The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: Our summary of the news; a look at today's jobs and unemployment numbers; some perspective on efforts to bring democracy to the Arab world; a report on dealing with post-fires devastation in southern California; the analysis of Mark Shields and William Safire; and a double-feature movie essay by Anne Taylor Fleming.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: Six American soldiers were killed today in a helicopter crash, the second this week in Iraq. It happened near Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit. Wire service reports quoted witnesses saying the black hawk helicopter appeared to have been hit by a shoulder-fired missile, but there was no official confirmation of that. Last Sunday, a larger U.S. Transport helicopter was shot down north of Baghdad. The death toll in that crash rose to 16 after a wounded soldier died yesterday at a hospital in Germany. Elsewhere in Iraq today, a U.S. soldier was killed in a grenade attack on his convoy in the northern city of Mosul. The military reported another died there yesterday when a roadside bomb exploded. In all, 384 soldiers have died from combat and other causes since March. More than 2,200 have been wounded or injured during that time. The U.S. unemployment rate improved in October. The Labor Department reported today it fell 0.1 percent to 6 percent, the lowest level since April. Businesses added 126,000 jobs, twice what analysts had expected. October reflected the third straight month of job growth following a six-month slump.We'll have more on this in a moment. President Bush's call yesterday for greater call for greater democracy in the Middle East got a cool reception today. Iran said it was obvious interference in its internal affairs. A leading Lebanese newspaper said the words were attractive but "boring, empty rhetoric" until "American bias for Israel and against Arabs" is ended. We'll have more on this later in the program. In Gaza today, four Palestinians were killed in Israeli anti- terror operations. Three of them were gunmen killed during overnight clashes. The fourth was a 10-year-old boy. He was shot by Israeli soldiers as he was trapping birds near the security barrier with Israel. The U.S. Embassy and two consulates in Saudi Arabia will close indefinitely tomorrow to review security arrangements. The embassy's web site said terrorists had entered the "operational phase" of planned attacks. It cautioned Americans in Saudi Arabia to be "vigilant." On Monday, Saudi police uncovered a suspected terrorist cell in Mecca. Yesterday, two suspected militants there blew themselves up to avoid arrest. A dozen post offices in the Washington D.C. area were closed today, after suspected traces of anthrax were found at a naval mail-sorting facility. Five navy employees were offered precautionary antibiotics and air samples were tested. Initial results found no anthrax in the air samples but more tests were being conducted. Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson said he was "under whelmed" by the incident, and that confirmation of anthrax was unlikely. In late 2001, anthrax mail attacks in the U.S. killed at least five people, including two Washington postal workers. And in Greece, a series of firebombs damaged three banks in central Athens today, just hours after FBI Director Robert Mueller arrived to inspect security plans for next year's Olympics. No injuries were reported. An Athens newspaper reported an unidentified caller said the attacks were to "welcome the FBI Director." The caller also demanded the release of 19 people charged with terrorist activities. On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 47 points to close below 9810. The NASDAQ fell more than five points to close below 1971. For the week, the Dow gained less than 1 percent. The NASDAQ rose 2 percent. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to: The good jobs news; democracy to the middle east; recovering from the fires of California; Shields and Safire; and Anne Taylor Fleming goes to the movies.

FOCUS READING THE NUMBERS

JIM LEHRER: Ray Suarez looks at today's job numbers.

RAY SUAREZ: Today's employment report contained some good news about the last few months. The Labor Department revised initial estimates and reported that the economy added 286,000 new jobs between August and October. But despite the good news, there were still 8.8 million people unemployed last month. Of that group, two million have been out of work for six months or more. Joining me now to discuss all the numbers and what they mean is Lisa Lynch, former chief economist of the Labor Department.

She is the academic dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Professor Lynch, what do these latest numbers, coming on the heels two of months of job growth previously reported, tell you about the state of the job market?

LISA LYNCH: Well, today we finally got some good news in the economy, and just in time for the holiday season. I think a lot of people were, economists were caught off guard in a good way, in terms of the jobs report. Not only did we have 126,000 new jobs added to the economy, but we had upward revisions for employment in both August and September that really, those three months taken together, suggest that we may have finally turned the corner in and finally we are starting to see in the labor market increases in employment that are beginning to catch up with what we've already seen in the output for the economy, the growth of the economy.

RAY SUAREZ: Do we know in which sectors those new jobs are being created?

LISA LYNCH: Yes, the employment growth was located primarily in the service sector, although again the good news was that that was distributed across many different parts of the service sector. So we saw employment go up in the education and health services sector. We saw employment go up in professional and technical services. We saw employment go up in eating and drinking establishments. And an important leading sector, in terms of the economy, we saw increases in the temporary help industry as well.

RAY SUAREZ: What about manufacturing?

LISA LYNCH: Well, there is a lot of good news in this report, but there is still a lot of sobering news in this report. Manufacturing is one of those sectors. Again, manufacturing lost 24,000 jobs in the past month. And that's the 39th month, consecutive month that we've seen employment loss in the manufacturing sector. So since its peak back in 2000, the manufacturing sector has shrunk by about 16 percent. So it's been regards significant and while the job loss this month was less than it has been, it continues to decline.

RAY SUAREZ: I think you counted employed, even if it was just a brief time during the previous week, do we know how many of those are part-time workers, or workers who are working part time but would like full-time work?

LISA LYNCH: We don't know out of the 126,000 how many of them are full time or part time off of that particular survey, but we do know that there are 1.4 million people that are in employment that are in part time employment who say they would like to work full time, but they can't. And we have another 460,000 or so people that say they would like to work, but they've gotten very discouraged with their local labor market job conditions and have stopped looking for work.

RAY SUAREZ: These new job numbers come on the heels of a Gross Domestic Product number that was way up, reported a little earlier this month. How are those two numbers related? And will we have to have continued GDP growth in order to see things improve in the jobs picture?

LISA LYNCH: Well, this recovery has been rather unusual, and actually it is quite unprecedented, the recovery, because we have officially been in a recovery since November of 2001. And usually at this stage, so many months after the end of a recession, you would have already have seen fairly robust job growth. And we've not seen it until today's report. So the good news is that we are getting output growth that's very rapid and strong and that should put pressure on to the labor market, make employers feel more confident that they could go out and hire more workers. But it has taken an extraordinarily long amount of time for us to see this up tick in jobs. And even this increase of 1236,000 new jobs this month, it's a good number. It's positive. We have three months of positive numbers. But as an economy, we need about 150,000 net new jobs added every month just to keep pace with the growth of the population. And if we want to make a dent in the 2.4 million jobs that have been lost since recession began, we need much stronger growth than that on the jobs front.

RAY SUAREZ: As an economist, as someone who has watched the labor market very closely for years, why do you think it's taken so long, so many quarters of economic growth to start turning around the picture in the unemployment numbers?

LISA LYNCH: I think there are a variety of factors in play. One of the factors has to do with the extraordinary growth we've had in productivity as well. We had very rapid productivity growth, even in the run up before the recession. We've continued to see that. We've had sizzling productivity numbers, well over 8 percent increase in productivity most recently reported. And what happen is that employers find that they can get product out of the door, using the existing work force. So they've become increasingly efficient. So they don't have the same pressure to hire new workers. But that's a short run effect. And what should happen as the economy grows is that employers begin to increase the employment. But I think employers have been very cautious in terms of doing hiring. Part of that is related to uncertainty associated with the war in Iraq. Part of it may be associated with uncertainties in terms of corporate scandals, et cetera. And then there is an ongoing discussion about, especially in the manufacturing sector, has there been a permanent outsourcing of jobs outside the United States?

RAY SUAREZ: What does it tell you that such a large number of the unemployed are people who have been unemployed for a long number of months?

LISA LYNCH: We have now almost one in four workers that are unemployed have been out of work for six months or more. And again that suggests that we need to see job growth numbers much bigger than 126,000 a month to begin to make a dent into those folks, because individuals that have been out of work for six months or more, they've exhausted all the resources that they could have at their disposal to address the loss in income. And for them, they need a really very strong up tick in the labor market to pull them back into employment.

RAY SUAREZ: Professor lynch, thanks for joining us.

LISA LYNCH: Thank you, Ray.

FOCUS MIDDLE EAST DEMOCRACY

JIM LEHRER: Now, promoting democracy in the Middle East. Margaret Warner has that story.

(Applause)

MARGARET WARNER: President Bush yesterday laid out his vision for a democratic Middle East. In a speech in Washington, he said the West won't be truly secure until autocratic Arab regimes make political and civic reforms.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Sixty years of western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe, because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty. As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence, ready for export.

MARGARET WARNER: To bolster his case, the president cited recent findings by a group of Arab intellectuals, published under the auspices of the United Nations Development Program.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: In the words of a recent report by Arab scholars, the global wave of democracy has, and I quote, "barely reached the Arab states." They continue, "this freedom deficit undermines human development, and is one of the most painful manifestations of lagging political development." The freedom deficit they describe has terrible consequences for the people of the Middle East and for the world.

MARGARET WARNER: In two recent reports, the Arab experts challenged regional leaders and publics to address what they called three "deficits afflicting the Arab world": In freedom, women's rights and knowledge. This year's report painted a bleak picture of the widening gaps between Arab countries and the rest of the world in media, education and scientific inquiry. And in some countries, the report said, alliances between conservative religious leaders and oppressive regimes have exacerbated the problem. To close the gaps, the authors recommended democratic changes that would "remove all restrictions on essential freedoms." Yesterday, President Bush said some Arab governments were beginning to see the need for change. He cited some early democratic steps in Morocco, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, Yemen, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. And President Bush said bringing democracy to Iraq would play an essential role in transforming the region.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution.

(Applause)

MARGARET WARNER: Now, two Arab perspectives on President Bush's call for democratic reform in the Middle East. Murhaf Jouejati, a scholar at the Middle East Institute and adjunct professor of international relations in the Middle East at George Washington University. Born and raised in Syria, he's now a U.S. Citizen. And Edmund Ghareeb, an adjunct professor in the School of International Service at American University, and author of several books on Iraq and on the Middle East. Born in Lebanon, he's a U.S. Citizen. Welcome to you both. Murhaf Jouejati, what did you make of President Bush's call on Arab governments to make democratic reforms?

MURHAF JOUEJATI: I think it was a very good call. I think it was a very good message. It was a very good speech, although I have a few problems here and there with it. But on the whole, it was a great message, and I am happy that this was an opportunity to send the message to the Arab political elite that it needs to change and it needs to change now.

MARGARET WARNER: Important message to the Arab political elite?

EDMUND GHAREEB: Absolutely, an important message to the Arab political elite and important message when it comes to the idea of democracy. I think it is an important speech we heard. The reference that he made to the mistakes made about it West, the support for authoritarian governments in the past was very important. And also something else he said, that Islam is not incompatible with democracy. I thought that was also a very important statement to make.

MARGARET WARNER: Before we go on with the president's speech, let me ask you both about, he and these two reports that we've seen link... say that the lack of political freedom is really at the root of the lack of development in the Arab world: Education, media, scientific inquiry, and learning. Do you agree with that? Is that a big problem?

MURHAF JOUEJATI: I think no doubt. When people are confined politically, they cannot grow economically. They cannot create. Their creativity has to be unleashed and that can only happen through democracy. So, yes, political and economic underdevelopment at the end of the day, is really tied to the fact that these are despotic authoritarian regimes that are dominating society, that are unable to advance as a result of these dictatorships.

MARGARET WARNER: Yet in the Middle East... I mean in Asia, professor, you did have economic development, say in China or in South Korea, the way it was then under still autocraticregimes. Are the two absolutely incompatible?

EDMUND GHAREEB: I'm not sure they are absolutely incompatible, but it would be preferable to have economic development, economic growth at the same time and perhaps some privatization as well, and have freedom in addition. I think both are necessary. The problem is what has been the problems behind the situation in the Middle East? Has it been simply just the absence of freedom? I think it's much more complex than that. It has something to do with history, has something to do with economics, it has to do with culture, it has to do with foreign interference in the region. All of these are important when it comes to what has happened over the past sixty, seventy years.

MARGARET WARNER: So what did you both make... and you referred to this Professor Jouejati, of the speech the president made. That the U.S. has an important role to play and he said 60 years of western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe, stability can't be purchased at the sake of liberty.

MURHAF JOUEJATI: This is a fantastic admission of failure of the west in general, and the United States in particular, which has been supporting autocratic despotic regimes for the past 50 years. I hope this is a new course that the United States will be set on by President Bush; a course in which the United States will no longer support autocratic and despotic regimes. Now the message is very good. However, I think many Arabs would be skeptical as to the messenger because here we must not forget and we must not take away from the equation the presence of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the role of the United States in the Arab- Israeli conflict, and the blind support the U.S. has given to Israel. And so here many Arabs would be skeptical. They do not want to hear words alone. They want to see deeds.

MARGARET WARNER: Did you see it one as an admission of failure as Professor Jouejati did on the part of the U.S. Government? And specifically which regimes do you think he is talking about or to which regimes do you think it applies?

EDMUND GHAREEB: Well, this is very interesting actually, when we look at this because the date was very interesting to me. I mean he said 60 years ago. Why 60 years ago? What happened 60 years ago? Was he perhaps referring to a meeting between President Roosevelt and the Saudi king? Is this a sign also to the Saudis perhaps? Why didn't he refer, for example to 50 years ago, to what happened in Iran, the overthrow by the United States and by England, the CIA and MI-6 overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran. That's one of the most historical events in the region that people now refer to and talk about because they see it as an attempt by the United States, by the West in fact, to block democratic transformation and to bring governments that are not representative of the people and that are, that they want to bring governments that serve western interests and help perhaps the control over oil because oil is an important factor at that time.

MARGARET WARNER: Have either of you seen evidence that the U.S. is ready to press, for instance, the president referred specifically to Egypt and Saudi Arabia, two countries with long- standing U.S. ties, saying he wished he thought they should lead in this transformation. What do you think the U.S. has to do? Do you see any evidence the U.S. Is exercising is any kind of... I don't want to say pressure because maybe that's not what you think is required but doing anything to move them?

MURHAF JOUEJATI: It's good that you use the word "pressure," because here again we have to be very, very careful with the use of pressure. What the use of U.S. pressure is doing, unwittingly I think, is uniting states and society and that is counterproductive to the cause of democratization. Case in point: In Syria recently, a Syrian leadership that wanted to reshuffle the cabinet and to bring in a new reformist team, this has not happened as a result of U.S. pressure because the president of Syria feared that he would be seen as bowing to American pressure. So we have to be very careful with the use of pressure. I think the United States needs to encourage these societies and these states to open up rather than to use simply sticks, because in the end that is going to be counterproductive.

MARGARET WARNER: Your view on that.

EDMUND GHAREEB: I think to a certain extent I agree with that. The United States needs to encourage, I think, but how do you encourage? You encourage, in part, by example. You encourage, in part, by behavior, the practice and the policies that you pursue in the region. That's the best message to send to the people in the area. That's one of the questions because now today I was talking to some people in the area, and we were talking actually about the speech, and some of them said, "well, who is the target?" And two people actually said that.

MARGARET WARNER: So they saw it as a question of being a target.

EDMUND GHAREEB: Not only that. They saw who was the target of this speech. They believe one person said the target of this speech was American audience; that American president was coming to an election year, was having difficulty, facing difficulties in Iraq, facing difficulties in the Middle East, wanted to address his own people first, to mobilize support for people of Iraq. Secondly, he was talking to the people of Middle East. One... the other person, however focused on the angle that Professor Jouejati mentioned, and that's Syria, was he targeting Syria and Iran? Was he priming Syria to be part of the axis of evil?

MARGARET WARNER: What did you hear in the reaction and what did you read? I assume you have been looking at the Internet and Arab television, to this speech?

MURHAF JOUEJATI: I found mixed reactions. And these are not "this category of people think this" and "this category of people think that." But it is the same people who have mixed reactions. On the one hand, they are very happy to hear about democracy and freedom and this coming from a United States that has supported autocratic regimes. But, on the other hand, again, they are skeptical. Is this the democratic U.S. that we are hearing that at the same time is biased towards Israel and even arming it in its brutality against the Palestinian people? So here they are open to the message of freedom, yet extremely skeptical, and they need to see things on the ground rather than simply to hear words.

MARGARET WARNER: Another big assertion in this speech by the president, and we've heard it before, but he made it again, is that transforming Iraq into a democracy will be an absolutely, you know, watershed event, I think is what he said. Do you think that's true?

EDMUND GHAREEB: Well, absolutely. If Iraq could be transformed by the United States toward democracy, there is no doubt it would be a model for the whole region. The question is this -- how feasible, how likely is something like this to happen. So far what we've seen, in fact situation is becoming much more complex, more messy, and in fact the arena here was at least a country that was more secular, it's becoming a target for some of the more radical forces, Islamic radicalism, radical nationalists are emerging in the area. So it is doing at least so far has achieved the opposite of what has been declared.

MURHAF JOUEJATI: We have to be very careful here with our wishes for a spillover effect. A democratic Iraq that is governed by the Iraqi people is a very good thing and would send wonderful, positive democratic messages to the rest of the Middle East. But we are not there yet; this is number one. And number two, we have to look around in the neighborhood. A democratizing Yemen has not pushed Saudi Arabia towards democracy. A democratizing Lebanon has not pushed Syria towards democracy, nor has a democratizing Morocco done anything to Algeria. So here it would be a great thing, but we have to be very careful in our expectations.

MARGARET WARNER: So bottom line, how realistic did you feel yesterday's speech was or was it not intended to be? Was that not the point?

EDMUND GHAREEB: I think this was perhaps, not so sure that the president believes it, but I think there is no doubt that this is more of a utopian kind of vision because of the complexities of the region, because of the questions, the skepticism about the messenger, about the purposes behind this speech, because also we have to remember that people, in part, some of the people dislike the United States policies and they dislike the United States because they see their governments are supporting governments that are oppressive, authoritarian. At the same time, there are people who don't like the government because they see their governments kowtowing to the United States. This is one of the basic challenges the United States is going to face is how to try to communicate to the people in the region and try to change their attitudes.

MURHAF JOUEJATI: I like the speech very much. I'm happy it sends the message to the Arab political elite. It is high time that the Arab world democratized, and there is nothing to justify the lack thereof. And I do hope that these words translate into deeds very soon.

MARGARET WARNER: Murhaf Jouejati and Professor Ghareeb, thank you.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight: A California fire story; Shields and Safire; and an Anne Taylor Fleming essay.

FOCUS BURNED OUT

JIM LEHRER: Jeffrey Kaye of KCET- Los Angeles tells our fire aftermath story.

JEFFREY KAYE: The fire-damaged suburbs of southern California have been in the national spotlight. This week, President Bush came to the outskirts of San Diego to see the devastation.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I've has some families here that are obviously crushed by the material loss, and they look forward to rebuilding.

JEFFREY KAYE: But one heavily damaged place that hasn't received much public attention is eastern San Diego's back country, home to a dozen affected Indian reservations. The fires killed nine people on or near tribal land. More than 130 buildings on reservations were destroyed, at least 25,000 acres burned. Tribal leaders want to make sure the public hears their story of loss and destruction.

WENDY SCHLATER, Chairwoman, La Jolla Tribe: The people of America need to understand this is all we have left. We don't have the Great Plains, we don't have the coast. We don't have anything. We have this small acreage of which the government has corralled us on.

JEFFREY KAYE: The San Pasqual Reservation, where about 500 people live-- Indians and non- Indians-- was hardest hit by the fire. About a third of its homes-- 75 structures-- were devoured by the flames. Robert Stewart, a tribal elder, and his grandson Roy, lived on one of the reservation's oldest properties. Their house and trailer burned down.

JEFFREY KAYE: So how long did you live here?

MAN: I lived here mostly all my life.

JEFFREY KAYE: The Stewarts want to rebuild, but have no idea how they'll get the money. One of their properties, like most of the homes destroyed in Indian country, carried no fire insurance. It was too expensive.

JEFFREY KAYE: So what... what next? What are you going to do?

MAN: Rebuild.

JEFFREY KAYE: Rebuild.

MAN: Shoot, yeah. About all we can do is start over again.

JEFFREY KAYE: Can you afford to do that?

MAN: Not really. (Laughs) Not really.

JEFFREY KAYE: The Stewarts say they're thankful for support from their tribe. Native American leaders say they've been proud of tribal self-reliance, thanks in part to a growing gambling economy. Six of the fire-affected tribes operate casinos, but those ventures have not erased poverty. Two tribes with casino resorts provided accommodations and food for people displaced by the fire. At the San Pasqual Community Center, volunteers brought in donations provided by neighboring tribes.

SPOKESMAN: We've had all the tribes contribute. Even those who lost a lot are contributing. Everybody is pitching in no matter where, what. Wherever I go, I am offered help. I am offered help everyplace.

JEFFREY KAYE: The donations were also welcomed by non-Indian residents of the reservation and surrounding areas.

WOMAN (Translated): Everything I had was burned up. I was left with nothing. So I'm here to ask for some help. Maybe I can somehow find a trailer like the one I used to live in.

WOMAN: ...Because there are a lot of kids that have asthma that are...

JEFFREY KAYE: As Alfonzo Orosco helped out here, he was also worried about his grandson who almost died in the fire.

ALFONZO OROSCO, San Pasqual Tribe: He is in semi-critical condition. They are trying to get his infections down, because he has no skin from here to here. His face is damaged. They had to do some grafting on his face. They think that will be okay.

MAN: ...Putting in together...

JEFFREY KAYE: On Tuesday, representatives of the area's tribes met with federal and state officials to discuss their needs. Tribes will have a hard time rebuilding, said the meeting's organizer, James Fletcher of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

JAMES FLETCHER: It is very difficult, because a lot of the tribes are much poorer than people would suspect, because not everybody has successful gaming operations or operates large casinos.

JEFFREY KAYE: This week, utility crews worked to restore power. Other workers fixed an aqueduct. Firefighters checked on potential hotspots. San Pasqual leaders say, so far, they've been satisfied with the initial response by federal authorities.

MAN: As a consequence of your request for federal assistance...

JEFFREY KAYE: A representative of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, took a report from the Stewarts. FEMA can offer cash assistance. Allen Lawson is the elected chairman of the San Pasqual tribe.

ALLEN LAWSON: As far as evaluating and doing all of the paperwork, FEMA is here doing that right now. So they were out here since last Thursday, so they're on top of it. Paperwork is one thing. Actually getting it done, we'll find out, I guess.

JEFFREY KAYE: Members of a so- called BAER team represent one key element of the federal response. It's a multi-agency task force. Baer stands for the Burned Area Emergency Response program. Experts in water drainage, biology, soil erosion, and archeology came to San Pasqual to survey the damage.

SPOKESMAN: So after every rainfall, you're... you and your maintenance guys need to come up here and clean these things out.

SPOKESMAN: Oh.

JEFFREY KAYE: Biologist Chris Holbeck said one of his team's purposes here was to warn about perils the tribe will face in the wake of the fires.

CHRIS HOLBECK: Some of the things that can happen in the aftermath of a fire are mudslides, debris flows that threaten resources at risk like this road, homes, businesses, infrastructures. There are municipal water supplies that can be threatened. In the aftermath of a fire, often exotic plants invade. They are plants that didn't evolve in this area, and they came from overseas, from Asia, whatnot.

JEFFREY KAYE: The team will make recommendations for federal grants to assist with flood control and preservation of archeological sites. Tribal member Robert Morales who escorted the BAER team hopes the tribe will emerge from this disaster with more of a sense of unity.

ROBERT MORALES: I think it's going to make us stronger here on the reservation, and things are going to look a lot better. We just have to learn to work all together, and I think that is going to happen now.

JEFFREY KAYE: Slot machines, blackjack tables, and video poker will generate some of the cash needed for rebuilding. Casinos are the linchpins of tribal economies. The fire came uncomfortably close to the San Pasqual Casino, forcing it to close down for several days. But when it reopened for business Wednesday, loyal patrons returned in droves.

SPOKESMAN: Welcome back!

WOMAN: Thank you!

JEFFREY KAYE: Alfonso Orozco, the casino's greeter, was there to welcome them back.

SPOKESMAN: Good to see you, buddy.

JEFFREY KAYE: The gamblers' return was one first sign of things returning to normal in Indian country.

FOCUS SHIELDS & SAFIRE

JIM LEHRER: And to the analysis of Shields and Safire. Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and "New York Times" columnist William Safire. Bill, the Democrats' confederate flag flap this week. What's the end result for Howard Dean, do you think?

WILLIAM SAFIRE: I think that it shows a little bit of character. Everybody recognizes that it was a blunder, a gaffe. Even the Dean people say so. But it was how he mishandled it afterwards that was revealing. He countered everybody who complained about it, and he took on Al Sharpton, and, I didn't make a mistake. You're all reading things into it. And then he realized that... he must realize that there would be a man with a confederate flag showing up at every one of his rallies from now until he's finished. And his people must have gotten together with him and said look, every now and then you have to admit you made a mistake. It kills him to do this. But he did it finally. That's what it revealed.

JIM LEHRER: Any damage to him, do you think, Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: I look at it a little bit differently, Jim. I first heard Governor Dean use this expression when he said he was going to campaign in the south and discuss race in the South February 21 at a Democratic National Committee meeting....

JIM LEHRER: February 21. We are sitting here not quite a year later but close.

MARK SHIELDS: That's right. Expressly used, the phrase he used and used it several times in speeches. White folks in the South who drive pickup trucks with confederate flag decals on them ought to be voting for us because their kids don't have health insurance either and their kids deserve better schools. In other words, that he would emphasize...

JIM LEHRER: When you heard it, did you say oh my goodness, he just made a gaffe.

MARK SHIELDS: No, because he got a standing ovation at this speech. It was a big applause line, more than a representative African American audience. The difference was he was at 3 percent in the polls then. Now he's the front-runner, the overwhelming front-runner and this was a case of a consensus among John Kerry's, his principal opponent in New Hampshire, Dick Gephardt, his principal opponent in Iowa and John Edwards who doesn't like the fact that he is ahead and Al Sharpton who Bill mentioned. Al Sharpton is a different case. They got together and they said look, we have to stop this guy. They made a big brouhaha about this. It was a plot line here. They want to deprive him of the Service Employees International Union endorsement.

JIM LEHRER: Which is about to happen.

MARK SHIELDS: Which is about to happen and the Service Employees International Union, Jim, is sort of a fixed image of American labor in people's minds. They think of big, brawny muscular guys who work on auto assembly lines, steelworkers, machinists. That's gone. That's a different... Lisa Lynch said to Ray, 39 months of losing manufacturing jobs continues. The biggest of union in the country, the Service Employees International Union, 1.6 million members; there are more members in it than there are in steel unions, auto and machinists combined.

JIM LEHRER: Very diverse union.

MARK SHIELDS: It's a very diverse union. It's 56 percent women and it's only 58 percent white. They were kind of hoping if they get this out about Dean and the confederate flag and all the rest of it, it might make them a little bit nervous about endorsing him. The fact is they're the biggest union in New Hampshire, very politically sophisticated union, they're going to endorse him.

WILLIAM SAFIRE: This wasn't a plot to do him in. You should have, back in February, said confederate flag? That's a red flag in front of a bull in politics. And it's a big issue in the South, and to just use it as a symbol shows a certain lack of understanding of big symbols. And I think what he did was made a big mistake. Certainly everybody jumped on him. And the fact that he's out there in public now and people are watching him means you watch very closely. It's the same thing with George Romney talking about being brainwashed. Boom, everything happened and he was finished.

MARK SHIELDS: I don't think it's the same. It's a way of saying I'm going after votes in the South that somehow we've written off in the past. This is part of the Dean Shtick. Dean said if Al Gore had my position on gun control, he would have been running for reelection in 2004 because he wouldn't have lost West Virginia and Tennessee.

JIM LEHRER: You just said you used the Romney analogy and you said Romney was finished. You're not suggesting...

WILLIAM SAFIRE: I don't suggest he is finished because frankly I'm all for Dean. I want to see him become the Democratic nominee because I think that would be a McGovern candidacy. I think that would lead to a Republican landslide. So I'm not knocking Dean for any --

JIM LEHRER: But your analysis is, your preferences aside....

WILLIAM SAFIRE: This was one stupid mistake. And worse than the mistake itself was his refusal to back off it which showed that he is an aggressive, angry man, who, somewhat arrogantly, will not admit he is wrong.

JIM LEHRER: What about Mark's point that the endorsement by this union kind of counter balances that and could wipe it off? Wipe it off as an issue?

WILLIAM SAFIRE: The position of labor in the Democratic Party is kind of interesting here. Gephardt is supposed to be labor's favorite because he has been protectionist from the word go, anti-NAFTA and he's been labor's friend. And there used to be a saying that labor rewards its friends and punishes its enemies. Now you have oh maybe five million member unions signed up for Gephardt now. And now you'll have three million members between this one and next week they'll have the government workers....

JIM LEHRER: Yeah.

WILLIAM SAFIRE: So you have a split among labor. And there's Gephardt who has been the champion of labor all along being tossed over in Iowa where he desperately needs labor's help.

JIM LEHRER: How do you read the labor....

MARK SHIELDS: Jim, the division in labor that Bill has eluded to is the industrial unions, unions that have lost the jobs. Dick Gephardt has been their champion. And for the most part, other than auto, they've endorsed him. Steel has endorsed him, Machinists. They're not as big as they were, but the reality this is: That if you work at the Registry of Motor Vehicles, or you work at St. Joseph's Hospital, they're not going to leave and go to Indonesia or Mexico with their jobs. Okay. So trade and loss of jobs that way isn't as big an issue to the Service Employees International Union or to ASME. That's the division in labor is between the industrial and the service employees. The service employees and the government unions are the fastest growing. And there is a political sophistication but Bill is absolutely right. I've written it and I believe it. Dick Gephardt has been the longest and strongest and most loyal advocate and champion of labor and its positions....

WILLIAM SAFIRE: And they're selling him out now.

MARK SHIELDS: This time it looks like they want a winner.

JIM LEHRER: You mentioned, Bill, the Sharpton thing and all of this happened in the debate this week at CNN and rock the boat had. A lot of people have questioned the goodness and mercy of these debates. In fact, Mrs. Kerry, John Kerry's wife recently called them silly. What do you think? Are they helping the process? Are they helping the electorate make choices among these things?

WILLIAM SAFIRE: When you have a sitting president who doesn't have a primary and you have a bunch of Democrats who are going to savage each other to get the nomination, it's kind of unfair. We're looking at these debates on television and lapping them up. When Kerry and Gephardt close in on Dean,....

JIM LEHRER: When you say we, you mean you Republicans.

WILLIAM SAFIRE: Right-wingers.

JIM LEHRER: Right wingers, okay.

MARK SHIELDS: Right-wing conspiracy.

WILLIAM SAFIRE: Vast.

MARK SHIELDS: Vast.

WILLIAM SAFIRE: So we're delighted to see everybody clobbering each other because that will be then used in the general election to say you see, even Kerry or even blah, blah, or even Dean said about the guy who won, if somebody else wins?

JIM LEHRER: What do you left-wing conspiracy people think about that?

MARK SHIELDS: Jim, Jim two, things. First of all, the debates are terrific for the candidates who don't have... who are dark horses, for Carol Moseley-Braun, for Dennis Kucinich, for Al Sharpton. It's their campaign. But because they're on the same stage with plausible presidential candidates like Joe Lieberman and Dick Gephardt and John Kerry and Howard Dean and John Edwards, the debates are therefore taken less seriously. And Bill's right. They're watched more for ammunition than they are for information. I mean, we watch 'em in our business; Karl Rove watches them and tapes them and I'm sure looks at the films.

WILLIAM SAFIRE: More important than the debates in the long run, I think, are the major speeches. Bill Clinton made a big impact with his Georgetown speech on foreign policy.

JIM LEHRER: Back when he was a candidate.

MARGARET WARNER: When he was nobody. And here the president, as you reported today made a major speech, an idealistic Woodrow Wilson democracy speech just at the right moment. And that's, frankly, what I would hope the television would cover more and not just the conflict of personalities, but sometimes people think big and make you stop and think.

JIM LEHRER: That's a good point.

MARK SHIELDS: Can I just make one point about Al Sharpton, and that is that Al Sharpton attacked Governor Dean for having an anti-black agenda. The anti-black agenda turned out to be a position on gun control that was not castigated by the NRA, support of the death penalty, and an endorsement of affirmative action based on class rather than race -- I think an argument which has considerable merit and certainly is a lot more sensible. But the reason is, Al Sharpton, I think it's fair to say, was hoping to be the Jesse Jackson of this campaign. Jesse Jackson won a string of primaries in 1984 and 1988 and became essentially the president of black Americans and guaranteed himself a prime time spot at the national conventions and a place at the table when it came to developing strategy or anything of the sort. And Al Sharpton had his sort of political hopes cut off by the endorsement of or the news of the endorsement of Howard Dean by Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr.. so he was lashing out at dean. He was ready to go after Dean on that basis alone because I think he saw his own hopes of becoming a major national figure through the primary system, as being dashed.

JIM LEHRER: Do you see it the same way?

WILLIAM SAFIRE: He'll make a good speech at the Democratic convention, I think, Sharpton will, and surprise a lot of people unless Dean gets the nomination and doesn't let him speak at all at the convention.

JIM LEHRER: Do you both agree that as we speak tonight, that Dean remains the front-runner -- whether you prefer it or not prefer it?

MARK SHIELDS: Dean is clearly the front-runner and in the effort to gang up against him this week was the consensus and acknowledgment on the part of his challengers that he has to be stopped. If he wins Iowa and New Hampshire, there's probably no stopping him and the worst thing in politics is to get what you wish for.

WILLIAM SAFIRE: On the other hand, look how everybody was all hot and excited about General what's his name Clark. And he sort of disappeared from the scene. So things change pretty fast around here.

JIM LEHRER: Speaking of disappearing from the scene, you're going to disappear from our scene.

WILLIAM SAFIRE: Yes. I'm becoming a pencil again.

JIM LEHRER: You're becoming a pencil again. David Brooks will be back next Friday. And thank you very much, Bill, for filling in for him. We'll still see you from time to time when David is otherwise occupied.

WILLIAM SAFIRE: Glad to.

JIM LEHRER: I really appreciate your doing this for him.

WILLIAM SAFIRE: Well, this gave him a chance to get his sea legs at the New York Times where he's going to be a columnist and he already is a columnist. It is a pleasure to have another conservative voice on that page.

JIM LEHRER: Say something nice now, Mark.

MARK SHIELDS: I never realized that the New York Times was a ship,.

JIM LEHRER: A right-wing ship.

MARK SHIELDS: A right-wing ship. But it's great to go toe to toe with two dominant leading respected conservatives in American journalism, Mr. Safire and Mr. Brooks. I've enjoyed being with Bill and going knee to elbow.

WILLIAM SAFIRE: I like the way you keep saying I agree with Bill and then you clobber me.

JIM LEHRER: Thanks again, Bill. Thank you both very much.

ESSAY MOVING IMAGES

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, essayist Anne Taylor Fleming contrasts two current movies.

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: I stumbled-- or maybe grumbled is the more apt word-- out of this theater not so long ago after seeing the big new hit movie, "Kill Bill." In fairness, I knew what I was getting in for.

ACTRESS: Now it's kill or be killed. And I choose, kill.

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: The reviews, some laudatory, some excoriating, had made no secret of the blood-and-gore nature of the film, in which action heroine Uma Thurman summarily hunts down and hacks to bits her former cohorts in crime who had turned on her and tried to kill her. I went not expecting to be amused or entertained, but edified and horrified. I was both.

ACTOR: Silly rabbit.

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: Aging boy wonder Quentin Tarantino has thrown up a revenge filled, fantasy phantasmagoria of beheadings and skewerings and maimings-- the violence cloaked in a kind of hipper-than-thou cartoon excess that defies you to take it too seriously. Why does somebody make this, I wonder. What's the point? I happened, standing there, somewhat revulsed, to look up and see another film on the marquee: Sofia Coppola's "Lost in Translation," which I had seen some days earlier. What an amusing juxtaposition.

ACTOR: Hello.

ACTOR: Hello. Do you ever switch seats?

ACTOR: If "Kill Bill" is about our violence-jaded sensibility and desire for revenge, "Lost in Translation" is about our loneliness and our desire to connect with each other.

ACTOR: I'm trying to organize a prison break. I'm looking for, like, an accomplice.

ACTOR: ( Laughs )

ACTOR: Are you in or are you out?

ACTOR: I'm in.

ACTOR: It's a lyric tone-poem of a film in which a mismatched couple-- a wry, bitter middle aged actor and a beautiful young aimless woman-- circle each other in a Tokyo hotel high- rise. Both married, both adrift, both insomniac, they sit in the bar and wander the halls and watch TV together, conducting a tender, trans-generational flirtation that is much more about longings than lust. He wants to start over. She just wants to get started. How odd that both movies are here now making their disparate splashes. They are bookends of our entertainment culture-- Tarantino, the dark-hearted, hyper-kinetic, blood-spattering yin to Coppola's gentle yang. The irony is that she is the bold filmmaker, not he. In our current environment, it is much riskier to put tenderness on the screen, long- lost tenderness, than savagery; much harder to capture unconsummated longings than ferociously consummated bloodlust-revenge. After all, even our most-loved TV comedies have acid tongues. Those "friends" are always jabbing at each other verbally, as are most of our sitcom couples, turning the lovey-dovey into some titillating version of kiss and make up. And of course, the whole reality TV world is anchored by humiliation. One of the meanest shows on television is the ironically named "America's funniest home videos," in which small children and animals are always falling down and getting hurt-- not really, really hurt, just mock- hurt. This is Tarantino-land, dead on, a place where we can have our violence and laugh at it, too. Andof course, revenge fantasies have infected our politics and political rhetoric, certainly since September 11. There is an "axis of evil" that must be eradicated. Uma Thurman, meet George Bush. It is no accident that someone named "The Terminator" won the governorship of California by talking tough and addressing little, no accident that the myriad Democratic presidential hopefuls are all struggling to find a tone tough enough to make them acceptable as action figure heroes. "Kill Bill" borrows heavily, in fact, from other action movie genres-- from samurai movies to spaghetti westerns. Tarantino, by his own admissions, has clearly lived and breathed movies, been weaned on them. In short, he is a movie mutant, the ultimate disconnected man, whose sensibility has been formed in movie theaters, not by contact with the human heart. Let us leave, though, with our two lost souls trying, in fact, to make a connection in that Tokyo high-rise and help each other, with their shy smiles and funny asides, through another sleepless night. I'm Anne Taylor Fleming.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of the day. Six American soldiers were killed in a helicopter believed shot down by hostile fire, the second this week in Iraq. Two more GI's were killed in other incidents. Unemployment fell 0.1 percent to 6 percent as 126,000 new jobs were created in October. And the U.S. Embassy and two consulates in Saudi Arabia will close indefinitely to review precautions against terrorism.

JIM LEHRER: And again, to our honor roll of American service personnel killed in Iraq. We add them as their deaths are made official and photographs become available. Here, in silence, are four more.

JIM LEHRER: A reminder that Washington Week can be seen on most PBS stations later this evening. We'll see you online and again here Monday evening. Have a nice weekend. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.