The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer; May 30, 2007

I'm Jim Lara, today's news, the World Bank, California versus EPA, a new museum, and former Vice President Gore, all tonight on the news hour. Good evening, I'm Jim Lara.

On the news hour tonight, the news of this Wednesday, then I'll look at the World Bank, now to be led by former Bush administration official Robert Zellock. A back and forth over emission standards between the state of California and the Environmental Protection Agency. A report on a new Texas museum that celebrates Latino culture and a book conversation with former Vice President Gore. Major funding for the news hour with Jim Lara is provided by. Some say that by 2020, we'll have used a half the world's oil.

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And this program was made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you, thank you. President Bush today named Robert Zellock to head the world back. He's a former U.S. trade representative and deputy secretary of state. If the bank's board approves, Zellock will succeed Paul Wolfowitz. He resigned under fire after authorizing a pay raise for a bank employee romantically involved with him. Well I have more on this story right after the news summary. Seven NATO soldiers, including five Americans, were killed in Afghanistan today when their transport helicopter went down. Initial reports indicated it was shot down in Helmand Province, the Taliban claimed responsibility. And the U.S. military confirmed enemy fire brought down a helicopter in Iraq on Monday. Two U.S. troops died in that crash.

Several others were killed by roadside bombs as they rushed to the scene. Two more Americans soldiers were killed in Iraq today and a roadside bombing. And Iraqi and U.S. forces searched for five Britons. They were kidnapped yesterday from the Iraqi finance ministry. Today in Baghdad, troops combed the solder city area. It's dominated by a Shiite militia, the Madi Army. We have a report narrated by Bill Nealey of Independent Television News. Back down street-serving searched, but there's no sign of the five men and silence from their captors. A hunt is on two in the back streets of Baghdad's main Shia suburb, solder city. Second troops raided overnight using stun grenades and vehicles to break down walls. They arrested six people, but none in connection with the kidnapping. Two people were killed in the raids and approached British officials might not welcome. At the scene of the kidnapping today, few clues to answer the key questions, who kidnapped

them in and what do they want. Iraq's Foreign Minister says the culprits are most likely a Shia militia. It was an open, brazen kidnapping. At least 40 armed men arriving in 19 four-wheel-drive vehicles and sealing off streets. The convoy would have passed through multiple checkpoints. The number of police vehicles and uniforms ensuring they were just waved through. The police are Shia dominated. As for why the Madi Army might do this, they're under attack. Their bas-relator Abu Qadir was killed in a joint British Iraqi operation last week. Across Baghdad, day and night, British Special Forces have begun work. A hostage rescue team is now in place diplomats aren't digging, but it may be a long search in the darkest of places. There was also a word today to Iraqi employees at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad are missing, and U.S. officials said it's believed they were kidnapped. Elsewhere, a mortar attack in Fallujah killed at least nine Iraqis and wounded 15 others.

In prime minister Maliki and the country's two vice presidents spoke by video conference with President Bush. Iraqi President Talibani will meet with Mr. Bush at the White House tomorrow. The UN Security Council approved setting up a tribunal today in the murder of a former Lebanese prime minister. Rafik Hariri was killed in a Beirut bombing in 2005. Syria was widely blamed, but denied in a role. Today's resolution will establish an international court unless the Lebanese parliament sets up its own tribunal by June 10. Russia accused the United States today of sparking a new arms race, the foreign minister, insisted again a missile defense system in Eastern Europe would be a threat to Russia. U.S. officials say it's designed to protect against Iran and North Korea. Iran President Putin is expected to raise the issue with President Bush in early July at Kinibong port Maine.

The meeting was announced today. On Wall Street today, stocks rallied on new optimism about interest rates and corporate profits. The Dow Jones industrial average gained more than 111 points to close at 13,633. The Nasdaq rose 20 points to close at 2592. And that's it for the new summit tonight. Now what next for the World Bank, auto emissions in California, a new museum on Latino culture and former Vice President Gore? Ray Suarez has our World Bank story. I'm pleased to announce that I will nominate Bob Zellick to be the 11th president of the World Bank. Robert Zellick, the president's nominee, will be charged with putting the World Bank back on track after the tumultuous tenure of Paul Wolf. Wolfowitz will step down on June 30 after an internal investigation found he violated

ethics rules in arranging a large raise for his girlfriend Shaha Reza, also a bank employee. At this morning's announcement, the president had high praise for his nominee. Zellick understands that there are about 1 billion men, women, and children who live on less than $1 a day, and he's committed to doing something about it. The United States has a moral and national interest in helping poor and struggling countries transform themselves into free and hopeful societies. This work, the purpose of the World Bank, is not about charity. The United States has been a strong supporter of the World Bank since its exception. The Bank's reliance on markets, investments, sound policies, good governance, and partnerships for self-help are in keeping with the values that Americans esteem. Zellick served as the president's trade representative from 2001 to 2005. Then in 2005 he became Deputy Secretary of State, where he worked to end conflicts across

the globe, including his talks in Sudan. Zellick stepped down from that post last June to become an executive at Wall Street Giant Goldman Sachs. His next role will be overseeing the bank, founded in 1945 to help rebuild Europe after World War II. Since then its mission has evolved to providing assistance to developing countries. The 185-member institution provides more than $20 billion a year for projects that improve infrastructure, like building dams and roads. The programs also focus on education and fighting diseases like AIDS and malaria. One of the bank's main programs is providing interest-free loans to impoverished countries. But the scandal surrounding Wolfowitz's departure has led to a number of questions about the bank itself, including debate over whether the presidency should continue to go to an American. As the bank's largest donor, the U.S. has traditionally appointed the bank chief.

It's also led to speculation about what the bank's new role in the world should be and if there's still a need for the institution. On the news hour Andrew Young, a former U.S. ambassador to the UN, suggested the World Bank had outlived its use of market. We might not need the World Bank if it continues like it is. It takes so long for them to approve and evaluate projects and the people who are proving and evaluating projects have never done projects themselves. Today, Zellix said he recognizes the challenges ahead of him. The World Bank has passed through a difficult time for all involved. There are frustrations, anxieties, intentions about the past that could inhibit the future. This is understandable, but not without remedy. We need to put yesterday's discord behind us and to focus on the future together. Zellix nomination as World Bank President still needs to be approved by the 24-member World Bank Board.

And for more, we're joined by Kenneth Rogoff, Professor of Economics at Harvard University, and visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. He served as chief economist at the International Monetary Fund from 2001 to 2003, and Sebastian Malabi, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and columnist for The Washington Post. He's the author of The World's Banker, a story of failed states, financial crises, and the wealth and poverty of nations. And Sebastian, what do you make of the appointment of Robert Zellix to replace Paul Wolfowitz? I think it's basically a good choice. I mean, Zellix was associated with three main policies when he was in government recently. And I think on all three of them, he gets a pretty good grade. One was framing the US China relationship, where I think he did more intellectually to put that in a good context than anybody else. In other words, negotiating peace in Darfur, the peace obviously failed, but I would say he made more diplomatic progress on that than anyone else did before or since. And the other thing was launching the Dohar round of trade talks, which was supposed to

be focused on development. He did, he was the moving spirit in getting it launched. So again, I would say that he made more progress on that than people have either before or since. Professor Rogoff, what do you think of the choice? Well, I think if it had to be an American, he's a solid choice. First of all, he's a very pro trade in markets and they've done a lot more to alleviate poverty in places like India and China than any amount of aid has. He's a committed multilateralist, which is not necessarily easy to find in parts of Washington these days. And last but not least, I think he's had a history at least behind the scenes of supporting the bank. He believes in it and presumably has a vision for it. Well, as we mentioned earlier, he's taking over, if approved at a difficult time. One international economist said today, it's going to be hard to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. What's Zellix's first job, if he takes the job now? Well, I think his first job is probably to smooth over relations with the staff where Mr. Wolfwood's just had a very rocky time.

They are the core of what the bank has to offer. It's technical assistance. It's knowledge. It's experience. Without the team, it doesn't mean anything to be the manager. And I think that's the first thing he has to do. Second thing, of course, is he has to go out, hat and hand, raising money because the bank's on a cycle where it constantly needs money, maybe $20 billion for the next three years. And he has to convince all these capitals around the world to give it to him, even though a lot of them are quite angry at the bank, and still angry that it's yet another American as president. And he's also bastard with that anger, the professor mentioned. Does Mr. Zellix get a little bit of breathing room to get those projects started, of fixing the bank? I think the typical pattern is that there is a honeymoon for three or four months, partly because there are always going to be factions in the staff, and then we'll see an opportunity when a new guy comes in to kind of stick onto him and advance their particular cause. And then there's going to be sort of a loss of the honeymoon, the end of the honeymoon when some of these factions don't get what they want, and that's where the rubber hits

the road. I think the main thing he's got to do is to fasten on a good, chief operating officer because it's a labyrinthine organisation of 10,000 people, lots of disputations, extremely smart, highly educated PhDs, and they're going to be critical if you don't do a good job. And so to get somebody who can implement the vision, I think Zellix is good at the public face, good at the political strategy of what the bank should do, but what he needs to do is get somebody who can implement that internally in a very difficult bureaucracy. Well he said today in his acceptance that one of his first jobs he thought was to go out and meet the professionals of the bank and begin that relationship along with the partners and contributors of the bank, and he said to listen to their perspectives on how the world bank can best fulfil its purpose. Is that in dispute right now? What is the purpose? What do people understand the purpose of the world bank to be? Well in a very general sense everyone says and that's right, the World Bank's purpose is to relieve poverty.

The difficulty counts when you try to define what do you do to relieve poverty because it's a multifaceted problem, you know, more roads in some areas and rural Africa can help you to get the farm goods out to the market and that can relieve poverty, or it could be that you need to have more clinics, so people are well enough to actually work, or perhaps they need education, or maybe the macroeconomic environment around all these things need to be right because if you've got hyperinflation no one can get out of poverty, or maybe it's corruption. So there are all these different issues under the heading of poverty relief, and that's where I think Zelleck needs to pick a theme, partly just for sort of inspiring people to believe in it. You can't just say, I'm for everything. You've got to say, here's where I'm trying to focus, here's my vision. Well, Professor, with more than 180 members, does an answer to the question, what is the World Bank for in 2007? Does the answer depend on who you ask? Absolutely, and it's an incredible model. The World Bank is a sponge for every do-good idea to relieve poverty. I think Sebastian's absolutely right that the next president, Zelleck, needs to regain

its focus. They haven't just experienced mission creep. They've had mission sprawl. They're just all over the place on in religion, in gender and development, health and development, education development, micro-structure and development, all good things and there are dozens of others, but they simply can't do it all. They need to have more focus. And I think the top priority for Zelleck is very quickly to get an idea in five years where do I want the bank to be, what is my vision, and try to execute it in a way that brings everybody on board and doesn't just try to do it by himself. But having made the point you just made, what is the bank good at? If it was going to say, okay, no more mission sprawl, let's pick the three things that would really good at and just do that. What is it? Well, I mean, it's such a big animal. This is tough, but I think there are a couple things that does well.

One is it calls itself a knowledge bank. It takes ideas and development experiences from all over the world, shares them around, and basically provides information, free or at low costs to a lot of people. They don't necessarily tell countries what to do, but they say, look, China did this. They tried this in Brazil, show us your problem, we'll show you some other experience. I think that's a great contribution. And then more broadly, there are technical assistance where they go out in the field. Now I have to say on the knowledge bank, they spend about 2.5% of their budget. And another thing that's all it needs to look at is spending more on that, and maybe less on his executive board, which accounts for three times that much. Well, Sebastian, you heard Ambassador Andrew Young a little earlier, and that knock on the World Bank is fairly widespread that the truly poor need grants, not loans, and the sort of new emerging global middle class that Brazil's the turkeys, the Thailands can get the money they need to borrow from worldwide capital markets.

So you really don't need a world bank. When on the question of the poor countries needing grants, I mean, the World Bank has partially acknowledged that because it's shifted from making subsidized loans in part to making grants. So there's now both options for the really poor countries. And on the middle income countries, the China, the Brazil's and so forth, I think there's a lot to be said for staying in those countries. It's even though they can borrow on private capital markets, there are global public goods. There are things that the market won't do enough of by itself. For example, reducing carbon emissions, you need to give China an incentive, next time it builds a coal-fired power plant, that the technology should be clean coal because China by itself won't capture all the benefits of the clean coal and therefore why would it do enough of that? So I think using the World Bank as a technical institution to come and give the technology transfer, maybe give some financial subsidy for doing that, that's a very good mission for the World Bank in the future. But to use Sebastian's example professor, if the money's tied, if the World Bank lends money and says, well, will any of the money?

But only if you do this and this and this, global capital markets say, we'll lend you the money as long as you pay it back. They don't have all those conditions. Yeah. But I mean, the idea that you want to accomplish that by making loans, I think is really something that's 60 years old, China has more than a trillion dollars in reserves, a lot of which are U.S. Treasuries, the World Bank's landable resources are a tiny fraction of that. The idea of the World Bank going in and making loans to a country with a space program building nuclear submarines, it's just an absurdity. There are very important issues about technology transfer and I think especially in clean coal and emissions and that's something that needs to be worked out among the trade representatives of trying to find ways to share information. And I think the World Bank can provide technical assistance, but the idea that this needs to be packaged in with a loan to this very liquid country, I think, makes no sense. Gentlemen, thank you both. Good to be with you, thank you.

Now a battle between California and the federal government over auto emissions. Judy Woodruff has that story. California and nearly a dozen other states are turning up the heat on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, demanding action to curb auto emissions. Under the Clean Air Act, California can adopt standards that are more stringent than federal air pollution rules, but it still needs the federal government's approval. In 2002, the California legislature passed a law requiring automakers to cut greenhouse gases by 25 percent in cars and light trucks, and by 18 percent in larger trucks and sport utility vehicles, and automakers would have to begin installing technologies starting with their 2009 models, but have until 2016 to be in full compliance with the new standards.

Eleven other states have said they too want to adopt the California tailpipe emission standard. But the EPA has so far refused to issue a decision on California's request to waive the federal standards. The Bush administration first contended that it did not have authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming. But last month, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the EPA did have that authority. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has threatened to sue the federal agency if it does not grant the waiver. And last week, State Attorney General Jerry Brown said he would file suit even sooner. The EPA does not issue a decision. The EPA has been holding hearings on California's request last week in Washington and today in Sacramento. We hear from both sides about this issue. Jerry Brown is the Attorney General for California, a former governor of the state, and a long-time Democrat.

He testified at today's public hearing in Sacramento and he joins us from there. And Bill Wareham is the Acting Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In his previous position as an attorney for the EPA, he helped draft rules on power plants that were heavily criticized by environmental groups. Gentlemen, thank you both for being with us. Thank you. Mr. Brown, let me begin with you, why does California need to implement emission standards that are stricter than the national standards? Because we have compelling and extraordinary conditions. These conditions have been recognized first starting with Richard Nixon when he was president and Ronald Reagan when he was governor. And they agreed and the law was so changed that California could be granted a waiver when it wanted to pioneer new and stricter standards. And actually, California has been given the role as really a pay center for the rest of the nation.

We've done that with the catalytic converter with particulate diesel emissions and a number of other standards that we anticipated and introduced before the federal government followed suit. And what are those conditions that you say are compelling and extraordinary? Well, the number of cars more than anywhere else in the country, the concentration of cars, the topological conditions, the mountains, the air currents, and all of that exacerbate air pollution. And that's why California has such a disproportionate problem when it comes to reducing air pollution in its state. And that was the original reason, together with the innovative quality of the state that California was given the special role to carve out its own standards. Then a few years later, the law was changed to allow any other state to adopt either the federal standard or the California standard. And that continues to be the law today. Mr. Wareham, if a state wants to make its air cleaner than other states, why wouldn't

the EPA give them permission to do that? Well, Governor Brown is exactly right. The Clean Air Act generally requires the federal government to regulate emissions from fuels and vehicles. But there is a provision in the act that says California, if the state decides it wants to do something more stringent than what the federal government requires, they're authorized to do that. But EPA is required to grant a waiver for the state when they choose to do that before the role can be effective. And that's exactly what we're talking about today. So dozens of times over the past few years, the state of California has asked for this type of waiver. And we have a process that's well established for going through the deliberative process to make a decision on this. So you've done it before, as you say many times, why is this time different? This is different because it raises a very unique issue and an issue we've never dealt with in the Clean Air Act before. And that's the question of whether we EPA and the state of California are authorized under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions for their impact on climate change.

That's a very new issue. As was pointed out in the opening remarks, it was our position as an administration, and we expressed this position through a separate proceeding on another matter, that we didn't think we had authority under the law to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. And that question, of course, was litigated when we made the decision. And the question went all the way up to the Supreme Court. And as was indicated in the opening remarks, the Supreme Court disagreed with our position and found that, in fact, we do have authority in the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions if we make some basic findings that are necessary into the law before we can act. And that's what you're in the process of doing now. That's right. So Mr. Brown, if EPA is in the process of doing what they were told to do or what they could told they could do by the Supreme Court, why not wait and let this process work its way through? Well, we can't wait because if we don't request, nothing happens. And as a matter of fact, EPA has been dragging their feet, they're now forced by the U.S. Supreme Court.

I mean, the law is, I think, relatively clear, any kind of a substance that is emitted from vehicles that causes harm is a pollutant that can be regulated. That's exactly what the Supreme Court ruled, and the EPA really has no choice unless they're going to scientifically demonstrate there's no such thing as human-induced global warming. I don't believe they can do that, 90% of the scientists don't think so either. So it's only a matter of time. And what we're really facing is the policy of President Bush, who next week is going to Germany to stand out alone in opposing a consensus draft to set targets and term tables to reduce greenhouse gases. So Bush has basically been doing nothing. In fact, no. He's been doing worse than that. He's fighting any effort to set a target toward, that will result in reducing greenhouse gases. And I would just conclude by this. This global warming is perhaps the greatest threat to our national security and the well-being of nations throughout the world.

It's setting in motion the global greenhouse gases, irreversible changes, and we've got to get about the business of correcting it and curving it. Let's bring this back to what's at hand here before the EPA. Mr. William, you heard Jerry Brown, the Attorney General, say the EPA really has no choice. The scientific evidence is solid. If that's the case, on what ground is the EPA waiting? What new information is the EPA waiting for that? Well, again, there's a very basic issue raised by the California waiver petition that we never had to address before, and that's the question of, do we have authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions in the Clean Air Act? I respectfully disagree with the governor. We, in fact, have moved quite expeditiously. First of all, in asking and answering that question through another proceeding. And second of all, it was very important for us to see the litigation process through, and in this case, all the way through the Supreme Court, it would have been irresponsible for us to act on the California waiver petition before we got a signal from the court

is what our basic authorities are. We've gotten that signal. The court ruled just a short number of days after that. I myself signed a notice beginning the decision-making process on the California waiver request. In fact, we are moving quite expeditiously on the request now that we have the signal from the court we've been waiting. Well, that's damn it. And now that you have the signal, that's true. But this global warming has been building up in the scientific literature has been growing clearer and clearer over the last 18 years. So that's what I mean by delay. If you say you can't move to the Supreme Court, gave you the green light, I would acknowledge you are moving quickly now. Is there, are you saying that there's still doubt inside your agency, inside EPA, as to whether emissions, auto emissions contribute to climate change, to global warming? We're talking about two very different things in this conversation. One is, what are the basic illegal authorities and responsibilities under the Clean Air Act that we and the State of California can use to regulate, if we choose to regulate?

And again, on that question, the Supreme Court just ruled we believed and we believe we had a compelling case that in fact we didn't have authority on the Clean Air Act. Well, now that they've ruled that. That's correct. Now that they've ruled, we're moving expeditiously, but we're trying to move responsibly on the California waiver request. It's a very complicated request. They filed several thousand pages of technical support to justify their regulation and justify the request for a waiver, and we take that very seriously. It's our responsibility to review that material, to make sure we fully understand it so we can respond on the record, and more importantly, it's our responsibility at this point to seek public input. That's why we had a public hearing in Sacramento today. That's why we had a public hearing in Washington last week, and there will also be an opportunity for the public to submit written comments, and we fully expect to get a substantial volume of very specific and technical information that we're going to have to understand, and that we will use to inform the final decision-making process.

So, Mr. Brown, you hear what he's saying, that they are moving as expeditiously as they can, given the fact they just got the go ahead from the Supreme Court. Yeah, I understand that, but look, the auto industry has opposed every emission standard that anybody proposed. They've always been fighting California, they're suing us, they're in league with President Bush, who sabotaged the Kyoto Agreement. He's now going to sabotage the group of eight, Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Japan, and the other nations meeting next week. I mean, we are at loggerheads here, not the agency, they're doing their professional work, and I fully expect that they'll apply the law. But I think it is important to see the larger context. California is following the procedures that it's always followed, since the time of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, and that is to pioneer, to set the pace, and we've done so responsibly with technical proficiency and integrity, and we just hope that the EPA will follow the law and not the policy of George Bush. Very quickly, if there is a suit from the State of California, how does that affect what

you're doing? Well, the law requires us to go through a public process and the deliberative process. We're going to act expeditiously, but we're going to act responsibly so that we get it right. All right, Bill Wareham, Acting Assistant Administrator for the EPA, and Jerry Brown, Attorney General for the State of California, and I do want to point out that we invited the auto industry to participate in this discussion, and they declined. Thank you, gentlemen, thank you both. Next, a place and a case for celebrating Latino culture, Jeffrey Brown, reports from San Antonio. Santiago Jimenez Jr. was taught to play the accordion by his father, Santiago Sr., who'd grown up watching German immigrant musicians in South Texas perform pokas and waltzes. This is the way the German played.

From the mix of Europe and Tex-Mex, Umpapah and Latin rhythms came something new, called Conhunto music. Conhunto style is more powerful, to me it's powerful. The celebration of a uniquely American Latino culture is the idea behind a new museum in San Antonio, Texas, the Museo Alameda. Instruments and photographs of Conhunto musicians, including Santiago Jimenez, make up one of the opening exhibitions. With its pink walls and punch tin exterior, the museum sits in the historic Market Square District of San Antonio. A city that today is 60% Hispanic. The museum is a collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution, which will then works from its huge collections. The initial loans are an eclectic mix, a Mayan limestone carving, and a modern sculpture by Luis Jimenez called Man on Fire, but also a Tiffany's necklace by Paloma Picasso

and Laura Busch's inaugural purse. Among the other initial exhibits is a video installation called Somos We Are, a montage of family photographs. Henry Munoz, head of a local architectural firm, and chairman of the nonprofit organization behind the creation of the new $15 million facility, sees the museum as a piece of cultural activism. It is activism in the sense that to create a museum at the front door to one of the most important Latino landscapes in the country so that future generations of Latinos can see themselves. See themselves in that setting, I think, is incredibly important. If you walked into a Smithsonian museum in the early 1990s and your last name was Munoz, or Sanchez, or Mendez, you didn't see yourself anywhere in those museums, and so there was no question that an important part of the American story was not being told.

In fact, the idea for the Alameda goes back to a 1994 report written by a Smithsonian task force that criticized the institution for a quote, willful neglect of Hispanic culture, and a big part of it is to attract people like Olga Saceras and her family who'd never been to a museum before. It is important for us to have this show in some of the Latin paintings here in Texas. From the beginning, the project included the nearby Alameda theater, a grand movie palace built in 1949 that featured Spanish language films and performers from south of the border, and served as an important cultural center for San Antonio's Latino population. They built the theater with these beautiful murals on either side of the wall with the history of Mexico and the Americas on this side and the history of San Antonio and Texas in the United States on this side.

The Alameda was built during a time of segregation here in San Antonio, so it was the first theater that you could come to and not have to sit in the colored balcony if you were Mexican or Mexican-American descent. The theater closed in 1991 and has suffered major water damage. Munoz's group plans to restore and reopen it in 2009 with production support from Washington's Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The Alameda is for Latinos living in the United States with the Apollo Theater is for African-Americans. It is that symbolic. So yes, it's more than a movie theater. It's an icon of blended culture. It lived in two worlds. It had both the American and the Mexican. And so it was a blended architecture, which I call Mestizo regionalism, which means together blended. In San Antonio today, traditional Mexican culture is on display at evening folk dances along the city's popular river walk, and some burros are for sale in Market Square.

But it's the modern cultural blend that many want to emphasize, including Texas-born artist Franco-Mondini Ruiz. We're not purely American, and if we go to Mexico, we're not Mexicans either. We are the American story. We're a hybridization of culture. Many Ruiz created one of the museum's quirky exhibits, the Botanica, an artistic rendition of a unique kind of neighborhood establishment. What you're looking at is a Tex-Mex interpretation of a botanical store, which sells magic potions, true herbal medicines. Many of the items here are preserved from a real San Antonio Botanica Casa Moreles, which operated for over 100 years before it closed in 2005. It was the pharmacist, it was the psychiatrist, it was the therapist, it was the love adviser, it was the gift shop, it fulfilled a lot of roles. There are candles here that and saints here for particular needs that people have.

So give me an example, somebody comes in and they have, I don't know, I don't love problem. Okay. Well, is it someone you're trying to get rid of, someone you want or someone who's trying to get rid of you? Because you've got something different. I've got a lot of money. All right, let's say I'm trying to get rid of someone. Yes. It depends. You want to be nice about it or not, nice about it. I have all kinds of categories. So why would you put this in a museum? Personally speaking, I feel this is so vital to be in a museum. I think this is truly the jewel. This is truly the story of a Latino people that needs to be told. Look at it. To me, it is a key to a puzzle that will make humanity a better place that the world needs right now. Look at what you're looking at, tolerance, understanding, forgiveness, hope, diversity. There are gods of all different faiths side by side.

Everyone is allowed. Everyone here understands very well that this museum opens amid an often bitter national debate over immigration and borders. Henry Munoz sees it as an effort to create a kind of cultural unity. The issue of immigration and the idea that culture knows no border, they can't build a fence around people's creativity or their minds is center central to this museum and its ideas. And that's what the story is about. And it's places like the Al-Ameda and this museum that I think tells those stories and make sure that those kind of ideas stay alive. For his part, Santiago Jimenez knows that conhonto music, like everything else, is changing, but he's sticking to the old style. Why do you want to keep it alive? Is it a good question? Why do I want to keep it alive?

Because I promise my dad, I promise my dad, this is my music, this is what I learned. And I promise my dad that this music was going to keep going till I die. This is my question, this is why I'm keeping this music alive. Jimenez is hoping the museum will help to further that effort. And officials expect some 400,000 visitors in the first year. And finally tonight, Gwen Eiffel talks with former Vice President Gore about his new book, The Assault on Reason, Among Other Things. Mr. Vice President, welcome. Thank you. The book reads as a screed, it's an attack on media and politics and mostly against George W. Bush. Is that what you intended? Well the examples that are taken from the Bush-Chaney administration are alongside examples

taken from other parts of American history also. It's heavy on examples from the last six years because I think they make the case very well. But the book is really not about Bush and Chaney. It's about what has happened to our democracy. I'm deeply concerned that the role of reason and facts and logic in the way we make our decisions in America has been diminished significantly to the point where we could make a decision to invade a country that didn't attack us at a time when 70% of the American people genuinely had the impression and believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the attacks of 9-11. In the same way that the truth about 9-11 was ignored in the rush to war, the truth about the climate crisis has been ignored in the shaping of policies that basically do nothing

to stop the most serious crisis our civilization has ever faced. And there's a long list of serious policy mistakes that our country has been making in the last several years that are added to the war and the climate crisis in these others. So when you say that this is about the cracks in fundamental democracy and not just about Bush and Chaney, does that mean that if you had been president these same problems would have existed? I think many of them, well I would have made different mistakes if I had served as president and I like to think that I would have avoided some of the large ones that our country is suffering through now having 150,000 of our soldiers trapped in the middle of a civil war, for example, and being an outlier and almost an outcast in the global community when the rest of the world is trying to confront the climate crisis. But some of the same problems with the way Americans way we Americans communicate among

ourselves, they have no tether to which party is in control or which person is president of the United States, how we deal with them I think can be affected by leadership, but the problems outlined in this book and the solutions recommended really go much broader than whose president or which party controls Congress. This is a much deeper set of challenges that we have to address together as Americans. You write of a determined disinterest in learning the truth on the part of the Bush administration and pre-war intelligence. You choose the White House of an unprecedented and sustained campaign of mass deception, very strong words, and you say that the president Bush outsourced the truth. Are you suggesting that the president Bush deliberately misled the American people when it comes to the Iraq war? Well, there was certainly a coordinated effort in the White House and in the Department

of Defense simultaneously to convey the image of a mushroom cloud exploding over an American city and to link it to a specific scenario, the very strong and explicit implication that Saddam Hussein was going to develop nuclear weapons and give them to Osama bin Laden and that would result in nuclear explosions in American cities. This was the principle hot button justification for convincing the majority of people to support the invasion of Iraq and they selected weapons of mass destruction and the themes related to that, not because they had the evidence to justify it, but because it was the most effective way to manipulate opinion. Manipulating opinion outsourcing the truth, why don't you just go ahead and call it a lie? Well, I think it's more subtle than that.

I think that when someone conveys false impressions and when it is done so in such an artful way, the phenomenon itself is part of what should be changed. For example, in both political parties, 80% of the budgets in contested races last November were devoted to 32nd television commercials and the impressionistic approach is also part of the problem in my view. Because now the conversation is not really a two-way or multi-way conversation. The vast majority of the information flow is over television. That's still the dominant medium and it's a one-way flow. But I want to bring you back just for another moment to your indictment of the Bush administration. You say they are either too gullible or dishonest.

Which do you think it was? Well, I don't know. But they should speak for themselves and I hope they'll answer that question. If they genuinely believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9-11, then that's a degree of gullibility that's quite serious. And although President Bush has since tried to specifically distance himself from that argument, Vice President Cheney still has not. So maybe there's a split within the administration. You've been a leader. You served in Bill Clinton's administration as vice president. You watched as the Republican Congress impeached him. Do you think that the Democratic-led Congress right now should be making efforts to impeach George W. Bush? I haven't made that case. That's, you know, I think that with... Why not? Well, with a year and a half to go in his term and with no consensus in the nation as a whole to support such a proposition, any realistic analysis of that as a policy option

would lead one to question the allocation of time and resources. You don't think it's a good use of time. Well, I don't think it is. I don't think it would be likely to be successful. We're going to look forward a little bit. We're in the middle of already a big, vibrant race for 2008. If you were approached and I imagine you happened by different people running for president about the issues you raised in your book, what advice would you give them? Or do you give them about finding a way to make it the issues you raised front and center? Well, I haven't thought about how to apply these as a candidate. I'm not a candidate. I have no plans to be a candidate. I'll tell you, Sam. I've avoided being repetitious so far. But I do think that the new forms of political dialogue and organization, the new forms of multi-weight conversation that are emerging on the Internet, represent a real source

of hope. Is that realistic? You've lived this. Do you really think it's possible to get past this notion of what conventional politics is to some broader, more uplifting idea, based on reason rather than politics, pure politics? Well, first of all, all of us, as the book says, are a mixture of our reasoning, capacity and our deep feelings and emotions and instincts, obviously. But the relative role of reason in American political discourse has declined dramatically. I think that it can be restored to a more prominent place, and I'm hopeful and optimistic that it will be. Is it right now realistic that a candidate might be able to do that? I think it's possible. We may not quite be there yet, but I do think it can be restored.

I really do. Conventional politics is completely broken, Gwen. Everybody knows it in both parties. And those who are candidates obviously are not going to acknowledge that, and they're in it to win, and God bless them and made the best person win. But winning in a game that rewards as much superficiality and impressionistic manipulation as this current state of politics requires, you know, that is damaging to our country. It really is. You sound like a reformed politician, but covering politics, as you say. So here's the question, how late can someone still get into this 2008 race and be a viable candidate you think? You don't know.

You haven't thought about that at all. No, I am. Okay. I'll take your word on that. Okay. Let me ask you one more question. I think that some period before November of 2008, but I haven't looked at the calendars in the dates and so forth. Let me ask you one final question, which is, as you were putting this book together and assembling your thoughts about what you see as a broad-based collapse and a lot of the way we think and reason in our society, did you ever think to yourself, based specifically on the indictment you make against the Bush administration, that perhaps you conceded too soon in 2000? Well, there was no, I took it all the way to a final Supreme Court decision, and in our system, there is no intermediate step between a final Supreme Court decision and vice violent revolution. So at that point, having taken it as far as one could, then the question becomes, are we going to be a nation of laws and not people? Do I support the rule of law even though I disagree with the Supreme Court's decision?

I did disagree with it, and I think that those of us who disagreed with it will have the better of the argument in history. The name of the book is the assault on reason, thank you vice president Al Gore very much for telling us about it. Thank you. And again, the major developments of this day, President Bush named Robert Zellick, who had the World Bank, seven NATO soldiers, including five Americans, were killed when their helicopter crashed in Afghanistan, initial report said it was shot down. And two more American troops were killed in Iraq. And again to our honor roll of American service personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, we add them as their deaths are made official and photographs become available.

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