The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

INTRO

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. The violent and bloody aftermath to Indira Gandhi's assassination tops the news today. Hindu mobs seeking vengeance killed an estimated 105 Sikhs. Washington protested to Moscow over the Soviet claim that the CIA was implicated. The FBI said it smashed a plot to assassinate the president of Honduras. President Reagan and Walter Mondale began the final campaign push, both doubting the polls. Jim?

JIM LEHRER: After our summary of the news of the day our focus sections will open up to the day's two major stories: India after Indira Gandhi and the U.S. elections. Indian writer Ved Mehta talks about the agony of his country; New York Times editor A. M. Rosenthal talks about the Gandhi family dynasty. On the political story Elizabeth Brackett reports on the last campaign days of Walter Mondale; Judy Woodruff does the same on President Reagan; and we look at a mini version of the Reagan-Mondale fight at the local congressional level.

MacNEIL: An estimated 150 people were killed and 1,000 wounded today in India as Hindu mobs attacked Sikhs to avenge the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi yesterday. Mrs. Gandhi was gunned down by her own Sikh security guards. Security forces were ordered to shoot rioters on sight as the government struggled to restore order. Here is a report on the day from Brian Hanrahan of the BBC.

BRIAN HANRAHAN, BBC [voice-over]: The Hindu backlash turned what should have been a day of mourning into a day of revenge. Hardly a part of Delhi was spared the attacks on the Sikhs. The elegant colonnades of Connaught Center were put to the torch as part of a frenzy that started early and spread right across the city, to rich and poor areas alike. Burning vehicles by the dozen littered the roads and pavements. Heavy black smoke puffed upwards with each exploding petrol tank. Particular targets were the taxis, mostly driven by Sikhs. They were stopped, smashed and set on fire. Few drivers were willing to risk their lives; nearly all traffic stopped. The few policemen in sight watched without attempting to interfere. They said the violence was so widespread it was impossible to cope with it. Parts of Delhi became lawless. At their temples the Sikhs gathered with swords and homemade cudgels ready to defend themselves. The targets of the violence were undoubtedly Sikhs, their shops, their offices and their vehicles. A similar pattern of violence against Sikhs is becoming apparent across central and northern India, the areas they call the Hindu heartland. Eventually in Delhi this evening the army were brought in to try to restore order. They have had to be called out in six cities now. Curfews have been declared in 16.While all this was happening, Mrs. Gandhi's body [unintelligible] on a gun carriage from her house, where it had remained overnight. It will lie in state for two days in the mansion used by her father, Pandit Nehru, while he was India's prime minister. Her son, Rajiv, now prime minister in her place, took his stance, as tradition demanded, alongside the body. He greeted the president of India, other officials and members of the family who came to see Mrs. Gandhi's embalmed body. While the mighty filed past inside, many thousands passed in front of the open door outside. Their's was a noisy and an angry procession, shouting and surging. Their slogan: "Mrs. Gandhi's memory will live on." And there to watch and sometimes greet them was the new prime minister, who has to ride that anger and turn it away from communal violence.

MacNEIL: The reporter was Brian Hanrahan of the BBC. Jim?

LEHRER: The Gandhi assassination also became another issue for the United States and the Soviet Union to argue about. The Soviet news media hinted quite directly today that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency may have had something to do with Mrs. Gandhi's death. Reports from Radio Moscow as well as Soviet newspapers and the news agency Tass all referred to a U.S. policy of state terrorism and claimed the CIA backed the anti-Gandhi Sikh militants in India. The suggestions drew this reponse from State Department spokesman Alan Romberg.

ALAN ROMBERG, State Department spokesman: We strongly resent the Soviet allegations that the United States and specifically the CIA were involved in or inspired this act of political terrorism. We reject in the strongest possible terms the outrageous Soviet allegations. They are absurd and irresponsible. The United States has protested strongly both in Moscow and here in Washington against the Soviet media and official suggestions of U.S. complicity in this tragic event.

LEHRER: Secretary of State Shultz left for New Delhi late today to represent the U.S. at Mrs. Gandhi's funeral. State Department sources said he hoped to have a chat with the Soviet representative while he's there. That representative is Nikolai Tikhonov, the Soviets' number-two man to Konstantin Chernenko. A reminder: India is the subject of a major focus segment later in the program. Robin?

MacNEIL: President Reagan and his Democratic opponent Walter Mondale threw themselves into the final five days of the 1984 campaign, today, both casting doubt on the polls showing the President poised for a landslide victory. The President left the White House for a hectic 10-state swing that will be his own last political campaigning for himself. While aides said the final push was an effort to secure a 50-state victory, Mr. Reagan himself kept warning against overconfidence. In Rochester, New York, he recalled the polls that showed Thomas Dewey would beat Harry Truman in 1948.

Pres. RONALD REAGAN: The polls are scaring me to death because I have a feeling that maybe some people are looking at them and saying, "Oh, we don't have to go and vote. It's all over." Well President Dewey told me to tell you that isn't true. Please, no matter what it takes, go to the polls and vote and get others out to vote. Tell your neighbor to go and vote. And, then, look, I don't want to spend those four more years alone. So make sure that these candidates and these congressmen that I mentioned in my earlier remarks, make sure they're back there with me in Washington. We need them all.

MacNEIL: Walter Mondale also campaigned against the polls that show him continuing to lose ground. At a giant rally in New York's garment district, Mr. Mondale said, "Pollsters are trying to tell you the election is over. They should know they cannot tell you how to pick a president." Standing with his running mate, Geraldine Ferraro, in their last joint appearance of the campaign, Mondale told his largest crowd yet, "I can feel victory in the air." An estimated 100,000 people and all leading New York Democrats also heard Mondale attack the President.

Mr. WALTER MONDALE, Democratic presidential candidate: Last week the President came to this state and accused me of being soft on anti semitism. Mr. President -- Mr. President, that charge says something about you. That is false and contemptible, and the American people do not like that kind of politics anywhere in this country. I have fought anti semitism and bigotry all of my life.

MacNEIL: An expert on American voting trends said today that voting turnout on Tuesday could be large enough to reverse a 20-year trend of declining participation in presidential elections.Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate said that with voter registration estimated at a record 127 million, turnout could reach 55%. It was 52.6% in 1980 and had been falling every election since the high point of 1960, the Kennedy-Nixon election, when turnout was 62.8%. In our focus section later in the program, special reports from the Mondale and Reagan campaigns and a close congressional race in California. Jim?

LEHRER: Mr. Mondale's running mate, Geraldine Ferraro, had some tough words today about the way the Reagan administration is handling famine relief for drought-ravaged Ethiopia and the rest of Africa. She noted the President today signed off on a $45.1 million in relief for Kenya, Mozambique and Mali, but said this.

GERALDINE FERRARO, Democratic vice presidential candidate: Now this administration ammounced a plan for emergency relief, but the problem isn't new, and they cut back on Food for Peace by nearly $700 million. They did that when everyone else saw the problem develop, and now we are faced with a tragedy.

LEHRER: There has been much finger-pointing over who is to blame for the gruesome pictures and stories from Africa this week as public and private efforts were underway to bring food and other relief. Charlayne Hunter-Gault will have more on that later in the program. Robin?

MacNEIL: Syria today gave its approval to talks with Israel next week on Israeli troop withdrawal from Lebanon. The talks will start on Monday under U.N. auspices on an agreement to replace the 1983 accord reached with U.S. mediation. But Syria rejected in advance one key Israeli demand. Syrian Vice President Abdul Halim Kaddam said Syria would not guarantee the security of Israel's northern border. In Washington today the Agency for International Development formally signed an aid agreement with Israel already approved by Congress.To help Israel's failing economy the U.S. is releasing the full $1.2 billion in economic aid in one sum instead of the usual quarterly payments. Jim?

LEHRER: The FBI late today announced the arrest of eight Honduran businessmen in a plot to assassinate the president of Honduras. FBI Director William Webster said the eight men planned to overthrow the government of the Central American nation. The Honduras president is Robert Suazo. He is considered a key friend and ally of the United States in that region. Webster said the FBI uncovered the plot in July and inserted an undercover agent into it as a would-be trigger man. He said $10.3 million in cocaine was seized Sunday at a remote Florida airstrip. The proceeds from its sale were to be used in financing the assassination and the government takeover.

And, in Poland, a group of Solidarity union leaders today called for a one-hour strike to protest the death of Father Jerzy Popieluszko. The 37-year-old activist priest was a Solidarity supporter whose body was found in a reservoir in northern Poland. Three members of the secret police are being held on suspicion of having kidnapped and murdered him. Today's strike notice said it should be either Saturday or a week from Friday.

Robin?

MacNEIL: Velma Barfield, the 52-year-old North Carolina woman who murdered her boyfriend, dropped all appeals today and prepared to be executed at 2 a.m. tomorrow by lethal injection. She will be the first woman executed in this country since 1962. Mrs. Barfield confessed to poisoning a farmer, Stuart Taylor, in 1978. She also confessed to poisoning her mother and two elderly people she served as a housekeeper, but she was never charged in those killings. Early today a federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, rejected her case. Her lawyer said Mrs. Barfield then made what he called "a very clear-headed decision" not to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, where she's been rejected three times in the past.

That ends our summary of the top news. Coming up, the focus sections. India After India: Death of a Dynasty

MacNEIL: For our first focus section we return to today's top story -- the violent reaction by Hindus today to the murder of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi yesterday by her Sikh bodyguards. To give us some additional perspective we have two views on events in India, from A. M. Rosenthal, executive editor of The New York Times, and Ved Mehta, a writer with New Yorker magazine. We start with Mr. Mehta, who was born in India and is the author of many books and articles about that country. He recently published The Ledge Between the Streams about modern India.

Mr. Mehta, looking at this violence and the animosity between the Hindus and Sikhs, how deeply into Indian history does that go?

VED MEHTA: Actually it's very recent. Until 20, 30 years ago it wasn't at all uncommon for Hindus and Sikhs to get married, and that's quite different from the Hindus and Muslims who really never intermarried. And so the roots are really extremely recent. I would say that this kind of animosity only goes back about three, four years. Before that the demands that Sikhs were making from the central government were no different than the demands other linguistic groups and other minorities were making, for instance, in Tamil Nadu or Nagaland or Assam.

MacNEIL: Demands for what, specifically?

Mr. MEHTA: Well, specifically they were making demands -- when the East Punjab, which was split off from Pakistan in 1947, when that was divided between a Hindu state of Harijana, a state where Hindus had majority, and the Punjab, where Sikhs had the majority, they had to share their river waters, they had to share to capital, which LeCorbusier built, and the Sikhs in the Punjab wanted the capital for themselves or they wanted the river waters for themselves. But I mean these were really political demands which could have been negotiated, but Mrs. Gandhi, who was very committed to the unitary system of government that India inherited from the British, was unyielding. She felt that if she granted any kind of demands for autonomy to Sikhs in the Punjab, she would have to do something like that for Nagas in the Nagaland, for Assami in the Assam, and the process of secession or unwinding of the fabric of the country would begin. So, from the very beginning the more dread demands of the Sikhs were brushed aside by Mrs. Gandhi's government and so gradually what happened was that the Sikhs' demands fell into the hands of extremists, and she kept on hoping that the extremists would discredit the Sikh demands eventually and that she would then be able to militarily move against the extremists -- something she had done in Nagaland, in Assam and in Tripura.

MacNEIL: So you feel Mrs. Gandhi contributed to the animosity?

Mr. MEHTA: Yes, but she did with the best of motives. I think she really did believe that the fabric of the country would become unwound if she gave in to the demands for autonomy or any kind of demands of these states. And I think what happened was, before she came to power, Mr. Nehru, her father, had conceded the principle, for instance, that the states should have linguistic majorities, because the system he inherited from the British -- there were many linguistic groups in each provinces, but once he conceded it then I think it became very difficult for Mrs. Ghandi to resist the demands she met from all directions.

MacNEIL: What part in this did the attack on the temple at Amritsar this year play in recent events, do you think?

Mr. MEHTA: Yes, I think that was her calamitous, mistake, and I'm sure she realized it before she died, because in India one thing you don't do -- you know, we have one foot in the modern world, but our other foot is in the middle Middle Ages. You do not attack people's religious sentiments. I think that she might have followed a policy that would, I think, have been slower and much more difficult, but perhaps would have yielded better results, which was, for instance -- I mean, having not granted the moderates their demands earlier on, when she was confronted with the Golden Temple, which by then had become a virtual military fortress --

MacNEIL: Of the Sikh extremists.

Mr. MEHTA: -- of the Sikh extremists, what she might have done was to cut off the water supply, cut off the electricity, cut off the food supply. In other words, she might have brought the extremists to their knees over a period of two, three months. Instead of that, she did what she did often, was to strike with the might of the army.

MacNEIL: Well, thank you for that background. We'll come back and see how it may be projected into the future in a moment. Jim?

LEHRER: Yes, now to A. M. Rosenthal, executive editor of The New York Times. Mr. Rosenthal was the Times correspondent in India in the 1950s when Indira Gandhi first emerged on the public political scene. He has returned to India many times since, his most recent trip being in January and February of this year. First, does the violent reaction to Mrs. Gandhi's death surprise you?

A. M. ROSENTHAL: No, it does not. It was something that I think anybody who knew anything about India feared as soon as they found out that she was assassinated, that religious tensions and passions and hatreds are very, very close to the surface in India and have a way of boiling over and, indeed, are the greatest danger that the country faced. They resulted in the death of millions of people during the Hindu-Muslim riots, and they resulted really in the death of Mahatma Gandhi himself, who was killed by a Hindu who thought he was too friendly to the Muslims. So it was no surprise.

LEHRER: What about her? What about her personality and her -- how was she able to have this fervent loyalty and for so many years?

Mr. ROSENTHAL: Well, I think you're making, perhaps you're making an assumption that wasn't entirely true. I don't think that the whole country adored her. She certainly had great political strength as a leader of the party and the prime minister of India. But the fact is that in 1975 she betrayed her heritage that she had -- her inheritance -- political inheritance of a free democratic society that her father and others had passed on to her, and established an iron-fisted, authoritarian regime for a few years. She was very confident of the love of her people, and so she took it to the polls. Much to her and everybody else's astonishment -- including mine -- they promptly threw her out. Indians are a passionate people, as are many others. I have a great passion for India myself. I'd rather be there than almost anywhere. But they're also very astute voters. They brought her -- they threw her out and then her successor was even more miserable and ineffective, so they brought her back. I don't think that she was adored as a goddess in India. She was a powerful politician, much more powerful than the men who put her in place ever thought she would be.

LEHRER: Well, that's what I was getting at, a poorly phrased question. What was the source of her power, then? Was it her personality? Was it the fact that she was Nehru's daughter or what?

Mr. ROSENTHAL: There were many.The fact that she was Nehru's daughter was part of it. The fact that she established a very, very strong political machine in India, the fact that she had her own private party, the Congress Party India, the fact that she had patronage, and the fact that she was an intelligent, tough-minded individual.

LEHRER: Was she interested in establishing a family dynasty?

Mr. ROSENTHAL: Yes, I think she was, and I think that was a bad thing that she did for India. I don't think that her father was particularly interested in a dynasty. I don't think he selected her to be prime minister of India.But there was no question that she selected her son, Sanjay, to be her successor, and then when he was killed in an airplane stunt over Delhi, she promptly turned around and turned to Rajiv, who had been an airplane pilot, and said, "Okay, you're it." I don't mean to be facetious about it, but that's exactly what happened. And this man, who has had absolutely no experience in running anything, was made the heir apparent, and today is the prime minister of India.

LEHRER: It seems kind of strange, you know, India, the largest democracy in the world, and yet the succession seems to go like the kings and the queens do. What's your explanation for it?

Mr. ROSENTHAL: Well, they don't. This is the only case where it happened. There have been elections and this is the only case where it was a kind of king or queen and son. There's a strange -- there's a paradox in this. He knows nothing about running a government, but for a few months or some time he may really be the best choice. If he does the right thing and goes out and uses his name and the name of his mother to calm the Hindus in their murder of the Sikhs, he will have a place in history. I think that after he does that the people who -- there are other people who want to run India. It's a big, powerful country, and I don't think they're going to sit around indefinitely watching the ex-airplane pilot run India.

LEHRER: All right, thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: Mr. Mehta, has Rajiv Gandhi got any of the qualities of leadership or personality which give you confidence that he can take charge at this point?

Mr. ROSENTHAL: No, but I tell you. I much prefer him to his younger brother. He's a decent man. He probably has a great sense of duty, but he's totally inexperienced. He'll have to acquire training on the job. I think one thing one might say in his favor at the moment is that the attack on the Golden Temple tarred his mother, but he's not tarred by that brush. So that in fact Sikhs in India don't feel about him the way they felt about his mother after Amritsar. So I think that certainly is in his favor, but goodness knows, I think he proves a point I've been making for some years, that India goes on regardless of what the government does. The people have their own sort of inertia or way of functioning, and government is just like a cork on the sea.

MacNEIL: Let's talk about the present, very unfortunate situation. Is the violence between the Hindus and Sikhs anything of the order of that which you referred to, Mr. Rosenthal, between the Muslims and Hindus after partition, which led to thousands and thousands of deaths, or will it burn itself out and play itself out more quickly? Could this conflagration spread across the nation?

Mr. ROSENTHAL: It has already spread, but I don't think it will achieve the hideousness of the Hindu-Muslim riots. For one thing, there are fewer Sikhs. They're only 2% of the population. And I think that the Indian government is much more established now and able, through military-political force and persuasion, to deal with it. Don't forget at the time of the Hindu-Muslim riots the Indian government had just about established itself. And this partition and the riots hit it very hard. I don't -- I think it'll be terrible. I think hundreds of people will be killed. But I don't think the Indian government --

MacNEIL: I guess what I'm asking is, and I include you in this, Mr. Mehta, is there the same fuel of passion behind this violence as there was at the time of after Gandhi's assassination?

Mr. MEHTA: No, but I just like to add something to what Mr. Rosenthal said. The key to what happens in the next few days and few weeks and few months, I think, is going to be what the Indian government is able to do about the Punjab. In a sense the deeper cause of Mrs. Gandhi's assassination was her inability to control the situation in Punjab where it's a total martial law after Amritsar. If Rajiv cannot handle that situation, and if there isn't an attempt made to find some kind of solution to the state agitations which are going around all over the country, then I think we are in a very difficult period because I think that the Sikhs' violence may become just one of series of eruptions of violence in different states.

MacNEIL: Mr. Rosenthal, put this in a kind of American model for us. We're not used to the idea of unitary government. We have strongly -- began with strongly established states but with no religious majorities in any of them. Can you think of an American example that would make this situation clear? The Punjab is a rich state in the north of India. I mean --

Mr. ROSENTHAL: Oh, I think you'd have to go back to the Civil War, and even then I don't think the analogy -- India is India. It is not the United States. It is a whole universe, which makes it a very exciting country to be in. It's a whole universe unto itself of different religions and different peoples. And I would simply like to say one thing about it, and that is that it is true that India is in trouble, and it's true that India is a very poor country. But that is not the total reality about India. The fact is that the last -- since 1948, since independence, Nehru and some of his successors took a collection of princely states, a whole bunch of religions and languages and whatever and molded it into a unified state. India is in trouble, but India exists. India is a poor country, but India also has a very powerful industrial base, a great scientific establishment, some marvelously educated top leaders. And they're, again, without being Pollyannish, I feel that the story of India is not simply the story of riot and disaster, but of a considerable achievement. Until Mrs. Gandhi became a dictator and then after she was thrown out and so on, India was the only large underdeveloped country that tried progress through the democratic process. That's what made India exciting for those of us who were there then.

MacNEIL: So you're hopeful they will, through their democratic instruments, find a way through this?

Mr. ROSENTHAL: Well, I don't know what the new prime minister is going to do. If he follows his grandfather's path, Nehru, and follows the democratic process, that will be one thing. If he takes the role model of his mother in 1975 and tries to rule as a dictator, I think there's going to be an awful lot of trouble.

Mr. MEHTA: I think I may just -- I can't --

MacNEIL: Could you sum it up finally because we're just coming to the end of this segment?

Mr. MEHTA: I can't think of an American parallel, but I think there is a parallel in Britain. We may have in the Punjab a situation comparable to that in Northern Ireland, and we may be looking down the road to endless guerrilla warfare and military action which would sap away the energies which really should be concentrated on economic development and other issues in the country.

MacNEIL: Mr. Mehta, Mr. Rosenthal, thank you both for joining us.

Mr. MEHTA: Thank you.

MacNEIL: Jim?

LEHRER: Still to come tonight, politics. Elizabeth Brackett tells of her travels with the Mondale campaign. Judy Woodruff does the same from the Reagan campaign. And we close with a report from California about a congressional race where national issues are local issues too.

[Video postcard -- Jemez Pueblo, New Mexico]

LEHRER: We move our focus now to electing a president of the United States. Elizabeth Brackett has spent the last few days with the challenger, the underdog, Democrat Walter Mondale. He has an enormous gap to close and very little time to close it. Judy Woodruff has been with President Reagan, the Republican who the polls say will be reelected next Tuesday and whose thoughts now are also on who can he help win with him. Elizabeth is first. She is in our studio in Denver. Elizabeth? Mondale: Still Fighting

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Jim, the pollsters are saying Walter Mondale has no chance, but on the stump Mondale is more upbeat than at any time during the campaign. His crowds are Democrats. He gets few hecklers and few whose minds have not already been made up. He tells the crowds what both they and he want to believe.

Mr. MONDALE: Are we going to carry California?

Are we going to carry Minnesota?

Are we going to carry Illinois?

Are we going to win this election and take the people's president into the White House?

BRACKETT [voice-over]: As Walter Mondale barnstorms his way across the country in this last full week of the campaign, it is the roar of the crowds that drowns out the steady drumbeat of bad news from the pollsters.

Mr. MONDALE: The pollsters and Newsweek are trying to tell you this election is over, but we got a big surprise for 'em.

BRACKETT: The crowds are out for Walter Mondale, loud, noisy, enthusiastic. Some here in Spokane waited up to three hours to catch a glimpse of Walter Mondale here in this crowded hotel lobby. It is that enthusiasm, insists the Mondale campaign, that the pollsters have missed.

MAXINE ISAACS, Mondale press secretary: We're way beyond the polls now. We're the campaign that has been written off in the public opinion polls so many times there is no reason on earth why we should be here. We're not trying to win in the polls. We're trying to win a general election in this country. It's a big difference, right? The New York Times one day wrote Walter Mondale's challenge is to come up in the polls between now and Election Day. Baloney. That has nothing to do with what we're doing.

BRACKETT [voice-over]: Those who make up the crowds Mondale has been drawing think the pollsters are wrong, too.

1st VOTER: The support is there. The pollsters are not picking it up somehow, but it's there.

2nd VOTER: I don't fell like I'm supporting a lost cause at all. I expect him to win the election. I honestly do.

Mr. MONDALE: I can feel it! We're on our way! Let's go get it!

BRACKETT [voice-over]: The big crowds are energizing the candidate and giving the campaign a boost. But almost all presidential candidates draw big crowds the week before the election, even those who lose. Veteran political reporter Tom Oliphant.

TOM OLIPHANT, Boston Globe: Senator McGovern had magnificent crowds at the end of his odyssey, and I was a baby then and I learned that year not to put too much stock in noise and in numbers and to not put too much faith in what your eyes are telling you.

BRACKETT [voice-over]: Mondale staffers say it is Mondale who set the strategy for the last week, Mondale who decided to go back and hit the basic themes of his campaign as he made coast-to-coast stops in states crucial to his hopes for an upset win. Campaign chairman Jim Johnson.

JAMES JOHNSON, Mondale campaign chairman: He wanted to make sure in these concluding moments of the campaign that people knew exactly where he stood, what he cared about the most and what he considered to be the most significant differences between himself and Ronald Reagan.

BRACKETT [voice-over]: So, in San Jose, California, Mondale went back to taxes, despite the fact that Mondale's plant to raise taxes to cut the federal deficit has only hurt him in the polls.

Mr. MONDALE: When the Vice President of the United States pays less in taxes as a percentage than the janitor who cleans up his office, something's wrong with taxes in this country.

BRACKETT [voice-over]: In Portland Mondale added the issue of human rights to his stump speech, and made it one of the hardest-hitting speeches of the campaign.

Mr. MONDALE: To get results our leaders must speak with moral authority. That means that we must have a single standard for human rights. We must condemn torture, whether it's South Africa or the Soviet Union, and stand for freedom from Czechoslovakia to Chile.

BRACKETT [voice-over]: In his home state of Minnesota, the issue was Social Security and Medicare and a sharp rebuke to hecklers who interrupted his story of his mother's need for both.

Mr. MONDALE: She put every dime she had --

HECKLER: Aawwww!!

Mr. MONDALE: -- in her kids. Shut up, will ya? [crowd roars] You may not -- you may not want to hear about Social Security and Medicare, and I don't blame you, but we're going to hear about it and we're going to elect a president to protect those programs for our senior citizens.

BRACKETT [voice-over]: Mondale has not ignored his underdog status on the stump. His favorite political hero has become this man, Harry Truman. Mondale revived this famous Chicago Tribune headline at a massive rally in Chicago.

Mr. MONDALE: I remember a time when they were wrong a little while ago here.

BRACKETT [voice-over]: The rally, on the heels of a huge Chicago torchlight parade. It was the day after the torchlight parade 36 years ago that Chicago Democrats helped pull off Truman's upset victory. Mondale's staffers insist Mondale's spirits are as good in private as they are in public, that neither he or his staff are depressed by the ever-gloomier Election Day predictions.

Ms. ISAACS: He's up, he's relaxed, he's having a good time. We're having a good time. We're talking about things that we care about. I've been at this for 11 years. If there is any -- I mean, the idea that somehow we would suddenly quit a week out and get depressed at the most exciting time in most of our lives is completely beyond me. I don't understand -- I get the question all the time, but I don't understand it.

BRACKETT [voice-over]: But Walter Mondale is an astute politician, and there are few who think he does not understand how unlikely it is that he will win next Tuesday or how important it is to act like that win is still possible. So reporter Oliphant says it is not just an act when Mondale shouts, "We're gonna win."

Mr. OLIPHANT: I'm convinced that he's convinced he has a chance.

BRACKETT [voice-over]: So the relaxed, upbeat candidate will continue to pour it on as he criss-crosses the country one final time before next Tuesday, convinced, says his campaign chairman, that he has done what he has wanted to do.

Mr. JOHNSON: The test always for Walter Mondale is whether or not he has stood up for what he believes in, given it everything he has, made his best effort, and I think there can be no question that's exactly what he's done in this race.

BRACKETT: So there are few regrets inside the Mondale camp. Some frustration, some anger, some sadness, but few major regrets. They feel they have gotten their message out, and if that message has not cut into the voters' satisfaction with the economy, with the voters' liking for Ronald Reagan, they feel it is not because the message or the candidate should have been any different. Judy? Reagan: Still Confident

JUDY WOODRUFF: Elizabeth, with Reagan aides so sure of victory that one of them was quoted today as calling the campaign "boring," about the only suspense left for many of them is to guess how many Republicans the President will help pull into Congress. Mr. Reagan went so far the other day as to predict a historic electoral realignment was in the making. But, as we found out spending some time with the campaign this week, there are mixed views about just how broad the President's coattails are.

Pres. REAGAN: His economic plan has two basic parts. Two parts: raise your taxes and then raise them again. But I got news for him. The American people don't want his tax increases, and they're not going to get them.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: It was a bold prediction, and one of the few public signs of just how confident the President is that he's got this election wrapped up.

CROWD: Four more years! Four more years!

Pres. REAGAN: All right.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: Most of the time he goes around warning against complacency, despite polls that put him ahead of Mr. Mondale by as much as 25 points.

Pres. REAGAN: Also I've been trying very hard not to read the polls. And don't you read them. President Dewey told me we must never become overconfident.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: For all his public disclaimers, however, the Reagan campaign is displaying a high level of self-assurance. Four of the last 10 days before the election the President did not even campaign. He was at home in Washington or at nearby Camp David. The states he has visited or will visit at the end, besides California, are in the traditional Democratic heartland, the industrial Northeast and the Midwest, meaning he's taking the South and most of the West for granted. Reagan campaign director Ed Rollings says it was a mistake of Walter Mondale's that contributed to the lopsided nature of the contest.

ED ROLLINS, Reagan campaign director: He went into the South.He went into the President's home base of California and made significant efforts there, left the industrial base -- Ohio's, Michigan's, New York's, Pennsylvania's -- which we weren't strong in initially, let us have the opportunity in the first weeks of the campaign to go up there and solidify our base into where we had a lead. If he would have gone into some of those states early on I think he would have done much better.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: But for all the early postmortems being handed out, the Reagan people did have their confidence shaken a couple of times during the campaign, especially after the first debate.

Mr. ROLLINS: It shook up some of the complacency we all may have had. We've run a lot harder since the first debate than we did earlier, and I think it was a good drill for the campaign itself, probably a good drill for the President.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: But Ed Rollins does see one lasting negative effect from the debate, that it slowed down the momentum for a large pickup of congressional seats by the Republicans. President Reagan, however, still sounds as if he thinks that can happen.

Pres. REAGAN: Please vote for Curt Weldon [?] on Election Day. If a gypsy looked into her crystal ball and said, "You can win this election with a lot of votes or win by just a few votes but get a sympathetic Congress," I would choose the latter, the sympathetic Congress.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: But campaign director Rollins indicates that his priorities are the other way around.

Mr. ROLLINS: My job, my responsibility is to do everything to help reelect the President, so I've got to make decisions that relate to that, and these decisions where we're going, basically these are states that the President is leading in but doesn't have won yet.

STEVEN WEISMAN, The New York Times: It's basically seemed to me to be more important for them to get a bigger electoral victory.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: Steve Weisman, who covers the Reagan campaign for The New York Times, has some theories about why that is.

Mr. WEISMAN: I think, frankly, they want a personal vindication of a historic election victory for Ronald Reagan. They're very much, you know, competitors -- Jim Baker, Ed Rollins. They're competitors. They want to be the campaign managers who brought about this historic victory. And, secondly, I think they honestly feel that ticket-splitting is going to be enormous this year. They don't want to invest their time and energy into the Hill races when they know that it's a real long shot at best, even with a big landslide, to make inroads in the Hill.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: That's one reason the Reagan campaign is anxious to lower expectations about the size of any GOP gains in Congress. Ed Rollins says there's also some fear of antagonizing both Democratic congressmen whose support the President will need next year and Democratic voters.

Mr. ROLLINS: A lot of Democrats will vote for the President, but may not want to vote for a Republican congressman, a Republican senator. So if you get out and talk too much about "elect Joe Smith, Republican Congressman," you're liable to alienate some of those voters.

Pres. REAGAN: There is a candidate we need in the United States Senate. He's John Burris [?].

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: Even if these Republicans lose, however, Rollins says the Democrats who are elected will carry a message with them to Washington if the President runs strong in their state or district.

Mr. ROLLINS: If he runs in a congressional district where an Democratic incumbent wins and he gets 60 or 70 percent of the vote and that incumbent gets 55% of the vote, it puts a little fear into the incumbent -- the congressman, where the President has run better in his own district. You always know that Reagan has this great ability to go back and communicate to the voters in your own district. They're up again in 1986.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: The enthusiasm in the crowds who turned out to see Mr. Reagan this week suggests Rollins may be right, but, as Steve Weisman points out, there are limits to the support the President can claim when he has been so cautious about talking about what his plans are for a second term.

Mr. WEISMAN: If you run a campaign for reelection without saying what you're going to do, then when you have to do certain things, you can't argue very creditably that you have a mandate to do them. I mean, if he really is going to cut the budget and cut programs in a second them and if there is really a need to do that, will he be able to say, "I now have a mandate to do it"? I don't think so, after this campaign.

WOODRUFF: The fact that the President hasn't been any more specific in spelling out his plans for a second term has been a deliberate strategy of his campaign, a campaign run by a group of moderates or pragmatists and led by White House Chief of Staff James Baker and Ed Rollins, among others. Their rivals for the past few years have been the so-called conservative ideologues in the Reagan camp who would have liked to have more of a say in running the campaign. In a very real way the pragmatists want a big win next Tuesday. Not only because it will vindicate their cautious strategy throughout the campaign, but also because it will give them the clout they need to call the shots in the second term.Robin? Riding Reagan's Coattails

MacNEIL: One Congressional district where President Reagan's popularity will be tested by a popular Democratic incumbent is California's 36th, which includes the city of San Bernadino. George Brown, a 20-year veteran of Capitol Hill and an unabashed liberal, is fighting for his political life. His opponent, John Stark, has support from both the Republican National Party and a coalition of fundamentalist Christians. Redistricting has given the district more conservative demographics and made it a real battleground. Stephen Talbott, of public station KQED-San Francisco, has this report.

STEPHEN TALBOTT [voice-over]: The race for Congress in California's 36th District has attracted national attention with outside money pouring into both campaigns. It's a chance for Republicans to knock off a prominent liberal Democrat. And it's a race where political passions have been inflamed by religious differences.

JOHN PAUL STARK, Republican candidate: I think that there has been an effort to remove God from everything in society, as evidenced by efforts of Madalyn O'Hair and the ACLU, of which my opponent has been a member, of the ACLU. I think -- I think it has gone too far.

Rep. GEORGE BROWN, Democratic incumbent: I have not sought to make this kind of a thing a major issue in this campaign, because I have worked all of my political life with Christian moderates and Christian liberals. And I think Christian conservatives have just as much right to be involved in the political process.

TALBOTT [voice-over]: A former Quaker and now a liberal Methodist, Brown says he has no argument with conservative fundamentalists unless they try to impose their values on everyone else. He accuses Stark of being a Moral Majority Republican bankrolled by right-wing Christians like Texas billionaire Nelson Bunker Hunt.

Mr. STARK: Well, I think George likes to talk about the Bunker Hunt connection. There is not a Bunker Hunt connection. Mr. Hunt owns property in the district.He has personally contributed just $1,000 to the campaign.He has a political action committee that's contributed, I think, $2,000 or $3,000 to the campaign, and, of course, with a $300,000 budget, that's hardly exercising any kind of undue influence.

ROTARY MEMBERS [singing, to tune of "Battle Hymn of the Republic"]: "Come and serve your county Rotary/come and serve our world in Rotary --"

TALBOTT [voice-over]: Neither Brown nor Stark has shied away from face-to-face confrontations. This debate before the San Bernardino Rotary Club is one of 10 they've scheduled during the last two weeks of the campaign.

MODERATOR: What is your stand on abortion?

Rep. BROWN: I hate to just give a simple quick response to that, but essentially I am a pro-choice person on the abortion issue. That means that I support the decision of the Supreme Court and agree that a woman who chooses to should have the legal right to an abortion.

Mr. STARK: I think my position on abortion has always been clear. I oppose it. I think that there is, you know, a constitutional responsibility of government for the protection of life, particularly concerned about tax dollars being used to pay for abortions, and of course that's something that the congressman has faithfully voted for over the years.

TALBOTT [voice-over]: Both candidates now claim they would like to put religious issues behind them and focus on more appropriate questions, like how to prevent nuclear war or reduce the federal deficit. But the religious issue won't go away.

MODERATOR: What is your position on prayer in the school as it relates to separation of church and state?

Mr. STARK: I support, basically, President Reagan's position on this. I think that local school districts such as, perhaps, the one here in San Bernadino, ought to be able to decide if in fact they want to have some form of prayer.

Rep. BROWN: There is no prohibition in law or the Constitution from anybody that wants to to pray in schools today, and that is good enough as far as I'm concerned. If we're going to start praying let's start praying at home.

TALBOTT [voice-over]: This is the third time John Stark has run against George Brown. He lost in 1980 and again in 1982, when he got 46% of the vote to Brown's 54%. Stark's bedrock political support comes from politicized, born-again Christians.

VOTER: Means a lot to me. As a Christian I believe in everything he's believes in.

TALBOTT [voice-over]: But in this race Stark is expanding his political base.

Mr. STARK: We've had Jerry Ford come into the district for a fundraiser. We are a -- I guess the word is targeted, fully targeted, race by the national Republican Party.

TALBOTT [voice-over]: For the first time, Stark's campaign has been able to match George Brown's dollar for dollar, each raising about $300,000. Stark has the endorsement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and has received substantial contributions from major oil companies and defense contractors as well as national right-to-life organizations. Congressman Brown relies on strong support from labor, environmental groups and the peace movement. The nuclear freeze campaign has endorsed Brown, providing a host of committed volunteers.

CHRIS BROWN, director, Nuclear Freeze Campaign: Sure, it is a conservative district and not everybody here would be a loyal Freeze supporter.However, polls show that about 66% of the local people in this district support the Freeze. That's not as high as the national average, but it's high enough that we think that we can go out and produce a win for George Brown.

TALBOTT [voice-over]: The debate between Stark and Brown over nuclear and military spending issues has become as intense and partisan as their debate on religious issues. A Los Angeles-based group has rallied to Stark's side with a sledge-hammer TV attack on Brown's defense record.

NARRATOR: They aren't waiting for him to figure it out. Maybe George Brown doesn't believe in a strong America. Lucky for us, these Americans did.

Rep. BROWN: We are developing a paranoia about the Soviet threat. We are now taking the point of view that we have to have overwhelming power and we have to be able to destroy them. That's impossible in today's world. War is obsolete, and to persist in that paranoid attitude is going to lead to our destruction, the whole world's destruction.

TALBOTT [voice-over]: Even though his district depends heavily on military contracts, Brown has chosen to campaignnot only on the nuclear freeze, but also on his opposition to President Reagan's Star Wars initiative.

Rep. BROWN: Now, the President also presents it as a way of protecting the people of this country. That is an absolute fallacy. There is no way that any missile system -- any defense system against missiles can protect the population of this country. I know of no scientist or nobody even in the Pentagon who claims that it can.

Mr. STARK: The Soviets are continuing to refine and develop their capabilities in this area, and to tie the hands, defensive hands, of the United States government, as Mr. Brown has done in his anti-voting record back at Washington, I think is unforgiveable.

TALBOTT [voice-over]: Although military and religious controversy have dominated the campaign, how well President Reagan does in the district may well be the deciding factor.

Mr. STARK: I think that we need a more conservative voice speaking from this congressional district.

TALBOTT [voice-over]: Stark hopes that a Reagan landslide will provide him with that elusive margin of victory. Brown thinks he'll defeat Stark once again, but he is worried about a Reagan coattail effect, and he's concerned that some voters may be swayed by Stark's conservative Christian appeal.

Rep. BROWN: And this cuts across party lines so that he's getting into some of the Democratic constituency here. The fundamentalist churches and, of course, they have not historically been a very active element in the political process, but they're becoming more active.

MacNEIL: That report was by Stephen Talbott of KQED-San Francisco. Jim?

LEHRER: Partisan politics has also played a part this week in the debate over food aid for Africa. Charlayne Hunter-Gault has more. Charlayne? Politicizing Famine Relief

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Jim, gruesome pictures of starvation in famine-ravaged Africa, particularly Ethiopia, have brought an outpouring of world anguish and overdue attempts to bring relief. But the situation has also generated both domestic and international blame-laying.

[voice-over] The African famine, said to be the worst in a decade, brings scenes like these. In Ethiopia, six to eight million people face starvation; 250 people die of hunger every day. The scenes are the same in other countries, like Mozambique, Mali, Chad and Kenya.

Rep. THOMAS P. O'NEILL, (D) Massachusetts, Speaker of the House: We turn on the evening news and we see African children starving to death, and we get no explanation whatever why we Americans are allowing this to happen.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: The Democratic speaker of the House, Thomas P. O'Neill, led the criticism earlier this week.

Rep. O'NEILL [October 30, 1984]: I'm speaking out today because I believe this administration, acting on its own, lacks the political and moral will to cut through politics and get food to those starving people.

HUNTER-GAULT [voice-over]: Not so, the Republican administration argued today, saying U.S. relief efforts in the last month were more than double the amount spent all of last year. At the same time the director of the Agency for International Development was meeting with the head of Ethiopia's relief commission on the problem. But the director of AID has been blaming the Marxist government of Ethiopia for not handling its own relief efforts properly. He also said the Soviet Union has shown a calloused indifference for giving weapons instead of food to its Ethiopian client.

At a news conference at the U.N. in New York yesterday, the Ethiopian relief commissioner took issue with such charges.

DAWIT WOLDE GORGIS, African Relief Director [October 31, 1984]: I received today information that the Soviets are giving around 12 Antonov airplanes, 300 trucks and many helicopters for transporting relief supplies to certain areas, and earlier we have also received 10,000 tons of rice from the Soviet Union.

HUNTER-GAULT: James Grant, the director of UNICEF, the United Nations Childrens Fund, diplomatically said there was enough blame to go around.

JAMES GRANT, executive director, UNICEF: Virtually everybody shares some of the blame for the situation that we have in a country like Ethiopia. I think the important thing is the world community is beginning to respond to Ethiopia in the right manner from all sources. It will need to be sustained.

HUNTER-GAULT: The first flights of large emergency airlifts began arriving at Ethiopia's airports today, with countries of East and West putting politics aside for the moment. In one case the Soviets provided planes fueled with gasoline donated by the United States. Jim?

LEHRER: Again, to summarize the major news of the day. Some 150 people have been killed in mounting violence between Sikhs and Hindus in India following yesterday's assassination of Indira Gandhi.

The FBI late today arrested eight persons in a plot to assassinate the president of Honduras and overthrow the government in that Central American nation.

And President Reagan and Walter Mondale talked today about anti semitism and over-confidence.

Good right, Robin.

MacNEIL: Good night, Jim. That's our NewsHour tonight. Thank you for watching. We'll be back tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.