The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

GWEN IFILL: Good evening. I'm Gwen Ifill. Jim Lehrer is away. On the NewsHour tonight, the breakthrough trade agreement with China; an update on the crash of EgyptAir Flight 990; defining presidential character with NewsHour regulars Michael Beschloss, Haynes Johnson and Doris Kearns Goodwin, plus historian Garry Wills and author Gail Sheehy; and a Richard Rodriguez essay about old neighborhoods and new baseball diamonds. It all follows our summary of the news this Monday.

NEWS SUMMARY

GWEN IFILL: The head of the National Transportation Safety Board suggested today that the EgyptAir 990 crash investigation could be taken over by another agency. The most likely agency would be the FBI, which would investigate the crash as a crime, not an accident. NTSB Chairman James Hall also said the sound quality of the cockpit voice recorder recovered Saturday was good. But, in part because much of the conversations were in Arabic, additional translation and analysis are needed. He predicted the painstaking process would yet yield answers. We'll have more on the story later in the program tonight. In a related development, a Rhode Island judge today cleared the way for the state to issue death certificates for the 217 people aboard the 767 Boeing jetliner. The certificates will say the victims are presumed dead even if their remains have not been found and identified. U.S. and Chinese negotiators concluded a long-sought-after trade deal today. It's expected to pave the way for China to join the World Trade Organization. Under the agreement, China would cut tariffs an average of 23 percent and open its markets to, among other things, banks, insurance companies and Hollywood movies. But the terms will not go into effect until China officially enters the WTO, most likely early next year. President Clinton said the agreement was "a profoundly important step" in Sino-American relations and a boost for the global economy. He spoke during his trip to Ankara, Turkey.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: The China W.T.O. agreement is good for the United States, it's good for China, it's good for the world economy. Today, China embraces principles of economic openness, innovation, and competition.

GWEN IFILL: Ministers from the 134 member nations of the W.T.O. meet at the end of this month in Seattle. We'll have more on the China trade developments right after the News Summary. Mr. Clinton also said today the U.S. would provide $1 billion in credit to help rebuild Turkey. The country has been devastated by two massive earthquakes. The latest one, which struck Friday, killed more than 450 people. Relief workers continued to help victims. Thousands of people have moved into emergency tents. Rescuers worked through the night, still hoping to find additional survivors; 17,000 people were killed last August when a 7.4 magnitude quake rocked the same section of the country. President Clinton is scheduled to visit quake-damaged areas tomorrow. Back in this country, White House and congressional negotiators worked today on a plan to allow the U.S. to pay its back dues to the United Nations. It's been a major sticking point in budget talks. But on Sunday, the stalemate ended when the Clinton administration acceded to Republican demands for some limits on federally-funded family planning groups that promote abortions abroad. In exchange, Congress would appropriate nearly $1 billion for unpaid dues to the U.N.. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed today to review a Galveston, Texas, school prayer case. The justices will decide whether students may be permitted to lead prayers at public high school football games. A lower court ruled that by allowing such prayers the local school board violated the constitutionally-mandated separation of church and state. The Supreme Court has banned prayer in public schools since 1962. The court let stand a ruling in which a lesbian won visitation rights to her ex-partner's child. It refused to review a Massachusetts Supreme Court decision which said the woman had become a de facto parent after helping raise her partner's son. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the big trade deal with China; an EgyptAir update; presidential character; and a Richard Rodriguez essay.

FOCUS - TRADE DEAL

GWEN IFILL: Spencer Michels begins our coverage of the China trade deal.

SPENCER MICHELS: The major trade deal signed by U.S. And Chinese leaders after 13 years of fits and starts brings China a giant step closer to joining the World Trade Organization. When and if that occurs, China will be obligated to cut tariffs an average of 23 percent over a period of five years or longer. U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky spent six days in Beijing negotiating the economic accord. Today she called the deal profound and historic.

CHARLENE BARSHEFKSY: The United States and China have a... had a rather tumultuous relationship, as you know, ups and downs, lots of swings. But an agreement of this sort, with its breadth, with its scope, with its emphasis on rule of law, with its consistency with China's own internal reform process can help to anchor the relationship between the United States and China.

SPENCER MICHELS: Under the deal China agreed to lower tariffs and other protective trade barriers in a broad range of industries, from agriculture and telecommunications to financial services and automobiles. That gives American exporters greater access to a billion customers and a $4 trillion economy. In return, China receives White House backing for membership in one of the world's most important economic clubs: The World Trade Organization. With more than 130 member countries, W.T.O. grants the same free trade privilege to every one of its members. China has been clamoring to join that club because it wants to sell its products abroad. But China will also have to abide by a long list of W.T.O. rules governing its trade relations and business practices. In April, the two countries came very close to a trade deal. Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji came to Washington with W.T.O. on his wish list. In the end though, he and President Clinton were not able to bridge the gaps. A month later the U.S. bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. And that helped put the trade negotiations on ice until recently. The next stage of the process for China is similar negotiations with the European Union and other influential members of the W.T.O.. For the U.S., the arena moves to Congress where lawmakers will have to vote on what's known as permanent, normal trade relations status. Such status would provide Chinese exporters permanent access to low tariffs that most other countries already get from the U.S.. The AFL-CIO opposes the agreement and vows to fight it. But White House officials predict Congress will approve the deal.

Gene Sperling, Economic Adviser: We don't expect it to be easy, but we expect that when people see this deal, see the agreement and understand the importance of this for the U.S.-China relationships and the future of the global economy, they will understand that this is in our nation's interest.

SPENCER MICHELS: W.T.O. members meet in Seattle at month's end. China will attend probably as an observer and could join the group sometime this winter.

GWEN IFILL: Margaret Warner takes it from there.

MARGARET WARNER: For more on today's deal, and what it will mean, we turn to Kenneth Lieberthal, special advisor to the president and senior director for Asia affairs at the National Security Council-- he just returned from the negotiations in China last night; Liu Xiaoming, deputy chief of mission at the Chinese embassy in Washington; Robert Kapp, president of the U.S.- China Business Council, which represents more than 250 American companies doing business in China; and Robert Scott, an international economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, a research and policy organization. Welcome, gentlemen.

Mr. Lieberthal, tell us what the U.S. and the U.S. economy gets out of this deal.

KENNETH LIEBERTHAL: The most fundamental thing we get out of this deal is an enormous increase in our access to the Chinese economy. This is in services, it's in the export of our industrial products, of our agricultural products. Essentially China will now, after a brief phase-in, have to play by the same rules that we and many other countries around the world play by: Greater transparency, more rules-based, fairness to farm firms that will be treated in most sectors just as Chinese firms are. So, we should see a very substantial increase in our exports to China, a very substantial increase in our economic engagement with China. At the same time this builds in key protections for American labor to protect us from surges of Chinese exports to the United States and also from the possibility of Chinese dumping of goods in the United States. So this is a very, very significant agreement for U.S.-China economic relations and, as your people mentions, it also has substantial political significance for our overall relationship.

MARGARET WARNER: Mr. Liu, the minister in China who negotiated just called it -- he used a very American phrase - a win-win. What's in it for China?

LIU XIAOMING: I think it serves China in further developing the economy, to further to reform, and it means a lot of business opportunities. It means a lot for China's exports. And what's more, it serves the interest of our two countries. It means more job opportunities, and it means more exports to both sides, and it also means that we'll stabilize our relations, you know, without permanent N.T.R.....

MARGARET WARNER: What's that?

LIU XIAOMING: The normal trade relations.

MARGARET WARNER: Which we described at the end of the taped piece.

LIU XIAOMING: That's right. That will stabilize relations and now China is the fourth largest trading partner to the United States, while the United States is the second largest trading partner to China. So it's very important for these two major trading partners to do trade according to the international practice. It also serves the interest of the world trade, and China is the 7th largest economy and the 9th largest exporter and the 10th largest importer. So you can hardly imagine the World Trade Organization could be complete without China's participation. So I think China will contribute to the further development of the world trade, both in terms of expanding its trade and also in terms of actively participating, formulating the rules and laws of the World Trading Organization.

MARGARET WARNER: How will it actually... give us some examples of how it will change the rules of the road for American businesses doing business in China -- in other words, following up on what Mr. Lieberthal said and Charlene Barshefsky as well.

ROBERT KAPP: Margaret, if you sell a machine into China, currently you're not allowed to run your own service operation there. Once the machine is in Chinese hands, you can't open your own service shop without having a Chinese partner. This is going to open up all sorts of opportunities for American services firms. After all services are a very big part of our economy to operate on their own in China for the first time. That's just one simple example. American banks and I might say that the United States negotiating this, of course, is negotiating for the whole rest of the world because under the W.T.O., what any country agrees to provide to one other W.T.O. member is provided to all. So we've really led the charge on this. Banks are now going to be operating increasingly in the local currency, which was almost unknown before. Insurance companies will have a much wider scope of action. On the agriculture side though there's just no overestimating the importance of agriculture in this agreement. The farm and agricultural groups are estimating that this is the biggest single market-opening opportunity for American agriculture in decades. And I think we'll see very substantial improvement there and of course manufacturers are in many cases extremely happy with this as well.

MARGARET WARNER: Are Chinese industries and Chinese farms and Chinese agriculture ready for this kind of competition?

LIU XIAOMING: I think so. We expect there might be some negative impact on certain sectors.

MARGARET WARNER: Some negative impact?

LIU XIAOMING: On agricultural manufacturing, but the goal for the Chinese government is to introduce the maximum of competition. That's part of the reform of the state-owned enterprises. Since we are building a market economy, which is more integrated with the world economy, so we have to push our companies and enterprises to the world competition, you know, compete in accordance with international practice -- so we believe in the long run it serves China's interests, serves China's economic growth, and also serves the enterprises in the long run.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, I know you're more skeptical. What are your problems with this?

ROBERT SCOTT: Margaret, this is a lose-lose agreement for workers in both the U.S. and in China. This agreement failed to obtain progress, in particular, on labor and human rights. No progress was made in those areas at all. The agreement is a commercial failure. The benefits that have been promised by the administration are illusory. They're not going to be there. In fact, this agreement can be very costly for both our economy and for China's. And finally, the agreement itself is unenforceable. So I'm concerned, I think, that China is not yet ready to join the W.T.O., and I think this agreement is premature.

KENNETH LIEBERTHAL: May I say something to that.

MARGARET WARNER: Yes, quickly.

KENNETH LIEBERTHAL: As you are well aware, we disagree almost across the board on that sort of comment. American labor is well protected in this agreement. I think you'll agree with that. Chinese labor conditions will improve as the overall Chinese economy improves. Most foreign enterprises in China apply labor conditions that are in fact better than those mandated by Chinese law. That is especially true for European and American enterprises in China. This will vastly expand our presence there and our ability to do that. In terms of enforcement, W.T.O. has enforcement mechanisms. These are not perfect, but they are better than anything that currently exists out there so that I think you never get from 0 to 100 in one step, but if anything moves China along the path to a wealthier population, a better educated population, a population more in tune with the rest of the world with a more rule-based system in a more sophisticated environment, if anything will move China along that path, this agreement does that. I just have a hard time understanding the kinds of comments that you have just made about it. I don't think that they really capture what's going on here.

ROBERT SCOTT: My concern is with your assumptions. I think this agreement is actually going to lower incomes in China, not raise them. And we can look to our experiences under the NAFTA agreement to see that after NAFTA was implemented, almost immediately Mexico was hit with a peso crisis and wages fell, employment fell. And today three or four years after the peso crisis, real wages for Mexican workers remain 29 percent below where they were before the NAFTA agreement was put into effect. China has already announced that it may have to devalue in the first quarter of 1999. This is history repeating itself again and again. We saw it with the Canada-U.S. Free agreement -- when Canada devalued after the agreement was put into effect -- we saw it with Mexico. And I expect we're going to see it again with China. I think the key factor here is that China has one of the most abusive labor markets in the world. And nothing was done in this agreement to protect worker rights. Instead, what we've done is protect investor rights. That's what this agreement is all about is protecting the rights of U.S. investors to do business in China, but that's not going to do anything for the interests of workers in either country.

LIU XIAOMING: I cannot agree with what you are saying, that China has abused its labor forces. In fact, if you look at the road China has covered in the past 20 years, the livelihood of the Chinese people has improved tremendously with the opening up and the reform. So there's a broad, you know, universal support in China for continuing reform and opening up and also these, you know, China's interaction with the outside world. It will help China's economy grow steadily.

MARGARET WARNER: Let me get Mr. Kapp back in this.

What do you think is going to be the impact on jobs both in China and in the United States?

ROBERT KAPP: Well, I can't really speak on the Chinese side, Margaret. The studies that have been conducted on this side tend to be rather method logically rigid. It's a little hard to tell. I've pointed out, for example, that the real impact is not going to be on the day that China joins. It's going to be affected by whether the Chinese economy is growing by 10 or 15 percent a year or shrinking by 10 or 15 percent a year. A country which is in the economic doldrums is not able to purchase as much from the rest of the world and generate much employment abroad as much as a country that is moving along. The Chinese economy right now is not in the best of shape. It still looks pretty good by global standards, 7 plus percent. But there's a lot of unemployment and there's a lot of uneasiness for the future.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. A related question: What impact is it going to have on the U.S.-China trade deficit which last year was $60 billion?

ROBERT KAPP: Well, it was. And that is a concern, but I think the point about the trade deficit, any trade deficit, is that if you can get the markets open, which is what this extraordinary achievement is aimed to do and which to me seems clearly designed to do well, the best answer to the trade deficit is to sell more goods to China, ship more to China. It's certainly not-- I think none of us would suggest that it was-- to shut the door to Chinese goods coming to this country. So, who knows whether it will take one, two or five for the trade deficit to be affected by the W.T.O., but the market openings and the reductions of non-tariff barriers and the lowering of tariffs and the creating of American companies in the same way that domestic companies are treated are all good for opportunities for American businesses and their workers and the farmers as well.

MARGARET WARNER: So, shouldn't that be good for American workers?

ROBERT SCOTT: It sounds great in theory. The problem when you look at what happens in reality when we implement these trade agreements. In fact, the U.S. Government's own International Trade Commission has done a study of a likely impacts of the W.T.O. agreement that was put on the table in April, and they found that the U.S. Trade Deficit was likely to be increased as a result of this agreement. In fact, an increase in the trade deficit is going to reduce employment in the U.S., just as was the case under the NAFTA agreement.

KENNETH LIEBERTHAL: Let's be clear as to why a trade deficit might decrease in the short term. China exports far more to the U.S. than it imports in the U.S.. In percentage terms our exports to China will grow far more rapidly than China's exports to us will grow. But since they start from a much higher base for those exports in absolute terms, that trade deficit may grow in the next few years. It will not grow as much as it would have grown without this agreement and over time clearly it will shrink with this agreement.

ROBERT SCOTT: The question is what does over time mean? I've done the forecasts and looked at the I.T.C. reports, and I've extrapolated those out into the future. It is going to take more than 50 years for the U.S. Trade Deficit with China to be eliminated given the rates of growth of imports and exports forecast by the I.T.C.. Of course the deal that was negotiated this week has worse commercial terms than the one that was put on the table in the April.

KENNETH LIEBERTHAL: That's not true.

MARGARET WARNER: Can I throw another issue on the table, which is something a couple of people raised. It has to do with enforcement. One of the critiques has been that the U.S. is going to give up his ability to, for instance, impose unilateral sanctions. How do you guarantee that this is enforceable?

KENNETH LIEBERTHAL: The question is whether this leaves better off than we were before the agreement. I think the answer to that clearly is yes. We can enforce certain provisions like provisions against export surges, provisions against dumping. There are stronger terms here than we had before this agreement was signed. In terms of enforcement on the Chinese side of how they treat foreign firms within China, that primarily relies on W.T.O. dispute resolution mechanisms. Those are, you know, those are reasonably effective. There are problems with them but there are problems with any of these things. I think that one of the fundamental goals of this administration, let's keep in mind, has been to encourage an outcome where China joins multi-lateral institutions and becomes a constructive member of those major institutions. This advances that goal a great deal. I think the dispute resolution mechanisms within the institution are ones that will be reasonably adequate to the task over time.

MARGARET WARNER: Is China ready to essentially play by the W.T.O. rules?

LIU XIAOMING: Yes, very much so. Once we become a member of W.T.O., we will abide by all the regulations and rules. We tend to believe that the rules will be set by all the players, not by just a few countries. So that's why we support the multi-lateral mechanism rather than resort to unilateral, bilateral channels. We believe that serves the interest of all trading partners.

MARGARET WARNER: You have doubts?

ROBERT SCOTT: The problem we have is that China has consistently violated paper agreements it's made in the past. And we've given up the right to use unilateral sanctions in this case. We've weakened our own enforcement capabilities.

ROBERT KAPP: I think one of the chimeras here - is the idea that unilateral sanctions have the power that sometimes are attributed to them.

MARGARET WARNER: All right.

LIU XIAOMING: We have a basic differences here. If you keep saying that China violates all agreements, it seems to me you have no interest in making any trade relations with China. We need to have a basic trust to each other, and you have to remember that the United States is not perfect and I believe the United States violated many agreements between our two countries. You have to keep that in mind.

MARGARET WARNER: We can continue this but off the air. Thank you four very much.

GWEN IFILL: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, an EgyptAir update; defining presidential character; the neighborhood; and a Richard Rodriguez essay.

UPDATE - FINAL WORDS

GWEN IFILL: Kwame Holman begins our update on the EgyptAir crash.

KWAME HOLMAN: The second and last of EgyptAir 990's so-called black boxes-- the cockpit voice recorder-- was delivered to National Transportation Safety Board headquarters in Washington yesterday. It was brought up from more than 250 feet of water on Saturday night. This afternoon, N.T.S.B. Chairman Jim Hall said, while no conclusions could be drawn yet, the reported 31 minutes of tape from the cockpit recorder will be matched with information from the flight data recorder recovered last week.

JIM HALL: Because of the quality of the cockpit voice recorder and the extensive information on the flight data recorder, I am confident that many of the questions we have, you have, and the individuals who are following this investigation around the world have, will be answered. Our investigators are working right now on synchronizing the timing between the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, trying to refine the correlation between the two recorders.

KWAME HOLMAN: On October 31, the EgyptAir jet, with 217 on board, was at a cruising altitude of 33,000 feet when it took an extremely fast, steep dive to 16,700 feet. It then climbed-- again, at a very high speed-- to 24,000 feet, and then fell-- the Boeing 767 crashing into the Atlantic Ocean-- all within a span of a few minutes. Today Hall said his investigators are trying to determine whether the N.T.S.B. should continue to lead the probe, suggesting it may become a criminal inquiry.

JIM HALL: We are concentrating our efforts on determining from the evidence, including the cockpit voice recorder, whether or not this investigation is to remain under the leadership of the National Transportation Safety Board.

KWAME HOLMAN: Meanwhile, the Board continues its analysis of EgyptAir's flight recorder.

GWEN IFILL: For more, we are joined by Lee Dickinson, a former member of the National Transportation Safety Board and the director of Exponent, an engineering and investigative firm that specializes in transportation accidents, and Tim Forte, a certified commercial pilot and the director of aviation safety at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

Mr. Dickinson, James Hall is a very... he picks his words very carefully. And, yet he opened the door to the possibility, it sounded like, of a criminal act. Is there anything that you've seen in what's been...what has been discerned from the black boxes so far which would lead you to understand why he might do that?

LEE DICKINSON: Well, I think if you listen to what Jim Hall, the chairman of the NTSB, said today, he was very careful in his choice of words. But one thing I think your viewers need to keep in mind is it's not uncommon for the NTSB in an investigation such as this to work in conjunction with the FBI, because what happens is you keep working in certain avenues and certain approaches until there's certain information that allows you to change directions. If they're getting to that point, that is a decision that the Safety Board will have to make. If that's the case, they will relinquish the investigation or the running of the investigation.

GWEN IFILL: The FBI has been working with them so far. The question is whether they will turn it over. Wouldn't that make a big difference in the kind of investigation they'd be conducting?

LEE DICKINSON: Well, keep in mind that the NTSB is charged by law to investigate all civil aviation accidents. Now, those are of a civil nature. If, indeed, there's a determination that there may be criminal action involved, then the NTSB would wind down its investigation from the standpoint of determining cause and it would be taken over by another agency.

GWEN IFILL: Mr. Forte, you have flown 767's; you're very familiar with the plane. Can you give us any sense about -- based on what you've heard so far -- about what could have happened in this crash that wouldn't have been involved, in which human error would not have been a factor?

TIM FORTE: Well, of course, I would caution you to not speculate, let the investigation take its course, but the 767 is a very reliable airplane. It's been in commercial operation for over 18 years. There's about 800 in use worldwide, and it has an excellent safety record. There's not rational explanations for the data that's been released so far that makes any sense.

GWEN IFILL: Are you surprised so far that it's so inconclusive?

TIM FORTE: No. I think clearly Jim Hall has hinted that there's a lot of information available on both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder that, as they correlate them and align it and align it along with the air traffic tapes and the military radar tapes, I'm sure it's going to probably paint a picture that will if not give you the probable cause certainly the road map to it.

GWEN IFILL: It's the painting of that picture, Mr. Dickinson, exactly how does the NTSB recreate those last minutes in the cockpit?

LEE DICKINSON: Well, as Tim just mentioned the Safety Board has in its hands now both the digital flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder. The information that you get off the flight data recorder provides information on the aircraft itself. What was the airplane doing, what was its speed, what was his altitude? What was its heading? Was it rolling? Was it pitching -- that type of information. That's more of the engineering side of the puzzle. The cockpit voice recorder will provide information, communications between the cockpit and air traffic control possibly or within... with the pilots themselves. That information is more of a human performance type information. Those two pieces of data and information will be correlated; in other words, there will be a time line set up so that you'll be able to see what was the crew saying and how was the plane responding. That information will be the foundation for possibly developing scenarios or computer animations on what exactly the airplane was doing and probably what it should have been doing based on the inputs that we think were provided.

GWEN IFILL: There are at least two unusual things which have surfaced so far in the preliminary readings of these two black boxes. One I'll ask you about, one I'll ask Mr. Forte about. The one I'll ask you about is the flaps on the back of the planes, the elevators, one was up, one was down. Usually they would be down or up for the ascent at the same time.

LEE DICKINSON: That is correct.

GWEN IFILL: Why would that have happened?

LEE DICKINSON: Well, again, as we said earlier, it's too early really to say. One of the things we do know is there's something not correct there. So that is an area that the Safety Board will indeed be looking at because as you indicated elevators should be in the same direction, either up or down.

GWEN IFILL: And, Mr. Forte, how unusual is it that both of the engines were shut off possibly manually at some point?

TIM FORTE: I think it's highly unusual. When trying to search for a reasonable explanation to do that-- and again cautious with speculation-- one possible scenario would be both engines on fire. However if that was going on, I think there would be information on the flight data recorder that would tell us that. In addition, you would expect the flight crew to be making emergency calls and preparing for ditching.

GWEN IFILL: As you both point, it's very difficult to figure out what you don't know and they're still searching for more information. We're all looking for hard and immediate answers for what's turned out to be a very murky mystery. How difficult is it for the NTSB in investigations like this to get to the bottom of it?

LEE DICKINSON: I believe that the NTSB will indeed determine a cause of this accident. Unfortunately most of the public would like to have the answers today. We all would like to have answers today but it is not something that occurs overnight. The investigation is only about two weeks old. Typically what happens in any major investigation that is conducted by the NTSB is it's at least 12 to 14 months before a final probable cause is determined. I'm not saying it's going to take that long in the case, but we have to make sure that the on-scene portion of the investigation is indeed complete, all the data are collected because that indeed is the foundation for doing the subsequent analysis which would then determine the probable cause.

GWEN IFILL: The investigators are taking the flight data and voice recorders to Seattle trying to reconstruct a time line. What do they hope to find?

LEE DICKINSON: Again, my understanding there's about 150 different pieces of information from the flight data recorder on the aircraft itself. The information from the cockpit voice recorder, it's my understanding is a little over 30 minutes of that. They will try to put together exactly what the crew was saying, maybe what they were doing to the airplane itself, and subsequently how the airplane was actually responding to these various inputs that were put in by the crew. That then paints the picture, as you mentioned earlier, and starts the process of developing scenarios to understand not only what happened but more importantly why the accident occurred.

GWEN IFILL: Mr. Forte, the 767 as you mentioned is a pretty new generation plane, a very good plane as you described it. How difficult is that to fly for a human being or how much of it is on remote control basically once you get up in the air?

TIM FORTE: I believe Boeing did a wonderful job of putting new technology, mixing that new technology with the human input and in a way that capitalizes on all the good things of technology and all the good things of the human element in that. The aircraft has been very reliable. We've seen very few incidents that would lead to look for any kind of systemic safety issues. And, as I mentioned earlier, there are 800 operating worldwide for close to 18 years now.

GWEN IFILL: So, Mr. Dickinson, what should we novices be looking for as the next real key about what happened here?

LEE DICKINSON: Well, I think you have to keep in mind what Jim Hall said today in his briefing. You would have to assume that the NTSB is continuing to look at the flight data recorder they're listening to, as he mentioned they've convened what is known as a cockpit voice recorder committee where people will actually be listening to the tape and developing a transcript. If, indeed, they find a point in time where they believe that they should be moving away from the investigation, that decision will be made. So, I would be looking forward to the next day or so.

GWEN IFILL: Mr. Forte, what are you hoping to hear?

TIM FORTE: You have to remember that there are world-class performance engineers at the NTSB. I'm confident they'll be able to take that date from the both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder and the air traffic tape and determine a probable cause or, as Mr. Hall hinted at, transfer it to an appropriate agency.

GWEN IFILL: Thank you very much, Mr. Forte and Mr. Dickinson.

LEE DICKINSON: You're welcome.

FOCUS - DEFINING CHARACTER

GWEN IFILL: An examination of presidential character and to Ray Suarez.

RAY SUAREZ: What do we mean by presidential character? How do we assess it? Has it changed over time? We get five perspectives now from NewsHour regulars Presidential Historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Michael Beschloss and Journalist and Author Haynes Johnson. Joining them tonight are Gail Sheehy, contributing editor at "Vanity Fair" and Author of "Hillary's Choice," a portrait of the first lady, and Garry Wills, Professor of History at Northwestern University. His new book is "A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government." Garry Wills, in a recent essay, you stressed competence over what's being called in shorthand -- in common parlance -- character. But they don't plot out on ends of a continuum.

GARRY WILLS: No, of course not. Character is important. My objection was to the idea that you can get the right temperament, the right maturity, the right morals and predict a character who will be a good leader. We all know people who are of very equitable temperament and fine morals and great maturity but can't lead, don't attract followers. Character is very important. In fact, I wrote a whole book on this about George Washington, that character was what this republic was built on. But character in the 18th century meant public reputation for public virtue. And that's the sense in which Washington distinguished himself. And that's what we would look for for character. Otherwise, character has been taken as a license to snoop or to practice psychoanalysis without a license. So we hear somebody gets angry a lot so he can't be a leader. I know a lot of leaders who get very angry.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Gail Sheehy, you've used the phrase "the politics of biography." And, after all, when the candidate controls what's in the biography, it's predictable that they're going to burnish and highlight those things that show them in a good light and suppress or omit altogether those things that show them in a bad light. How do we know about character then?

GAIL SHEEHY: Well, it becomes more difficult. I define character as the Greeks did, as the enduring marks imprinted by life that distinguish one as an individual. And it's been important since Plutarch wrote his great book "Lives" in 105 A.D.. Now that the candidates themselves have seized the character issue and look what we have as differences among these characters, we have four presidential candidates essentially, all white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant middle aged males, all raised in reasonably affluent circumstances, sons of successful professional fathers. And none of them have very stark ideological differences so they're all running on the politics of personal biography. I think that's why John McCain is giving George W. Bush a run for his money in New Hampshire. Bill Bradley has his teammates out vouching for his character and saying you can tell a lot more about a man by playing against him every week than you can by talking to him for a year. So, we have to, as voters, become more discerning, look beyond the biographies that are, you know, really contracted by these candidates -- they all have books out -- and beyond the photo ops and the sound bites to the enduring, repetitive pattern of behavior. How have they reacted to failure? How have they reacted to success? Do they lie some of the time or all of the time? Too often we've been burned by accepting presidential candidates for neatly packaged virtues they've turned out not to have. The new Nixon was not new. The competent Carter was perhaps competent but he also had something of a nervous breakdown in office. Nixon was a very competent foreign policy President but he was also a deeply paranoid individual who took this country through a great national trauma. So I think it's really kind of amazing to say that character doesn't count.

RAY SUAREZ: Haynes Johnson, Gail Sheehy suggests we should become more discerning. But, isn't some of the character issue built on the presumption, maybe even the myth that we can really know these guys?

HAYNES JOHNSON: Yeah, I have trouble with the character issue, so-called. We all talk about it. We know what we mean. This guy is ignoble; this guy is a crook, this guy is wonderful. This guy is Plato, or so forth. I would rather use the terms qualities, qualities of leadership and what makes a great leader. Is it strength? Is it a force? Is it intellect? Is it the ability to move things, to be felt, to make a difference? I mean, that's what I think when we look back at our American Presidents, those that stand out were those that moved the times. They were able to connect with the people in a way that the people understood these were people of consequence. When Roosevelt died, Lyndon Johnson - Doris will remember this and Michael too particularly - Lyndon Johnson was just weeping. He said, God, how he could take it for all of us. How he could take it for all of us. I think that's kind of what it's all about. The country felt something. And whether you loved or hated Franklin Roosevelt, you knew there was a force there, whether you didn't like his character or not, but you knew there were qualities of leadership. And I think that's the way --

GARY WILLS: That was the public record though. That wasn't going into how he felt when his brother died.

HAYNES JOHNSON: Exactly.

RAY SUAREZ: Doris Kearns Goodwin, aren't some of these things only things that we can know in retrospect?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: What we know is if we define character not as moral virtue or sexual fidelity which has been too much with us lately but rather as Gail said the recurrent patterns of behavior over time exhibited in the past performance, these characters didn't come out of nowhere, they've been somewhere beforehand. I mean, look at the anger issue, for example. The problem is when you take it out of focus and you say McCain is angry. Somebody said I agree with Gary, that may not be anything at all. It may be a sudden outburst. Lyndon Johnson used to do that a lot. And then he'd feel sorry and suddenly a card would appear at the aide's house. So they were glad for that anger to come. But the key thing is does the anger, is it of such a nature that it permanently damages relationships? Is the candidate the kind of person who when he gets upset or things don't go well, he blames others for it? Does he therefore have a problem with loyalty on his staff? Is there a turnover on the staff? I'd like to know things about the past Similarly, with the pop quiz of George W. Bush, it may not matter what his grades were in college or whether he knows leader's name but does his candidate show in previous jobs as governor, as senator, whatever they were, curiosity, a love of learning, absorbing information, the mental traits that do matter? That's there for us in those mini-biographies can be very helpful.

RAY SUAREZ: You talk about the importance of the past. Right now leading every poll I've seen is a man whose past is largely unknown to most voters, George W. Bush, who began his public career in his mid 40s.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Well, I think it's our responsibility as analysts, as writers, to look into that past, not to look into what he did as a young man before maturity set in, not to look at something that might have been a youthful indiscretion to use that famous word. But, rather, I'd like to know more about his governorship. How was he able to pull people together? Was he able to inspire loyalty among people? He still has got some years there that matter and there are mature years before that. I think we're just beginning to learn about those things. I think the trouble is we define the past as sort of moments of great exposure rather than these patterns over time which are there for us to see.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Michael Beschloss, is part of our problem here is the fact that someone who is supposed to be both the head of state and embody the nation, in effect, and be the head of the government get down and dirty with legislators, call people into the wood shed and all of that, we're asking for a lot from our President, and these character questions are sometimes hard to place?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Absolutely because we're in this odd position, the founders thought it was a good idea to combine almost a king and a prime minister in the same person. So you've got this person who is President who, on the one hand, is divisive, proposing all sorts of polarizing programs that will divide Congress and the American people, and at the same time he is supposed to be someone who parents will hold their children up and say, "this is someone that you should be like." The two are almost antithetical. But, you know, the other problem is that we're in a new age as far as our looking at the issue of character because, for most of American history, presidential nomination was decided by people who had known the candidate in one way or another -- fellow party leaders or fellow governors or members of Congress. They would have a pretty good idea from knowing the person for 20 or 30 years, is this a person whose word can be relied on? Is this someone of pretty consistent values? Now that's not true. We as voters have to cast votes in primaries over a space of about six weeks based on information that's very unreliable and fragmented. We all have to make these character judgments that other people used to. The other problem is that now with the Internet and 24 hour a day cable news networks we're flooded with all sorts of information that we never had before and all this makes it very tough for each of us as an American.

RAY SUAREZ: So in a weird way we know too much and too little at the same time, Gary?

GARY WILLS: Well, we know too much that is irrelevant. As I say, I think the public record-- you're right. The people used to know them because of the party system. In parliamentary systems they know that. These are people they worked with as they go up the parliamentary ladder. And you should only care about character, it seems to me, when it enters the public realm. For instance, womanizing, if it comes to the point where a Clinton is lying to his staff, using his staff, lying to the public, then it's no longer a private vice, it's a public vice. Public virtue is involved. But going back and trying to bring in all of the private aspects of a person; for instance Gail Sheehy said that Michael Dukakis will be a great president because he grew from the fact that he lost the governorship and he lost a brother. Well, you know, Clinton lost the governorship and he kind of lost a brother to drugs. Those men couldn't be more different. So it seems to me that is not really useful information.

RAY SUAREZ: Gail Sheehy?

GAIL SHEEHY: I never said Michael Dukakis would be a great president. That's really a falsification. I just reread my book on character and I did not say that. In fact I said he basically was running to justify his Greek immigrant background and to be respected.

GARY WILLS: And he had deepened and matured through these experiences.

GAIL SHEEHY: He did do that. I never make judgments on who should be the president. I just go out and dig up the kind of thing that party leaders used to do. I go back to a person's... having been trained by Margaret Meade in the anti-theological method, I go back to a person's home....

GARY WILLS: But you offer....

GAIL SHEEHY: Could I finish, please. I talk to the mother or the father if they're still alive. Teaches, coaches, first wives, second wives or spouses if it's a female candidate...the person who people... people who worked with or played with the person over the course of many years so that by the time you have a candidate who is 50 or 55, you can see the patterns of behavior that are repetitive. In the case of Bill Clinton, for instance, he grew up in an extremely permissive environment with a mom who bragged about carrying a drink around on Sunday and going to the racetrack. And so he didn't really see anything wrong with rewarding himself with having women along the way after he had worked himself to death. And we knew about that when we elected him. So, in fact, we were kind of enablers. We had alloy allowed him to pleasure himself and to lie about it and then it became a national issue when he did it before... under oath. Then we became shocked because he wasn't the paragon of virtue that we could hold up before our sons and daughters so we didn't know about his character and we are kind of unhappy with ourselves because we took it off the table.

RAY SUAREZ: Of the more than 40 people who have held this job, there are far more that we didn't know all this stuff about, the kind of things that Gail Sheehy has beentalking about. Were we better off before? Not that I'd ever speak up for ignorance?

GARY WILLS: I was talking to 12,000 honor students the other day, and they said... I said did we have better leaders in the past? And a great many of them said no but we thought they were better because we didn't know the things we know now and we don't want to know them now.

HAYNES JOHNSON: One of the problems and Michael and Gary just talked about it, is the blurring, the speed with which we look at, we want to know all these things. And it may not help us really because the public is so cynical, so distrustful of the word spin. It's a new term in the last few years had really. Spinning something, it means lying, making up false biographies, making false characters and selling your receive to the public. So the authentic quality of the character becomes harder to find. I do agree with everybody who has said, Gail and Doris, that we ought to help the public understand everything we can about the leaders who are going to lead us, how they make decisions, how they think, who their friends are, where their money comes from, and so forth.

RAY SUAREZ: Doris.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Especially since we have to counter that the candidates are trying to project themselves. When Coolidge was running they figured he a certain sour personality. Somebody said he was weaned on a pickle or he looked like he was, so they tried to project somebody who laughed a lot and smiled a lot. Which he never did. Public relations was just coming into being at that time. Given we have these huge amounts of money, ads and consultants, trying to give us a view of these candidates' character or candidates, it's up to the media to try to figure it out. Understanding their response to disappointment or loss, as we talked about, is important. Walter Litman, for example, projected the idea that Roosevelt was a superficial lightweight character. If he had really seen the way he responded to polio, 39 years old, struck at the height of his power, the patience, the focus, the concentration, the continuing optimism that he exhibited even after that huge loss, he couldn't have said that this was a lightweight character. That hadn't been fully explored in a way that it would be today.

RAY SUAREZ: We're going to end it right there, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Gail Sheehy, Gary Wills, Haynes Johnson, and Michael Beschloss, thank you all.

ESSAY - THE NEIGHBORHOOD

GWEN IFILL: Finally tonight, essayist Richard Rodriguez of the Pacific News Service takes a look at what was lost when a new baseball stadium was built.

RICHARD RODRIGUEZ: The noise you hear around me is the sound of nostalgia-- nostalgia being created in concrete, and at the cost of millions of dollars. San Francisco, like other American cities, is building a baseball park to resemble the ones we tore down a generation ago, a park of intimate scale.

SPORTSCASTER: A side-arm pitch to Charlie Neil. Eddie Mathews grabs the hopper

and really wizens up to first...

RICHARD RODRIGUEZ: You would be fooled, however, if you expect truly to find an earlier America within the state-of-the-art nostalgia of Baltimore's Camden Yards, or Denver's Coors Field, or San Francisco's Pac Bell Park. No, if you want to consider a more intimate America, I would recommend, instead, this wonderful book: Chavez ravine, 1949, "A Los Angeles Story." Just over 50 years ago, around this time of year, a skinny 18- year-old named Don Normark trudged up the side of a hill, intending to take a photograph of downtown Los Angeles. What Normark found, to hisastonishment, just over the hillside, was a Mexican village-- grazing goats, Indian grandmothers, roses falling from tin roofs-- all within earshot of the Pasadena Freeway. The kid hung around for a year, taking these pictures. Normark had come to California from a Scandinavian immigrant town in Washington state. He recognized immediately his own Swedish family in these Mexican elders. The three neighborhoods that comprised Chavez ravine in the 1930's and 1940's were populated mainly by Mexicans. But there were some African- American families. And on one hillside, in shanties, lived single white men. "Los Viejitos," the Mexicans would call them affectionately, "little old men." "We had only one streetlight," a resident remembers now, five decades later. One streetlight on her block. "That was where everybody would party Friday and Saturday. We used to connect the wire to a big jukebox," she says. "We had Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw..." When the war came, the young men of Chavez Ravine went off. Most joined the Marines. The village's life continued-- children and grandparents, summer and winter, and shrines in front of each house marked Catholic feast days, the alternating seasons of joy and grief. By the late 1940's, city housing officials were describing these neighborhoods as "blighted." On July 24, 1950, a letter went out, informing residents that their houses would be torn down for low-income housing. Urban planners in those years were very much influenced by Northern European modernism, especially the Bauhaus Movement. Perhaps their hope was that if you put poor people in clean, rectangular spaces, draw straight lines around them, you can alter their messy lives. Richard Neutra, the gifted Austrian modernist, drew up plans for Chavez Ravine, 24 thirteen-story towers and 163 two- story buildings. Happily none of them got built. Neutra's very beautiful glass and concrete houses belonged on the other side of L.A. Growing up in the 50's in California, I grew accustomed to hearing New York sportscasters go on and on about the day the Dodgers left Brooklyn. On this other side of the country, there was another story to tell. Call it the story of when the Dodgers came to L.A. By the mid-1950s, Los Angeles wanted to entice Walter O'Malley and his Dodgers out West. And Chavez Ravine was dust or mud, depending on the season. So Los Angeles turned what had been a rose garden or someone else's front porch or a hillside's wooden steps into this: Dodger Stadium, with acres of parking. Don Normark's photographs are too gentle to shout in protest these many years later. What these photos remind us is that there was once, right in the center of our great American cities, not a brand-new, old-looking ballpark with a corporate logo, but neighborhoods where each door was a proper name and every face carried a nickname: Chuy, Hoyo, La Pocha, Neta, Punky, Topo, Vucho. I'm Richard Rodriguez.

RECAP

GWEN IFILL: Again the major stories of this Monday: U.S. and Chinese negotiators concluded a long sought-after trade deal expected to allow China to join the World Trade Organization. The chief federal aircraft investigator said the cockpit voice recorder from EgyptAir Flight 990 needed more analysis because the contents were in Arabic. And White House and congressional agreed on a way for the U.S. to pay its back dues to the United Nations. We'll see you on line and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Gwen Ifill. Thank you and good night.