The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MAC NEIL: Good evening. I'm Robert MacNeil in New York.

MR. LEHRER: And I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington. After our summary of the news this Tuesday, we have a Newsmaker interview with the prime minister of Turkey, an update from Japan on the rising yen, a look at a poll about how Americans view their government, and an affirmative action conversation with Boston University President John Silber. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MAC NEIL: President Clinton will hold a news conference this evening at 9 PM Eastern Time. White House Spokesman Mike McCurry said he will begin with a statement on welfare reform before taking reporters' questions. It is his first evening news conference since August and only the fourth of his term. Among the three commercial broadcast networks, both NBC and ABC have decided not to carry the news conference live. PBS will broadcast it. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Assistant Air Force Secretary Clark Feester was one of eight people killed in a crash of a military plane last night. The Air Force C-21 went down near Alexander City, Alabama, 40 miles Northeast of Montgomery. It was en route from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland to Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. Eyewitnesses said they heard several explosions before the plane went down in a heavily wooded area. There was no immediate explanation for the crash. The flight data and voice recorders were recovered today.

MR. MAC NEIL: In today's economic news, the Commerce Department reported that housing starts fell nearly 8 percent last month. It's the third straight drop and puts new construction at its lowest level in two years. Only the Northeast reported a gain. The dollar lost more value against the Japanese yen today. It's down more than 18 percent since the beginning of the year. We'll have more on the dollar later in the program.

MR. LEHRER: The U.S. Postal Service moved today to prevent violence at post offices. Some 40,000 postal supervisors will receive special training on how to recognize potentially violent situations. Those actions are in response to several recent shootings involving postal workers. At a Washington news conference, Postmaster General Marvin Runyon said postal employees were not more prone to violence than others in society.

MARVIN RUNYON, Postmaster General: Every few minutes a violent act takes place somewhere in this country. As a nation, it's imperative that we do something about this problem. Together, we must seek out a cure for this deadly disease of violence and encourage respect for human life. Clearly, we in the Postal Service cannot solve this problem all by ourselves. It's a national epidemic, not a postal one. But we're here today because we believe we can and must make a difference.

MR. LEHRER: Another House Banking case was resolved today. The wife of former New York Democratic Congressman Stephen Solarz agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges. Nina Solarz admitted she ordered one of her husband's staff members to write a bad check on the House Bank in 1990. She also admitted taking $7500 from a charity she headed. She faces up to 15 months in jail, $25,000 in fines. Congressman Solarz was defeated for reelection in 1992.

MR. MAC NEIL: An environmental group that monitors the nation's rivers released its annual report today. American Rivers named 30 U.S. waterways as endangered or highly threatened. The Clarks fork of the Yellowstone River in Montana and Wyoming was named as the No. 1 endangered river because of a gold-mining operation planned nearby. The group held a news conference in Washington. Democratic Congressman Bill Richardson of New Mexico spoke against the Yellowstone project.

REP. BILL RICHARDSON, [D] New Mexico: None of us should be unwilling [willing] to sacrifice Yellowstone National Park and the surrounding ecosystem for more gold chains and bracelets. I'm not against mining; I'm just against mining in this place and the manner proposed by this Canadian conglomerate. For them, it means riches at rock-bottom prices. For the rest of us, it's an environmental disaster waiting to happen.

MR. MAC NEIL: The mining company plans to build a reservoir to contain mine waste. The president of the company said the containment area would be strong enough to last indefinitely. Montana officials said the plan would likely improve the water quality in the region, but environmental groups have filed a petition with the U.S. Interior Department seeking to stop the project.

MR. LEHRER: The Pulitzer prizes were announced today. For drama, the winner was Horton Foote, for his play "The Young Man from Atlanta;" for fiction, Carol Shields "The Stone Diaries;" and for history, Doris Kearns Goodwin for her book on Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, "No Ordinary Time." The major newspaper award went to the Virgin Islands Daily News of St. Thomas for reporting on corruption in the criminal justice system.

MR. MAC NEIL: That's our summary of the news. Now it's on to the prime minister of Turkey, Japan's rising yen, how Americans view government, and affirmative action. NEWSMAKER

MR. MAC NEIL: We start tonight with Turkey, the nation a top State Department official recently called the front line of American and Western security in the post-Cold War world. Strategically located between Europe, the Mideast, and Central Asia, Turkey's relations with the West have taken a more tense turn since its army crossed into Northern Iraq in pursuit of Kurdish guerrillas known as the PKK. Only the United States, among Turkey's NATO allies, has voiced public support for the move. We'll have an interview with Turkey's prime minister, but first a report from Northern Iraq filed by Correspondent Nik Gowing of ITN soon after the Turkish invasion.

NIK GOWING, ITN: From the heavy guns like these Howitzers, the equipment, and the manpower we saw deployed 25 miles into Iraq, it is hard to see how this can be called hot pursuit. It is much more. With this fire power and numbers, it's clear Turkey is here to fight a war on foreign territory. Every valley leading North through rugged mountains to the Turkish border is stuffed with armor. Turkish commanders have taken no chances against the more lightly armed Kurdish PKK guerrilla group, some 4,000 Kurdish fighters that Turkey labels "terrorists" because of regular attacks and murders inside Turkey. The propaganda loud speakers still echo through the valleys, but it's believed the PKK have fled their mountain camps, perhaps back into Turkey, more likely to Iran and Syria, or even South into Iraq.

GEN. HUSEYIN ERIM, Turkish Army: -- peacekeeping operations.

NIK GOWING: Gen. Erim called this U.N.-style peacekeeping to protect Turkey's borders, but experts will argue that U.N.-style peacekeeping is not about waging war with aerial bombardment and Howitzers.

NIK GOWING: How do you keep the peace with Howitzers?

GEN. HUSEYIN ERIM: Howitzers?

NIK GOWING: Yeah.

GEN. HUSEYIN ERIM: We have nothing. It's just a show of force.

NIK GOWING: A show of force, said the general. He fired once against one machine gun in this area.

GEN. HUSEYIN ERIM: There is one machine gun over there.

NIK GOWING: Turkey's justification is that it's captured PKK weapons and destroyed its big guerrilla camps and weapons supply dumps across Northern Iraq. These, for example, said to be weapons from just one camp, but privately, Western governments remain anxious. Up in the mountains, we discovered that Turkish forces will probably stay in a special security zone inside Iraq for up to one year. This land slip was created by the PKK. They mined this main supply route 24 hours before the Turks arrived. It proves the PKK realized in advance that Turkish troops were about to invade. From their camp in this remote valley at high altitude, they had time, probably two or three days, to clear most men and material. Defecting PKK fighters and Turkish special forces have now secured this camp and village. It's the same in the next camp a few valleys over, where the PKK grew opium and other crops in their fields as revenue earners. The caves for PKK weapons storage have now been cleared, the hilltop anti-aircraft positions destroyed by warplanes. But whenever these Turkish troops are withdrawn, the PKK could easily return and begin rebuilding their infrastructure. It may take a year or two, but it's the classic guerrilla advantage, a major political and diplomatic problem for Turkey.

NIK GOWING: Do you still feel threatened by the PKK here?

GEN. HUSEYIN ERIM: Of course. Every night, you night you jump. You can hear from mountains some shootings.

NIK GOWING: So the operation is not yet over?

GEN. HUSEYIN ERIM: For me, it is not over. I think should stay a little bit, not too much.

NIK GOWING: Weeks, months, a year?

GEN. HUSEYIN ERIM: It depends on the PKK. If there is no resistance, we can go tomorrow.

NIK GOWING: But you say they're still resisting?

GEN. HUSEYIN ERIM: There are some, yes.

NIK GOWING: How many?

GEN. HUSEYIN ERIM: I don't know how many, but we are patrolling all around.

NIK GOWING: So you must have some idea.

GEN. HUSEYIN ERIM: I cannot say right now.

NIK GOWING: But has the operation achieved its stated objective, to destroy the PKK?

M. ALI BRAND, Political Commentator: Some questions should be asked, and the most important, how they have been able to break the backbone of PKK, I want to see the results.

NIK GOWING: You doubt that they have broken the backbone, do you?

M. ALI BRAND: Yes. I can't say now. I mean, I can't say now, but I have to wait and see. For the time being, 200 deaths -- it is not enough.

NIK GOWING: What we sampled here is the scale and the size of the Turkish military operation. We had no chance, no time to talk to the Kurdish population. The Turkish government believe they are legally and morally right.

MR. MAC NEIL: Next, a Newsmaker interview with Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Ciller. She is a professional economist who studied at several universities in New England. In 1993, she became the first woman prime minister of predominantly Muslim Turkey. She meets tomorrow with President Clinton. I talked with her earlier today.

MR. MAC NEIL: Prime Minister, thank you very much for joining us. The report that you've just seen from ITN suggests that you may leave some troops in a special security zone on the Iraqi side of the border for up to a year, is that correct?

TANSU CILLER, Prime Minister, Turkey: That is not true. We have never thought about it that way. There is a mission. The purpose of the mission was to destroy the bases, break through the terrorists' command there, and make sure that we got ahold of the ammunition and break down the plans to infiltrate into Turkey and kill the innocent people in Turkey. This is not something that I wanted to do. This was not a decision that I was very happy about, but it was something that had to be done because, as you know, we fought together against the Iraqis inOperation Desert Storm. It was a victory. It was a good one, but it was a victory that left a burden on Turkey, because we have a no-man's-land right next to our borders, and the terrorists have settled down there and to attack back to my country to kill the innocent people. So we had to do something about it to stop it. We will withdraw in the shortest possible time, and we are -- we have already started doing that. But I have to specify that if that kind of thing happens again, we will have to do the same thing again.

MR. MAC NEIL: You say you took this decision reluctantly. I wonder in a public relations sense whether the military operation - - the biggest Turkey's undertaken in 40 years -- has done you more harm than good, for instance, in the European Community, perhaps jeopardizing Turkey's accession to a Customs Union and European Community membership.

PRIME MINISTER TANSU CILLER: Any country in our place would have done the same thing, be it -- terror is terror, no matter where it is -- be it in the subways of Tokyo or World Trade Center in New York, you have to protect your people against that. This has nothing to do with the Customs Union. Turkey is the only secular democratic country amongst the 52 Muslim countries existing in the world. We are very proud of our democratic heritage. We have all the institutions of democracy, the parliament, the free press, all the other institutions. And we are proud of what we have set forth as an example for the other 52 Muslim countries, and it's a model, either the Iranian model or the Turkish model, we have two models now. Turkey is the only stable country in the Middle East which has access to 200 million Turkish-speaking people that have disintegrated from the former Soviet Union -- the Azerbaijanis, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. We are the country, as you know, with the support of the United States administration who will be providing the energy needs of Europe via the pipeline, petroleum pipeline and natural gas pipeline of Azerbaijan, of Turkmenistan, of Kazakhstan, passing through Turkey to Jehan to the Mediterranean to Europe. It is not a country that can be neglected with the water reserves.

MR. MAC NEIL: With all those resources and advantages from Europe's point of view, the military operation has created a negative political atmosphere in Europe about the Customs Union, has it not?

PRIME MINISTER TANSU CILLER: That is something that hurts my people, because we stood up for our allies. We were the first ones to act with our allies, not only in Korea but also in the Gulf War, to make sure that we provided the bases from Turkey. What would happen to that mission in the Gulf War had Turkey not provided that help? And while we paid for it -- continually paid for it -- we lost revenues amounting to $20 billion by closing down the pipeline, we paid $5 billion for the building of the pipeline. The petroleum in the pipeline is partially ours, and we lost trade in the area, which, which meant loss of employment.

MR. MAC NEIL: You believe it's unfair for the European Community to --

PRIME MINISTER TANSU CILLER: It's very unfair, because --

MR. MAC NEIL: -- to be criticizing you now?

PRIME MINISTER TANSU CILLER: -- it is not our making. The fact that we have Northern Iraq, a no-man's-land, without authority, where the terrorists can go and settle down and say, this is, this is an area which we are going to be in control of, to do what, to infiltrate into Turkey and kill Turkish citizens, and then when we try to defend ourselves, because of the heritage left on our borders, then they come back and say, you have no right to do that. That is not fair, and my people would react to that.

MR. MAC NEIL: There is a, a lot, in fact, much more intensive fighting against Kurds going on right now inside Turkey -- 25,000 Turkish troops are fighting an action in the valleys of Eastern Turkey against Kurds there. Your military has been fighting the Kurds inside Turkey for years now. Fifteen thousand people have been killed. Human rights organizations say they practice a scorched-earth policy, that there are summary executions, that villages are razed. How long does this go on, and what is the purpose of all that?

PRIME MINISTER TANSU CILLER: I reject that vigorously.

MR. MAC NEIL: Reject what?

PRIME MINISTER TANSU CILLER: We do not fight the Kurds at all, not only in Turkey but in Northern Iraq as well. We've helped our Kurdish citizens and brothers or what have you. Look at what happened in Northern Iraq. After Saddam's aggression, the Kurds there in Northern Iraq, the Iraqi citizens, fled by thousands, and where did they flee? They flee to Turkey. We opened up our borders. We fed them, close to a million people come into Turkey as refugees. We sheltered them. We fed them. And then when they went back to their own country, Iraq, we made sure they got foodstuffs. We're still assisting them. We're the ones who are providing them food and electricity, nobody else. We're not fighting Kurds. We have Kurdish-origin citizens in my country, about 10 million out of the 70 million population. We are talking about Anatolia. We have 24 ethnic backgrounds as well in my country, and all of us of Kurdish origin, of Turkish origin, are fighting the PKK which is a terrorist group. The PKK are killing both my Kurdish-origin citizens and Turkish-origin citizens, more my Kurdish-origin citizens than the Turkish-origin citizens. So we are protecting our Kurdish-origin people when we fight the PKK.

MR. MAC NEIL: Well, American observers of Turkey say that you would not have had to undertake military operations for so long if there had been opportunities in your democracy for the Kurds to express themselves politically and have organizations and, and be able to use their own language and not suffer for that.

PRIME MINISTER TANSU CILLER: Give me an example of one organization, Kurdish organization, who asks for that kind of thing. There is the PKK, a terrorist group who wants to separate a certain region from Turkey. There is no other civil organization or party saying what you have said. So the pressure is not for a Kurdish democratization process. But that does not mean that we don't need to upgrade our democratization in my country for all the people in my country. We will be changing Article 8 in the terror law which will provide freedom of speech for everybody, not only one region or one ethnic background but for all the journalists and the writers.

MR. MAC NEIL: Would that mean that the 159 journalists, writers, scholars, politicians, who are -- your own Turkish Human Rights Commission say are in jail now for expressing their opinions, they would be released from jail, and Turkish people would not be jailed for their political opinions?

PRIME MINISTER TANSU CILLER: Well, as I said, we're determined to upgrade our democracy.

MR. MAC NEIL: That would include that?

PRIME MINISTER TANSU CILLER: That would include that, very much so. I gave a fight for privatization. It was a fight that everybody thought I could not win in the parliament. I did. I spent three sleepless consecutive nights in the parliament to do that, to convince the parliamentarians, because I'm not even a majority government. This time we need to change the constitution as well and change Article 8 in the terror law. I think we will be able to achieve that. Like in every democracy, it works that way. That's the way democracies work. And if that is the right place to do it, in the Congress, in the United States, when you want to change something, what do you do, you fight it in the Congress. That's what we do in Turkey as well.

MR. MAC NEIL: Recent reports I've read about Turkey suggest that it may be again at a crossroads, that after 70 years of identifying itself as a secular western-leaning country, that it is now facing another decision of whether to be a more Islamic country, whether to lean more to the East, and that that is being fought out again in Turkey, and that Turkey is now another battleground for Islamic fundamentalism. How do you see that? Is there any question that Turkey will decide not to go to the West?

PRIME MINISTER TANSU CILLER: If Turkey is segregated from Europe or rejected from Europe, then the Turkish people will reject Europe as well. I will give you a very specific answer to that. On the 19th of December, when Europe rejected Turkey's membership to the Customs Union, the support given by the Turkish people, because they are a proud bunch of people, the support given for Turkey's integration was the EU, European Union, declined tremendously, because there was rejection on the part of the people. And the parties, which were more inclined towards fundamentalism, used that. You know what they said? They said, look, Turkey has been an ally in NATO, that we helped protect the Europeans from Communism. We have allocated our resources tremendously to the military sources because we had to protect Europe from whom? From the Communist Bloc. And where are they? They are now the priority given countries to full member of EU, like Romania --

MR. MAC NEIL: The former Communist countries, you mean?

PRIME MINISTER TANSU CILLER: Yes. Former Communist countries. But after Turkey's acceptance into the Customs Union on the 6th of March, this March, then the popular vote for Turkey's integration with Europe increased close to 90 percent. There was a lot of joy on the streets, and the preference was made in the hearts of the people. The preference had been made at the time -- and it is only going to be a threat fundamentally, is going to be a threat, if Turkey is left out of Europe. Turkey is not in need of Europe. I think Europe is more in need of Turkey as well, if they do not want the forces of fundamentalism to move up to their border.

MR. MAC NEIL: Prime Minister Ciller, thank you very much for joining us.

PRIME MINISTER TANSU CILLER: Thank you.

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, the yen, attitudes toward government, and an affirmative action conversation. FOCUS - MONEY MATTERS

MR. LEHRER: Now, the continuing saga of the rising yen and the falling dollar. Ian Williams of Independent Television News reports on how the imbalance is hurting Japanese business.

IAN WILLIAMS, ITN: In a shrine in Tokyo's financial district, stockbrokers have been playing for relief from the soaring yen. But in nearby dealing rooms, the markets have shrugged off every effort, spiritual or political, to stem the rise. The cut in interest rates to a record low, 1 percent, and an Easter package of emergency government measures which promise $60 billion of extra spending, deregulation, and efforts to cut Japan's trade surplus with the rest of the world have been dismissed in Tokyo's markets as too little, too late. Analysts have ridiculed their government's package as a bureaucratic document lacking substance or detail.

KEIKICHI HONDA, Chief Economist, Bank of Tokyo: The response by our bureaucrats are always stereotypes: We'll look at it, we'll discuss it, and over time, we'll decide what to do. But that's not the correct answer to your trading partners. They need to know when and how it's done.

MR. WILLIAMS: Japan is already suffering the economic aftershocks of the Kobe earthquake which devastated the country's biggest port. The cost of rebuilding the city will run to more than $100 billion. Share prices have slumped, and the yen's rise has provoked a collective scream from corporate Japan, companies warning they'll have to slash costs or shift production abroad because the high yen makes their exports so much more expensive. The country's biggest airline, JAL, is to cut a third of its headquarters staff in the face of fierce competition from other Asian carriers, and the pain being felt in the skies is shared by the most high-tech of companies on the ground. NEC, the microelectronics giant, has already adopted the philosophy design in Japan, but be sure to manufacture abroad. This facility at an NEC plant just outside Tokyo is the most advanced of its kind in the world, but once they've perfected the process of producing these advanced chips, production will largely shift abroad. Over the last 10 years, NEC's strategy has been to shift overseas whatever production it can. Now, more than 50 percent of what sells abroad is manufactured abroad, and that program is now accelerating. NEC is bringing forward by six months the commissioning of a new $750 million facility in Scotland. Red arm bands distinguish this year's high school graduates who joined the company a fortnight ago. They're fortune. Recruitment is now 50 percent down on what it was at the height of the boom in the early 90's. And the basic tenet of corporate culture -- a job for life -- may become a victim of the drive to cut costs. For now, unemployment in Japan, at less than 3 percent, is remarkably low by international standards. For critics of the Tokyo government, this is the root of the yen's strength, trade, or more precisely, Japan's enormous trade surplus, more than $100 billion last year. Unless Japan imports more, critics say, the yen will continue to rise. Washington has focused on the car trade as one illustration of the difficulty. At the weekend, there was a steady flow of British-built mini's into Tokyo's Yokohama port, together with Land Rovers and U.S. Army trucks. But the numbers were dwarfed by the ranks of Japanese-built cards waiting to be shipped out, these bound for Baltimore. This week, Washington is again pressing to be allowed to sell more cars and car parts in Japan, accusing Tokyo of erecting unfair barriers. That has produced little sympathy among officials here, who accuse the U.S. of encouraging the yen's rise in order to force them to make concessions. At the government's economic planning agency, which drew up the Easter emergency package, they place much responsibility for ending the currency turmoil on the shoulders of Washington.

MAKOTO NOMURA, Government Economist: The U.S. authorities has no determination to protect the dollar value or the existing monetary, International Monetary Systems, itself.

MR. WILLIAMS: At the Bank of Tokyo, Mr. Honda sees that as sidestepping the issue of Japan's trade surplus, yet, he also disagrees with economic pessimists, who he believes underestimate Japan's ability to shrug off the high yen, even at 80 to the dollar.

KEIKICHI HONDA: Strengthening the yen is always a bad thing for recovery of the economy, but in my opinion it is overstated. One of the reasons is that Japan's export of goods takes only 8 percent of the whole demand. Often it is said that [the] Japanese economy is export driven. To some degree, yes, but to the degree of 8 percent of the total demand is far below the -- for example -- European average standard.

MR. WILLIAMS: Meanwhile, Japanese consumers reap the benefits of the yen's strength, queuing to buy dollars ahead of their May holidays, when record numbers will travel aboard. Another headache for the authorities here in Tokyo is that right across the region there's been a stampede out dollars and into yen. The central banks of Singapore, Hong Kong, and other tiger economies in the Far East have been dumping dollars from their reserves. It's part of a longer-term strategy to reduce their reliance on the U.S. currency. And there's little Tokyo or Washington can do about that. Nobody is suggesting the immediate end to the dollar's role as the world's reserve currency in which most international transactions are settled, but it will no longer go unchallenged. Monetary officials in Tokyo, stung by the criticism of their response to the currency crisis, are to meet again this week, the officials promising a supplementary budget to boost spending. The markets, meanwhile, are watching but may not wait. FOCUS - WE THE PEOPLE

MR. LEHRER: Now, how Americans view their government. Today the Council for Excellence in Government, a nonpartisan organization of former senior government officials, released a national poll about attitudes, attitudes toward government. The polling was done by a bipartisan team headed by Republican Bob Teeter and Democrat Peter Hart. I talked to them earlier today. Bob Teeter, what do the people think of government right now?

BOB TEETER, Republican Pollster: Well, they've lost a lot of confidence in government. This not the first poll that's shown that, but I think it's the one that goes down into the most detail of those recently done. When you look at the confidence they have in institutions, government has fallen off markedly in 20 years. And when you think about it, 20 years ago was right after Watergate, when the government wasn't in very good repute. At the time and we've seen the confidence of the federal government gone from 45 or 47 percent 20 years ago to 15 now. Confidence in state and local governments is significantly higher, but it is declined. People are not very happy with the government, and I think most of those answers we got about why really centered on spending, on inefficiencies, on spending, wasteful spending. And simply, they don't think the government has done its job very well lately.

MR. LEHRER: And, Peter Hart, it's not just the federal government. I mean, the state government, the local government are also taking their hits, is that right?

PETER HART, Democratic Pollster: Absolutely, Jim. What we found in this poll is that the faith in state government has dropped in half again over this last 20 years and even in local government, but in comparison it's the federal government which the people don't have the confidence in and in part, that means people start saying, let's shift, let's shift things from the federal government to the state government. And that's -- that's an important finding out of this survey. What are the -- what are your findings about what they want their government to do? What do they expect government to do for them, Peter?

MR. HART: Well, I think there are two things that are important here. One thing is they're saying, look, we want it better managed, and we sought this in any number of ways. When they've gone through all the results and everything else, they said, bring it back to management, let's have the personnel better managed, and secondly, while people are saying, yes, let's turn things over to the state government and even to individuals and communities, the other thing that they're saying is we want government as a watchdog. And we don't trust necessarily business to do everything that's right, whether it be pollution or in terms of producing safe drugs or any consumer sort of question. So in many cases, they're saying let's change the way government's operating, but at the same time, we don't want to eliminate government altogether.

MR. LEHRER: So they still have -- they still want the government to do something, right?

MR. TEETER: They don't want to abolish the government. I think there are certain things they don't want the government to do anymore, but primarily what this data shows is that they don't think the government is doing -- particularly the federal government -- a good job of what it's supposed to do, administer the programs it's supposed to administer, and they've got a lot more confidence in the state government. And I think probably the most important finding here is over a whole series of questions, is people really do want power returned from the federal government back to the state governments. They have much more confidence in the state government. And they see the federal government having caused them real problems. I mean --

MR. LEHRER: In what areas?

MR. TEETER: The data in here, for instance, we talked about, do you think that your standard of living and your ability to achieve American dreams is greater than your parents? The big majority think it is for themselves, but it's when you ask them about your children, it's only split about half and half. It's about a 50 percent each way. And then when we talk to them about the government's role in that, we find anywhere from 55 to 75 percent saying they think the government hinders their ability to achieve the American dream, they think government tends to make problems worse, instead of better, and it stands in the way, so it's not only that it's not doing its job, it, in fact, is hindering it. And I think --

MR. LEHRER: Peter.

MR. HART: Jim, if I can just follow up on that, I think it's particularly interesting, when you consider that we have a whole generation of people who have been the beneficiaries of government, whether it's the GI Bill or student loans or housing programs or FHA, all of the different things that have happened, and these people are telling us, no, at this stage, we see government more as a hindrance than as a help. And the other thing that is sort of fascinating that comes out of this is what I'd say is a changing nature of the American dream. And no longer do people look at the American dream and say, yes, it's something expansive, it's a "can do" kind of attitude, but, instead, it's just the opposite. It is: How do I survive? How do I move from day to day? And that's a very different kind of dream that's out there. And I think that tells us a lot about the public, yes.

MR. LEHRER: That's kind of discouraging too, is it not?

MR. HART: I find it extremely discouraging, and I think Bob and I both in this poll were surprised at this finding.

MR. TEETER: Well, we've seen findings in polls, and it was really a little more marked in this one, where just on the standard poll question that's in all kinds of public polls you've got a 30 percent plurality who think things are -- the country is going off on the wrong track, as opposed to going in the right direction.

MR. LEHRER: That's a very standard poll question.

MR. TEETER: It's a standard poll question, and it has been negative. It's turned negative over the last year and a half. It's been relatively negative for sometime. It goes up and down. But here attitudes are not very optimistic, and particularly then when you focus them on the government, they get more pessimistic. I think that along with the finding about returning power to the state government, the other point that Peter mentioned is very important. They want to see the federal government managed better, and when we ask them, what does that mean, it says, manage the people better. And when you put --

MR. LEHRER: Manage the people who work for the government better?

MR. TEETER: Who work for the government better.

MR. LEHRER: I see.

MR. TEETER: Choose 'em better, hire, fire 'em, manage 'em better. And when you go back and think about it and you look at the restructuring that almost every business and other institutions have gone through in the country to become more efficient or more competitive over the last ten or fifteen years, I think people have experienced that, they've observed it, and they don't think that the government has followed those same principles that almost every other institution in our society has. And when you think about the two broadest ones that almost every business that has become more competitive has followed, they are, first of all, return decision- making down to decentralize it, push it down to where the problem is and empower those people and let 'em make those decisions who are charged with solving the problem, and secondly, manage the people better, make them more productive, give 'em more power, give 'em more authority. And those are the two findings that are really, in my mind, dominant in this poll.

MR. HART: And what's interesting, Jim, if I can just pick up on this, at the end of the whole poll when people had gone through this issue and really thought about it, we said, what's the main message that you want to deliver to the federal government, and we gave them three options. Only 9 percent said, look, make government smaller, let's cut programs. 38 percent of the people told us, look, give state and local government more responsibility, but a plurality, 43 percent, said improve management and make government more efficient. The problem is not necessarily what government does but how government does it.

MR. LEHRER: Well, Peter, when you talk about the results of this poll, does it go across-the-board, does it apply on racial grounds, on gender, on region, on incomes, the whole schmeer?

MR. HART: It certainly does cut across every group, and interestingly enough, we look at African-Americans, and they say they see government as more of a hindrance than a help when it comes to achieving the American dream. And that's important when you come out of all of the civil rights legislation and you look, and, of course, there are differences between Republicans and Democrats and Republicans, true to form, tend to be for smaller government and to react in that way, but in many cases, the Democrats say exactly the same thing. A majority of them say, let's turn programs back to the states and this is what we should be doing. So, I mean, I think there's a message here that not only goes to Newt Gingrich but also goes to President Clinton. And that is, look, we want government to react differently, we want to make the kinds of reforms, and the kinds of things that the Congress is doing I think the public in broadest terms probably supports the reforms, and the kinds of things that is being done on government reorganization with Vice President Gore, I think you'll also get the public behind that also.

MR. LEHRER: Bob Teeter, a cause and effect question. Was your poll able to determine, or can you, the two of you great experts, determine whether or not these were legitimate feelings of the people that you talked to, or were they reactions -- I mean, were they parroting the current political climate? In other words, were they following or were they leading the politicians?

MR. TEETER: No. I think in this case they were leading, and I think it was relatively clear all the way through this poll, because one of the questions we had when we designed it was: Would people discriminate between levels of government and between private sector and the public sector? And all the way through, I think in almost every question, you have to conclude they do discriminate, and they understand. And I think it is some basic ideas. I mean, I mentioned a minute ago a whole idea that they've seen take place in other parts of the society, and if you made a list and took and said: What are the three or four basic principles that we've seen always other institutions, particularly businesses, do in order to restructure themselves? That's what they want the government to do. And Peter's point about spending is you've seen business after business in this country downsize, cut their costs 10, 15, 20, 30 percent and end up producing a higher quality service or a higher quality product, and people believe the federal government could do that.

MR. LEHRER: And you believe that they really do believe it, this isn't something that they have been told and say, okay, well, now, that's what I'm supposed to believe?

MR. TEETER: No. When you see a poll like that, you see where you ask a whole series of questions, forty or fifty or sixty questions, and you get similar answers to all of them, the same percentages, you know, that cuts 60 to 20 on every question, then you have a feeling that the questionnaire didn't work, there's something wrong here.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah.

MR. TEETER: In this poll, as you go through the questions, it didn't matter. They are internally consistent, and they discriminated when you asked them. So I really think this is something people have thought about.

MR. LEHRER: Do you read it the same way, Peter?

MR. HART: I do exactly, Jim. And I'd say one other point, and this is an area where the public has been leading the politicians the last five years, and they've been bludgeoning them over the head to say change the way you're doing things. And they continue to send that message today, and I think the Council for Excellence in Government is the one that's helped deliver it.

MR. LEHRER: This is basically -- you're a Democrat -- this is basically a Republican poll, is it not? In other words, the results seem to justify the Republican agenda, do they not?

MR. HART: Well, I think this is what's important. It may justify some elements of the Republicans, but I don't think either party gets a carte blanche out of this. I think the Republicans to be able to say, yes, we want to cut directly across the board, I think you'll see answers in here that say no, we expect government to do the following things, and for Democrats who say we can protect everything that has gone on in the past, the message is equally clear, sorry, we want things to be different, so I think a strong message to both parties, and I think -- I think that's going to be the importance of the poll.

MR. TEETER: Well, I think there is strong support for what the Republicans are doing in the Congress right now in two regards. One is they want to push decision-making back to state and local governments and send those programs back. There's very strong support for that. Secondly, they want to cut government spending. There's very strong support for that. The point was not people don't want to eliminate the government. They understand there are legitimate functions of the government, and for those functions, they want to improve the performance of it.

MR. LEHRER: Okay. Bob Teeter, Peter Hart, thank you both very much. SERIES - AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

MR. MAC NEIL: Next tonight, rethinking affirmative action, the government policy born in the civil rights era of the 1960's. President Clinton recently called for a complete review of the government's affirmative action policies. That prompted us to launch our own look at the issue. Should affirmative action policies be abandoned, modified, or kept in place? We'll hear different voices on the subject this week and next. Tonight we hear from John Silber, president of Boston University. Charlayne Hunter-Gault spoke with him recently.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Dr. Silber, thank you for joining us. Do you think affirmative action should be continued?

JOHN SILBER, President, Boston University: Well, I think we have to agree on what affirmative action is. See, I think the entire civil rights legislative movement was a movement of affirmative action. When I was a child, I gave my seat on a bus, when I was nine years old, to a black woman, and then I was, I was shouted at by white people on that bus for having done that. And the woman moved immediately to the back of the bus. I was very near the back, but I wasn't far enough back. She went immediately to the back, and I stood in the back with her until I got to my stop. But I could not even understand it as a nine-year-old, this kind of hatred. When I grew up, blacks using the federal highway could not go to a rest room on a filling station on a highway. They couldn't go to schools with white children. Now, all of that has changed, and it's changed vastly for the better, as almost all Americans agree, and it's due to civil rights legislation. That was affirmative action. Now, we come specifically to the affirmative action that we're talking about in this, in this series. This is affirmative action with regard to employment, because it was thought that something more had to be done to encourage the admission of blacks into universities and the admission of blacks and other minorities into positions in industry, government, and elsewhere. And that, that obviously was a very sound idea and a sound concern. In the original civil rights legislation, it said that there was to be absolutely no discrimination based on race or ethnicity, religion, and so forth. And that's the way we were doing it when I was dean at the University of Texas School of Arts and Sciences. We didn't even put down the race of an African.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And what was the result?

DR. JOHN SILBER: I think the result was that we moved in the right direction, and we were moving substantially because at least the civil rights legislation let all minorities know you should apply. Now, what I did in my first address to the faculty after becoming dean was to say on a civil service examination if we can give a 10-point preference to a veteran, why can't we given a 50- point preference to a minority student who's gone to a very poor school on the SAT?

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So fundamentally, you agreed with the whole notion of affirmative action in the first place? Have you changed your mind?

DR. JOHN SILBER: Well, on Title 7 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 I haven't changed my mind. I think that it was right.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Isn't Title 7 saying that there should be no discrimination based on race, sex, gender, et cetera?

DR. JOHN SILBER: That's right. I think that should remain as the law of the land. But what the purpose was to recognize individuals on the basis of their individual merit. It was not to designate classes and say anybody who's in this class without regard to their merit shall be given a position.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, is that what it really says, or does it say that the pool should be expanded to include, because the supporters say that it wasn't as you said, but to open up the pool to qualified applicants from which individuals would then be selected?

DR. JOHN SILBER: Well, I think that's what I'm saying is they were to say there's no discrimination on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, religion, et cetera, so the pool is open. Anyone may apply. But with regard to assessing individuals, it was on an individual basis. Now, when you start talking about the class as defining the person who has the right and not the individual who has the right -- individuals of all classes have the right to apply -- now when you flip that and say a member of a certain class has a specific advantage over members of a different class, members of one minority group have an advantage over individuals in a different group, that becomes a form of reverse discrimination. And that is, I think, a mistake.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But do you think that's generally how affirmative action is applied today?

DR. JOHN SILBER: Let me show you how it works in the university. If you deny tenure to a female professor at the university, the Equal Opportunity Office of the federal government with the deep pockets, the infinitely deep pockets apparently of the federal government, sues us. We have the choice of going to court, and we have gone to court, and we have won, and we have paid $450,000 to deny tenure to an unqualified woman whose salary was $28,000 a year.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But that's an individual case. Let's look at the broader, the broader --

DR. JOHN SILBER: That individual case is symptomatic. Now, I would -- I would settle for this. If the Equal Opportunity Office sues the university and loses, let them pay the legal expenses, the court costs, and all of the lawyers' expenses for the university, and then we're home free. Right now, it becomes intimidation, and what happens is that unqualified persons, and they can be in minorities or they can be in the majority, which are women, but in those two classes, they can get positions in universities because you simply don't take the risk of the expensive litigation.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So are you saying based on that example that you don't think affirmative action should now continue, that it's achieved what it's intended to?

DR. JOHN SILBER: No, no. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying it should be fine tuned. It has been misinterpreted, and it ought to be reinterpreted I think to get rid of affirmative action based simply on class membership. There's no reason why a black should have an advantage on a job just because he's black. If this is a person -- now let me just take a name -- suppose you take the distinguished professor, Lerone Bennett, a marvelous historian, who's also an editor of "Ebony Magazine," a really distinguished intellectual. He doesn't need any advantage. He's not deprived. What, what bothers me about, about affirmative action right now is that it's failing to address the critical problems in the black underclass, in the minority underclass, who almost have no chance at all. That's where I would begin to focus.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What do you say to those supporters of affirmative action, though, who say that for 200 years there was society and legal enforcement of separation, segregation, and, therefore, inequitable results, and that 30 years is just simply not long enough?

DR. JOHN SILBER: That's totally irrelevant, because you're dealing with individuals as if they were members of a genus and were not individuals.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But I talked to a young professor from Yale, Steven Carter, who argues just the opposite. I mean, Stephen Carter says that he never would have gotten into Yale without affirmative action, that there had been -- and you can respond to this -- a kind of pervasive, good old boy network in which preference traditionally was shown to white males, and that, and that basically the statistics today don't bear out that the field, that the playing field is level.

DR. JOHN SILBER: I don't think the playing field is level. I think the blacks have a lot better chance to get into Yale than a white student of equal ability.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But do you have any evidence to show --

DR. JOHN SILBER: Sure. My son got turned down at Yale.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But my question --

DR. JOHN SILBER: He wasn't black.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But is there any concrete evidence to demonstrate that blacks or women are, in fact, taking the jobs of white males? That's part of what's fueling the anger of white males.

DR. JOHN SILBER: Well, for example, take in contracting, you have an engineering firm that can't win a job because any firm applying for government work that is owned by a woman or owned by a minority has an automatic advantage. They don't ask: Was that white person with that -- that white male with his engineering firm coming up from the bottom, small, hard-driving, working hard, disadvantaged in terms of childhood experiences, but now ready to make the grade, and are they competing against a firm earned by a black that's well established, done a lot of work, owned by a person who is under no disadvantage, had a college-educated father and mother, educated in college himself, or a woman who is educated and in a very good position, or against a fraudulent scheme in which the white firm has put a figurehead black as its head and made him a partial owner or put a figurehead woman at the head and made 'em a partial owner? Now, that white person, that white male competing in that is going to lose out every time. That is probably the most common case that has fueled the fire of reform in this regard.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But why are the statistics still so skewed? Why are the majority of contractors, people in Fortune 500 companies, et cetera, still predominantly white males, if that's the case?

DR. JOHN SILBER: Well, look at our welfare problem and look at the way in which we've broken up the black family with, with our welfare legislation which gave financial encouragement to black women to throw their husband out of the house. When, when we passed that Act, and I was in favor of at the time, don't misunderstand me, I didn't predict any more than Lyndon Johnson the effect of this, of this law on the black family. But in retrospect, we know exactly what happened. It, it has not only affected black families. Of course, it's affected the families of Hispanics and the families of the white poor. But we have -- we have diminished parental responsibility on the part of fathers. We have busted up those families, and as a result, we've created an underclass for which affirmative action can do nothing because they are so poorly educated, so disadvantaged by their rearing that they can't even finish high school, which means that they can't compete for these jobs, they can't compete to enter Yale, or they can't compete to enter East Jesus, Nebraska. They don't have a chance of getting into college. They don't have a chance of getting a good job. They are -- they are absolutely excluded from the programs that affirmative action is designed to help.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But supporting --

DR. JOHN SILBER: But let me finish. That skews the statistics. When you wipe out all those people, your statistics are never going to come into balance.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What are some of the things that you think need to be changed as -- if the review that the President calls for goes on? What specific recommendations would you make?

DR. JOHN SILBER: Well, my recommendation would be, first of all, let's continue the march of the civil rights movement. And it has always been aimed at action affirmative to opportunity for minorities and people who have been disadvantaged. Let's focus on the people who have been disadvantaged. And my highest priority for that reason would go to that vast number in the underclass who have been pushed there by misguided social policy. I'm certainly in favor of affirmative action, but I think that when you -- when you open it up for fraud, as it is in many businesses in those contracts, and when you try to apply quotas without paying attention to the -- to the size of the pool from which you're trying to select, and when you're trying to tell universities that you have to have a certain percentage of blacks or a certain percentage of women without asking where -- whether persons of great talent are available in those areas, in specific areas, I think you're making a great mistake.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Dr. Silber, thank you.

DR. JOHN SILBER: Thank you. I enjoyed being with you.

MR. MAC NEIL: Charlayne's series will continue tomorrow with a conversation with David Lawrence, editor of the Miami Herald. RECAP

MR. MAC NEIL: Again, the major stories of this Tuesday, President Clinton will hold a news conference at 9 PM Eastern Time. It's his first prime time news conference since August. Housing starts fell nearly 8 percent last month to a new two-year low. Good night, Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Good night, Robin. We'll see you tomorrow night. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.