The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

INTRO

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. President Reagan today gave the formal order to pull the U.S. Marines off Lebanese soil while the situation of President Gemayel got worse. Syria rejected his latest peace plan; so did the Druse rebels, who bombarded the small part of Beirut he controls. We'll bring you up to date. Also tonight a closer documentary look at another war -- the endless and costly struggle between Iran and Iraq. Jim Lehrer is off; Judy Woodruff's in Washington. Judy?

JUDY WOODRUFF: Also on the NewsHour we check up on the latest economic figures, good news about the GNP. We continue our interviews with all the Democratic presidential hopefuls with one who has hitched his wagon to the nuclear issue.

ALAN CRANSTON: Our country faces the gravest threats to its security and survival in its history.

WOODRUFF: And, finally, the images, the name and the memory of one particular president is tied to the American consciousness. Tonight we examine the immortality of Abraham Lincoln.

Efforts to win support for a new peace plan for Lebanon fell apart late today when the government of Syria said that it would not go along. Syrian Foreign Minister Khaddam charged that the eight-point plan worked out by Saudi Arabia was unacceptable because it did not amount to a complete renunciation of last May's troop withdrawal agreement between Lebanon and Israel. Syria's objections appear to have to do with the fact that the new plan would permit Israel to play a security role along the southern border of Lebanon, and that it calls for a simultaneous pullout from Lebanon of both Syrian and Israeli troops. Syria's rejection came after a personal appeal in Damascus by the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal. Where all these leaves Lebanese President Gemayel and his hopes to piece together a solution for his country's crisis is not clear. The opponents with whom he must work out any agreement are closely allied with Syria. Meanwhile, Gemayel's Druse enemies continued to shower rockets on his enclave in East Beirut. And, at the U.S. Marine base in South Beirut, American troops were quickly packing up their gear under orders from President Reagan to begin pulling out this weekend.

Back in Washington, the President told reporters it was unfair for his critics to contend that U.S. efforts to negotiate peace in the Middle East have collapsed. Mr. Reagan acknowledged, however, to a White House audience today that the process has been painfully slow. But, he said, "We must continue to search for peace and stability as long as there is a chance to bring it about." The President accused Syria for what he called its own selfish purposes of being the stumbling block to permitting a Lebanese government to broaden its base.

For more on the situation in Lebanon we have a report from Don Murray of the CBC. Iran-Iraq War

DON MURRAY, CBC [voice-over]: These are the victors, and they know it -- the Druse militiamen after their swift and all but complete victory over the Lebanese army in the past three days. Today, as the fighting died down, they consolidated their hold on villages south of Beirut and waited for news from Damascus. Their leader, Walid Jumblatt, has already served notice that with Gemayel on the run he wants to do no political deals with him. Jumblatt says the Lebanese President's last-minute willingness to scrap the accord with Israel is too little too late. Gemayel can't expect much more comfort from the Shiite Amal militia, the other main victor in the battles of the past two weeks. The Amal now control much of West and South Beirut. Their leader, Nabih Berri, while more moderate in his language about Gemayel, says he doesn't even want to consider a peace plan until the president admits governmental responsibility for what Berri calls massacres of his people in South Beirut.

NABIH BERRI, Amal (Shiite) leader: The catastrophe there was somebody tried to destroy the 35% from his people I think will have to tell him why. And he has to take responsibility.

MURRAY [voice-over]: These are only the start of Gemayel's problems. Below the Awali River in south Lebanon camps the occupation force of 15,000 Israeli soldiers. Israel has made it clear that if Gemayel does scrap Lebanon's accord with Israel it's troops will simply dig in in southern Lebanon. And if Israeli troops remain so will Syrian troops in the north.

WOODRUFF: And in southern Lebanon, hundreds of President Gemayel's Christian supporters streamed into the Israeli-occupied territory to get away from the victorious Druse and Shiite Moslem militiamen. Some said they were pinning their hopes on Israel, but as of today there were no reports of any major Israeli move against the Moslem forces.

And, in Washington, in a new piece of irony, Pentagon sources said today that last week's shelling by the U.S. battleship New Jersey hit nothing of military value. The New Jersey guns pounded the area around Beirut for more than nine hours shortly after President Reagan announced that he planned to move the Marines to ships offshore. One military source acknowledged that there had been some civilian casualties.

Robin?

MacNEIL: In the oil lands north of the Persian Gulf, Iranian troops today fought through the second day of a massive offensive into the heart of Iraq. The offensive appears to be aimed at Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, only 100 miles from the Iranian frontier. Western military analysts say as many as half a million men may eventually be engaged in the battle, which could be a climax in the 3 1/2-year-old war. Today Iran said it had killed or wounded more than 1,000 Iraqis and seized strategic territory. Iraq said its troops had killed 2,000 Iranians, destroyed large amounts of the enemy's armor and equipment, and captured a large number of prisoners.

The war began in September, 1980, when President Saddam Hussein of Iraq sent his army on a deep drive into the oil-producing Iranian province of Khuzistan. Several months later Iranian troops devoutly loyal to the spiritual leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, drove the Iraqis out. Since then the Iraqis have beaten back several Iranian offensives. The Iranians have blocked shipping from Iraq's only seaport at Basra, and the Iraqis have tried and failed to block shipments from Iran's principal oil port at Kharg Island. For a report on the situation in Iraq on the eve of this latest Iranian offensive. Here is Gavin Hewitt of the CBC.

GAVIN HEWITT, CBC [voice-over]: Iraq has become the prisoner of a war it started 40 months ago and now cannot end. Repelling the Iranian offensives has exacted an enormous price. Every shell fired costs at least $500. Iraq spends each month over a billion dollars on the war.

Iraq has lost about 80,000 dead and Iran twice that number. It's impossible to estimate the number of wounded. Iraq alleges that nearly a million Iranians have been injured. Whatever the figure, the largely ignored Gulf war has witnessed horrifying casualties. Iraq has taken nearly 7,000 prisoners, while Iran is holding over 50,000 Iraqis. Iranians have on the whole been less willing to be captured. Iraq is eager to show off Khomeini's child soldiers. In this camp 100 kilometers from Baghdad children as young as 10 are said to be prisoners.

The Iraqis can provide few recent examples of Iran using their very young, but the prisoners serve as a reminder to Iraq of the fanatical dedication that many of Iran's young have for exporting their Islamic revolution.

[interviewing] Why did you do it? Why did you decide to go and fight when you were 15 years old?

SOLDIER [through interpreter]: He say it was not the up to him; that it was the problem of the government's and --

HEWITT [voice-over]: Whatever the propaganda, both sides have their young volunteers -- the guns of Iraq's popular army. Originally it was the armed wing of the ruling Baathist party; now it provides 650,000 volunteers for the war. In reality few of them have any choice. After three months' rudimentary training, they are sent to the front, as expendable as their Iranian counterparts. Their training illustrates why the Gulf war has exacted such a high human toll. They are being shown how to destroy an enemy machine gun post. The tactic amounts to little more than a full frontal charge across the open desert. But increasingly Iraq is looking to its recently acquired sophisticated weapons as the best way of hastening the end of the war.

Iraq is believed to have recently taken delivery for the SS-12 missile. With a range of over 500 miles it would enable Iraq to hit Teheran. The French have delivered the Super Etendard fighter, which Iraq could use against Iran's economic lifeline, the oil terminal at Kharg Island. The planes are armed with Exocet missiles. Although the Exocet is not ideally suited for destroying an oil platform, a combination of Iraqi missiles could destroy Kharg Island.

ROBERT ELLIOT, institute for Strategic Studies: Saddam Hussein originally tried to end the war after he'd made his gains in Khuzistan. That failed. He tried to end it again when the Iranians pushed him out of Khuzistan back across the border. That failed. He is now faced with a growing casualty rate, and most families of Iraq have lost some male member of their families. Inflation is high and it's, I think, rather higher than the government admits, and this is going to have a very, very adverse long-term effect on the economy of his country. There's a limit to how far he can go with this.

TARIQ AZIZ, Iraqi Foreign Minister: No, we are not in a desperate situation and we are not frustrated. You have been in our country and you have seen the people; you have seen the officials. And a lot of people in the world know Iraq very well, and they are very completely sure that Iraq is not in a desperate situation and the Iraqi leadership and people are not frustrated.

HEWITT [voice-over]: Few believe the Iraqi denials. The port of Basra, with its 100 trapped ships, serves as a reminder of the war's potential for economic damage. But if Iraq uses its new weaponry Iran has hinted it might block not a few ships but the Gulf, the waterway for 60% of the world's oil.

It's the Straits of Hormuz, the Gulf's narrow neck, that would be most vulnerable to Iranian attack. Most analysts, however, doubt the Iranians' capacity to mine or blockade the Straits. Of greater concern would be an Iranian attack on a supertanker. One burning tanker, it is said, would frighten off the world's shipowners. Recently the American Navy operating out of Bahrain and the British from Oman have been rehearsing a system of convoys. What frightens the West is that Iraq might well be deliberately trying to provoke the Iranians so as to draw the West into the war with Iran.

Iraq is a one-man state, and he appears everywhere. President Saddam Hussein presides over a personality cult that exceeds that of his enemy and neighbor Ayotollah Khomeini. His critics, none of whom survive inside Iraq, say he started the war because he had ambitions to become the undisputed leader of the Gulf. Under him Iraq is a ruthless police state. Be it military police or the much more numerous army of informers, every aspect of life is controlled. The foreigner is deliberately isolated from the ordinary Iraqi, who is frightened to answer the most innocent question. Yet Saddam Hussein has cleverly concealed the true cost of the war. There's plenty of meat and vegetables, and the Gulf states, who equally fear an Iranian victory, have given $20 billion.

Since the war began, Iraq has indulged itself with construction. Several million foreign workers have been drafted in to prove that war doesn't hurt, that you can build and fight at the same time. The new apartments are the only side of Iraq we were permitted to show. Poverty does not officially exist. But the strain is showing. Payments to some foreign companies have been postponed. As for the dead and injured, here, too, the agonies of war have been carefully disguised. Widows are given new cars, a patch of land and cash compensation.

Half of the Iraqi people are Shiite Muslims, from the same branch of Islam as Ayatollah Khomeini. It was fear that Iran might try and export its fundamentalist revolution that was one of the reasons for Iraq starting the war. So far the Iraqi Shiites have remained loyal to their own state. But the Iranian challenge continues. Only recently Teheran said it would only stop the war when Iraq became a true Islamic state.

Mr. ELLIOT: The impact of the war itself will create grassroots dissent. It will depend entirely on how long he can keep his people happy. So far, contrary to many people's earlier thoughts, he's been able to do this, but there must come a time where war weariness takes over and people say, "Look, anything to get out of this." There were reports of a coup attempt late last fall. That is the sort of thing that will emerge again. Sooner or later one of those will be successful.

HEWITT [voice-over]: Each year another 100,000 Iraqis prepare to make their first visit to the front. Their morale seems high, and their determination to defend their cities appears strong. Many Iraqis know that the Iranians who have built their revolution on martyrdom cannot easily be bullied, and that they, like so many other Iraqis, are destined for the front line.

MacNEIL: For a further look at the current state of the fighting and its implications, we turn to Thomas McNaugher, a research associate at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Mr. McNaugher is currently working on a study of Persian Gulf security issues. Mr. McNaugher, in the 3 1/2 years of this war or after 3 1/2 years of war, could this be the climactic battle that has now been launched?

THOMAS McNAUGHER: Well, one never knows. I think so. I think it's fair to say that we have seen the Iranians build up several times for offensives over the last year and a half since 1982, the summer of 1982, when they tossed most of the Iraqi soldiers off their own territory. Some of those buildups have never gone anywhere -- suggesting that their logistics is pretty shaky right now, that they couldn't support a major breakthrough even if it occurred. To the extent that they've been able to conduct offensives it's gotten them some of Iraq's territory -- tens of square miles -- at enormous cost in terms of dead and wounded, but nothing approaching a breakthrough that would collapse the Iraqi army.

MacNEIL: How much do we actually know about what's going on there? I mean, can U.S. spy satellites see what's going on on the ground and make really good estimates of who is where and how many troops are involved?

Mr. McNAUGHER: I'm actually not able to comment very well on that. I suspect we can see a lot from satellites. We certainly haven't been able to get in to the front from either side. The Iraqis and the Iranians have denied Western journalists access except very controlled access. And certainly their press releases aren't to be believed. So while I say we shouldn't worry too much about the current offensive, there is always the problem that we don't know the full story, and in that sense there may be a breakthrough here.

MacNEIL: Is it documented that the Iranians have been using, at least in the past, waves of human fodder to clear minefields, and that young men, particularly some boys, have been willing because of their deep faith just to walk these fields to clear them? Is there real hard evidence for those stories?

Mr. McNAUGHER: Yes, I think there is, as hard as anything that's come out of this war, and there's evidence that they still do that, although I think it's fair to say unless there are quantities in, say, 1981.

MacNEIL: Why can't the Iraqis, with their sophisticated weaponry, some of which we saw referred to in this film, why can't they be more effective against the Iranians?

Mr. McNAUGHER: Well, Iran's strength is in its ground forces, and the sophisticated weaponry that the Iraqis have really doesn't allow them much leverage over Iranian ground forces. They have a lot of aircraft, a lot of strike aircraft, which could be capable of hitting ground troops, but their pilots have never shown much capability to do that, and they have not even been very good at choosing targets. Iraq has thus tended to concentrate its aircraft on going after, for example, Iranian naval vessels or commercial traffic entering or leaving Iranian ports.

MacNEIL: Let me ask you this. Apart from being aghast at the quantity of human life that is being spent there, does this war affect the United States? Do we have to worry about it?

Mr. McNAUGHER: If we could guarantee that this war would remain the kind of bloody stalemate that it's been for some time, it's rather heartless, but it's probably true that in the ultimate sense it doesn't affect our interests. Where it affects our interests most immediately is that there's always the probability that either Iraq or Iran will make good on threats to cut off the oil traffic out of the Gulf.Both have the capability to do that. At that point, of course, the war would become an international event.

MacNEIL: Does that threat become more real if this is now a campaign by Iran that could make the Iraqis desperate?

Mr. McNAUGHER: If the Iraqis are really desperate, of course it becomes more real, and that's the question everybody is asking. Just how close to the brink is Iraq? My only personal guess is it's not that close to the brink, but, as I say, there's a lot we don't know about this. In the interim, neither side is encouraged to use the capabilities it has. Both realize that the consequences of disrupting oil traffic would be pretty serious.

MacNEIL: The United States has indicated and even a couple of months ago moved some ships around to suggest that if the Iranians tried that the U.S. Navy would prevent them. Can the U.S. Navy keep that strait open if necessary?

Mr. McNAUGHER: Well, I don't think we can prevent them from doing something. I don't think it's very easy to mine the Strait of Hormuz. We'd have trouble doing that. It's a wide waterway; the water runs pretty quickly. The Iranians probably would have -- well, of course, would have a great deal more trouble. More likely scenario is that they sink a supertanker down in the southern Gulf. That would send insurance rates sky high and tanker traffic would stack up outside the Gulf. That would happen. I don't think there's any way to stop that. Even a motor boat loaded with dynamite, much like the truck loaded with dynamite that went into the Marine barracks in Beirut, could do that. We would then have to set up a convoy system to bring tankers into the Gulf.If anyone got in the way -- presumably the Iranians -- we'd have to eliminate that threat. It wouldn't be a difficult problem. Somewhat messy, but I don't think oil traffic need be disrupted for more than a few weeks.

MacNEIL: Okay.Well, Mr. McNaugher, thank you very much for joining us. Judy?

WOODRUFF: Richard Stone, the President's special ambassador to Central America, is leaving his job on March 1st.Stone, a former Democratic senator from Florida, joined the administration last June. He is reportedly leaving because of his disagreements with the State Department's key official on Central American policy, Langhorne Motley. President Reagan accepted Stone's resignation today with regret. He named Harry Schludeman, the former U.S. ambassador to Argentina, to serve as the new special envoy to Central America. Schlaudeman recently served as executive director of the Kissinger Commission, which studied U.S. policy in Latin America.

And, from Moscow, the word tonight is that Soviet dissident Yuri Orlov has been released from a labor camp. Orlov was sentenced in 1978 for anti-Soviet agitation after he founded a committee to monitor compliance with the Helsinki human rights accord. The 59-year-old physicist is now headed for eastern Siberia to finish out his punishment. He faces five years of internal exile.

And at least 10 Korean Air Lines pilots face a different punishment. They have been grounded as part of a review program begun by the airline after one of its planes was shot down in Soviet airspace last September.Pressure on airline officials increased in December when a KAL cargo plane collided with a small private plane at the Anchorage, Alaska, airport. That incident was attributed to human error, and today the airline said some senior officers have been grounded and replaced by qualified juniors.

[Video postcard -- Dixie, Louisiana]

MacNEIL: The government today published revised figures showing that the economy grew faster at the end of 1983 than earlier though. In the last quarter of the year the gross national product, or the sum of all the country's goods and services, increased by 4.9%. The government's preliminary estimate had been 4.5%. The Commerce Department said the increase came from better showings in housing construction and business investment.

The Federal Communications Commission today rejected a new rate structure proposed by local phone companies for private business lines. The new rates would have dramatically increased the fees for business lines. Today's ruling was a victory for large business phone customers ranging from Western Union and Dow Jones to the American Library Association. It could also affect all phone customers by causing new directory assistance charges to be lower than the 75 AT&T has been proposing.

Judy?

WOODRUFF: Jesse Jackson announced today that he probably will not go to Nicaragua next week for a celebration by the leftist Sandinista government there. Jackson said his campaign schedule has made him reluctant to go. However, Jackson added he might change his mind if the Nicaraguan leaders answer some of his concerns about human rights issues.

With just three days to go before the presidential election season gets formally underway, we continue our series of interviews with the eight Democrats who are running. Charlayne Hunter-Gault has more. Charlayne? Alan Cranston Interview

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Tonight we take a look at Alan Cranston, the 69-year-old senator from California. According to the Gallup poll released over the weekend, Senator Cranston ranked behind all other candidates except Hart and Hollings. Each of them got 2%. Today Senator Cranston sent a letter to National Democratic Committee Chairman Charles Manatt asking him to intervene in the sniping between candidates Glenn and Mondale. Senator Cranston said in his letter that the only American who benefits from such behavior is Ronald Reagan. As for the Senator's -- Senator Cranston's campaign behavior, we observed it during his last few days of campaigning in New Hampshire.

ALAN CRANSTON, Democratic presidential candidate: Our world is beset by an arms race that is raging out of control.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: Across New Hampshire, to audiences young and old, Alan Cranston brings one message -- peace and arms control. In a 30-minute address to this college audience he spoke of nothing else. To these anti-nuclear activists in Hampton, he varied the message, but only slightly.

Sen. CRANSTON: Many other issues are, of course, important. Education, the environment, equalopportunity, housing, health care, transportation, and many others. But if we blow ourselves up in a nuclear war none of those issues will really matter.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: But his campaign managers aren't worried that he'll be considered a one-issue candidate.

PHIL GRANDMAISON, campaign aide: Well, Alan Cranston isn't a one-issue candidate. What he is is a two-issue candidate, a candidate who is both committed to the control of nuclear weapons and to the return of a full-employment economy.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: In a Cranston campaign there's little time spent greeting strangers in shopping malls or factories, no entourage of Secret Service. Just the candidate and a couple of aides making his speech about peace to the elderly and the young, a speech with increasingly sharper jabs at the frontrunner, Walter Mondale.

Sen. CRANSTON: On the general issues of war and peace Walter Mondale has not provided leadership. On Grenada, for example, he was very, very silent when that country was invaded, and eventually he said, "Well, it was hard to tell whether the invasion was proper or improper because the press was not allowed to cover it."

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: Cranston may be directing his fire at Mondale, but his real goal is to set himself apart from the pack of runners-up to eliminate such liberal rivals as Gary Hart and George McGovern. A sense of humor helps, as when the Cranston recently sought the endorsement of the highly conservative Manchester Union Leader newspaper.

NEWSPAPERMAN: No, I don't think you're going to make it.

Sen. CRANSTON: You don't?

NEWSPAPERMAN: No.

Sen. CRANSTON: What a shock and a suprise!

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: He also has demonstrated that he is a candidate ready and able to get into the nitty gritty of raising his own money. When he takes off his shoes to relax for a few hours, the time is spent on the phone with the goal of raising $8,000 a day, as in this call to a liberal cartoonist.

Sen. CRANSTON: I have long admired your work and I wondered if by any chance you might be a supporter of mine, and if you could, for example, let me have one of your original cartoons to auction off for my campaign.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: The cartoonist said no for the moment, but the Cranston campaign has been raising $100,000 a week helping wipe out an earlier debt of $1 million incurred before he received federal matching funds. Money remains a problem, being spent almost as fast as it comes in. Some of it is going to these high schoolers, still too young to vote, but who are nevertheless being paid $3.45 an hour to identify Cranston supporters and to find out if the peace issue is resonating in New Hampshire.

HIGH SCHOOL CAMPAIGN WORKER: Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Ending the nuclear arms race must be the number-one priority of the next United States president.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: But what these callers found is that most of the voters they called still consider themselves undecided, and that is certainly one of the things weighing heavily on Alan Cranston's mind these days.

[in studio] For more on what's weighing on Senator Cranston's mind, Robin and I interviewed him earlier today. We began with his assessment of Lebanese President Gemayel's move abrogating the May 17th security agreement with Israel.

Sen. CRANSTON: -- the factor that is destabilizing in a terribly turbulent situation, but I think we should recognize that we sort of led Gemayel down the primrose path when we got him to sign that agreement with Israel and assured him that we would take care of the Syrians, that they would withdraw and that everything would work out. That was a false premise. We were unable to deliver. I think we should recognize that it's not wise for America to intervene in every civil war that comes along, and we should get out of there. George Bush today said it will take us 30 days to remove the Marines from their hunkered-down, indefensible position at the airport. I see no reason for it to take that long, and he admitted that we could get out faster if we had to. We should get the Marines not only back to the ships, but we should get the ships away from there because on the ships they will still be in danger, and I do not believe that we should continue our intervention in that civil war from the ships with the shelling and the attacks. We've intervened in civil war after civil war without adequate results in Lebanon, in El Salvador, in Nicaragua, just like in Vietnam. I think we should stop trying to intervene on one side in every civil war that comes along and instead use America's great power and prestige for peaceful purposes, for diplomacy, for solutions.

HUNTER-GAULT: How fast do you think the troops should be taken out of there, and how would you accomplish that?

Sen. CRANSTON: Well, I'd accomplish it just the way it will be accomplished when it's done -- by putting them on helicopters and flying them out to the ship. And I think that could be done very swiftly, in a matter of hours.

HUNTER-GAULT: In other words, you think it should happen -- when you say immediately you mean today.

Sen. CRANSTON: Today, tomorrow, at once.

HUNTER-GAULT: How do you think that the pullout that is gradually happening along with the abrogation of the treaty affects U.S. influence in the region in general? It is a defeat?

Sen. CRANSTON: Well, we have certainly had a failure in Lebanon. Our policies have not worked. Our military interventions have failed, and we are now in the process of trying to extricate ourselves from a very untenable situation. I think we should have recognized at the outset that 1,600 Marines cannot bring peace to a part of the world, Lebanon, that has not really known stability and peace for thousands of years. Factional blood feuds between various sects of the Moslem faith, with various Moslems killing each other, killing Christians, killing Jews and vice versa, has been going on for century after century. And to think that we could come in and solve all of that with 1,600 Marines was a very superficial, simplistic view of that part of the world.

HUNTER-GAULT: Well, you say you see no further role for U.S. troops. What about the United States itself in a diplomatic capacity? Do you see any further role, and do you think our -- how damaged do you think our role has become as a result of the moves we've made recently?

Sen. CRANSTON: Well, if we would stop trying to use our military power in places where military power is not the answer to the problems that exist and would instead use our prestige, our leverage as a great power, we might well be much more successful. I think our messages should be two-fold. One, to the Arabs: drop your holy war against Israel. Every nation surrounding Israel, every Arab nation except Egypt, is in a state of war with Israel, determined to drive Israel into the sea. There cannot be peace until they abandon that, and they should. Once they do, peace can be accomplished. Israel can be more forthcoming if she knows she has peaceful neighbors. And I think we should go back to the Camp David peace process which Ronald Reagan has totally subverted.

HUNTER-GAULT: Well, King Hussein and President Mubarak of Egypt said just this past week that they thought the Reagan administration should begin dialogue with the PLO in order to bring about peace in the area. Do you -- if you were president would you follow that advice, and do you think President Reagan should?

Sen. CRANSTON: No, I don't think so. I think that the PLO must plainly avow and make plain by its actions that it no longer seeks to destroy Israel, that it will no longer resort to terrorist activities and will support the U.N. resolutions that have been the foundation of our policy there. If the PLO would take that new role, then there would be a role for the PLO in negotiations with us and with others.

HUNTER-GAULT: Can we move just briefly to the Soviet Union? Do you see any thaw in the relations between the United States and the Soviet Union since the death of Andropov?

Sen. CRANSTON: I hope there will be a thaw. We certainly need it. But I don't think we can expect any rapid changes in the actions of the Soviet Union. It will take a time for Chernenko to consolidate his power, and the relations between the Soviet Union and the United States, with the militaristic policies of the Kremlin on the one hand and the bellicose actions and saber-rattling by Ronald Reagan on the other have soured our relations so severely that I think it's going to be very difficult to straighten them out in the time remaining for Ronald Reagan.

HUNTER-GAULT: But he has changed his tone in the last few days. Is that a good thing?

Sen. CRANSTON: Yes. I think it's fine that the President has changed his tone, but we need a change in fundamental view and in actions, and we need a President committed to making a breakthrough in arms control surrounded by aides who know what it takes to do so. And I don't think we have that kind of a president, and I don't think we have that kind of a team in place in Washington. And the President has left only a few months now -- he's let most of his administration slip by without any progress on arms control. I don't think he has the time now to make the sort of a change and a breakthrough that we need.

HUNTER-GAULT: All right. Robin?

MacNEIL: Turning to domestic matters, on Wednesday you proposed a new jobs program that would cost $23 billion. How would that work?

Sen. CRANSTON: Well, first, we would pay for it by military cuts that I have proposed that would be larger than that. I think we can cut about $38 billion out of the defense budget -- I have proposed exactly how -- before we get to negotiating with the Soviet Union. Eliminate the MX and do many other things that we are presently spending vast sums upon that do not add to our security. The jobs program basically is one of investing in the American worker -- giving them the training they need with jobs at the end. My program has focused on young people who need an opportunity to have job training and jobs.

MacNEIL: These are people who are unemployed at present?

Sen. CRANSTON: Yes. People who are unemployed, but there is also a focus on giving aid to businesses, particularly small businesses, that can bring jobs to places where they are needed and provide unemployment and entrepreneurial opportunities of a new sort. It also focuses upon the need for day care centers for children of mothers who would like to be working. We pose a terrible dilemma to a typical young woman, say, 25 or 35 years old, no husband in the house, and three or four kids. Presently all she can do is go on welfare or abandon her kids through the day and go out and look for a job that she may not find, and if she gets a job her kids are not taken care of. We need a day care program so that she can go out and find a job and know that her kids are taken care of in the appropriate environment while she's working.

MacNEIL: How many people would this program serve? How many jobs? How many people could be trained and placed in jobs?

Sen. CRANSTON: I think we can get a couple of million people back to work, and the main thrust of this program over several years can protect about 10 million jobs that are in jeopardy of being lost because of present trends in our economy. We have to think not only about those who can't find work now, but those who may be unemployed in the future if present trends are not changed.

MacNEIL: Why is such a large expenditure of federal money needed at a time when the recovery appears to be bringing the rate of unemployment down rapidly?

Sen. CRANSTON: Well, the rate of unemployment is still higher than when Ronald Reagan became president. There are 17 million Americans today unemployed or underemployed, and I do not see the signs that the economy is going to straighten out so swiftly and so substantially that we can feel that most of those people will have a job opportunity. Another aspect of the program is to start the task of rebuilding the infrastructure of America. Our highways, our railroads, our ports, our waterways, our canals are deteriorating, and there can be much employment if we start the task -- which we must, sooner or later -- of repairing that and rebuilding.

MacNEIL: Congress passed a bill last year with new gas tax for exactly that purpose, but not much of that work has started yet.

Sen. CRANSTON: Unfortunately it has not. Ronald Reagan apparently doesn't see the need for moving on these many fronts that are required to straighten out our economy and lead us back to full employment.

MacNEIL: Can the federal budget, even with a big cut in military expenditure such as you're proposing, afford a new program of this size when it is so heavily in deficit?

Sen. CRANSTON: The federal budget can afford a program like this if you find the money within the present expenditures, and I have done that and more. There would be about $10 to $12 billion beyond what we would save in military expenditures that we could use to reduce the deficit. There are many steps we have to take to reduce the deficit. We can. We can't achieve it overnight because it's gotten so monstrously high under Ronald Reagan's unworkable and unfair economic program. We have to start in that direction. We can, we must.

MacNEIL: How vital is it to do something about the deficit this year?

Sen. CRANSTON: I think it's vital to start the task of reducing the deficit to restore confidence and make plain that we know how to do it and that we are headed in that direction. It will take years, unfortunately, to get rid of the deficit, but if we build confidence that we're headed in that direction that will help tremendously in giving investors the faith that if they invest they have a sound economy looming in the future.

MacNEIL: What kind of a dilemma do you see the President placing the Democrats in in proposing this bipartisan working group to tackle the deficit now?

Sen. CRANSTON: Well, I think the President's trying to share in the solution of a problem that he helped create, and I think the Democrats are wise in taking the position, "We're not going to talk unless you display a willingness to consider and to go along with reasonable cuts in our defense spending." If he is adamant on that subject, as he's been up to now, there's no way to negotiate with him.

MacNEIL: And the moment he indicates some willingness to tackle defense spending then the Democrats should cooperate with him?

Sen. CRANSTON: We should endeavor to. I don't think that we should have a deadlock all through this year until we have a new president. We should try to start the task of dealing with the deficit right now.

MacNEIL: Finally, a question on politics. When we interviewed you in July you said you hoped by April 1st to be alone in the field with John Glenn. How have all those expectations changed since then?

Sen. CRANSTON: Well, I would change that to say that now I hope that around that time I will be alone in the field basically with Walter Mondale. John Glenn's campaign doesn't appear to be taking off. Of course, we don't really know what's happening until people vote. And there is a new factor. Jesse Jackson's in the race, and I think he will remain in the race even if he does not have a strong prospect of winning the nomination.

MacNEIL: Your campaign staff says it would be virtually impossible for you to carry on if you don't do well in Iowa and New Hampshire, and they say "well" means less than -- not well would mean less than third in the race. Is that what you're calculation is? If you don't come third in Iowa and New Hampshire that's the end of it?

Sen. CRANSTON: Well, we have high hopes in Iowa. Monday night comes the first vote. We expect to come in a clear third. That means, in effect, that I emerge as the alternative to Mondale and Glenn, the present frontrunners, and win the contest among the rest of us for the right to get into the playoffs with them. I believe we will accomplish that in Iowa and that momentum should help us in New Hampshire. But I'm not in the business presently of thinking about when I get out of the race. I'm thinking about when and how I win the race.

MacNEIL: Senator Cranston, thank you.

Sen. CRANSTON: Thank you. Democrats' Advertising

WOODRUFF: There is one important ingredient in most political campaigns that doesn't get a great deal of news coverage: it is the advertising the candidates do to sell themselves to the voters in exactly the manner they want to be sold. They don't have to worry about their message being filtered through the typewriter or the camera lens of some news reporter. We decided to take a close look at some of the TV commercials the candidates have been running.

NARRATOR [Cranston TV commercial]: -- there will be no more tomorrows. There is only one candidate --

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: A nuclear explosion is featured prominently in one candidate's commercials, but to sell another candidate it's shown in reverse. It's all part of the contest being waged between episodes of "Hill Street Blues", "M*A*S*H", and the evening news on your home TV screen. Every four years TV and radio stations like WMUR in New Hampshire become part of the presidential campaign. They are forced to sell air time to every politician with his eye on the White House, from the frontrunner to the dark horses.

NARRATOR [Hollings TV commercial]: Why not a president for a change?

DAVID ZAMICHOW, WMUR General Manager: Hollings has the Fritz blitz and he's not very selective in what he's buying. He's just buying almost all areas, and someone like Glenn will buy, perhaps, a "Hee Haw", a "Tic Tac Dough", daytime dramas, which, I believe, are aimed at reaching a slightly older women's audience. Askew and Hart are interested in a younger audience, and have been heavy buyers of things like 20/20 -- programs that might appeal to a younger group. Mondale has been extremely selective at first and is now starting to widen his buy, including a lot of other programs that at first he didn't consider.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: Candidates who can afford to target their message to audiences of the age and sex they're most trying to reach.

Sen. GARY HART [TV commercial]: The politicians of yesterday are trading our furture by asking our price instead of challenging our idealism.

MARK SHIELDS, political analyst: Gary Hart is a candidate who has made "old" into the pejorative in American politics. Anything that is older than two weeks is a candidate for the trash heap intellectually or one other way. The emphasis on new. New, new, new. The emphasis on generation. That he had been -- even the presentation, that sort of computer grid and the pages turning, which is -- look like they might have been an ad for the Napa computer --

WALTER MONDALE [TV commercial]: I'm sort of a farm kid. I worked in the farm --

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: But because TV is a mass medium, there are limits to how specific the message can be and still be effective.

Mr. MONDALE [TV commercial]: -- that was in and you're fired --

My dad was a minister, and we always grew up in small towns where we knew everybody.

NARRATOR [Glenn TV commercial]: You know him as an astronaut, an American hero.But how much more do you know? Did you know that he's been in the United States Senate for nearly 10 years? A senior --

Mr. SHIELDS: John Glenn had just the opposite problem of Walter Mondale. John Glenn was a public persona, and people didn't know or weren't as informed about what he had done in his legislative life and his political life. So what John Glenn's campaign had to do, and this commercial is an attempt to do that, was to provide a sense of the political substantive to go with this marvelous person, this likeable human being.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: Political analyst Mark Shields used to run campaigns himself.

Mr. SHIELDS: Mondale's problem was that he was a public resume. People knew him by his jobs. He had been vice president. He had been a United States senator. He had been a public person. But nobody knew whether Fritz Mondale had a family, had a sense of humor, had a dog, had a temper. And this, the television commercials that the Mondale campaign used, were an attempt to flesh him out as a person, to give him a sense of personhood.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: On the campaign trail in recent days Glenn has stepped up his criticism of Mondale, even accusing him of lying. Glenn's commercials have gotten tougher, too.

NARRATOR [Glenn TV commercial]: The difference between what he [Mondale] says and what he does, that's politics. But is that leadership?

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: As the frontrunner, Mondale has nothing to gain by a counterattack, and until very recently his only response was to use ordinary citizens defending his record.

[Mondale TV commercial]

1st CITIZEN: This government's tax policies really favor the rich. Walter Mondale is going to make them fair again.

2nd CITIZEN: He'll fight for the average American, not just for the big people.

3rd CITIZEN: He'll deliver.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: But just this week the Mondale organization started running thesespots in Iowa.

NARRATOR [Mondale TV commercial]: Our children are strapped with a trilliondollar debt. Their future is mortgaged.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: Such an unusual lower-profile approach probably wouldn't work for some of the lesser-known candidates, whose main task has been just to tell voters who they are.

REUBIN ASKEW [TV commercial]: Do you know me? I was governor of Florida for eight years and ambassador and chief trade negotiator for the United States --

Mr. SHIELDS: Television commercials tell us, I think, an awful lot about the candidates themselves. This is the single most important message of the campaign. This -- I mean, they're buying a spot in a major market like Boston for the same price that they pay their best speechwriter for a month or a month and a half's worth of work, and all it's on is for 30 seconds. They're two thirds of the campaign -- most campaigns' budgets go to the creation, production and purchase of airtime of broadcast commercials. So it's a major ticket item.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: The chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party, however, believes that the money the candidates are spending to advertise before his state's party caucuses is mostly wasted.

DAVID NAGLE, Iowa Democratic chairman: You need some ads to establish your credibility, to establish your visibility, to supplement the coverage you're getting from media, but beyond that it's virtually worthelss. It's not money well spent. Iowa is an organizational state and it requires organization. It requires personal contact and it requires you to reach out and touch a bunch of people and build an effective organization. Advertising simply is not an effective way to campaign in a caucus state.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: But the well over a million dollars the candidates are forking out for Iowa advertising says they think Mr. Nagle is wrong. In any event, the people who run WMUR-TV in New Hampshire say that because of limited news coverage the candidates must advertise in their state.

Mr. ZAMICHOW: What happens is that from the point of view of news we just can't give that much time to the candidates, and they have a lot of trouble getting across there what they're in favor of, their positions, their image. And without advertising I don't think they think that they can do it. And they're probably right this year.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: And Mark Shields says voters are influenced, whether they realize it or not.

Mr. SHIELDS: They discount commercials of all kinds, and you can believe that until you ask them to name a few things about the candidate that they like, and I wouldn't say invariably, but very frequently voters will cite and list those very qualities which are emphasized, and oftentimes in those very words that are used in political commercials the candidate's campaign sponsors.

WOODRUFF: We plan to continue to monitor the candidates' TV ads throughout the rest of this election year.

This early political activity is clearly a test of strength of the various campaign organizations. Ronald Reagan, the only major Republican candidate, won't have any pre-November challenges, as far as we know, but he decided to test his strength in a slightly different way. Yesterday at the White House Mr. Reagan received an award from the editor of Muscle Training Illustrated magazine. The award was in honor of Mr. Reagan's devotion to body-building equipment. The Oval Office award ceremony quickly became what in Washington is known as a photo opportunity -- an arm-wrestling contest between the 73-year-old President and the 61-year-old editor. According to the White House account, Mr. Reagan won this test of strength, pinning the editor's arm in two matches.

[Video postcard -- Lake Quachita, Arkansas]

MacNEIL: In Commodore, Pennsylvania, rescue workers today found the bodies of three miners killed in a coal mine explosion and fire yesterday. Ten other miners were injured in the blast apparently caused by a buildup of methane gas in a shaft owned by the Pennsylvania Mines Corporation.

In Rapid City, South Dakota, Robert Kennedy, Jr. pleaded guilty to a charge of heroin possession. The 30-year-old son of the late Senator Robert Kennedy was charged after becoming ill on a flight that landed in Rapid City last September. He has since completed a drug rehabilitation program in New Jersey.

Judy?

WOODRUFF: Turning now to a final look at today's top stories. Syria has said no to the eight-point peace plan offered by Lebanese President Gemayel.The Syrians say the plan did not amount to a complete rejection of last year's treaty between Israel and Lebanon. U.S. Marines in Beirut are packing up; the withdrawal to Navy ships off the Lebanese coast begins this weekend.

Also in the Middle East, a major battle appears underway between Iran and Iraq.

And there was another tidbit of good economic news today -- the annual rate of increase for the gross national product in the last quarter of 1983 exceeded expectations, hitting 4.9%.

Robin? Lincoln Memorials

MacNEIL: Abraham Lincoln had only one birthday, February 12th, and this week marked the 175th anniversary. But if you're a Republican politician, especially in an election year, there are lots of Lincoln birthdays. In fact, covering a presidential campaign some years ago I remember going to 12 different Lincoln birthday dinners on 12 different nights. But Lincoln is ubiquitous in another way, and a New Jersey photography called George Tice has just made us aware of it. George Tice, who has published six books and had many exhibitions, decided to go all over the country looking for evidence of Lincoln's immortality. What he found appears in his new book, Lincoln.

GEORGE TICE, photographer: It started in '81. I had gone to the Newark public library to do some research on Lincoln and when I came out of the library, I was wishing that I could do a Lincoln book; but I was wishing I was some sort of scholar. I just thought that all over America there's probably things named after Lincoln, and it's a strange kind of immortality.

MacNEIL [voice-over]: For a year and a half George Tice traveled the country and photographed some of the ways Americans immortalize Lincoln -- the ordinary, the bizarre, and the traditional monuments.

Mr. TICE [voice-over]: My interest in photographing the statues was not just to photograph the statues but to photograph them in their setting so they showed the place, which would either be a park setting or an urban setting. So it becomes a book about America with Lincoln being the central theme. The cover picture is taken in Newark, and that's the statue that I've always known as a little boy living in Newark. In Racine, Wisconsin, there's one of him and his wife, and that's an interesting one because Lincoln stood more than a foot taller than Mary, so they were never photographed together standing up.Well, I kind of like the idea of different artists' interpretation from great artists like Saint-Gaudens doing the Lincoln statue in Chicago, to naive primitive artists doing their version of Lincoln.

I get this piecework of America in the pictures of the businesses using the name Lincoln. I made a special trip to Washington to go down and photograph that Lincoln liquor store, which is all barricaded up. I certainly would have loved to have had the opportunity to photograph Lincoln in life, but that sure isn't possible. The next best thing was the evidence of his immortality: Lincoln, the young lawyer; Lincoln, the emancipator; Lincoln as President-elect, when he doesn't have a beard. This one in Washington, this is one of the oldest Lincoln statues, and it's in front of the Superior Court, and in the background shows a young black lawyer with an attache case coming out of the courthouse.

Well, I think it's important to have heroes and somebody to pattern your life after. I mean, any way I look at Lincoln, he's a measure, some way to measure yourself against somebody. He's a good measure.

MacNEIL: Good night, Judy.

WOODRUFF: Good night, Robin. That's our NewsHour for tonight. I'm Judy Woodruff. Thank you and good night.