by the sort of atmospherics of this. I mean, some of the things, the way that Clinton and Gore were addressed, he was addressed by one speaker we heard, and "you guys" and "you people." I heard John Jones of the American Stock Exchange describe the whole thing as kind of a sea change in the way the national leadership communicates. Just as a -- what did you think of that and the, the sort of the demeanor of everybody and the atmospherics of it?

MS. DREW: Well, I think we are going to have to get used to the idea that this is going to be an inventive president who is going to communicate with the people and the public and opinion makers even in unconventional ways. This whole thing was unconventional. And I think the fact that he and Gore were sitting there and they're not yet the President and Vice President, people, and a lot of people there knew them very well and had known them over the years, had talked to them, so everybody was kind of finding their own footing, but I didn't find any of that suggesting a lack of respect for him or for the office he's about to take. They're all getting used to the new role, including Clinton and Gore.

MR. MacNeil: Yeah. Paul, what do you think Clinton has achieved by doing this?

MR. SOLMAN: Well, he's convinced people that he's a great moderator of discussions, that he could be a very effective leader. I think even among the media apparently down there, there was a great sense that he had accomplished something. That's what Elizabeth was saying earlier. I was reminded of the fact that this is a guy who listens to everybody, and listens to all sides, and that's his great strength and could also be his great weakness, and because there, after all, is a guy who might be listening to so many sides, and people said this during the campaign, that he, that he can't make up his mind; he wants to please everybody.

MR. MacNeil: He was urged pretty directly and very forthrightly by several speakers today to get on with it and quickly, not waste time, and make tough decisions right way, and not just go on hearing opinions.

MR. SOLMAN: Right. And he's so good at that.

MS. DREW: Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Yeah.

MS. DREW: Robin, I don't think there's any question that that's what he's going to do.

MR. MacNeil: Can you say it in 10 seconds, Elizabeth?

MS. DREW: In 10 seconds, he's going to get on with it. He knows that he doesn't have a lot of time.

MR. MacNeil: Yeah. Nor do we. Thank you, Elizabeth and Paul. Jim. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the other major stories of this Tuesday, IBM announced plans to cut 25,000 jobs next year, and possibly lay off workers for the first time in its history. The nation's overall trade deficit shrank by 20 percent in the 3rd quarter of the year, and hundreds of U.S. and French troops headed for Baidoa, one of the Somalia towns hardest hit by civil war and famine. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Jim. That's the NewsHour tonight. And we'll see you again tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.