The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, economics correspondent Paul Solman looks at who has jobs these days in America. Kwame Holman, Margaret Warner and Dan Balz of the "Washington Post" examine the money race in the 2000 campaign for President. Mark Shields and Paul Gigot analyze that and other matters political. Betty Ann Bowser reports on some art from New York on display in San Jose. And essayist Roger Rosenblatt considers home on the 4th of July. It all follows our summary of the news this Friday.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: The nation's unemployment rate rose from 4.2 percent to 4.3 percent in June. Today's Labor Department report said gains in the restaurant and entertainment industries were offset by losses in manufacturing employment. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. The House of Representatives passed broad banking reforms last night. They would allow banks, security firms and insurance companies to merge. It also has a financial privacy provision that would restrict the sharing of consumers' personal data among banks and other institutions. The Senate passed a banking bill in May. Differences are now to be worked out before it goes to the President. The prime ministers of Britain and Ireland offered a new plan for Northern Ireland. They announced it after marathon talks between pro-Britain Protestants and pro-Ireland Catholics deadlocked. Britain's Tony Blair and Ireland's Bertie Ahern said it called for a turnover, or devolution, of Northern Ireland to a joint Protestant-Catholic government in mid-July. It also demands a complete disarming, or decommissioning, of paramilitaries by May, 2000. Neither side immediately accepted the plan. Blair had this to say.

TONY BLAIR: Once these proposals are accepted and put in place, they offer at last -- after decades of violence and conflict and injustice -- the chance for peace and for democracy and equality for all. And they are based as they have to be on one inescapable fact of life here in Northern Ireland: There is not yet trust between people. There must be certainty. Devaluation must be certain. Decommissioning must be certain.

JIM LEHRER: In Washington, President Clinton called the plan a welcome opportunity to resolve that difficult problem forever. Mr. Clinton said that at a meeting with South Korean Leader Kim Dae Jung at the White House. Mr. Clinton declined to comment on reports North Korea might be testing a missile capable of hitting South Korea. He said he and Kim had yet to discuss security matters. High-level talks between South and North Korea in Beijing were suspended today. South Korea recalled its negotiators after North Korea refused to discuss reuniting families separated by their 54-year-old civil war. The North said there'd be no further discussions until the South followed through on a fertilizer shipment. There have also been recent tensions between the two over fishing grounds. NATO Secretary-General Solana issued a warning to Yugoslavia today. He said NATO will protect Montenegro if Yugoslav President Milosevic starts trouble there. Solana was responding to reports Milosevic is reinforcing his troops and trying to destabilize Montenegro's government. Montenegro is Serbia's partner in the Yugoslav Federation. NATO had five Yugoslav soldiers and six suspected special police in custody today. A spokesman said they were arrested yesterday by American and Dutch soldiers in Southeastern Kosovo. They were said to be violating the troop pullout agreement between Yugoslavia and NATO. Author Mario Puzo died today at his Long Island home. He was 78 years old. He was known for his "Godfather" novels about the Corleone crime family. They were the basis for a series of Academy Award-winning movies. Puzo's literary agent said the cause of death was heart failure. Forrest Mars, Sr. also died today. He was the creator of M & M candies, and head of Mars, Incorporated, the giant candy maker. He was one of the richest men in America, according to "Forbes" Magazine. He was 95 years old. And no further details were given. And as this July 4th Holiday began, a symbol of America was scheduled to be taken off the endangered species list. President Clinton said bald eagles were now plentiful enough to avoid becoming extinct in this country and would be removed from the list next year. He spoke at a ceremony on the White House South Lawn attended by young people and a ten-year-old eagle. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to jobs in America; campaign money; Shields and Gigot; art in San Jose; and a Roger Rosenblatt essay.

FOCUS - JOBS IN AMERICA

JIM LEHRER: Our economics correspondent, Paul Solman of WGBH-Boston, has the jobs story.

PAUL SOLMAN: Today's 0.1 percent uptick in the overall unemployment number is, according to the Bureau of Labor statistics, statistically insignificant. Much more striking, to BLS Chief Katharine Abraham, is that the economy added a hefty quarter-million jobs in June.

KATHARINE ABRAHAM: The unemployment rate was essentially unchanged in June, at 4.3 percent. The rate has been between 4.2 and 4.4 percent now since last November. Non-farm employment, as measured by our establishment survey, increased by 268,000 in June, well above the monthly average for the first five months of the year.

PAUL SOLMAN: Where were job gains? Well, in high-paying high-tech, in banking and brokerage firms, and there were also big gains in the lower reaches of theeconomy: 20,000 new jobs in amusement parks and recreation, for example; and in retail, especially eating and drinking establishments. And there was also strong job growth in the construction industry. While the data don't suggest the U.S. is becoming a nation of hamburger-flippers, as the clich would have it, they do confirm the long-term trend to a mainly service economy: The manufacturing sector shed another 35,000 jobs in June, putting factory job loss at nearly half a million in the last 15 months alone. To give the unemployment number some historical perspective, here it is over the last 50 years: In the post World War II boom of the early 1950's, the unemployment rate fell to 2.5 percent. After snaking up and down for two decades, it bottomed out at 3.4 percent in 1969. The rate spiked twice in the 1970's, and hit almost 11 percent during the recession of the early 80's. It's been dropping ever since, with one interruption. A closer look at the last decade shows an uptick during the recession of the early 90's, followed by continuing declines. And for almost two years now, the jobless rate has stayed under 5 percent. The jobless rate for African American workers, meanwhile, has traced the recent downward trend of the national average. Today it reached a record low of 7.3 percent.

PAUL SOLMAN: Joining me first are two economists, Alan Krueger of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School, and William Rogers of the College of William and Mary. He is co-author of a recent study on how young men are faring in today's labor market. Welcome to you two.

Alan Krueger, what do you make of today's numbers?

ALAN KRUEGER: Well, I think your report had it right, that essentially unchanged from last month when we look at the unemployment situation -- we still have near record low unemployment. The economy, I think, is doing quite well. The manufacturing sector is a weak area. That's a trend that's been going on for some time, but I don't think that's going to affect overall job growth or the overall economy.

PAUL SOLMAN: William Rogers, who is getting which jobs, I mean, in addition to what we've just heard, or do we just have it right and you don't need to say anything?

WILLIAM ROGERS: Right. I think my sense is that if you -- I like to describe to my students that you can picture a job ladder, and that at the top of this ladder, they have the highest skilled workers and then at the bottom you have the lowest skilled workers. And as the market has tightened since 1991 -

PAUL SOLMAN: The labor market.

WILLIAM ROGERS: The labor market, excuse me, has tightened -- you've move further and further down the ladder where you're now picking up more of the lower skilled workers, such as in the service sector, in retail, and in that -- especially benefited minorities, in particular African Americans.

PAUL SOLMAN: So, what's happened? You've done this study on young men in the work force, right?

WILLIAM ROGERS: Yes.

PAUL SOLMAN: What's happened to minority men?

WILLIAM ROGERS: Sure. As you pointed out in your opening segment the African American unemployment rate has fallen to historical low, but especially amongst less educated African Americans, who are not enrolled in school, Richard Freeman and I, and my co-author, found that we've seen dramatic increases in employment and wages, which is very different from the 1980's expansion, and that they have been in these -- in these areas that we've mentioned earlier.

PAUL SOLMAN: You know, we've talked a lot on this show and other places about a two-tier economy, you know, good jobs at the top, good jobs at the bottom and not much in between, manufacturing jobs losing there and we've lost manufacturing jobs and have been losing them. Is that a fair statement, or have we turned around this supposed trend to a two-tier economy?

WILLIAM ROGERS: Well, I think you have to really make a distinction between types of service -- service jobs. That -- Richard and I found is that amongst young men, when they first start out they are in these lower paying service jobs, but they do then move on to more higher paying service jobs in terms of the trades, construction.

PAUL SOLMAN: Mm-hmm.

WILLIAM ROGERS: In terms of auto mechanics, precision production and actually in the data we're seeing a slight shift, even for young -- all young, less educated men being able to move into the higher paying occupations.

PAUL SOLMAN: So we're seeing a diminution of that trend towards a lot of people at the top, a lot of people at the bottom and fewer and fewer in-between or no?

WILLIAM ROGERS: I wouldn't say it's diminution. I think the business cycle because we've tightened so much there have been shortages in construction and some of these other higher paying occupations that, yes, once these men age and get to the mid-20's and on, they get into the jobs, but it looks as if the tightening of the market has helped to bring them in a little earlier.

PAUL SOLMAN: So you're encouraged?

WILLIAM ROGERS: Yes.

PAUL SOLMAN: All things considered. We're going to bring in two people now who helped those wanting to get into the job market, Irene Cohen of Headway Corporate Resources, finds workers for big and small companies and Bill Banis is the director of career services at Northwestern University and has been placing college graduates for more than 26 years. And, welcome to both of you. I guess the question is for -- for you, what are the jobs, Irene Cohen, let's start with you, what are the jobs that people are getting -- that you're getting for them, I guess?

IRENE COHEN: Well, primarily you're seeing the greatest growth in technical and professional areas. I mean, you're talking about the Internet having a profound impact on the market in every functional area. I mean, we're seeing people who are three, four and five-year associates in financial investment houses who are being recruited out by the Internet companies, Internet start-ups most particularly, and then, of course, you have all levels of Internet services. You've got web masters. You've got -

PAUL SOLMAN: Web masters?

IRENE COHEN: Yes -- who take care of the websites, and you've got an interesting field, you've got a great need now for firewall specialists because you're looking at security concerns because the Internet is so accessible to everyone.

PAUL SOLMAN: Wait, wait. Fire wall -- you mean, electronic Internet fire wall to make sure that my credit card doesn't get stolen or something?

IRENE COHEN: Exactly, exactly.

PAUL SOLMAN: How much people like that making? I mean -

IRENE COHEN: Those people -- the average salary of a technology specialist runs about $70,000 to $80,000, and the highest salaries, of course, are paid out in the Washington area, and -

PAUL SOLMAN: Washington State?

IRENE COHEN: Washington State, exactly, but you're seeing growth in jobs in almost all -- anything that we now label the knowledge worker. Someone with experience can get a job because companies are absolutely desperate for experienced workers.

PAUL SOLMAN: Okay. You're in New York. Bill Banis you're in Chicago, and you've got these young graduates coming out. They are knowledge workers, presumably, if they have gone to Northwestern. Is that -- how much are they making, and what kinds of jobs are they getting?

BILL BANIS: I think what happens today on college campuses reflects a broader economy. We certainly see the high-tech and the engineering students continuing to do very well. I would not want to be a technical recruiter in 1999. They have a very tough job. But beyond that -

PAUL SOLMAN: A job of finding enough people.

BILL BANIS: Finding enough talent, that's correct.

PAUL SOLMAN: Mm-hmm.

BILL BANIS: But beyond that, I think the college recruiting scene reflects the broad transition in the economy from an industrial base to a service base.

PAUL SOLMAN: Mm-hmm.

BILL BANIS: And on campus, in particular, we see consulting firms now being dominant player in really taking talent away from high-tech and traditional manufacturing. Salaries this year continue to climb. We've had some undergrads with no experience except for internships break $50,000 routinely.

PAUL SOLMAN: Coming right out of college?

BILL BANIS: That's correct. But that's not an average. That's the high end. The average this year, the range will be between low to mid-20's to about mid-40's. We suspect it's going to come in for our class around $42,000 to $44,000. We just graduated two weeks ago, so we're still crunching numbers.

PAUL SOLMAN: You mean so your typical senior who graduates will make about $43,000 a year next year?

BILL BANIS: It's looking that way. And I think there's another story. With the economy expanding, I think one of the untold stories of the last three or four years is how well our traditional liberal arts and humanities and social science students are doing. For the first time since I've been doing this work, I've seen English majors, for example, command salaries on par with engineers. And that's because of the influence of consulting firms.

PAUL SOLMAN: Miss Cohen, who is working now who wasn't working say, I don't know, five, ten years ago when the unemployment number was a lot higher?

IRENE COHEN: Well, I think anyone who is coming out with a decent education, the college level, is working, but I do tend to feel a different trend in the colleges, and that is that many of our college grads who before were immediately heading toward the consulting firms, who were paying very high salaries, are now very anxious to get their hands on that $90 million Internet start-up, and they are running to small Internet start-ups, and I think that one of the statistics that I've seen is that about 40 percent less college grads are going into the management consulting firms in the Northeast and heading right towards the big bucks.

PAUL SOLMAN: Alan Krueger, let's go back to you in Princeton. We didn't get you in on this issue of the two-tier economy and the widening income gap that we've been talking about in this country since 19, you know, the early 70's. I mean, here we hear about $90 million Internet start-ups and $42,000-a-year starting salaries, which is a lot higher than the medium income in this country, is it not?

ALAN KRUEGER: Absolutely. What - I think it's been going on in contrast to the trend in the late 1970's and the 80's when inequality grew tremendously, the last ten years and especially the last three or four years, the bottom of the distribution has done quite well -

PAUL SOLMAN: The very bottom.

ALAN KRUEGER: -- high school dropouts, less-skilled workers, which is the group that really got clobbered in the 1980's. I think they have regained not all of what they lost, but a substantialfraction of what they lost in the 1980's.

PAUL SOLMAN: So this is the bottom fifth or -

ALAN KRUEGER: The bottom 20 percent, absolutely.

PAUL SOLMAN: Right.

ALAN KRUEGER: The top, meanwhile, has continued to do very well and that's what you hear about from the other speakers. The middle has been somewhat weak. There's been real wage growth at the middle, but it's been weaker than it has been at both tails of the distribution.

PAUL SOLMAN: William Rogers, I want to know who -- who are the four-plus million people who don't have jobs? I mean, if it's 4.3 percent unemployment, that's a little over four million people. I mean, is that just the people who are kind of looking to change jobs, or -- I mean, who are they?

WILLIAM ROGERS: That's a difficult question. I think my sense from the work Richard and I had done -

PAUL SOLMAN: Richard Freeman.

WILLIAM ROGERS: Richard Freeman and I had done.

PAUL SOLMAN: Right.

WILLIAM ROGERS: Is that -- particularly we looked at the folks in the tightest economies, economies that had unemployment rates below 4 percent in every year since 1992, and, you know, we're still seeing about a third of these young men, you know, they are not participating, and these are also men -- we looked at only people who were not enrolled in school.

PAUL SOLMAN: So, you're talking about people 18 to 24, 25 or something like that?

WILLIAM ROGERS: Right. Where their choice is either working or not working. And -- and this is one of the areas we're looking into. I think one of our speculations is if we take my home state, Virginia, and I know other states have been -- in terms of their level of incarceration, have really increased that greater level and one potential possibility is that these men are coming back on to the streets and now they have had contact with the criminal justice system and are having a harder time getting jobs so that could be one area of -- of types of men who are -- still haven't been pulled into the fold, if you will.

PAUL SOLMAN: So there are a third of those young men still don't have -- still don't have jobs?

WILLIAM ROGERS: This is again in -

PAUL SOLMAN: Non-white?

WILLIAM ROGERS: It's a little bit lower for young whites, but still it's a substantial share. But again, these were just the men in our areas where we thought this is as good as it's going to get.

PAUL SOLMAN: Is there anyone in America -- briefly to each of you -- is there anyone in America who can't find a job at this point, Professor Rogers?

WILLIAM ROGERS: Who can't find? I think, you know, there are folks who again in this last group of segment of folks who are in terms of being at that -- my back to my job ladder in the lowest part in terms of skills or they are in a particular urban areas where the growth hasn't touched them while the growth has occurred in the suburbs -- in our conversations with folks in the last few weeks we've been hearing stories of that.

PAUL SOLMAN: Alan Krueger, anybody who can't find a job?

ALAN KRUEGER: I think there are certainly some. There are still six million people unemployed and looking for work. Where we've been very successful is in reducing the short-term unemployment. The longer-term unemployment, people who have been searching 15, 20 weeks or longer, has remained stubbornly high, and it's come down but not nearly as much as one would hope and not as much as the short-term rate and I think that this is related to issues that Bill Rogers raised. There are people who don't have the skills that are currently demanded by employers. These tend to be less skilled workers, particularly people who might have had contact with the criminal justice system are being spurned in the labor market. Another point I want to make -

PAUL SOLMAN: We don't have time for another point and we don't have time for Mr. Banis and Ms. Cohen. Thank you all very much; we appreciate it.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, campaign money; Shields and Gigot; art in San Jose; and a Roger Rosenblatt essay.

FOCUS - CAMPAIGN 2000 - MONEY RACE

JIM LEHRER: Kwame Holman begins our look at money and Campaign 2000.

KWAME HOLMAN: George W. Bush was in California this week for a three-day fundraising swing, and by the end of the trip, Bush had collected a reported five million dollars. In fact, the Texas governor has become the most prolific fundraiser in presidential campaign history. Quarterly reports to the Federal Election Commission this week estimate Bush raised more than $36 million during the first six months of this year. No other candidate ever has raised so much, so fast. And Bush has out-raised the other nine Republican candidates combined. Arizona Senator John McCain is a distant second having raised just over $4 million. In comparison, Vice President Al Gore has been only half as successful as Governor Bush. He reportedly has raised $18 million during the first half of the year.

TIPPER GORE: He is funny, he is good-looking, he is handsome, and he is sexy -- your Vice President, Al Gore. (cheers)

KWAME HOLMAN: Events -- like this reception in April for young professionals in Washington D.C. -- were relatively small. Here Gore raised about $200,000. But he too has held large events from coast to coast. And it doesn't appear investigations into Gore's fundraising efforts during the last presidential campaign have hurt his ability to attract donors. Gore Adviser Lynn Utrecht -- who also was a member of the Clinton/Gore 1996 team -- says the campaign is being extra cautious.

LYNN UTRECHT: I think the Vice President has clearly communicated to the Gore 2000 staff that he wants everything done absolutely by the book, and even beyond that. He's very much supportive of the compliance program that the campaign has initiated, and that's a very important issue for him.

KWAME HOLMAN: Gore's lone primary opponent -- former New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley -- is keeping pace with the Vice President. Bradley already has raised more than $11 million. And he appears to be on target to raise the more than $20 million his campaign says it needs to contend with Gore in the presidential primaries that begin early next year. Anita Dunn is a senior advisor in the Bradley campaign.

ANITA DUNN: The 20 to 25 million is the amount we'll need to be competitive going into next year, and that because of the early calendar that we need to raise it this year. And that's really the biggest change from previous years is in previous years you had more time to raise it. The front-loading of the calendars has put pressure on all campaigns to spend more time fund-raising this year than normally would be.

KWAME HOLMAN: Bradley has tapped a non-traditional source for money for his campaign -- the world of sports. This Bradley event in New York City in April was one of his biggest fundraisers. He collected more than $2 million. Bradley once was a New York Knicks basketball star and those at his side this night were former teammates Dave Debusschere and Willis Reed. Another prominent Bradley supporter is former Chicago Bulls Coach Phil Jackson, who also played with Bradley and is a longtime friend. Jackson not only contributed his own money but has convinced other stars of the sports world to pitch in -- among them NBA great Michael Jordan, who contributed a thousand dollars -- not a lot for a multi-millionaire but under federal election rules, that's all Jordan or anyone else is allowed to contribute to candidate in the presidential primary. And all the candidates soon will have to decide whether to limit how much their campaigns will spend. If a primary candidate opts into the federal funding program, each contribution received is matched up to $250. In return, the candidate agrees to limit overall spending during the primaries to $33.5 million or less. The huge early fundraising success of Governor Bush, leads many observers to conclude he will decide to forego the matching funds, freeing his campaign to raise and spend as much as it wants during the primaries. And it's believed Republican Candidate Steve Forbes will decide that as well. The multi-millionaire businessman spent $36 million of his own money during his unsuccessful run for President in 1996.

JIM LEHRER: And to Margaret Warner.

MARGARET WARNER: For more on George W. Bush's money bonanza and his week in California, we're joined by Dan Balz of the Washington Post.

MARGARET WARNER: Dan, you've been out there all week with George W. Bush. First of all, how did he raise so much so fast?

DAN BALZ: He's been the beneficiary of belief in the Republican Party that they very much want to win this election, and there's this huge outpouring among the Republican establishment for him. Second, though, they've put a lot of emphasis into fund-raising from the very beginning. He did what we all wrote about -- a front port campaign in Austin -- but much of the emphasis of bringing people into Austin in the months early in this year and even beginning late last year were aimed at bringing in people who could raise a lot of money. He's put together a network of fund-raisers who represent really the cr me de la cr me of Republican fund-raisers from many campaigns in the past. One of them said to me if you'd looked at the top 25 fund-raisers in the Republican Party, Bush has 22 or 23 of them.

MARGARET WARNER: That's still, though, a massive organizational effort when you think about $36 million all in thousand-dollar chunks or smaller. I mean, who's running it for him?

DAN BALZ: Well, his finance chairman is a man named Don Evans, who's an old friend. He's a Midland, Texas, businessman, who has come in to help run it. But they have a huge network of people that they're able to draw on. Most of the people that are helping them raise money have their own fund-raising networks that they can tap. And, in addition, I think what Bush has been able to do -- and I know they have tried to concentrate on this -- is that they believe that there is a whole new category of givers who exist in this country because of the strength of the economy, that these are younger people of Bush's generation and younger, who have never participated in presidential fund-raising, and they are going after the very, very hardy.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, was he able to keep up this same pace of fund-raising on this week in California?

DAN BALZ: Very much so. The goal in California originally was somewhere around 4 or 4.2 million dollars.

MARGARET WARNER: For this week.

DAN BALZ: For this week alone, seven events over three days in California. By the time they left Fresno, California, on Thursday afternoon, Don Evans said that they were at 5 million and still counting.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, he did a lot of other events, other than fund-raisers, though. What are those like? What were those like this week?

DAN BALZ: It's interesting to see the Bush campaign at this point. There are a couple of things that I think are important about it. The first is that despite the fact that he doesn't have the nomination yet, he did almost nothing with these other events that -- was aimed at the core or base of the Republican Party. This campaign at this point though, we're 16 months away from the election, very much has the look, the feel and the themes and message of a general election campaign. Most of the events outside the fund-raising events put him in situations where he was with voters who are non-traditional Republican voters, specifically minority voters, a lot of children. On Tuesday in San Diego he was with Latinos. On Wednesday morning in Los Angeles he was seated next to a young African American girl. On Tuesday -- on Wednesday afternoon in Sacramento he did a little shoot at a mini football camp, mostly Latino and African American kids.

MARGARET WARNER: Almost like what a Democratic candidate would go to.

DAN BALZ: That's exactly right. He has the luxury because he has so much money at this point in comparison to his opponents because he has such a lead in the polls, and because he has a significant amount of institutional support from governors and others, that he can spend his time looking toward the general election and reaching out to swing voters, independents, moderates and that sort of thing.

MARGARET WARNER: Now the road show -- he's only been out on the road nationally for three weeks. Is it as organized as the fund-raising operation?

DAN BALZ: Very much so. It -- it is an extraordinary thing to see actually. Dee Dee Meyers, former White House press secretary to President Clinton and who did the 1992 campaign with President Clinton, showed up in Los Angeles where she lives, showed up at the Los Angeles event he did with teachers on Wednesday morning and she took a look at what she saw and said that they are running almost a White House level campaign in terms of the way they are staging events, the way their logistics operate, the camera angles, the shoots, the way the press is taken care of and those sorts of things. Again, they have tapped into a broad network of people who are very loyal to the Bush family. The core group of people who are running this campaign are home-grown. They are Texans, but as you go around and see this campaign move from city to city, what you see increasingly are people who have been there before, who know how to do these events, and they are -- they are willing to help right now as volunteers to make this campaign run smoothly.

MARGARET WARNER: And then how is George W. Bush himself handling this? Again, it's rather sudden national scrutiny.

DAN BALZ: I'd say two things about that, Margaret. First of all, he's very loose. He's confident, bordering on cocky. He was in Silicon Valley Thursday morning for a big fund-raiser and he got up and said, this isn't my first trip to Silicon Valley, but it is my first trip here as President of the United States. Then he caught himself and said, well, soon-to-be President of the United States, but there wasn't even that much ripple in the room about the faux pa that he had made. Beyond that, he's still at a very general level in what he's talking about. He's not talking specifics. He's answering some questions, but there is still a lot voters don't know about George W. Bush that they will have to learn about him.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Well, thanks, Dan, very much.

DAN BALZ: Thank you.

FOCUS - POLITICAL WRAP

JIM LEHRER: And to Shields and Gigot, on the money race and other political matters of the week. That's syndicated columnist Mark Shields, "Wall Street Journal" columnist Paul Gigot. Paul, how do you explain George W. Bush's extraordinary ability to raise money?

PAUL GIGOT: Well, I agree with everything that Dan Balz said, and would I add one other thing, which I think is a secret that hasn't been stressed much but really has helped him and that's the governors, his fellow governors, because in a sense, George W. Bush won the governor's primary. They all got down and sat down and in unofficial off-the-record conversations here and they said, you know, we've got to bring somebody, one of our people in to be the nominee. And they decided George W. Bush had the best chance to win, but each of these governors have enormous fund-raising bases themselves, Tom Ridge in Pennsylvania, John Engler in Michigan, and a lot of these things have been used to -- now that they have endorsed George W. Bush, are going to -- to his advantage.

JIM LEHRER: What would you add to that, Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, with all deference and respect to the governors, I mean, he just had a week -- a record-breaking week in California -- where there's a Democratic governor. I mean, this is awesome. This is spectacular. We've seen candidates in the past who have raised a lot of money, Phil Gramm, the senator from Texas, in 1996. He never registered in the polls. John Connolly, the former governor of Texas, a little pattern here emerges, who raised -

JIM LEHRER: Just keep talking, Shields.

MARK SHIELDS: -- money in 1980 but never registered in the polls. Steve Forbes, who has very deep pockets, the millionaire publisher of Forbes Magazine, has never registered in the votes. This is a twin towers. This is a double threat; this is a man with a 50-point lead in the public opinion polls and with Pat Buchanan this afternoon, with a $34.5 million lead over Pat Buchanan in fund-raising.

JIM LEHRER: So is it his -- is it how well he's doing with the public in the polls that's making the money come?

PAUL GIGOT: Sure.

JIM LEHRER: Or is it the other way around?

PAUL GIGOT: It's both. They have a kind of cascading effect. One builds on the other. There's no question about it. People see that he's the likely winner. They want to get on board. That creates more money, more momentum, and -- and conversely takes out everybody else -- his ability to make money.

JIM LEHRER: And your examples show money alone ain't going to get it.

MARK SHIELDS: No. But I think the numbers are what do it, and I think what has been underestimated certainly by me and I think by other people who cover politics is how much the Republican activists dislike Bill Clinton and want a winner. I mean, George W. Bush, Dan was talking about his -- the questions he got in California. Governor Bush -- I mean, the toughest question he gets is "how is your mother?" I mean, they are not asking him the usual "where are you on school prayer - you know, are you against the McCain tobacco bill or whatever else?" There's very little in a tough litmus test. I mean, they are just saying you're a winner, are you okay, you're still governor. Family is all right. That's basically the cross-examination.

PAUL GIGOT: Let me give you an example of that. This week in California he was endorsed by Ward Connerly. Now, Ward Connerly is the activist who has done a lot in California and elsewhere to oppose affirmative action, racial preferences. He won the referendum in California. His brother, Jeb Bush, the governor's brother in Florida said don't come here and George W. Bush has not exactly embraced his cause and yet, here's Ward Connerly saying he's my guy. Now, that's a pretty good one-on-one -- I don't know what he said to him in private but he somehow managed to bring him onboard.

JIM LEHRER: Well, as Dan just told Margaret just kind of in passing, we're 16 months away from an election. I mean, do you see anything -- I mean, I realize I won't hold you to this. Maybe I will hold you to it.

PAUL GIGOT: Yes, you will.

JIM LEHRER: Yes, I will hold you to this, but do you see anything in the road ahead for George W. Bush, anything specific that could trip him up?

PAUL GIGOT: Voters.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah.

PAUL GIGOT: And in the sense that these are the elites of the Republican Party speaking. And that's a very important message they are sending and money is going to help him a lot but he is going to have to actually get down in two states, New Hampshire and Iowa, and go head-to-head with voters. I assume he can't dodge debates forever.

JIM LEHRER: And his expectations are so high now he's got to just do extremely well everywhere or he's had it?

PAUL GIGOT: Well, he's got to win the Ames Straw Poll in Ames, Iowa, in August. Right now he's certainly the favorite. He could afford to perhaps lose in one of these states, but it may -- he's at least got to get down and start saying more specific about his agenda.

JIM LEHRER: All right.

MARK SHIELDS: I was in the contrarian state of New Hampshire this past week, and John McCain, one of the -- trailing the pack would-be challenger, tried to make the case on George Bush that the fund-raising becomes a liability for him. In other words, that he -- he, Governor Bush, Paul points out the establishment of the party is behind him, that this is -- this is the candidate now of the status quo, that because it's the K Street establishment of lobbyists here in town, it's the traditional Republican givers, the House and the Senate and the Congress backing him. This is not an agent of change. Now, the sense if it ever gets abroad that the fix is in and that the voters have been cut out of this, whether in Iowa or New Hampshire and they say, "Hey, wait a minute, we want to have a voice in this" that will be a part of the case made by his challengers.

PAUL GIGOT: There's one other thing, Jim.

JIM LEHRER: Sure.

PAUL GIGOT: It may be that because he's doing so well and some of these other candidates have to drop out earlier than you would have thought, that there will be some pressure among -- some talk among conservatives to coalesce around one candidate. Maybe Forbes who has the resources to go all the way, maybe somebody else, and that person then can carry the debate better than a diffuse field.

JIM LEHRER: Now Bill Bradley, Mark, he also did well raising money. Why? Why is he doing so well?

MARK SHIELDS: I mean, Bill Bradley, again, is a person whose career has been characterized by enormous discipline, whether it's playing basketball, whether it's studying an issue in the Senate, and he realized to be a serious candidate that he had to, that there is now a money primary that closed on June 30th when the reporting date ends the year before but also to be competitive you had to have $20 million, and he set about doing it. Over an 18-year career in the Senate and a career as an author and as a professional athlete, Bill Bradley has been preparing for this, and he's got a rolodex that probably is as impressive as Bill and Hillary Clinton's was in 1982.

PAUL GIGOT: Always been a great fund-raiser, a lot of ties to Hollywood, to the sporting community, and he benefits because he's not part of this administration and for every Democrat who doesn't like this administration, for some decision or another, doesn't like Al Gore, they're going to go for him. I'd say there's one other thing. George W. Bush helps Bill Bradley because the more that George Bush looks like he's beating Al Gore in the polls by 15 points, which is what he's doing now, the more it makes a lot of Democrats say, geez, I'm not so sure that Al Gore is the guy -- the horse we want to ride.

JIM LEHRER: Yes.

PAUL GIGOT: And so we'll give Bill Bradley a look and certainly let's write him a check because we want - we want to see.

JIM LEHRER: Do you see it the same way?

MARK SHIELDS: I do. I mean, I think that the argument -- the analogy that old-timers use is that this is 1968, and Hubert Humphrey because of his relationship with Lyndon Johnson, because of the scars and scar tissue of the wars was a beloved and favorite son, standard bearer for the Democrats but was liability and probably couldn't beat Richard Nixon, whereas a Gene McCarthy, probably McCarthy would resist this analogy and so would Bradley, as an outsider Senator, not tied to the administration at that point would have a better chance.

JIM LEHRER: Another subject. The federal surplus contest. President Clinton said this week Medicare, Social Security, bring down the national debt first. The Republicans said, no tax cuts too. Who won the contest, or does it even matter at this stage?

PAUL GIGOT: Too early to tell who won the contest. I will say this: Republicans got a dose of confidence. They didn't necessarily earn, but they are going to take anyway, and that is that the surplus, I think, is going to give them a lot more confidence to cut taxes. It's going to say we can get away with cutting taxes without running into the Social Security surplus. We cordon that off, and so we don't have to fight on that ground, that issue where we're weaker, and so I think you're going to see now the Republicans pass in both Houses, Senate and House, a fairly substantial tax cut this year. Now whether the President will sign it or not, who knows, but I think they're going to at least put it on his desk.

MARK SHIELDS: Democrats expect that Bill Clinton, President Clinton, would veto that -- that tax -- such a tax is passed but eventually there would be some compromise reached. I think what we're seeing now is golden oldies. I mean, each party is playing the song that -- that they remember from their glory days. The Republican tax cuts in '80 and '84 and somehow it's a way of evoking a memory of the gipper. For the Democrats, it's let's go back to what's worked for us. 1982 when they resurged in the house after the first Reagan landslide, a sense of bringing Social Security, Medicare, those issues up that the Republicans weren't good on.

JIM LEHRER: So would it be a mistake to suggest that probably nothing is going to happen on this before the 2000 election? We're just talking here?

MARK SHIELDS: I'm not sure. If -- the Republicans, I think I'd like to get Medicare off the board. I don't want to go into the election at 2000 with Bill Clinton having framed the issue and they know -- they have seen from previous experience how he's capable of framing an issue. They would just as soon not have that be the central defining issue of the campaign of 2000.

PAUL GIGOT: I talked to Democrat Bob Torricelli -- I know he's Mark's favorite Democrat this week. He said -

JIM LEHRER: He's chairman of the Senate Campaign Committee?

PAUL GIGOT: That's right. He has to elect Democratic Senators and he's saying that he thinks that Democrats, as many as 15 in the Senate, would support a tax cut up to $500, $600 billion over ten years. That's a pretty good tax cut.

JIM LEHRER: A tax rate kind of -- the kind the Republicans wants, a tax rate tax cut.

PAUL GIGOT: That's right, and a pretty big one. So that suggests to me that there may be some momentum behind actually passing this year.

JIM LEHRER: Before we go, Mark, this thing between President Clinton and Vice President Gore, somebody being upset, tension between them. What do you make of all of that?

MARK SHIELDS: I think it's real. I think that there's always a tension between a president and vice president. There was between Ike and Dick Nixon. There was between Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey, and there was not an intense relationship certainly between Ronald Reagan and George Bush in 1988. And I -- I think what Al Gore is faced with is the Republicans have an enormous advantage over the Democrats on the issue of values and ethics and morality.

JIM LEHRER: So he's got -

MARK SHIELDS: He's got to distance himself there and I think at a personal level what really has hurt Bill Clinton was Al Gore's reference to Bill Clinton being a bad father. I mean, I think that's driving a stake in. While he knows it's true, it has to be personally painful and publicly painful.

PAUL GIGOT: That issue, moral values, is the number one issue among - by -- mentioned by one in four voters in the recent battleground survey. The number one issue and the Republicans have a 41-point advantage, 57 to 16. That's a residue - Celinda Lake - the Democratic pollster says -- of impeachment and that's the kind of hole that Al Gore has to climb out of.

JIM LEHRER: So whether Bill Clinton likes it or not, if Al Gore is going to win, he's got to do something. And we've got to go. Thank you both.

FOCUS - AMERICAN LANDSCAPES

JIM LEHRER: The making of an unusual art exhibition. It opened recently at one museum, the San Jose Museum of Art, with the artwork of another, New York's Whitney Museum. Betty Ann Bowser reports.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: For any art exhibit the elegance of opening night is just the payoff to months of complex work behind the scenes. Beginning more than a year ago, we watched the curators of this show, Cathy Kimball of the San Jose and Beth Venn of the Whitney at work.

BETH VENN, Curator, Whitney Museum: It's also quite large, 236 inches.

CATHY KIMBALL, Curator, San Jose Museum: Oh, my God.

BENN VENN: It's maybe too large.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: We found there's a lot more involved than just nailing pictures on walls. Somehow they had to find works in the Whitney's collection of 12,000 that would say something fresh about a very old and familiar art form, the landscape.

CATHY KIMBALL: Yes, I think that is definitely the challenge. And that is some of what we're grappling with here. And we don't want to tell a story that's already been told, or state the obvious.

BETH VENN: And some of that is by including works that people aren't as familiar with, so they can begin

to look at landscape in a whole new way.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: The first briefing for the tour guides was a chance to see how Kimball and Venn shaped the show to that purpose.

SPOKESPERSON: We wanted to introduce people first coming into the show to the more traditional notion of landscape painting in America.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: So the first gallery had a lot of classic landscapes, including three by the ever- popular Edward Hopper. But there was the highly personal vision of Japanese-born Yasuo Kuniyoshi -

SPOKESPERSON: And this kind of rock symbolizing perhaps death or the spirit.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: And one in a cubist style by Oscar Bluemner.

SPOKESPERSON: This is very opaque, very dense. He's really covered the canvas.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Viewers could compare styles and learn from the comparisons.

SPOKESPERSON: I liked the Hopper. I liked the O'Keeffe, with the New Mexico mountain, the sense of this redness, and then these little valleys. I looked at that for a while, the sense of probably a little river trickling through that made it so lush, the contrast of the arid desert and the lushness of it.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Other works stood out from the first walk-through at the Whitney's warehouse, like this giant abstract painting by Joan Mitchell. They wanted to include it, but they knew its giant size would dominate the gallery. They solved that by carefully placing it so it held people's attention as they rounded the corner from the first gallery to the second one. It's an old curatorial technique: Put the grabber at the end of the gallery to lead people on. Then in front of the Mitchell, they placed a baffling contemporary wire sculpture, "Mount Tai" by Alan Saret.

SPOKESPERSON: You know, I think we need to be clear that this is a very challenging piece, and it is a piece that people are going to question and wonder why it's in a landscape show.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: The curators knew they'd have to brief the guides thoroughly on this one. They tried to show why what looked like a tangle of scrap wire could be a work of art.

SPOKESPERSON: He uses many different kinds of wire, and not just because that's what he happened to find around. But, in fact, again it's a very deliberate choice to use different colors, these kinds of metallic wires as well as wires that are covered in plastic. You'll see a very little bit of kind of orange and yellow wire through here.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: They also explained why it belonged in a landscape show.

SPOKESPERSON: What Saret was trying to communicate in this work is kind of the force and the energy within this mountain, the kind of human force and the natural force, and this idea that the Chinese believe that the mountain is literally kind of filled with the spirit of people long gone.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: The guides had to use their knowledge to help audiences grasp a work that makes no concessions to conventional notions of beauty. Responses varied from intrigued -

WOMAN IN GROUP: I read the caption that it was a mountain, but if I were to look at it without that background, I would see it more animalistic.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: -- to enthusiastic -

MAN IN MEMBER: It just blows my mind when people are so imaginative as to take something like that kind of wire and make art out of it. You know, that's my kind of stuff.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: -- to clueless.

ANOTHER WOMAN IN GROUP: I don't know what it's called. It's sitting in the other room, and it looks like they forgot to take it to the dump.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: But the curators think new works of art always will strengthen people's imagination.

SPOKESPERSON: I didn't see that, but I can see what you're saying.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: And the head of the Whitney, Maxwell Anderson, thinks a good show should include some surprises.

MAXWELL ANDERSON: At the end of the day, a lot of what can happen in front of an object is just serendipitous. It's just a casual observation by someone who draws in their own life an example from a work of art, which may have no real connection to their life. That kind of coincidental arrival of a visitor into a space like that can be magical.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: But the show had to do more than just expose viewers to individual works of art. The curators were also trying to show the progression of landscape art in this century, from the famous and familiar to recent works, where the images are sometimes recognizable, but not always easy to understand, like this work by Fred Tomaselli, featuring a desert plant at dusk. Superimposed over it were hundreds of pills and marijuana leaves arranged in patterns to evoke drug-induced fantasies; or works like this that made ironic or highly political comments on how Americans have treated the land. This work by Roger Brown shows the effect of oil spills on wildlife. And this photograph by Richard Misrach shows leaching chemicals in the desert. To follow the whole storyline, viewers had to make connections between different works and different eras, an easier job for a knowledgeable viewer like Misrach himself.

RICHARD MISRACH, Artist: What's really amazing for me is to see my work surrounded by all my heroes, people like James Turrell, and Michael Heizer, and Robert Morris, all these people - it's just very exciting. And what's really interesting is the way that their work bounces off my work, something I hadn't really thought about, and now seeing it together like that, it's pretty wonderful.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: But others didn't look for any connections.

YOUNG MAN: I look at each picture individually. I didn't really follow a storyline very much.

WOMAN: Actually, we just sort of -- I mean, we have the write-ups, but we just sort of walked through and looked at what we liked.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: So you were more focusing more on individual pieces?

WOMAN: Right.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: The show had one further purpose: It had to convince people to care about the museum as well as the art. San Jose itself has grown from a farm town to a major American city in a mere generation, and is now trying to shed its image as a cultural backwater. Museum director Josi Callan thought the solution was to make a partnership between her museum and the Whitney. She knew the Whitney had a glittering permanent collection of American art, but a shortage of gallery space. The San Jose Museum had enough space, but only a small permanent collection. After four shows, Callan says the collaboration has worked.

JOSI CALLAN: Someone said to me yesterday that he has seen more of the Whitney's collection here in San Jose than he has ever seen when he's been in New York, and that's pretty remarkable. I think it has certainly added to the scholarship of American art, for students, for educators to be able to come and see this work. It has certainly attracted a new level of patron to the museum.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Attendance figures also seem to indicate the collaboration has worked. The museum's audience has tripled since it began five years ago. For a young museum with high ambition, it's clearly a vote of confidence in the future.

ESSAY - HOME ALONE

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, some pre-July 4th thoughts from essayist Roger Rosenblatt.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: I love this country. I just can't find it. So as America approaches its last 4th of July in the 20th century, my question is, where are we? (Fireworks exploding) On a surface level, America looks like one solid, homogenized place. Drop a citizen on the outskirts of any city, and he's made to feel at home by the array of identical shopping malls, food shops, Gaps, and cineplexes. The cities themselves are looking more attractive with renewal projects like san Antonio's Riverwalk and Baltimore's inner harbor, but it's still much the same. Walk around within all this sameness for a while, however, and the differences cry out. Rich are separated from poor; Latinos from African Americans; Asians and Caribbeans from the rest -- everyone living with his or her own kind. This group is opposed to that group, and all groups oppose the government, thus creating a country where everyone is pretty much home alone. For its part, the government that is supposed to reflect the wishes of the people doesn't have a clue as to what those wishes are, and remains isolated, on gun control or most anything else. As for us so-called "we the people," we make faint noises about national unity from time to time-- we like the environment, we don't like crime-- but most of the time, we park ourselves in front of the TV or the computer, in an effort to stay away from one another, or to destroy actual place, or to create a virtual USA. Businesses, too, are standing alone these days, as they amalgamate in the direction of becoming one very big company-- America, Inc. Phone companies become cable companies; cable companies become phone companies; the giants then stalk the world. "Have a Coke, Paris." "Have a smoke, Indonesia." "Have a Big Mac, Tovarich." Yet, our international tendencies don't make a lot of sense. "Let's trade with China. But Cuba? No cigar." Let's all go to the same movie-- American of course-- but then let's return to our private, self-interested lives. A rather good recent movie, "Election," succeeds because it paints the country as the great American freak show of isolations and disconnections. Is this where we are on the 4th of July? I don't sing America, but I feel it. And what I feel these days is a country growing away from itself. The rich may be getting richer, but money was never solely what the country was about, and when the bottom line becomes the reason for living, the country's multiple divisions are exacerbated. For all its multinationalism, America is alone these days, alone in the world, and with itself, alone on the fourth. (Fireworks exploding) In many ways, we are better than ever-- low unemployment, more civil rights. But we are also less than we were when the century began. In the great wave of immigrants a hundred years ago, people came here to be part of something. They lived in ethnic divided pockets in New York, Chicago and Boston; they lived in color-divided pockets in Los Angeles and Detroit. But the assumption was that these were temporary quarters. Soon, it was hoped, the living would be easy, and everyone would be part of one America. Now, people still live in pockets, many of them upscale, to be sure, but on their own, gated or ghettoed. The image of a single "E Pluribus Unum" America may have always been a dream, but at least it was a shared dream. No longer. I love this country. I just can't find it. (Band playing) Have a happy Independence Day. Everyone is independent. At the turn of the new century, one wonders what to look forward to. I doubt that it will ever again be the prospect of the newcomer entering the country when the century began-- that scene in the movie, "Avalon," when a brand-new hopeful arrives in America on the 4th of July, in a sparkling bouquet of fireworks. Fireworks were symbols of celebration for a country, too, that was about to arrive. Well, here we are. I'm Roger Rosenblatt.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major story of this Friday was the rise in the nation's unemployment rate from 4.2 percent to 4.3 percent in June. We'll see you online, and again here Monday evening. Have a nice 4th of July weekend. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you, and good night.