The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington.

MR. MAC NEIL: And I'm Robert MacNeil in New York. After tonight's News Summary, we debate the proposal to call nicotine a drug and put cigarettes under government regulation. Kwame Holman reports on the grassroots campaign for health reform. Mark Shields and Paul Gigot analyze the week's politics, and essayist Roger Rosenblatt discusses the technique of "Schindler's List." NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MAC NEIL: The government reported today that the nation's unemployment rate held steady at 6.5 percent last month, but it also said the economy is sprouting new jobs. In fact, more Americans found work in March than in any month since 1987. The nearly 1/2 million new hires didn't reduce the overall jobless rate because more people were searching for work. The stock market didn't react to the news because it was closed for Good Friday, but Labor Sec. Robert Reich did. He spoke at the White House.

ROBERT REICH, Secretary of Labor: This is good news for American workers today. The March employment increase of 456,000 jobs reflects steady sustainable employment growth over the past six months with an average of 200,000 jobs a month. In fact, March puts us back on track to where we would have been had we not lost so much ground in the bad weather during January.

MR. MAC NEIL: In other economic news, the Commerce Department reported that Americans' personal income rose at an annual rate of 1.3 percent in February, while spending increased 1 percent. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: The U.S. and South Korean governments today praised the U.N. Security Council call on North Korea to allow inspections of its nuclear sites. The U.N. action last night was supported by China, a close ally of North Korea, but it did not include language proposed by the U.S. and its allies threatening further action if North Korea did not comply. U.S. Defense Sec. William Perry said the support from China showed diplomacy was working. He spoke before a meeting with South Korea's foreign minister in Washington. Later, the foreign minister spoke to reporters.

HAN SEUNG-JOO, Foreign Minister, South Korea: It is very important that China join the rest of the world in urging North Korea to comply with the special requirements. I think this is clearly a very strong message that China is sending not only to North Korea but also to the rest of the world.

MR. LEHRER: The North Korean government denounced the U.N. action and said it would not change its position on inspections.

MR. MAC NEIL: China detained its most famous dissident again today. Wei Jing-Sheng was taken into custody as he attempted to return to Beijing from a nearby city. Last September, he was released just six months before he completed serving a 15-year jail term. Wei was detained last month, a day before Sec. of State Christopher arrived in Beijing demanding improvements in China's human rights policy. Christopher warned that failure to do so would affect China's Most Favored Nation trading status with the U.S.

MR. LEHRER: The government of South Africa stepped up its crackdown in Natal Province today. It's designed to stop violence that threatens the first all-race elections later this month. We have a report from Mark Austin of Independent Television News.

MARK AUSTIN, ITN: The measures announced today give South African troops wide ranging powers of search and arrest, allowing security forces to detain people for up to 30 days without charge. There are also regulations banning unauthorized military or paramilitary training, a measure clearly aimed at outlawing the private armies run by both the African National Congress and Chief Buthelezi's Inkatha Party. There will also be a crackdown on the carrying of firearms and other dangerous weapons. The list includes the spears and sharpened sticks routinely carried by Zulus. The fear is this could inflame the Zulus, who have fierce pride in their warrior traditions. But President DeKlerk has moved quickly to emphasize that the aim of the emergency powers is not to threaten the Zulu culture, saying troops would only take action when public safety was threatened. Military analysts have warned that 40 percent of South Africa's Zulus could take up arms if large numbers of troops moved into their homeland. But this morning, Natal and KwaZulu are reported to be calm.

MR. MAC NEIL: Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said today Israel had to speed up autonomy talks with the PLO. Under its original peace accord with the PLO, Israel pledged to withdraw its troops from parts of the occupied territories by April 13th. Peres told Israeli Radio that could still be achieved if the PLO cooperates in the current talks. In Jerusalem, Israeli troops were out in force as worshipers observed Good Friday. We have a report narrated by Richard Vaughan of Worldwide Television News.

RICHARD VAUGHAN: Israeli security forces guarded Jerusalem's Via Dolorosa as pilgrims retraced the last steps of Christ to his crucifixion. Unseasonably cold, drizzling weather and increased tension following the Hebron mosque massacre more than halved the usual number of Good Friday pilgrims. At the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, believed to be on the site of Jesus's Tomb, pilgrims carried a cross through the dim candle-lit interior. Many sang hymns, and some kissed the large stone slab on which Christ's body is said to have been wrapped before burial. In Vatican City, Pope John Paul continued his Good Friday tradition of hearing the confessions of ordinary Roman Catholics in St. Peter's Basilica. Vatican officials selected people from India, Italy, Paraguay, Spain, and the Pope's native Poland to confess totheir faith's spiritual leader. The Pope then prayed in St. Peter's before going to Rome's Colosseum for the Way of the Cross procession.

MR. MAC NEIL: That's it for the News Summary. Just ahead, some ifs and buts, checking a pulse, a political pair, and a testament about terror. FOCUS - ALL SMOKE?

MR. MAC NEIL: The debate over regulating cigarettes is our lead segment tonight. It's a debate that has caused smoke and fire lately. The fire came from the head of the Food & Drug Administration who recently made new charges against tobacco companies. We begin with this backgrounder from Correspondent Betty Ann Bowser.

MS. BOWSER: City streets are one of the few places where America's 45 million smokers can still go and light up without repercussion, but last week, Food & Drug Commissioner David Kessler moved the debate on smoking away from where it's permitted to what's in cigarettes, namely nicotine.

DR. DAVID KESSLER, Food & Drug Administration Commissioner: The assumption has been that the nicotine in cigarettes is present solely because it is a natural and unavoidable component of tobacco. Mr. Chairman, that assumption needs to be re-examined. The amount of nicotine in a cigarette may be there by design.

MS. BOWSER: In testimony before a House subcommittee, Kessler also said there is a growing body of evidence that tobacco companies are manipulating levels of nicotine in cigarettes to keep smokers hooked.

DR. DAVID KESSLER: The public may think of cigarettes as no more than blended tobacco rolled in paper. But they are more than that. Some of today's cigarettes may, in fact, qualify as high-technology nicotine delivery systems that deliver nicotine in quantities sufficient to create and to sustain addiction in the vast majority of individuals who smoke regularly.

MS. BOWSER: In an exchange with California Congressman Henry Waxman, a tobacco company executive denied the industry spikes its cigarettes.

ALEXANDER SPEARS, Lorillard Tobacco Company: The level of nicotine in tobacco products is solely determined by the tobacco that we buy and the blending of the different tobaccos during manufacturing. We do not set levels of nicotine for particular brands of cigarettes.

REP. HENRY WAXMAN, Chairman, Subcommittee on Health and Environment: Do you know whether the nicotine levels can be manipulated from what would otherwise be in the blend or the product, itself?

ALEXANDER SPEARS: By blending tobacco is the only method of manipulation that is being used.

MS. BOWSER: The industry is getting more vocal in its opposition to any other restrictions on cigarettes. Just last month, several thousand tobacco farmers came to Capitol Hill to protest a proposal to increase cigarette taxes.

DEMONSTRATORS: [shouting] Save our jobs! Save our jobs! Save our jobs!

MS. BOWSER: And the industry's chief trade association thinks it's unfair to compare nicotine to heroin or cocaine.

CHARLES WHITLEY, Tobacco Institute: It's irresponsible, completely irresponsible to equate cigarettes with hard drugs. We do not unequivocally, unconditionally, without any equivocation at all, do not spike cigarettes or add nicotine to the level that occurs naturally in leaf tobacco.

MS. BOWSER: Yesterday, Congressman Waxman released a report he says shows the tobacco industry knew as early as 1983 that nicotine was addictive but withheld that report from publication. And like a growing number of legislators, Waxman wants to know if the industry should be subject to government regulation.

REP. HENRY WAXMAN: We must find out whether tobacco companies make deliberate decisions to assure a minimum level of nicotine in their products and whether the purpose of such level is to maintain addiction, and what extraordinary efforts are made to keep this information secret. If true, this is corporate irresponsibility on a grand scale. If true, these practices may violate the Federal Food, Drug & Cosmetic Act and subject cigarettes to federal regulation.

MR. MAC NEIL: So, should the government go after cigarette manufacturers and regulate tobacco products like drugs? We have four views. Congressman Mike Synar, Democrat of Oklahoma, is the sponsor of a bill that would regulate tobacco. Brennan Dawson is a vice president for public affairs for the Tobacco Institute, the chief lobbying organization for cigarette manufacturers. Scott Ballin is the chairman of the Coalition for Smoking or Health, a group representing the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, and the American Lung Association. Richard Klein is a professor of literature who's just written a book called Cigarettes Are Sublime. Congressman Synar, you're proposing legislation to put tobacco under regulation, so why and for what purpose?

REP. SYNAR: Well, very simply, I think the overwhelming evidence is, is that we have a drug on the market, and we have to regulate it. And yet, as we describe it as a drug that is addictive and is putting our children at great risk because the tobacco industry's spending $4 billion a year trying to prey upon our children to hook them, and the success of that preying is the fact that 3,000 teenagers take up the habit every day. We need to do something and be sensitive to the fact that 50 million Americans may already be hooked. The legislation I've introduced is an attempt to say we don't need to ban the product; that would be really cruel and unusual punishment for those people who've been hooked by the tobacco industry. But we do need to regulate it as we do any food product or other prescription drug on the market. My legislation would prohibit the banning of the product, but it would regulate the sale and distribution, the labeling, the advertising, and promotion, and the manufacturing of the product very similar to what we do with all other products on the shelf. That's the way we deal with the product, by creating a new class of product that's not a food, not a drug, because if it was classified as a drug, then the Food & Drug Administration would have but one option, and that would be to ban the product. And, again, that's not what any of us who believe that we need to deal with tobacco should do.

MR. MAC NEIL: What would the kind of regulation you propose achieve?

REP. SYNAR: Well, we do some various things. On the sale and distribution we would limit the access to 18-year-olds and older, because we think the industry's preying upon our children, and we need to try to limit that access. We wouldn't allow free samples. In the area of advertising and promotion you would no longer see any logos and advertising and promoting at Nascar, Marlboro Rodeos, ball parks, Virginia Slims, because that's where the industry has really targeted their advertising to hook children. On manufacturing, we would inspect factories. We would look at things to make sure that the manufacturing of the product meeds the standards that we feel like food and other drugs have to meet. And finally in sales and promotion we would have the type of ingredients and labels on chemicals that are involved and very similar things that you see on food packages when you go to the stores. These are very common sense things that we need to do that are long overdue. In fact, tobacco is a unique product in our society. It's the only one that's consumed by the public that has none of these kinds of jurisdictions over it.

MR. MAC NEIL: Ms. Dawson, how does the industry answer that argument, that nicotine is an addictive drug and should be regulated?

MS. DAWSON: Well, what we have here is a consumer product that's enjoyed by about 50 million American adults. If we listen to Mr. Synar, we would have them believe that he just wants to treat it like a food. And that's very far from the truth. In fact, food manufacturers are not required to go through some of the advertising requirements that Mr. Synar would have the tobacco industry go through. He would take tobacco advertising and, in fact, gut it, which is why groups as diverse as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Washington Legal Foundation have opposed these kinds of measures. Tobacco has nicotine in it because the nicotine is in the plant. It occurs naturally. There's no manipulation done by the manufacturers. In fact, one thing that's important to point out -- and we're talking specifically about nicotine -- is over the last 40 years, nicotine levels in cigarettes have dropped by 2/3. Now that occurs not through some manipulation but as consumer tastes change in the United States, as smokers across the country are looking for different flavors, lighter cigarettes, if you will. The tar reductions have been in place, and nicotine follows tar. So this notion that somehow we need to regulate nicotine in cigarettes is like saying we need to regulate caffeine in coffee or in sodas. And Mr. Synar is not telling us the whole story when he says he wants to treat us like food, because the bill he's introduced would go beyond what any food manufacturer has ever in their wildest dreams considered.

MR. MAC NEIL: Do you, do you in the industry concede that nicotine is an addictive drug?

MS. DAWSON: No, we don't. We need to make a very important distinction here. When we use the term "addiction," there are two meanings. There's an everyday meaning when we talk about being news junkies or chocoholics that people have adopted into their everyday language. Now, under that, all kinds of habits become addictions. And so if it's a habit, then, yes, smoking can be a habit. And some people look at it that way. But if we're talking about addiction in a true medical sense, in a drug sense, in a sense that we apply it to heroin or cocaine, there are very enormous distinctions that we have to make. Cigarette smokers don't have to be hospitalized to quit. They don't go through the same withdrawal that heroin and cocaine and even alcoholics go through. They don't have psychotic episodes. They're not intoxicated when they smoke. That's why you're allowed to smoke and drive a car. All of these distinctions are very important. And so we really have to be careful about what kind of phrases that we're applying here.

MR. MAC NEIL: Mr. Ballin, how do you feel about that argument that it's different because -- and not a drug because it's not addictive in the sense you've just heard described?

MR. BALLIN: Well, as usual, the tobacco industry is in the minority in making those kinds of statements. The Surgeon General's Report looked at all the scientific evidence that was available, concluded that it is addictive as cocaine and heroin is addictive. The American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, the World Health Organization all reached the same conclusion. There is no debate. We're dealing with an industry that for years has denied that their products cause cancer and heart disease. And now they're denying that their products are addictive. This is just tomfoolery as usual for the tobacco industry in an effort to fend off government regulation of a product that is killing 420,000 Americans.

MR. MAC NEIL: Do you support Congressman Synar's legislation?

MR. BALLIN: Yes, our organizations, which represent millions of Americans throughout this country are fully supportive of the efforts of Congressman Synar and Congressman Dick Durban who introduced that legislation last year. We are not advocating a ban of tobacco products, however, it seems inconceivable to our organizations that the single most preventable cause of death in our society, in the form of tobacco products, is the least regulated. The tobacco industry has exempted themselves from regulation under every single safety health law passed by Congress, and it's time they be held to the same standards that other consumer products are held to.

MR. MAC NEIL: Mr. Klein, Prof. Klein, you've just written a book describing how deeply imbedded cigarette smoking is in culture and our literature, and everything. What would be the result of regulating them in the way that's been described?

PROF. KLEIN: I'm not sure that there isn't some disingenuousness on both sides. I find it difficult to believe that nicotine is not addictive. I, for one, would not want to encourage cigarette smoking. At the same time, I don't think the Congressman realizes the extent to which regulating nicotine would essentially have the effect of banning cigarettes, because it's precisely the poison, and nicotine was discovered to be a very deadly poison in the beginning of the 19th century, it's precisely that poison to which people are powerfully and compulsively attracted. And that's been true for 400 years in the East, in the West, and for even longer in the Americas. The notion that it's going to be possible to regulate out of existence a habit which every single day of the year almost a billion people in the world practice with great passion, the notion that after a hundred years of cigarette smoking around the world that it's simply going to vanish from society seems to me to be naive. My position is --

MR. MAC NEIL: What would be the result of doing it, do you think?

PROF. KLEIN: I think the inevitable result would be the result that occurred during prohibition. I think there's a strict analogy with the circumstances surrounding alcohol. I think we would see increases in lawlessness, in cynicism, in defiance, and ultimately resistance. Our ancestors from the time of the earliest Virginia settlers, through the American Revolution, fought vigorously to preserve the right to smoke and use tobacco.

MR. MAC NEIL: Encourage lawlessness, Congressman?

REP. SYNAR: Not really. In fact, if you use his argument, then we should allow teenagers to drink at the age of 14. The fact is, is that regulating this product will help us in the long run to really go to the thing that we're trying to do, which is to keep children from smoking, and as we evolve through society and through our ages, then we will not have as many smokers. You know, 60 percent of all smokers beginning before the age of fourteen or fifteen, 90 percent before the age of 20. That's because all the promotion and advertising by the industry's targeted at them. By regulating the product, regulating its access to 18-year-olds, keeping it out of the hands of those people, putting federal labels on it with the ingredients, keeping it out of the activities that kids are around, we will gradually move out of there by -- and also recognize that adults are hooked because of the tobacco industry's nicotine.

MR. MAC NEIL: Let's ask what Prof. Klein thinks. Would it stop children from smoking?

PROF. KLEIN: I don't know. I mean, ideally, ideally I want the government to protect the absolute right to smoke and to protect the absolute right of people to be protected from secondhand smoke. That contradictory ideal may not be easy to achieve, but it seems to me that's the only ideal worth struggling for. In order for the government to do that, they would not have to impose taxes and enforce regulations, they would also have to promote sacrifices of civility and tolerance. It's Good Friday today so I may be forgiven for speaking about sacrifice. But it seems to me that in an ideal society, non-smokers would recognize that at certain moments they might, despite the best efforts of government, have to endure the whiff of a tobacco -- of tobacco, and smokers would have to practice much greater restraint, and particularly the discipline of courtesy and considerateness for other people.

MR. MAC NEIL: Mr. Ballin, on the -- how is it going to be decided, this argument of whether it is addictive enough as a drug, whether it's socially addictive or chemically in the scientific sense, addictive enough as a drug to decide whether the FDA should have a handle on this or not, nicotine I'm talking about?

MR. BALLIN: Well, it's more than just nicotine we're talking about. We're talking about tobacco products. And nicotine is one aspect of the product that the FDA feels it does have an obligation to regulate because the tobacco industry is controlling nicotine, therefore, meeting the definitions of what a drug is. But above and beyond that, Ms. Dawson mentioned the low tar and nicotine advertising and labeling. This is a clear indication in our view that these -- that the tobacco industry is attempting to convince the American public that these products are somehow safer and less addictive. Those are drug claims as well. Two definitions that FDA looks at when they try to determine whether a product should be a drug or not is whether it's designed to mitigate or prevent disease, or whether it has an effect on functions or structure of the body. In our view, tobacco products as a category meet those two definitions as they are presently marketed and should be regulated.

MR. MAC NEIL: Ms. Dawson, just on the nicotine point, is nicotine not already regulated as a drug? For instance, if you're trying to give up smoking and you wear one of the patches behind your ear, you have to have a doctor's prescription for that nicotine.

MS. DAWSON: That's right. And if you get nicotine gum, you need to get a prescription. That's regulated as a drug. But that gets to the heart of the matter, and that is those are marketed as drugs with therapeutic claim. Cigarettes are not marketed that way. Cigarettes are marketed for smoking pleasure, and Mr. Ballin and, in fact, Congressman Synar continue to use the word "manipulate." And I will state again that that is not the case. We are not manipulating nicotine. It is in there because it naturally occurs in there, and we market cigarettes in ways that do not make health claims. In fact, in advertisements and so on, you see a Surgeon General's warning. That's one of the many ways that the federal government regulates tobacco products. They are unique. They are unique in the breadth of regulations. It's a veritable alphabet soup, including the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, the parent agency of the Food & Drug Administration. So some of these - - you know, there is a lot of disingenuousness, and there is a lot of misinformation out there, and I think that that's the kind of messages the Congressman is to be reminded of as they look to see whether or not they want to put it under FDA jurisdiction, which the Commissioner says would force him to ban the product. That's prohibition.

MR. MAC NEIL: Congressman, how do you answer that, if Mr. Kessler, the commissioner, himself, says, as he did, that if you gave it to him to regulate, he would have to ban it?

REP. SYNAR: Well, that's exactly why I think the hearing was held. Dr. Kessler is asking Congress to give him direction. And if we don't give him direction, he feels compelled based upon the new evidence to take jurisdiction as a drug, and he will have no option. That's why, I think, my legislation and Mr. Durban's legislation is so critical now. You know, let us -- you know, if you want to cut through all the smoke -- no pun intended -- let us never forget this product cannot be consumed safely. There is absolutely no way that it can be consumed safely, unlike food and prescription drugs. So for the tobacco industry to continue to argue that it's overregulated is just a -- it's just -- is false. The fact is that we are allowing a product that we know is harmful to the health and kills 420,000 people to remain on the market because of the industry that has addicted 50 million Americans. And so what Dr. Kessler's asking us to do is to direct him to create a new category that's not a food, not a drug, which is less than a ban, which is the only way he can deal with it, because once it's defined as a drug, it has to meet a standard of being safe and effective, and there's no way that tobacco or any of its products can meet that standard, so he wants to be sensitive to the fact that we have 50 million Americans that are hooked. And I think that's the appropriate way to do it. And they're not overregulated. You know, for an industry official to come on this program and say they're overregulated as they have fought through all the regulations that we've tried to do is the most disingenuous thing. They have fought us against selling it to less than minors. They have fought us every step of the way --

MS. DAWSON: That is absolutely incorrect. We have supported laws that regulate sales to minors.

REP. SYNAR: -- on advertising. And so for them to come on here and do that, it's just not -- it's just not historically correct.

MR. MAC NEIL: Ms. Dawson.

MS. DAWSON: Well, that's -- Mr. Synar has made yet another error, and that is the tobacco industry has fought very hard to get laws on the books that make sales to minors illegal.

REP. SYNAR: That is absolutely false.

MS. DAWSON: That is absolutely true, and there are state legislators who have thanked us publicly --

REP. SYNAR: They have spent millions of dollars in the state legislatures throughout this country to try to keep that from being enforced.

MS. DAWSON: -- because the anti-smoking groups wouldn't do it. Only with the help of the tobacco industry could we get this law on the books. So Mr. Synar has also introduced lots of other bills to do just the kind of thing that he's looking to do in this, in this FDA kind of regulatory shift. So don't be fooled. What he wants to do is to ban advertising. What he wants to do is to regulate sales not only to children, which we can all agree shouldn't smoke, but to adults.

MR. MAC NEIL: I'm going to give the last word here to Prof. Klein. If you believe, as you said, that, that smoking is actually harmful to the health, how do you maintain this, your sort of civil libertarian position that there should be no further regulation?

PROF. KLEIN: Well, the Congressman said cigarettes couldn't be - - tobacco couldn't be used safely. That's true. Cigarettes are bad for your health, but native Americans have been using tobacco since the dawn of civilization, and for them, tobacco is a God. In the last 400 years, particularly in times of social crisis, tobacco has been not only tolerated in society but celebrated for its multiple benefits as a source of release or consolation, as a spur to concentration, as a way of modulating or mitigating anxiety, particularly in times of great sort of tension. But above all, it's a powerful aesthetic experience, and as a literary critic, I'm really interested in the power of certain kinds of aesthetic experience like the sublimity of tobaccos.

MR. MAC NEIL: We, we need to leave it there. Gentlemen and Ms. Dawson, thank you all for joining us.

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, health care reform in Kansas, Shields and Gigot, and a Roger Rosenblatt essay. FOCUS - WELCOME TO WINFIELD

MR. LEHRER: Now how health care reform is playing outside Washington. A Washington Post-ABC News Poll reported this week that support for the Clinton plan fell to 42 percent from 56 percent six months ago. The administration has been responding by sending top officials out into the country to join members of Congress home for the Easter break. Kwame Holman has this report about such an effort in Winfield, Kansas.

MR. HOLMAN: The livestock auction in Winfield, Kansas, is having a good year. The Wednesday cattle sales this week moved about 1500 head.

[AUCTION]

MR. HOLMAN: Most of the farmers and ranchers here are self- employed, and when it comes to health care, self-insured. So while buying livestock, feed, and grain is a big expense, so is buying health insurance. Ask Farmer Jack Dochow.

JACK DOCHOW: If you're a self-provider of your own health care, it's going to run five hundred, six hundred dollars a month, and that's with a -- probably a five thousand dollar deductible, and who can afford that with the farm prices the way they are?

MR. HOLMAN: Behind the counter at the auction, Janice Billiter and Mary Cotta say they get good health insurance from their company. As for the health care reform debate centered in Washington, they've heard few specifics but they do know what concerns them.

JANICE BILLITER: Anything that the government does is going to be more, you know, we're going to be taxed more and more and more. And I think our taxes are already high, and I think that a lot of people have been -- just resent being taxed.

MARY COTTA: I agree that everyone that needs some health care, but I also think that maybe it might not be as beneficial to some of that already have health care plans as people that don't have it.

MR. HOLMAN: Winfield is a fairly prosperous town of 13,000. Nestled in the Southeast corner of Kansas, 30 miles South of Wichita, Winfield is the shopping and services center for the area's farmers and ranchers, light manufacturing workers, and one thousand employees of the nearby state mental hospital. At lunch at the Main Course Deli this week, the talk between these two health care providers was less about where Congress is right now on health care reform than on where such reform ultimately may end up.

BRENT CASAD: You know, it's kind of stalemated right now, so I don't know where it's progressing toward from this point on. That's the kind of information I would be interested in. How's it going to affect me?

DR. JORGE STURICH: Who's going to have to pay for the program? Is it taxpayers? Is it going to be physicians? Is it going to be the general public? That's a big concern, because a lot of people can't afford insurance now. How are they going to afford another program that they may have to foot the bill for?

MR. HOLMAN: Vicki Rivera also has concerns. She is eight months pregnant, and both she and her husband are self-employed.

VICKI RIVERA: There are some companies that handle self-employed people, but still the rates are astronomical. So that's -- I mean, that's what I would like to see, that the self-employed person doesn't get killed, or the employee that has a smaller number of employees, say, you know, maybe five or seven, and if they have to pay insurance for all of their staff, gosh, you know, it needs to be affordable.

MR. HOLMAN: Down the street is the drop-in office of Dr. Bruce Wells. He's something of an icon in Winfield, having practiced general medicine here for 23 years.

DR. BRUCE WELLS: [talking to patient] Well, Bessie, I looked at your chest X-ray. And we'll talk about that.

MR. HOLMAN: Dr. Wells says his patients are worried about how a reformed health care system will compare to what they have now.

DR. BRUCE WELLS: Most of what they've been saying to me, they're confused. They're not sure what's going to happen, when it's going to happen, what is it going to cost them, and particularly in terms will they be able to stay with their doctor, with me. How will that affect me? They're concerned about staying with the physician, will their quality of care be affected; those are the main issues.

MR. HOLMAN: The Winfield Daily Courier, the town's newspaper, tries to address the confusion and misconception surrounding the ongoing health care reform debate in Washington. But publisher Dave Seaton says despite his best efforts --

DAVE SEATON, Winfield Daily Courier: Health care reform seems to kind of go over us a little bit like the airliners headed to the West Coast. I don't think we've got a personalized sense yet of it. You know, we sense a conservative trend in the country. We're probably part of that trend. We wonder how a major liberal initiative like this, comparable to Social Security, is going to stand up in the political climate we see ahead. And if it doesn't stand up, where is the money going to come from? Well, it's going to come right out of our pockets. And we sense that, I think.

MR. HOLMAN: All those concerns about the progress and eventual outcome of health care reform legislation being crafted in Washington came together here at Winfield High School on Wednesday. Winfield was selected as a target in the Clinton administration's all out blitz to shore up sagging support for the President's version of health care reform. The President's point person in Winfield was Health & Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, who was the main attraction at a town meeting Wednesday night.

MR. HOLMAN: What do you want to accomplish here in Winfield tonight?

DONNA SHALALA, Secretary, Health & Human Services: Well, I always come to learn. I want to hear what's on people's mind. I want to reassure them that, that the administration comes with the same values, that we're not trying to make radical change. What we are trying to do is to, to offer our help in providing security for every American to know that their health insurance system is not going to leave them.

MR. HOLMAN: Shalala's guide was Winfield's Congressman, Democrat Dan Glickman, who has not declared support for the President's plan.

REP. DAN GLICKMAN, [D] Kansas: There's clearly been a problem in the last year that the public is not any better educated about what's in this plan than it was a year ago when the President submitted the plan to us. Maybe they made a mistake and made it too detailed too early. Maybe they should have come out in the country with concepts and let the public kind of massage those concepts and to direct us. America works best when it's directed from the ground up, from the grassroots up, rather than from the top down.

MR. HOLMAN: Nearly 600 people crowded into the Winfield High auditorium to try to further their understanding and to question major parts of the President's plan.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: What mechanism is in place for deciding which things will be covered? I'm referring to things like organ transplants and medications and that kind of thing.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Why would a smoker and a non-smoker pay the same premium? Why would an HIV-infected and non-HIV-infected person pay the same premium? And where is the incentive in that scheme to be for the responsibility, for the responsibility of a healthy lifestyle?

SECOND UNIDENTIFIED MAN: In 1988, Congress passed a catastrophic Medicare program, and a year later, after the public found out exactly what was in it, there was such an uproar that it was repealed. There are some similarities between that plan then and the President's plan now.

SEC. DONNA SHALALA: And that's why we're doing this, to try to avoid pushing through legislation too quickly that then has to be repealed.

MR. HOLMAN: Some of these Kansans even had some suggestions on how to finance health care reform.

SECOND UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: I consider it as a "twinkie tax." Have you considered a non-nutritious food tax? We talk about -- well, we talk about taxing cigarettes, which is more than right. We talk about taxing alcohol, which is also -- but what about chips, pop, and cookies?

SEC. DONNA SHALALA: Not with this President. [audience laughing] Is this off the record? Is this session off the record? I think I'm going to get fired.

MAN SEATED NEXT TO SHALALA: They're just looking for a new secretary now, all right? [audience laughing]

MR. HOLMAN: But over and over, Shalala had to quell confusion about her administration's reform plan and assure townspeople it would not amount to a heavy-handed government-run program.

THIRD UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Can you give me one example anywhere in the world where socialized medicine works well?

SEC. DONNA SHALALA: No, and I don't have to, because we're not recommending socialized medicine.

THIRD UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: I would feel much more comfortable if I saw tangible proof of what you're describing for a period of several years before you try to tackle something and actually restructure something as complicated and large as the health care system.

SEC. DONNA SHALALA: Let me repeat again, the reason why the President of the United States did not recommend that we go to a government-run system is because he believed that the government could not run a big, new health care system and, instead, we ought to substitute a private system, the current private system, and simply build upon that.

MR. HOLMAN: Though Shalala only spoke directly to a few hundred people, her sweep through Kansas was big news across the state.

ANCHOR: The Secretary of Health & Human Services has ended a two-day tour of the state with a town meeting in Winfield. The sales pitch for the Clinton health care plan is familiar, but the potential buyers may be a little different here in small town Kansas.

MR. HOLMAN: So even if the President didn't win over many new converts to his plan, he did succeed in getting health care reform back on the front page. FOCUS - POLITICAL WRAP

MR. LEHRER: Now political analysis from Shields & Gigot, syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot. Mark, fear and confusion seems to be the order of the day, at least in Kansas, to the health care reform plan. What do you think of that? What's your reaction to that piece?

MR. SHIELDS: I thought it was a terrific piece, and really superb, and I think it's probably very representative of what members are finding when they go home. There is confusion. There is doubt. I think if anything has been learned, should have been learned by the White House, in the past week, after the President's press conference success last week, is that he, himself, is an under used asset. They've given up, I think, the terms of the debate to the opposition, I mean, the Harry and Louise commercials, the Republican charges that it is too bureaucratic, all of which apparently have stopped.

MR. LEHRER: And there is this fear, is there not, Paul -- I mean, it was expressed in this, and it's been reflected in other reporting that's been done during this, during this Easter break, that people fear this heavy-handed federal government is going to come in there and take away what they already have, and it's all kind of a mystery out there. That has not -- that has not been spoken too effectively, I guess.

MR. GIGOT: Well, I don't think it has. I mean, I think John Breaux, one of the President's strongest backers in Congress actually made this point, a Democrat from Louisiana. And I talked to a Democrat this week who said -- who's back in the district -- and said the good news is that people care more about health care than Whitewater. The bad news is they still don't like the President's health care plan. And he's going to bring that message back. I think this is a battle for really of health care, ultimately for which party can deliver most for the middle class. The Democrats are trying to say, look, we can give you security in health care, we can deliver something for you. The Republicans and the critics are saying, no, you're going to take something away, you're going to take the quality we have away. And that argument is prevailing right now.

MR. LEHRER: And we just saw it in -- Sec. Shalala had to defend the Clinton plan against the charge that it was socialized medicine which, of course, as she said, well, we intentionally did not do that. But that just speaks to this idea that it's not understood, or is it? Maybe they -- I don't know -- what's your analysis?

MR. SHIELDS: I think, I think, quite frankly, the opposition has, has defined the terms of it, and that's been one of the charges. In addition to that, the decision was made by the President right at the outset, Jim, to go from -- to the middle -- I mean, by -- in other words, instead of going to the left and going to the single payer. In a political sense it would have been easier to negotiate from. In other words, if you --

MR. LEHRER: Start way over there.

MR. SHIELDS: -- if you went with the single payer, you'd have a hundred people with you, and then you could move to the right. Where they're in the problem now is trying to hold both sides. I mean, they're trying to hold people, move to their right a little bit to pick up support, but they're worried about losing the people on the left who are, who are the single payer. I think that is a real political problem and the question of specificity, whether, in fact, you wouldn't have been better off laying down the four principles and saying, this is what we're going to do. Their hope is that it has taken on a life of its own in the Congress.

MR. LEHRER: That it's going to be health care reform, may not be the President's plan --

MR. SHIELDS: That's right.

MR. LEHRER: -- but there is going to be health care. Congressman Glickman's point that Mark just made as well that maybe the President and Mrs. Clinton went the wrong -- adopted the wrong strategy, they should have gone for three or four major points, some concepts have -- and then come in with the details later -- they threw too much and the details are getting lost.

MR. GIGOT: Well, there's no question that the details are complicated. And this thing was designed by people that actually enjoyed grad school. I mean, it was -- it's so complex, nobody knows what a health alliance is, and so you fear it. I mean, if there's something you don't know, you say --

MR. SHIELDS: And never will know. [laughter]

MR. GIGOT: The government is coming at you, well, then you say, well, I think I'll pass.

MR. LEHRER: It's good for you.

MR. GIGOT: The problem right now though is that the -- the polls show that the more people know about the Clinton health care plan, the less they like about it. So sticking to principles is fine, but trying to sell their plan, I think is a dead duck.

MR. LEHRER: You mentioned that you talked to Sen. Breaux. I think you said that the people out in the country are at least more interested in health care reform and in the economy than they are in, in Whitewater. And there have been other stories about that. And the stories I read said they were surprised, because they expected to go home on their Easter recess, and everybody said, let's talk about Whitewater. Should they have been surprised, Paul?

MR. GIGOT: Well, I think there's a sense in the country that somehow Whitewater is something in Washington, so it's pretty complicated after all, and it doesn't affect our daily lives. So they come back into the districts and they say do something that affects our daily lives, tell us something that matters to us. I don't say that people are -- I'm hearing that people don't care about Whitewater. There's a curiosity out there. They say, well, what's the bottom line? What is this anyway? Explain it to me. But in terms of what Congress can do, they want Congress to move ahead with legislation.

MR. LEHRER: And Whitewater, Mark, the national media coverage has just -- still continues to be massive. Both Time and Newsweek had cover stories on it this week. Time's concentrated on the Stephanopoulos angle. What do you make of that story?

MR. SHIELDS: I think that may have reached a point in the Whitewater coverage from which the press, itself, recoiled. It sort of took a collective breath and said, wait a minute, this is too much. I mean, imagine this if you would. George Bush is President of the United States. His buddy and campaign manager, Jim Baker, is in a position of authority. Jim Baker is told that Prof. Lawrence Tribe of the Harvard Law School who had spearheaded the fight against Bob Bork to the Supreme Court, against Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, has just been chosen by the Republican administration to investigate Silverado Savings & Loan, Neil Bush and the Bush family. Now, would Jim Baker have been -- erupted? Would he have -- he might not have made the call himself. He might have had a staff person.

MR. GIGOT: Jim Baker is really too smart to make that call.

MR. SHIELDS: Right. Jim Baker -- and calls would have been made, and people would have been held accountable. It was an absolutely legitimate response. Jay Stevens was a sworn enemy of the Clinton administration, former U.S. attorney here.

MR. LEHRER: And we need -- for those who haven't followed the story carefully, explain to 'em why --

MR. SHIELDS: Jay Stevens was relieved of his duties, as are U.S. attorneys whenever the White House changes hands -- all resignations come in. Jay Stevens didn't want to leave. He was the U.S. Attorney here. He was conducting this investigation. He investigated the District of Columbia here. He was conducting an investigation, grand jury, on the House Post Office in general and its irregularities, criminal activity, as well as the chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee. And --

MR. LEHRER: And Congressman Rostenkowski.

MR. SHIELDS: Congressman Rostenkowski, that's right. So, so he has been appointed by the Clinton -- some people acting in the name of the Clinton administration, his law firm, to check on -- investigate the possibility of civil liability in the Madison Savings & Loan, the one that Jim MacDougal, Bill Clinton's partner and Hillary Clinton's partner and Whitewater headed up. So, I mean, it was just a sense of outrage. And I think that the press, I think Time has just overstated, overheated, and I think that the press just kind of clicked, and they said, wait a minute, this is getting silly.

MR. LEHRER: Is it getting silly, Paul, on this issue, on the Stephanopoulos issue?

MR. GIGOT: I actually do agree with Mark on this. It's much ado about not very much. I mean, if you can't take phone calls from your White House position expressing -- asking, what's going on here --

MR. LEHRER: Why was this guy hired?

MR. GIGOT: Right -- you've probably gone too far. The problem is, Mark, that these Democrats who made the -- who hired Jay Stevens. This is an independent agency, the Resolution Trust Corporation. And a lot of these entities were created through the RTC by the Democratic Congress for a Republican executive.

MR. SHIELDS: That's right.

MR. GIGOT: And now these kinds of nit-picking rules and ethics traps really are coming back to haunt Democrats, including a guy like George Stephanopoulos who helped write some of these rules when he was running the Majority Leader's staff. So they're finding out how tough it is to exist on some of these rules.

MR. LEHRER: All right now, the other part, Paul, of this new surge in the Whitewater story was the commodities trading of Mrs. Clinton. Now, your newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, has viewed that with alarm, as did Newsweek. Newsweek had to back off. They said that Mrs. Clinton didn't use her own money. They later came - - Newsweek is now, as I understand it, going to correct that. But you see this differently, do you not?

MR. GIGOT: Well, I do. I think this is -- this is something that raises some questions. I mean, what happened was the White House this week released some records about these trades where -- showing that the First Lady invested $1,000, and within about -- within one day got $5,300 of profit, and within about nine months $100,000. Now average people -- Joe Six Pack, Joe Auto Worker goes in off the streets and says, geez, I read the Wall Street Journal, and I think I'm going to go long in pork bellies, and takes $1,000 and goes to the Charles Schwab account and says, I think I'm going to invest in this -- they're going to say, sorry, this is -- this is not something you can do. So it raises questions about how did she do this -- particularly when some of the advice she got was from friends of then Gov. Clinton in Arkansas?

MR. LEHRER: Mark, what do you think of this?

MR. SHIELDS: Could not disagree more. I mean, you talk about ingrates. I mean, Paul and the Wall Street Journal, Mrs. Clinton said she read the Wall Street Journal and relied upon its advice. This is a paper that bills itself as the diary of the American dream. It rhapsodizes in print regularly about the joy, the magic, the heroic risk-taking of entrepreneurial capitalism. She -- Bill Clinton obviously has women in his life who like legalized gambling. His mother liked the horses, and his wife liked commodities, at least liked them for a time. I mean, I've got to be honest with you -- I mean, I think there's enough hypocrisy on both sides, because those who trumpet the joys and wonders of the market are somehow criticizing her for having made a profit and three out of four don't in commodities trading, and those who branded the '80s as this decade of uninterrupted greed are now taking full page ads in the New York Times for defending her. So there's enough hypocrisy on this one really to make it the Stalingrad of political events.

MR. LEHRER: What about the New York Times also jumped the Clintons and said, quote, they accused them of -- their conduct may not have been illegal, but it was reckless and politically unattractive, seedy appearances, dangerous way to govern -- I mean, they came down hard too.

MR. SHIELDS: They have. I mean, they've been very, very tough on it. I mean, I think there are ethical questions which slipped now from legal, criminal accountability now down to ethical, which are raised by Jim Leach, the Congressman from Iowa. Those are legitimate questions. But I mean, the American voters, when they elected Bill Clinton in 1992, knew they were not choosing a perfect human being, and they did choose him for other reasons, his energy, his ideas, his vitality in running the country.

MR. LEHRER: And your position would be that that has not been confirmed?

MR. GIGOT: Well, it would have been nice to know this in 1992, I think, and it would have been nice to know this during the tax fight too.

MR. LEHRER: We have to go. Thank you all. ESSAY - THE FILMMAKER'S EYE

MR. MAC NEIL: Finally tonight, essayist Roger Rosenblatt has some thoughts about last week's big Oscar winner, "Schindler's List."

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Why did Steven Spielberg make "Schindler's List" in black and white? The rarity, for one thing. Black and white is rare in films these days, almost non-existent. Make a film in black and white and people will stare harder because of the rarity. Also, black and white is associated with the past, with movies made in the 1940's and earlier. So black and white brings the past to the present. One looks at the past as if it is the present. And black and white also applies a suspension of disbelief since one knows that the world pictured in a film is really in color, yet, here it is portrayed in black and white. The imagination asks: What color am I not seeing? In the case of blood, say the blood from the bullet wounds of the Jews in "Schindler's List," one must imagine the red in the black. Oddly, the blood does not seem less real but more real for its inaccurate color, and its spilling more apt in black which represents the extreme dead end of life. But Spielberg's better reason for making the film in black and white is Schindler, himself, Oscar Schindler. But "Schindler's List" is both a story of the Holocaust and of a man who stands for the world observing the Holocaust and acting upon what he sees. In the beginning, Schindler is a businessman, con artist, playboy. Their specialty is creating appearances. In the beginning, all he wants to do is to make a good business of cheap labor, Jewish labor. He establishes a factory for pots and pans that makes him rich. In moral terms, he profits two ways from the deliberate ambiguity of his position. He technically is rescuing Jews from eventual extermination at a distance, so that's a good. But that greater good is also the basis of Schindler's fortune, which is provided by both the Jews and the Nazis, with whom Schindler's consorts. And if Schindler does not look too closely at the murderous evil around him, he can do quite well, do well by doing good. Save a Jew, appease the Nazis, and have a different woman every night. What happens to Oscar Schindler, however, is that he learns to see the world in black and white. After watching enough murders go on literally under his nose, after seeing black blood make black rivers in the streets, after enough ambiguity, he becomes a moral man. The crucial scene in "Schindler's List" comes when he, sitting high on his horse, looking down on the slaughter of the Jews in the Krakow ghetto, sees or imagines that he sees color. A playful Jewish girl walks among the dead and dying wearing a red coat. The red is the color of life, one of three times that color is used in "Schindler's List". When Schindler sees red, he sees a person for the first time, a person, not a category. He sees into black and white. And a while later, when he sees the red- coated girl lying in a heap of corpses, he knows what he must do. I won't tell you want he does, because you'll want to see yourselves, and that too is Spielberg's intent. He wants people in this time to remember that time. At the close of the 20th century, there are generations who claim never to have heard of the Holocaust or to know its meaning only vaguely. There is no vagueness in black and white. "Schindler's List" is Spielberg's way of saying, "Never again," so he makes a film which can be shown again and again, always revived. Another time that color is used in the movie is for the sabbath candles which glow for the Jews' revival. There will come a time, not deep into the 21st century, when no more direct survivors of the Holocaust will be living. There will be no firsthand witnesses. This movie will serve as their proxy. This is why the third moment of color comes at the end, when the audience is shown today's survivors of Schindler's factory, the people Schindler saved, along with his widow paying homage at his grave. The survivors appear in color. They exist in the world of life and color, but they were forged in black and white. And they testify to the difference between the two. I'm Roger Rosenblatt. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Friday, the nation's unemployment rate held steady at 6.5 percent last month. The report said nearly 1/2 million new jobs were created. And in South Africa, the government stepped up its crackdown in the Zulu stronghold of Natal Province. It's designed to stop violence which threatens the all-race elections scheduled for this month. Good night, Robin.

MR. MAC NEIL: Good night, Jim. That's the NewsHour for tonight. Have a nice Easter Weekend. We'll see you on Monday night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.