The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. Leading the news this Friday, President Bush unveils a new defense strategy, the Senate Judiciary Committee split evenly on whether to recommend Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court, the parking lot confrontation between Iraq and a U.N. weapons inspection team came to an end. We'll have details in our News Summary in a moment. Judy Woodruff's in Washington tonight. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: On the NewsHour tonight, the Thomas nomination is where we go first with Senators pro and con explaining their votes, and what it all means from Nina Totenberg. Then our regular Friday team of Gergen & Shields considers that and the rest of the week's political developments. Next, a conversation with the controversial head of the Food & Drug Administration, David Kessler, and we close with essayist Frank DeFord on baseball's landmark parks. NEWS SUMMARY

MS. WOODRUFF: President Bush goes on television tonight to announce what the White House is calling a turning point in the nation's defense policy. Administration officials said Mr. Bush will unveil sweeping changes in U.S. nuclear weapons strategy, including proposing further cuts in the arsenals of the two super powers. Few other details were available, but the President seemed to give a preview during a ceremony at the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington.

PRES. BUSH: The events in the Persian Gulf, Eastern Europe, and, yes, in the Soviet Union, have changed our strategic defense requirements. Still, military challenges to democracy persist in every hemisphere. America must always be prepared to defend our hard won freedoms and safeguard our own national security. But the new world we've entered means changes in our national security strategy and tonight I will talk to the American people, will discuss on this subject and will discuss what this means for our nuclear weapons programs. In seizing the historic opportunity before us, we will advance the cause of world peace and we will advance the cause of international security.

MS. WOODRUFF: White House Spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said the defense policy would produce "a significant change in defense spending." But he said he did not know how much savings it might generate. The President will speak from the Oval Office at 8 PM Eastern Time. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: A divided Senate Judiciary Committee voted today to send the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Senate floor with no recommendation on whether to confirm him. That came after the committee deadlocked seven to seven on a favorable recommendation. All six Republicans on the committee, along with Arizona Democrat Dennis DeConcini, endorsed Thomas. The remaining seven Democrats opposed him. We'll have more on this story later in the program.

MS. WOODRUFF: The four day deadlock between Iraq and U.N. nuclear weapons inspection team has been broken. The head of the team told CNN by telephone that Iraqi troops surrounding them began pulling back tonight, officially ending the siege. The team has been stranded in a parking lot since Tuesday. The U.N. Security Council yesterday accepted an Iraqi compromise to let the inspectors go once they had provided an inventory of the seized documents. A U.N. spokesman said the team expected to remain in the parking lot tonight and begin an on-the-spot inventory with the Iraqis tomorrow.

MR. MacNeil: PLO Chief Yasser Arafat praised President Bush today. In a speech in Algiers, Arafat said the President took a courageous stand in endorsing the concept of political rights for Palestinians. Bush made the comments yesterday during a visit by Morocco's King Hassan. Arafat claimed it was the first time the U.S. referred to political rights for Palestinians. Arafat was addressing the Palestine parliament in exile, which is meeting to design on participation in a Middle East peace conference next month.

MR. MacNeil: Soviet Foreign Minister Boris Pankin said today he expects Israel and the Soviet Union to restore diplomatic relations before the peace conference. Pankin made the comments after meeting with Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy in New York.

MS. WOODRUFF: Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev today denied an accusation that Soviet troops are behind the current unrest in the Georgian republic. The accusation came from Georgian President Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who today moved to calm dissent in the republic. Troops loyal to Gamsakhurdia seized the opposition's national guard base in the capital of Tblisi overnight. Gamsakhurdia's office denied a Tass News Agency report that his troops killed 60 people in the attack. Opposition leaders accused the popularly elected President of imposing a dictatorship in the republic.

MR. MacNeil: Here at home, President Bush today asked the Federal Reserve Board and bank regulators for help in easing the credit crunch. White House Spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said tough loan terms from the nation's banks were having what he called the chilling effect on the economy. Nevertheless, he said Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan told the President the economy's underlying factors were strong and it is coming out of the recession. The Commerce Department released two economic numbers today. Personal incomes rose .4 percent in August, but consumer spending rose only slightly, up .1 percent. Lawrence Hunter, an economist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said, "Obviously, consumers are not leading the way out of the recession."

MS. WOODRUFF: Federal Aviation Administration officials said today that a Southwest Airlines passenger jet nearly collided with another plane near Chicago last night. Southwestern Flight 768 was carrying 62 people from Detroit, when it passed within 50 feet of a prop plane, just South of Midway Airport. The planes were in an area where normal flight rules require that they be at least three miles apart. An FAA spokesman said he could not remember such a close near collision. That's it for our summary of the day's news. Just ahead on the NewsHour, a split over the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination, Gergen & Shields, FDA Commissioner David Kessler, and a Frank DeFord essay. UPDATE - DAY OF DECISION

MR. MacNeil: We focus now on the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. Today's split vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee sets the stage for a full Senate debate and ends a week of speculation about what the committee's recommendation would be. Before the vote, several members explained where they had come down and why. Correspondent Roger Mudd has our report.

MR. MUDD: This morning, Chairman Joseph Biden ended the suspense. He would vote "no," leaving Dennis DeConcini of Arizona as the lone Democrat voting with the six Republicans in favor of Thomas.

SEN. DENNIS DeCONCINI, [D] Arizona: I must admit I struggled in making this decision. I began my consideration of Judge Thomas with the presumption that the President's nominee was qualified for the job or he wouldn't have sent the name up here. During August recess, I spent a great deal of time reading Judge Thomas's writings, his speeches, and his judicial decisions. I reviewed his record at the EEOC and at the Department of Education. I read analysis of his record prepared by the opponents and the proponents. I talked to many constituents in my state, and after this preparation, I was left with a number of concerns about Judge Thomas. I knew these concerns would only be resolved through the hearing process. After five days of testimony by Judge Thomas and hearing from over 90 witnesses, I came to the conclusion that I could, in good conscience, support Judge Thomas.

MR. MUDD: For more than two hours, members of the committee took turns explaining their vote.

SEN. EDWARD KENNEDY, [D] Massachusetts: The Senate should not give its approval to a nominee who refuses to answer fair questions on issues of bedrock importance to the vast majority of Americans. No one is suggesting that a nominee should jeopardize his impartiality by commenting on specific cases. Judge Thomas readily agreed to answer many questions about various issues before the court. When we contrast that willingness with his reluctance to discuss issues like abortion, it's transparently clear that he was not demonstrating his impartiality but defending his prospects for confirmation behind a stone wall of silence.

SEN. STROM THURMOND, [R] South Carolina: Throughout Judge Thomas's testimony, I believe he demonstrated that he possesses the attributes of a Supreme Court Justice, a keen understanding of the law, the intellectual capacity to deal with complex issues, fairness, patience, and a willingness to be open minded. His testimony related to the right of privacy, criminal law, religious freedom, and many other issues was forthcoming. As well, Judge Thomas clearly explains positions taken in his writings and speeches before his nomination. I found these explanations reasonable and consistent with those earlier speeches and writings. There has been no confirmation conversion.

SEN. ARLEN SPECTER, [R] Pennsylvania: The essential reasons for my supporting Judge Thomas are that I think he is educationally and intellectually and professionally qualified for the job. I think he brings a very, very important measure of diversity to the Court. I think it's very important that an African-American be on the Court now, within the chambers of those nine Justices, that they hear the views of African-Americans in this country.

SEN. PAUL SIMON: So long as Clarence Thomas is on the Supreme Court, it is not probable that another black will be named. That means that for three or four decades, the lone person of African heritage will, if judged by his record, be taking stands that the large majority of African-Americans do not hold. Their voice and yearning for justice will be muted.

MR. MUDD: Some members used their time not to talk about Thomas, but to complain about the confirmation process.

SEN. ALAN SIMPSON, [R] Wyoming: What will the nomination be in the future? The nominee will be a reviewer of videotapes. And they will say to themselves, How did so and so handle that against Sen. So and so, what did he say in answer to that, how do you handle Sen. So and So? It'll be like passing the bar exam. You learn the propensities of the professor and tell him exactly what they want to hear and that'll be the end of that. What does Simpson want to hear? What does Sen. Leahy want to hear? We can tailor that. We can get that. We can maestro that. We've got the tapes. We've got the hearings. We're getting more sophisticated, and on and on it goes, how to answer and how to please, and how to study those tapes and how to get Sen. So and So off your neck, and that's a real travesty.

MR. MUDD: Chairman Biden waited until last.

SEN. JOSEPH BIDEN, Chairman, Judiciary Committee: I might be prepared to vote my instincts and my heart were the state of the court and the state of the nation different than it is now. But I'm not prepared to rest on an instinctual feeling and in my heart at a time when the court is on the verge, separate and apart, from the issue of choice, on the verge of making some truly profound decisions that could reverse the 40 years of progress not only in matters of privacy, but in matters of property, on matters of the relationship between individual rights and property rights. And so I'm casting this vote with my head and not with my heart.

MR. MUDD: Finally, the committee clerk called the role.

CLERK: Mr. Kennedy.

SEN. KENNEDY: No.

CLERK: Mr. Metzenbaum.

SEN. METZENBAUM: No.

CLERK: Mr. DeConcini.

MR. MUDD: As expected, the motion to approve Thomas failed on a seven to seven tie. Then the motion to send the nomination to the floor without recommendation passed 13 to 1, with Simon dissenting. Senate debate on the nomination could start as early as next Thursday.

MR. MacNeil: For analysis of today's vote, we turn to our regular Supreme Court watcher, Nina Totenberg, legal affairs correspondent for National Public Radio. Charlayne Hunter-Gault spoke with her earlier this afternoon.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Nina, thanks for joining us. How surprising was this seven-seven deadlock, and what does it mean?

MS. TOTENBERG: Well, it was very surprising. As of a week ago, none of us would have forecast it, I think. In fact, some of us, I suspect, will lose a few dollars on it. In the last couple of days, once Howell Heflin, the Senator from Alabama, a conservative Democrat, the former Chief Justice of the State of Alabama, once he declared, then I think the seven-seven tie yesterday became a likelihood. It means, Charlayne, that this, this nomination that looked like it was going to be very easy to confirm is now a bit harder. But as Roger Mudd said earlier, in all likelihood, Clarence Thomas will still be confirmed.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, just on the Howell Heflin point, I mean, he generally votes with the White House. Last time, he, a conservative, he voted against Bork because of the pressure from Southern blacks on him. Is he likely to take a lot of Southern Democrats with him on this?

MS. TOTENBERG: It's not clear how many he'll take with him. A number of them who were leaders in the fight against Robert Bork, a number of them, like Bennett Johnston and John Broe of Louisiana, have already declared in support of the nominee. So I think that this is a no pain vote for most Democrats anyway. And each Senator is really free to vote his or her conscience or his or her politics, or his or her wishes.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Is that what we're seeing? I mean, just that litany we've seen recited by the Democrats, there were so many different reasons? Is this partisan politics? Is it really a concern about his qualifications? Is it because Thomas, himself, didn't make a strong case?

MS. TOTENBERG: Well, I think it's a combination of all of those things. And when you add to that the fact that every Senator will say privately, and some of them publicly, look, this is different,this isn't a piece of legislation that can be changed by the next election, or by the next generation, this person is going to sit on the court for possibly four decades, well, well into the 21st century, and even the most partisan of Senators sometimes feels a little differently about a Supreme Court nomination than he does about a pure legislative fight.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Although the Republicans on the committee all voted for him.

MS. TOTENBERG: Well, that -- they feel very strongly that he's qualified and he'd be good on the court, and he also represents their ideology. You have to understand that the Democrats have not had a nominee to the Supreme Court in 24 years. And they have watched the court move from very liberal in the '60s and early '70s to sort of centrist in the late '70s to conservative to now ultra- conservative. They don't like that and they think it's an affront to their views and to the country.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So you think they're trying to send a message of some sort?

MS. TOTENBERG: Well, I think they definitely are trying to send a message. If there are thirty to forty or more than forty votes, it'll be a clear message to the White House that even a nominee who had a lot of things going for him, a great story of his background, a good presentation, the second black ever appointed to the court, even he in the end could run into some trouble. And the Democrats want a bigger role. They don't want just to consent. They want to advise. They very much believe that at least many of them are really walking down the path, and some of them will say to you, if this nominee hadn't been black, we would have done it this time, but we'll do it next time. And they're walking down the path of saying to President Bush, look, you got your court, it's a conservative court, we've got the Senate, and we're not going to approve any more very conservative nominees. You have to consult with us if you want somebody to get through. We don't expect the ideal liberal candidate, but we expect consensus. And I think that Chairman Biden signaled that today in some of his discussion about the process that he wants in. He wants a consultative process that will lead, in his words, to a more moderate nominee.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Do you think the Bush White House is hearing this? Because today the President told reporters at the White House it's going to be all right. I mean, [a] is he hearing it, and do you think the White House sees this vote as a blow?

MS. TOTENBERG: Well, you know, when looking at the White House lobbyists today, they looked very nervous. How the President reacts is unclear. He has a clear mandate in the sense that he is high in the approval ratings and the polls. He was elected. He never pretended that he wasn't going to name conservatives to the court. The conservative wing of his party believes this is an article of faith naming conservatives to the court, and he would lose a lot within his own party if he didn't deliver on that. So I'm not sure how he will weigh it, but certainly the pressure, the heat is turned up on the Democratic side now.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Is there precedent for this? I mean, has this happened before? I mean, I know with the Bork nomination, like this one, it was sent to the full Senate without any kind of recommendation. I don't know if that has any implications for this, and if there are any other historical precedents.

MS. TOTENBERG: Well, Sen. Biden has always said that any nominee he thinks should be voted on by the full Senate no matter what the full committee does. So as long as he's chairman, that's going to continue to be true. But there's plenty of precedent in history for the Senate having input on Supreme Court nominees. Probably the most famous story is the story of how Benjamin Cardoza, a liberal, was appointed by President Hoover. And a lot of the Senators, Democrats and liberal Republicans, were pressing for Cardoza, who was a leading liberal theorist of his time. And Hoover didn't really want to appoint him. And finally he called Sen. Bora, one of the kingpins of the Senate, to the White House. And he showed him a list of 10 potential nominees to the court. And Cardoza was the last on a list of 10. And Sen. Bora said to him, well, Mr. President, you've got the list right but it's upside down. And a few days later, Hoover nominated liberal Cardoza.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: All right. You said a few moments ago, people would have lost money on this bet. Where is smart money in terms of the vote next week?

MS. TOTENBERG: If there is a vote next week, and it could be later than next week, there's something of a fight going on about when the vote would be, if there's a vote next week, my guess is it's somewhere between thirty and forty votes against Clarence Thomas.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So the nomination -- I mean, the confirmation will go forward?

MS. TOTENBERG: Yes, and he will be seated on the Supreme Court and become the 106th Justice to serve on the nation's highest court.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Is that timing important, I mean, in terms of the interest groups lining up sooner, better than later for any side?

MS. TOTENBERG: Well, they think the delay helps them, and certainly the White House used delay as the enemy. The Senate is scheduled to recess for a couple of weeks at the end of next week. And this vote can't come up until Thursday, so there's quite a lot of juggling going on now as to when it is going to come up. And as I said, the White House views delay as the enemy.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: All right. Well, we'll check in with you sometime later, Nina. Thank you.

MS. TOTENBERG: Thank you, Charlayne. FOCUS - GERGEN & SHIELDS

MS. WOODRUFF: It's not only Clarence Thomas but another of the President's prime appointments as well who seemed to have lost ground this week. Congressional Democrats have been pushing hard their domestic agenda. And tonight, President Bush will give what the White House is calling an important defense policy speech. Well, looking into the politics of it all are our regular Friday analysis team of Gergen & Shields. David Gergen is editor at large for U.S. News & World Report, and Mark Shields is a syndicated columnist appearing in newspapers across the country. Gentlemen, is Nina Totenberg right, Mark Shields, when she says it looks like he's going to be confirmed, but he's going to have about thirty or forty votes against him?

MR. SHIELDS: I would say right now closer to 30, but I think that what's important here in Judge Thomas's confirmation, which I do expect, is that nobody can recall the margin by which Judge Byron White was confirmed to the court, the margin by which Thurgood Marshall was confirmed to the court. And I think that once you're confirmed, you're confirmed. The politics of it is quickly forgotten.

MS. WOODRUFF: So you're saying this whole drama doesn't --

MR. SHIELDS: I think the drama plays itself out. I think it played itself out basically in the Judiciary Committee, which is important that no Republican opposed him, and secondly, that it's a committee more liberal among Democrats than the Senate as a whole.

MS. WOODRUFF: But the fact is, David, he still isn't getting as many votes as it appeared a week ago he was going to get.

MR. GERGEN: Absolutely. He had an unexpected setback this week. I think Nina Totenberg's analysis was right on target. Howell Heflin's decision to oppose I think changed the dynamics of the nomination. One Republican leader told me late last weekend that he was expecting Clarence Thomas to get about 80 votes. And now those calculations have been reduced to about sixty, maybe sixty- five. He's still going to win. I think that the importance, as Nina recommended or said, was that there is a clear message here for the White House, particularly from Chairman Biden, about the next nomination. They want more consultation and frankly, they want a more moderate nominee. And the interesting thing is there's a lot of talk among Democrats on the Hill. They think there may be another vacancy on the court within the next 12 months. We may be in another one of these fights next summer. One major figure on the committee told me today, he said the chances are ten to one that we're going to have another vacancy. They think that Justice Blackmun or Justice Stevens or, indeed, the Chief Justice, Chief Justice Rehnquist, might leave the court within the next year.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, we heard it here first.

MR. GERGEN: We'll see.

MS. WOODRUFF: At least, we think it was first. David, the other, of course, the other Presidential nominee who ran into some rough water this week was Robert Gates, the nominee to head the CIA. It wasn't the Iran-contra scandal, which everybody expected was going to be a problem for him, but these accusations that he may have tailored intelligence information.

MR. GERGEN: This has not been a good week for the President's men on Capitol Hill or, indeed, for his domestic programs. Going into this week, we said last week, last Friday, that on the committee, Senate Intelligence Committee, he had about 13 Senators leaning in favor of the Gates nomination, about 2 leaning against, Sen. Bradley and Sen. Metzenbaum. He was hurt this week, I don't think fatally so, but I think there are some other additional votes that may sway the other way.

MS. WOODRUFF: Mark.

MR. SHIELDS: I think that any time that Bill Bradley has taken a leadership position on this issue, and especially on the matter of Iraq, and the dealing with Iraq during the Iranian War, that between those two countries, and I think Sam Nunn's request, Sen. Sam Nunn, the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, immensely respected figure in the whole area of national security, wanting the hearings put off for another week, I don't think it bodes well. I don't think it's a nomination that one would say is in extremis at this point, but it certainly is not in the shape it was a week ago.

MR. GERGEN: I think Sen. Rudman is going to be asking some very tough questions of those who have some opposition.

MS. WOODRUFF: The hearings are continuing next week.

MR. GERGEN: As the hearings continue. And I think that you're going to see there's a strong argument on Gates' side, at least the Republicans will make that point next week.

MS. WOODRUFF: So some vulnerability --

MR. GERGEN: Some vulnerability.

MS. WOODRUFF: -- on the part of the President on these nominations.

MR. GERGEN: I think Gates -- yeah.

MS. WOODRUFF: Is this going to move on? He's also showing some vulnerability on a couple of domestic initiatives that the Democrats are pushing, and particularly this bill to provide extended unemployment benefits. Mark, what's going on? I mean, the Democrats are getting their act together.

MR. SHIELDS: The Democrats have gotten their act together. They're back where they want to be politically. This reminded me when Sen. Bob Dole, a Republican leader in the Senate, came up with sort of a halfway measure. It was a limited bill, ten weeks, six to ten weeks, instead of what had been proposed by the Democrats and passed the House overwhelmingly. It reminded me of the earlier debates in the '80s, Judy, on defense weapons systems. Every time there was a defense weapons system, the Democrats would come up with something that was smaller, cleaner, cheaper, and it would always lose and Republicans would triumph because they were the party of national defense at a time when national defense was urgent. This is a time when the nation's focus has shifted back to the domestic agenda. The Republicans found themselves offering something that was inadequate, unsatisfactory, and kind of half a loaf.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, the President called it a "garbage bill."

MR. GERGEN: I think what's interesting, Mark, is not only are the Democrats getting their act together, but I think that there's some restlessness now showing up on the part of the moderate Republicans.

MR. SHIELDS: That's true.

MR. GERGEN: There's a group of about a dozen Republican Senators now -- thirteen of them voted against the President on the unemployment bill, enough to possibly put that over the top on a veto fight. There are a number of them that have voted against him on the parental leave now, they're making their own independent judgment found out.

MS. WOODRUFF: This is another piece of legislation on giving people leave.

MR. GERGEN: That's right. And they've come out against the White House on counseling and health clinics with regard to abortion. There is a feeling on the part of some of the moderates that they need a more positive domestic program to go to the voters with, particularly those who are up for reelection.

MR. SHIELDS: Two points. One you touched on, Judy. First of all, George Bush, the kinder, gentler President, at a thousand dollar a plate fund-raising dinner in New Jersey said, I don't want them sending me any more garbage, the Congress sending me garbage. This was the day that the unemployment bill passed and certainly at a time when 2 million more Americans are unemployed than were a year ago, it certainly did not set well at all. I mean, it was the kind of message he didn't, that was jarring. It reconfirms the Republicans' disability as the party that tilts to the rich and is indifferent to the plight of ordinary working people, which is where Republicans obviously don't want to be.

MS. WOODRUFF: Now are they going to be able to override a veto, vetoes?

MR. SHIELDS: Yes. I think this is the first time that there really is a realistic prospect. I mean, one way that they've cast the argument in an almost a reverse Jujitsu against George Bush's strength as an international figure is that he declared emergency to break the budget agreement in seeking aid for Turks and Kurds and Bangladesh and even Israel, but he has not, he's unwilling to extend or elasticize the budget agreement when it comes to domestic.

MS. WOODRUFF: Domestic.

MR. GERGEN: I think we're going to see a lot of in-fighting in the next few days, and a lot of pressure being put on some of these moderate Republicans. Okay, you voted for this unemployment compensation bill, but sustain the President on the veto and let's come back for the more modest package. David Durenberger, for instance, has already broken off and said he was going to switch on the veto fight. So there's going to be a lot of I think squabbling here within the beltway. I think ultimately the Congress is likely to pass some sort of bill. It may be scaled back from what the Democrats are now pushing.

MS. WOODRUFF: And the White House, of course, also had the bad headline they couldn't have found welcome this week, that the poverty rate has climbed.

MR. GERGEN: Not a good week for George Bush.

MS. WOODRUFF: Not a great week. And does that have any connection, David, by any chance, with the fact that the White House scheduled a speech tonight? I don't want to sound suspicious about it, but --

MR. GERGEN: I thought that that was a point that Mark might make, Judy. [laughing]

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, it's been raised.

MR. SHIELDS: It's a good point, Judy, a very good point.

MS. WOODRUFF: No, but seriously, this is -- I think some people are questioning the timing of this all of a sudden big, big speech on defense policy, a turning point.

MR. GERGEN: I think that's reading too much into it in terms of -- you know, if it's like last week, Mark was arguing that their effort to go after Saddam Hussein had something to do with elections. I think that it had a lot more to do with it -- with, no, I think it had a lot more to do with the atomic weapons problems in Iraq. George Bush has been working with Brent Scowcroft for some time apparently on a major initiative. It was presented to his media people last night to Marlin and Dorrance Smith at the White House essentially saying, we're going to go give this speech at Fort McNair at 1:30 in the afternoon. These folks looked at that and said, wait a minute, this is big, big news, it was the first time they'd seen it, said, you ought to do -- this is a major speech on weapons systems and it's a very important speech, let's go prime time, and they argued for it and got it done. I think that it's odd to have a speech on Friday night, very, very odd. There are high school football games everywhere, but --

MS. WOODRUFF: Mark, it's a weekend.

MR. SHIELDS: High school football games in Texas. And George Bush is supposed to be, you know, a Texan. If there's anything more sacrosanct than high school, Friday night football games in Texas, I don't know what it is. But, Judy, I think he has lost what George Bush saw happening to him. It was not simply the domestic number of hits he was taking domestically, but he's also lost control of the defense debate. What we saw in the Congress this week, especially in the Senate, is total erosion of support for the cold war weapons systems. I mean, we saw turnarounds of fifteen, twenty votes in the space of four weeks, and opposition as opposed to support. What George Bush has to do, he has to hustle to do it, is to try and recast this debate because what we're heading for is a major cut in national defense and he wants to stop that.

MR. GERGEN: I agree with that. But I would just argue these things don't, are just not invented on the back of an envelope. These kinds of programs, these kinds of proposals take a lot of work. This effort, this program has been underway for a while. But I think it was done with the understanding that down the road, like about now, there would be this kind of erosion. And I think you're absolutely right about that, but this thing just didn't appear in the last 24 hours for a vote yesterday in the Senate.

MR. SHIELDS: I'm not saying it appeared, but George Bush doesn't appear on prime time television very often either. I mean, the very fact that he is doing that carries with it even greater significance.

MR. GERGEN: Let's judge it by looking at what he says tonight.

MR. SHIELDS: We'll look at the content, absolutely.

MR. GERGEN: Good, good. I'm glad to hear you say that.

MS. WOODRUFF: And last but not least, lest we are picking on the Republicans too much tonight, at least we think it's mostly the Democrats who are culprits here, we really don't know, Mark, a third of the members of the House of Representatives got in trouble because they were bouncing checks on a special bank account in the House. Is this -- what's going on?

MR. SHIELDS: Well, I'll tell you, Judy, what this is is the strongest argument yet for term limitations, a proposal that I have opposed, but I think --

MR. GERGEN: Coming around!

MR. SHIELDS: No, I mean, I still oppose it, but --

MR. GERGEN: I can't believe it!

MR. SHIELDS: -- I have to tell you --

MR. GERGEN: But you've seen the light.

MR. SHIELDS: -- I mean, it's strengthens, it strengthens the argument that these people are out of touch, that they're up there cashing thousand dollar checks when they don't have the money in their bank account. Everybody else in America is liable, responsible, embarrassed, humiliated. It costs them, and these guys aren't. I mean, I'll tell you how serious it is, that Tom Foley, the Speaker of the House, felt it and took to the House floor, himself, which is something he very rarely does, to say that this is the end of it. But I really think it's a terrible, terrible indictment of the House of Representatives.

MR. GERGEN: Well, the --

MS. WOODRUFF: Is it a big deal outside the beltway?

MR. GERGEN: It is. It's really rippling out there. And I'll tell you, you know, these fellows are getting so used to writing bad checks on the nation's treasury, I guess it doesn't make any difference when they write their personal check --

MR. SHIELDS: Hey, hey. Reagan-Bush, Reagan-Bush, come on, David!

MR. GERGEN: But I'm glad to see you saw the light on term limits, but I just want to add this. I think Mark is absolutely right about this point about living unlike others and living above the law. I mean, they have a habit of passing laws on equal opportunity, for example, and they apply it to everybody else but themselves. And here they've got a bank -- I don't -- I didn't know about this bank. I mean, the very idea that they've got this private bank and that everybody else in the country has to pay twenty-five, thirty- five dollars for a bounced check --

MS. WOODRUFF: And they don't have to pay. When they bounce a check, there's no charge.

MR. GERGEN: The taxpayers, the taxpayers have been paying for the float on this.

MS. WOODRUFF: And there were thousands of checks written, apparently, that bounced.

MR. SHIELDS: Yes.

MR. GERGEN: Eight thousand in one year, eight thousand.

MS. WOODRUFF: And what are they going to do? Are they going to close this bank down?

MR. GERGEN: They ought to close the bank.

MR. SHIELDS: I think they're certainly going to stop this practice. I don't see any argument for the bank.

MR. GERGEN: What's the argument for a bank?

MR. SHIELDS: No. All it was was check cashing privileges in the capital is what it was.

MR. GERGEN: At a private bank subsidized by the taxpayers.

MS. WOODRUFF: But some of the checks were bigger than --

MR. SHIELDS: Oh, no, I agree, I agree. It's an outrage. It absolutely is. And it's a terrible black mark on the Congress, which can, which ill needs it.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, it's interesting to see the two of you in agreement.

MR. GERGEN: Well, I'm glad he found the light. [laughing]

MR. SHIELDS: Especially on the Reagan-Bush deficits.

MR. GERGEN: Especially on term limits.

MR. SHIELDS: Quadrupling, quadrupling the national debt in 10 years thanks to Reagan and Bush.

MS. WOODRUFF: Mark Shields --

MR. GERGEN: You mean all those things that the Congress voted for?

MS. WOODRUFF: -- David Gergen, thank you both. CONVERSATION

MR. MacNeil: Next tonight we have a conversation with David Kessler, the commissioner of the Food & Drug Administration. It's the agency that regulates a broad range of issues, from the health claims that companies make on food labels to which experimental drugs cancer patients can receive. And it's an agency going through a major transition under its new commissioner, David Kessler, who's gaining a reputation for shaking things up. We'll talk to him in a moment, but first, Correspondent Kwame Holman has this backgrounder on Kessler's opening months at the FDA.

WOMAN IN GROCERY STORE: A lot of times when it says light, it's not really light or as good for you as you think, or you're led to believe.

MAN IN GROCERY STORE: I'm worried about not only good looking food but healthy food, so I do read labels rather closely.

MR. HOLMAN: Consumers today want to know more about what they're eating. And food makers have responded with labels that are supposed to tell them. But the commissioner of the Food & Drug Administration says they don't always tell the whole truth.

DR. DAVID KESSLER, Food & Drug Administration: [June] Consumers want and they deserve more accurate and useful information which will allow them to make informed choices.

MR. HOLMAN: The maker of Citrus Hill juice learned early that Commissioner David Kessler is a stickler for labels. In April, five months after he took over at the FDA, his agency seized 12,000 gallons of Citrus Hill orange juice. The FDA had been trying to get the manufacturer to remove the label "fresh" from its juice, because it's made from concentrate. Shortly after the seizure, food giant Procter & Gamble dropped "fresh" from the label.

SPOKESMAN: [In Meeting] Commissioner, we are going to have an enforcement briefing today regarding to the sale of, of adulterated orange juice or more typically phony orange juice.

MR. HOLMAN: Seizing products typically has been a last resort for the FDA. David Kessler has used it first as a weapon against misleading food labels.

MICHAEL JACOBSON, Consumer Activist: It was an opening blow and it was very exciting to see FDA actually doing something. This is an agency that for 10 years has done nothing.

MR. HOLMAN: Kessler's efforts appear to have paid off in voluntary actions by food makers. On its own, Kraft General Foods has discontinued using some fat free claims on labels.

SPOKESMAN: [Swearing in People to Give Testimony] Do you solemnly swear the testimony you're about to give is the truth, the whole true, and nothing but the truth --

MR. HOLMAN: Today when he speaks in public, food and drug industry representatives cram the aisles to hear whether his next act will affect them.

DR. DAVID KESSLER: [September 12] Late in July, the agency initiated a seizure action against a brand of breast implants that was being marketed without FDA's approval. Also, at our request, several seizures were made of unapproved amino acid products.

MR. HOLMAN: Kessler's performance is winning him personal press attention, but Kessler insists his dramatic product seizures have only one aim.

DR. KESSLER: The goal of enforcement is not to keep score and ring up impressive numbers. The goal of enforcement is to achieve compliance with the law.

MR. HOLMAN: Kessler's enforcement efforts aren't limited to food labels. He wants drug companies to stop advertising prescription drugs directly to doctors and to consumers. He's called on doctors to stop using prescription drugs and treatments for unapproved purposes. Specifically, Kessler singled out the unapproved use of collagen and silicone injections to augment lips and other features and the use of the acne treatment, Retin-A, to remove facial wrinkles. Kessler also has told physicians it's a conflict of interest to accept drug company invitations to seminars that really are little more than free vacations for the doctors.

DEMONSTRATOR: [AIDS DEMONSTRATION] Every 12 minutes someone dies!

MR. HOLMAN: Among Kessler's boosters, are AIDS activists, traditionally the most vocal and visible critics of the FDA and other federal agencies that control patient access to new, potentially life saving drugs.

MARTIN DELANEY, AIDS Activist: He's been something of a visionary on the drug approval process, you know. He's come in there with ideas and principles of his own, and he's supported that.

MR. HOLMAN: AIDS activist Martin Delaney notes a recent example in which Kessler took the unprecedented step of helping a drug company make available experimentally the new AIDS drug, DDI.

MR. DELANEY: What Kessler did was he dove in there, listened to us, and he brought together the resources of the agency to make that happen.

MR. HOLMAN: But another AIDS activist, Spencer Cox, says he doesn't yet know enough about Kessler to feel comfortable.

SPENCER COX, AIDS Activist: Kessler, like many Bush appointees, seems a little bit hesitant about making certain of his philosophical stances concrete and explaining them clearly for us. We've seen him do some hope or high profile things like seizing the orange juice. But in terms of AIDS, he's really had -- he's really been very tentative about certain things.

MR. HOLMAN: Kessler heads a bureaucracy of 8,000 people who certify tens of thousands of consumer products. A major study last spring called the FDA "understaffed, under-equipped, and under- funded." David Kessler, a 40 year old physician and lawyer, contends with those deficiencies and with senior officials in the Bush administration who reportedly want him to rein in some of his initiatives.

MR. MacNeil: This afternoon, the FDA announced its approval of another new drug that can improve the quality of life for people with AIDS. The drug, called Phoscarnate, can delay the progress of a disease that may lead to blindness in AIDS patients. The FDA completed the trials on Phoscarnate in one year. The process usually takes three. We're joined now by Food & Drug Commissioner David Kessler. Dr. Kessler, thank you for joining us.

DR. KESSLER: Thank you.

MR. MacNeil: Are senior officials in the administration wanting to rein you in?

MR. HOLMAN: Just the contrary, Robin. When it comes to the nation's food and drug laws, this President believes in enforcing the law.

MR. MacNeil: What about all the consumer groups who believe that the OMB, the Office of Management & Budget, in the White House has watered down the new regulations that your agency has been preparing for food labeling?

MR. HOLMAN: That's absolutely not true. There's a negotiation. There's a back and forth. There are some internal processes. But what we've come out with to date are very strong changes in the nation's food labeling laws.

MR. MacNeil: Why, an outsider might ask innocently, why would the OMB have any say in the, in the drafting of regulations for, for food labeling?

MR. HOLMAN: The way the executive branch sets policy no one person sets policy for the administration. A consensus has to develop. And OMB, the agency, the Department of Health & Human Services, are all part of the President's teams.

MR. MacNeil: These new food labeling regulations are due, I believe, early in November. Give us an example of something food manufacturers will not be able to do that they can do now.

DR. KESSLER: Right now, it's up to a food manufacturer to decide what low fat means, what light means. After those November 8th proposals go into effect, there will be uniformity, there will be consistency. The agency will set the definitions of those terms so when consumers go and buy products, they will be able to believe what's on the label.

MR. MacNeil: So, for instance, the puzzles over things like milk that are low fat but still are 2 percent fat in the milk, when full milk is, I believe 3 percent or something, in other words, everybody will have the same definition and everybody will know what it means?

DR. KESSLER: Exactly.

MR. MacNeil: What about cholesterol? I happen to know that that's a special interest of yours and we saw on some of those mayonnaise jars in that report. What are you going to do about the claims that things are cholesterol free?

DR. KESSLER: Well, we've already started taking some enforcement actions and we are going to have certain regulations on the topic. When people see a label that says, "no cholesterol," especially those that have not only no cholesterol but also a heart on it, they think, gee, that product's good for me. And yet, many of those products -- at least some of those products -- are high in saturated fat. So it's not -- it's the half truth. Yes, it's low in cholesterol, there's no cholesterol, but it was not necessarily good for people. It was misleading. It didn't tell the whole story.

MR. MacNeil: Have you come to the conclusion that some food manufacturers really quite deliberately mislead, it's just part of their culture to try and fool people?

DR. KESSLER: No, I don't think so. I think that what happened was that one manufacturer would start to make a claim, push the boundaries, and would steal marketshare from another manufacturer, who saw his sales being eroded. And it was almost forced to make claims. And one started leapfrogging the other. And I think that's what we see. And it's the job of the agency to say, here's the line, you can't cross the line.

MR. MacNeil: On cholesterol, if they now say "cholesterol free," is that going to, would that satisfy a heart doctor that it really is a food to eat in the right quantities for somebody who needs to watch his cholesterol?

DR. KESSLER: It's not simply the cholesterol content. It's the total fat content. If it's cholesterol free and it's low fat, manufacturers will be able to make the claim.

MR. MacNeil: So in other words, a person will be able to, under these new regulations, when they're forced to go into a supermarket and buy things with the confidence that they're doctors would approve, assuming they eat them in the right sort of proportion, that their doctors would approve of what they're eating?

DR. KESSLER: Words will have meaning.

MR. MacNeil: The words will have meaning. And they'll satisfy you. Are you going to be able to get the regulations as tough as you like through all this bureaucratic process, which usually grinds everything down a bit? Are they going to be as tough as you personally would like them to be?

DR. KESSLER: I think that they -- I think that within two years, Robin, I think there will be -- the entire supermarket, it will be entirely relabeled. Regulations will be very tough. They will prevent false and misleading claims.

MR. MacNeil: And how will you police that?

DR. KESSLER: Well, we're beefing up our enforcement. I think the food industry understands the actions we took. You know, we took an action on orange juice that was labeled as "fresh." It had less to do with freshness than with the way we enforced the law. I think the food industry knows, understands, that we mean business now.

MR. MacNeil: Let's move to the other thing that interests people so much, the approval of drugs. We just reported that today the FDA and HHS approved this drug for the condition that can lead to blindness in AIDS patients. Describe what you did with this drug that you wouldn't have done a year ago. How did you speed the process up?

DR. KESSLER: People view the agency as a bunch of bureaucrats putting obstacles in the way of drug manufacturers. It's just the contrary. There is the division of AIDS review with young physicians. They're not sitting back, they're not waiting for the data to come in, they're not saying to manufacturers, okay, you have to jump through these hoops, you have to prove to us safety. They are going out, they are --

MR. MacNeil: Now that was the procedure in the past, was it not, efficacy and safety had to be demonstrated in clinical trials to the real satisfaction and very conservative satisfaction of the agency before?

DR. KESSLER: In the past, I think the agency saw its mission as keeping unsafe drugs off the market. I think of late the agency has recognized that its job is not only to keep unsafe drugs off the market, but to get safe and effective drugs onto the market, especially in conditions that are life threatening, such as AIDS.

MR. MacNeil: We had an AIDS patient on the program last night in conjunction with the testimony about compulsory testing in Congress, the Bergalis testimony. One was a nurse who got AIDS, HIV, through her nursing. She said -- she told me informally -- she can't take AZT any longer. Now you've said that the agency is going to speed up and release this alternative drug, DDI, which the AIDS community has been urging be released. When, in fact, are people like this woman we had on last night going to be able to go and buy DDI?

DR. KESSLER: Robin, I think it's a matter of weeks.

MR. MacNeil: What's holding it up? Because I noticed that you said on a CNN interview about a month ago that it would be in about a month, so what's holding it up now?

DR. KESSLER: The application was filed only a few months ago. We have to make sure that the labeling of the drug is proper and we're going through --

MR. MacNeil: But your advisory panel has already recommended it.

DR. KESSLER: Our advisory panel recommended it on the basis of very preliminary data. And we have a little more data in, and we're doing some final review, but I think it's simply a matter of weeks.

MR. MacNeil: Is it ever going to be considered ethical again in conditions that are life threatening to deny patients an experimental drug that may be promising and give them -- what do they call it -- placebos or sugar pills or whatever in blind tests and to give other people the experimental drugs, is that ever going to be considered medically ethical to do again?

DR. KESSLER: In the case of life threatening diseases, for which there's an alternative treatment available, you cannot, the agency will not require, cannot require placebos. It's not ethically sound to do that.

MR. MacNeil: Even if the alternative is still somewhat dubious?

DR. KESSLER: Even if the alternative is dubious, it is -- if there is a standard therapy, we need to test the new drug against that standard therapy.

MR. MacNeil: Well, then what about the one that is much talked about, because Alzheimer's is such a concern to hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions of people, what about the drug HHA, is that --

DR. KESSLER: THA.

MR. MacNeil: THA. Why doesn't that fall into this category, and has the FDA said, no, to those people who say, well, let us at least try it, because it has some promising results?

DR. KESSLER: We had an advisory committee a little while back that looked at that, and every member of the advisory committee came to that meeting with the hope that they could say here's something that's useful in the treatment of Alzheimer's. The bottom line is we want to get life threatening, drugs for life threatening diseases onto the market quickly. But they, we still have standards and we still have to meet those standards. There's nothing worse than allowing a patient to take, for Alzheimer's patients to have a drug where there's no evidence of clinical benefit and also have risk. That's not in the interest of patients.

MR. MacNeil: If there's no evidence of clinical benefit, why are so many people so hot on THA and saying, give it to us and let us try it?

DR. KESSLER: Well, you know, that advisory committee spent two days and I sat with them, and I sat with and talked with members of families of Alzheimer's patients, and it is -- it is people have hopes, people look, if you take a medicine, gee, that maybe made my family member better, but in the end, science has to reign. And the science just wasn't there. There was no scientific evidence of clinical benefit. Now there are other drugs in the pipeline. And there may be some further hope with THA.

MR. MacNeil: How soon?

DR. KESSLER: Well, I think that we're working hard and I think over the next year there may be some other breakthroughs with regard to Alzheimer's.

MR. MacNeil: Let me just ask you briefly, before you took this job, you were a member of the Edwards Commission that examined the FDA, and it concluded that it was, they said, "glaringly apparent that the agency couldn't do all the things Congress has legislated it must do with the resources." Now, you've streamlined the agency, you have some new resources, you've hired some new people, but what is still falling through the cracks among the immense number of things that you're mandated to do? What can't you still do?

DR. KESSLER: We have to prioritize and --

MR. MacNeil: That means drop some things?

DR. KESSLER: Well, we don't -- certain inspections that need to, you know, that we'd like to do at an interval of, for example, every twelve months, we end up doing it at eighteen months. So certain things get pushed aside. For example, we're busy writing the regulations to implement the new food label law. That means that regulations that we need to write for bottled water get delayed a little. Everything gets done. Sometimes it just takes a little more time.

MR. MacNeil: Well, Commissioner Kessler, thank you very much for joining us.

DR. KESSLER: Thank you. ESSAY - BACK TO BASICS

MS. WOODRUFF: Finally tonight, with the baseball season winding down, sports writer Frank DeFord has some thoughts about what makes a national pastime so special.

MR. DEFORD: Butch Amadi, the late romantic baseball commissioner, loved to point out that the word "park" as in baseball park and the word "paradise" as in being at a baseball game both came from the same ancient root. I believe that. A proper baseball park strikes me as one of the few things that people have designed that God would approve of, along with all the good stuff that he's built himself. When God sees a really fine baseball park like this one, magnificent old Yankee Stadium, I'm sure that he sighs and says, well, at least you guys got that right. There certainly are more impressive Oedipuses that humans have constructed, bigger and more awesome, more beautiful by a standard aesthetic measure like say skyscrapers, or suspension bridges, or elevators in Hyatt Hotels. But a proper ball yard, and I keep emphasizing that adjective "proper," is simply a joy to behold for a couple of very special reasons. First, because if done right, a baseball stadium fuses itself with its surroundings, and second, because it also merges the people with the game that they came to see. I know, I know. It sounds so effected and pretentious to carry on this way about a mere place where they only play games, but I'm sorry. With the proper, crowded baseball park, there is a seemlessness, a oneness that we so rarely otherwise see as the result of human endeavor. Within the urban framework, a proper baseball park is downright organic. It's important to understand first of all that baseball grew up there in the city. The Georgian Shrine up in bucolic Cooperstown and the Amber Waves of Grain in the movie "Field of Dreams," make for lovely pastoral images, but in reality, most early baseball players didn't emerge out of corn fields, but out of tenements and back alleys. Football was the patrician game. It started on ivy campuses with college boys and the green grass running all around, all around. You just plunked a bunch of seats down horseshoe style and put a stadium together inside out. Football was always a tailgate party waiting to happen. But baseball emerged with working men, many of them first or second generation Irish or German, playing the game after a long day of real labor. The parks were made right there, cut out of the downtowns and the neighborhoods not unlike the way a storm changes the course of a river, or erosion digs out a cliff. Nobody dreamed up the left field wall at Fenway Park in order to please poets yet unborn or to accommodate the tormented puritan psyche. There's a big wall there because there's a street right behind it. But just as important, baseball, unlike those other games played within neat rectangles, needs a stadium that is a live extension of the field of play. Bands actually battled for batted balls with the players. Hey! I'm convinced that kids like foul balls better than the baseball game, itself. Baseball is the only game where the spectators are so involved, your dimension, so to speak. [vendor selling food] But sadly, a couple of decades ago, the appreciation of dear things began to go awry and all sorts of alleged baseball stadiums were built that were called "multipurpose." This meant that baseball diamonds in Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh, and St. Louis, and Cincinnati, all were constructed with football equally in mind. They certainly are multipurpose. Also, they resemble toilet bowls. But happily, baseball stadiums are starting to go back to their roots. The new Kamisky Park, opened earlier this year on the south side of Chicago, is a lovely rendition of the old Kamisky Park. And the new field downtown in Baltimore may be the finest revival architecture ever achieved in America. The right field wall is a huge warehouse, because that's where a real old warehouse remains. Babe Ruth's father's saloon once stood on the very ground where the Baltimore park is going up. Like most people, I never cared for that dreadful modern improvement, artificial turf. I've never cared for artificial baseball stadiums either. But now we can all rejoice that natural baseball parks are being grown again. Play ball! RECAP

MS. WOODRUFF: Again, the main stories of this Friday, President Bush unveils a new defense strategy in a national address this evening, the Senate Judiciary Committee deadlocks seven to seven over whether to recommend Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court, and in Baghdad, the standoff between a U.N. weapons inspection team and the Iraqi government came to an end. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Judy. That's the NewsHour for tonight. We'll be back next week with a fresh look at the worldwide implications of the BCCI scandal. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.