The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight another round of heat over the budget [Focus - Setting Limits?], Margaret Warner talks to Sen. Daschle and Congressman Armey, some historic perspective [Focus - State of the Union] on State of the Union Addresses, Kwame Holman reports, Elizabeth Farnsworth hears from regulars Beschloss, Goodwin, and Johnson, joined tonight by William Bennett, and Sec. of State Christopher [Newsmaker], he's here for a Newsmaker interview about Bosnia, Russia and other matters. It all follows our summary of the news this Monday.NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: First Lady Hillary Clinton will testify Friday before a Whitewater grand jury in Washington. Deputy White House Counsel Mark Fabiany said today Mrs. Clinton and other staff members were subpoenaed last Friday. Fabiany said Mrs. Clinton would be asked about missing legal documents recently discovered in the White House. They are billing records of her work for a failed Arkansas savings & loan. It will be Mrs. Clinton's first appearance before the grand jury and the fourth time she has answered questions under oath for special prosecutor Kenneth Starr. The White House announcement came only hours after Mrs. Clinton said she would answer written questions from the Senate Whitewater Committee. The offer was made in a letter to the committee from her attorney. Chairman Alfonse D'Amato said he also wanted Mrs. Clinton to explain the newly-found billing records. Treasury Sec. Robert Rubin said today the government would default on the national debt by the end of February unless Congress raises the debt limit. The warning came in a letter to House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Earlier today, House Republicans threatened to block such an increase. House Majority Leader Dick Armey said Republicans will use the debt ceiling and not a government shutdown to force the President to make spending reductions.

REP. RICHARD ARMEY, Majority Leader: Should we deem that, yes, indeed, it is necessary to have a debt ceiling increase, we will write one in such a way as to pass it through the House and the Senate, and give the President an opportunity to sign a debt ceiling. But neither the President nor I should delude ourselves into believing that a so-called clean debt ceiling increase will pass the House. It just won't happen.

MR. LEHRER: The clean debt ceiling increase Armey referred to means a bill without any restrictions attached. Yesterday, Armey said he would consider linking the elimination of the Commerce Department to an increase in the debt ceiling. Today, Senate Majority Leader--Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle said Armey's plan could have disastrous effects on the economy.

SEN. THOMAS DASCHLE, Minority Leader: What he said is he will hold the debt ceiling hostage until they get their way. I think that would be an absolute disaster. To threaten the full faith and credit of this country because they're not getting their agenda passed is the most irresponsible thing that anyone can do.

MR. LEHRER: We'll hear from Sen. Daschle and Congressman Armey right after the News Summary. President Clinton goes to the Capitol tomorrow night to deliver his third State of the Union Address. During a picture-taking session at the White House today, he gave a preview of what to expect.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: What I'm going to say tomorrow night is that the state of the union is strong but it can be stronger; that I am absolutely confident and optimistic about our ability to meet the, the challenges that our country faces, and I'm going to say what I think they are, and what I believe we should all do about them.

MR. LEHRER: We'll get some perspective on State of the Union Addresses later in the program. Floodwaters receded today in Eastern and Mid-Atlantic states. Authorities said at least 32 deaths can be blamed on flooding in the region. In Pennsylvania, evacuated residents returned to damaged homes to collect their belongings. Melting snow from blizzards sent river waters to record levels last week. Heavy rains added to the floods. A barge in Pittsburgh was dumped onto cars when the Susquehanna River overran its banks. President Clinton has declared 25 Pennsylvania counties a disaster area. The clean-up from the Rhode Island oil spill continued today. Two million gallons of heating oil spilled from a grounded barge last Friday. The Coast Guard worked to skim oil from the water. On shore, beaches were cleaned of marine life killed by the oil. One hundred and five square miles of Block Island Sound were closed to fishing. Back in Washington today, an estimated 60,000 anti-abortion advocates marked the 23rd anniversary of the Roe V. Wade decision. They held their annual protest march from the White House to the Supreme Court. The Court's 1973 decision legalized abortions. Sympathetic members of Congress urged the defeat of President Clinton and urged the sending of more anti-abortion lawmakers to Washington.

REP. TOM LATHAM, [R] Iowa: Let me just say that White House behind us next year has got to change the occupant in it. Anyone who could say that they could veto a bill that would stop the partial birth abortion simply is not in touch with America, is not in touch with what is fundamental to this country.

MR. LEHRER: From the other side, abortion rights advocates said many states were trying to undercut federal abortion laws.

KATE MICHELMAN, Abortion Rights Advocate: Our study reveals that the freedom to choose is caught in a crossfire of attacks from the states, where 171 anti-choice laws were introduced last year, the radical right takeover of many state legislatures in the 1994 elections led states to enact more anti-choice laws in 1995 than the year before, and these laws pose greater obstacles and restrictions on access to abortion.

MR. LEHRER: The Supreme Court today blocked one state's effort to revise abortion regulations. It turned down Pennsylvania's petition to apply stricter reporting rules to Medicaid-funded abortions. The Court also rejected California Gov. Pete Wilson's challenge to the Federal Motor Voter Law. It allows people to register to vote while getting a driver's license. The Court said the law was constitutional, even though it requires states to pick up most of the costs. In Chechnya today, rebels offered to trade 29 abducted factory workers for Chechen fighters captured by Russian forces. The workers were seized Tuesday in the Chechen capital of Grozny. A Chechen government spokesman said they were alive and well. Some 30 Chechen fighters were arrested by Russian forces last week. Yasser Arafat was elected president of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza. Preliminary results showed more than 88 percent of voters supported the PLO chairman in Saturday's first even official Palestinian elections. Back in this country today, NASA scientists reported more on what has been found out about the planet Jupiter. They said the atmosphere surrounding it consists of strong winds, dry conditions, and very little water. The information came from data sent back from the unmanned spacecraft "Galileo." NASA researchers said the information was not what they had expected, and it may force them to rethink their theory about how planets are formed. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to Daschle and Armey, State of the Union Addresses, and Sec. of State Christopher. FOCUS - SETTING LIMITS?

MR. LEHRER: We do go first once again tonight to the ongoing battle over the budget and the national debt. Margaret Warner handles that.

MS. WARNER: The impasse over the best road to a balanced budget continues, but it is once again complicated by a spat over the national debt limit. We hear first from a Democrat, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota. Welcome, Senator.

SEN. THOMAS DASCHLE, Senate Minority Leader: [Capitol Hill] Thank you, Margaret.

MS. WARNER: I gather you were in these meetings this morning, rather this afternoon up on Capitol Hill when Treasury Sec. Rubin briefed you about the latest developments on the national debt limit. What can you tell us about what he told you?

SEN. DASCHLE: Margaret, what he said was that he's running out of options, that there really isn't much latitude left. He doesn't have any flexibility. By the end of February, we will have to have dealt with this issue. We can't avoid it any longer. We've got to deal with it. I think it's important to deal with it, and the Secretary urged us to do it as soon as possible.

MS. WARNER: And do you think the threat is for real?

SEN. DASCHLE: Well, you have to take the words of the Majority Leader in the House for real and others who have voiced a similar position. Obviously, it's an extraordinarily irresponsible position to take, but I take it as a real threat.

MS. WARNER: What I meant by this was Sec. Rubin last November was saying that there was also a threat, a possibility of default, and then he did find some sort of creative accounting ways to work around it. Did you all ask him about that, and did he say that absolutely he's out of all those options?

SEN. DASCHLE: Well, that's exactly what the secretary told us this afternoon. He said that indeed this is real, that he has run out of options, that there really is no other way with which to deal with the situation. He told us last Fall that while technically we were in a very dangerous and precarious position, he had latitude last Fall that he could use to a certain extent for a period of time. That's no longer possible. All of those options, all of those tools, all of that flexibility has now expired, and we've got to make a very difficult and important decision here in the Congress.

MS. WARNER: And now as you did say earlier that House Majority Leader Dick Armey said that, in fact, House Republicans would not agree to a clean debt limit extension but wanted to add a number of conditions and restrictions. Did Sec. Rubin say whether the President would be willing to agree to any of those in return for a debt limit increase?

SEN. DASCHLE: Well, of course, we don't know what the conditions are, but, in my view, the very threat of, of shutting the government down, of threatening the full faith and credit of this economy, of this government, simply to have your way in whatever political agenda there may be is irresponsible, it's wrong, and it's extreme. That's the kind of thing that gets us in trouble. It's the problem we had all through the negotiations with regard to federal employees and whether or not we open or shut the government. Obviously, this is far more disconcerting, far more of a concern to us when you're talking not only about the government, but about the entire economy.

MS. WARNER: And are you saying that you think the President should not agree, you know, some of the conditions suggested by Mr. Armey were, were, for instance, to shut down the Commerce Department, that was one he mentioned today. Another one was to restrict the Secretary of the Treasury in the future from doing the kind of creative accounting he did last time to get us to this point without default. I mean, if you just take those two conditions, are you saying the President should not accept anything like that?

SEN. DASCHLE: Well, my advice to the President would be absolutely not. Of course, this is the choice the President is going to have to make, but shutting down the Commerce Department is an example of the extremism here that I don't think has even support among Republicans here in the Senate. I think Sen. Dole is right. Enough is enough. No one understands shutting down the government. No one, I guarantee you, will understand putting the government and the country in default. That's not the way we do business here.

MS. WARNER: Now, if the financial markets do respond to this by either raising interest rates or the market going down, do you think that in the public's eye Republicans will, will carry all the blame, or do you think that Democrats in the White House might, might also come in for some blame?

SEN. DASCHLE: I don't know how the Democrats or the President could be held accountable or responsible when it's the Republicans, especially those in the House, who are advocating this position. We're not advocating it. We want to see a clean debt limit increase. We want to be able to deal with this in a responsible way. We believe that we ought to take it out of the context of budget negotiations and out of the context completely of politics. Let's not play politics with the economy. Let's not endanger the economy, the full faith and credit of this government simply because we can't have our way. That isn't the way you deal with it. You got to have compromise. You got to govern from the middle. You got to deal with both sides. That's what we want to do.

MS. WARNER: All right. Let me get your thoughts now on where the budget negotiations stand. Yesterday Trent Lott, the Senate Majority Leader, said he considered the prospects quite doubtful now for getting any kind of balanced budget deal. Do you agree with him?

SEN. DASCHLE: Well, Margaret, we're really talking about two things. There is absolutely no reason why we couldn't have a budget agreement. We've agreed in principle if you take the minimal amount of cuts proposed by either Democrats or Republicans, merge them together, we've agreed to $711 billion of deficit reduction, more than $100 billion more than you need to balance the budget. What we haven't agreed to is how you pay for a huge tax cut that we just don't think you can afford given the circumstances. We support a tax cut but we will not use Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment to pay for it, but we have agreed to a balanced budget. Seven years, using CBO numbers, there is no reason why Democrats and Republicans can't agree to that much. Let's bank it. Let's achieve the victory we want, let's get that agreement, and let's go on then to more negotiating.

MS. WARNER: Do you think the President could move any more--any closer to the Republicans in this?

SEN. DASCHLE: Well, as I said, we've already agreed that we've done all you need to to make the cuts in the programs that we care deeply about to balance the budget. That's already done, but I would advise the President not to go any further in cutting Medicare and cutting Medicaid or education or the environment so deeply as the Republicans are proposing to get the tax cut that they want. We can get a tax cut without cutting Medicare and Medicaid like they'd proposed.

MS. WARNER: You're aware, of course, that Sen. Dole has said that the President's budget is essentially phoney. I don't know that he used that adjective, but he said 90 percent of the cuts come in the last two years after the turn of the century. Is he right about that?

SEN. DASCHLE: Well, he's not right about that, and furthermore, I would say that our pattern in deficit reduction is almost identical to the Republican pattern. In fact, as you may know, the deficit under the Republican plan goes up for the next three years, goes up; it doesn't go down. And so--and the reason for that is that they have to accommodate the huge tax cut that they want. So there is room in the middle. We can find a resolution to this. We ought to go back to work. Let's not have any more breaks around here. Let's go back to work. Let's resolve this thing. Let's agree. Let's get this balanced budget part of it done, then we can go on to other issues relating to tax cuts and other things for which there isn't an agreement yet.

MS. WARNER: The Republicans are saying that the other option, of course, is to simply have another temporary funding bill, and that they might set the amount at say 75 percent of--as in fact the government, part of the government is operating now. What would be the consequences of that?

SEN. DASCHLE: I think the consequences of funding government at 75 percent would be devastating in some cases. The governmental agencies can deal with these circumstances in the first quarter, perhaps in the second quarter, but it becomes increasingly difficult and virtually impossible in the third and fourth quarters in some cases. You would have what is tantamount to a government shutdown before the end of the fiscal year in some areas of the government. I think that's wrong. It's what we all agreed was not working over the, the Christmas break. I would hope we wouldn't get to that again this year.

MS. WARNER: Well, thank you, Senator. Thanks very much.

SEN. DASCHLE: My pleasure.

MS. WARNER: Now, a Republican view. It comes from House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas. Welcome Congressman.

REP. DICK ARMEY, House Majority Leader: Hi. How are you all?

MS. WARNER: Hi. Fine. I couldn't see you, but now I can. Tell me your reaction to what Treasury Sec. Rubin has said. I gather he not only told the leadership today, the Democratic leadership, but he sent a letter to Speaker Gingrich saying the same thing. Do you think this threat's for real?

REP. ARMEY: Well, first of all, let me say that I just came out of a meeting with Speaker Gingrich. I was earlier in a meeting with Sen. Dole. Neither I nor the Senator, nor the Speaker have received any correspondence from the Secretary of the President. Now let me just tell you first of all, I have been here for 11 years. I have seen a lot of debt ceiling increases that have been run through the Democrat Congress in those 11 years. Never have I seen them run one through clean, without hanging something on it. One case they had a major crime bill; they've had tax increases; they've had budgets. The idea that you get a clean debt ceiling is a fiction that they made up only for their convenience of a moment. Secondly, we passed a debt ceiling increase to the President sometime ago. He vetoed it. Now, prior to that, this same Secretary Rubin talked to us and said, look, I got to have a debt ceiling, I got to have it now; if I don't have it right away, we're facing a default on the government's obligation; there's going to be a financial disaster. We sent him a debt ceiling; he didn't like it; the President vetoed it; and for the last sixty days or so, Sec. Rubin's got along just nicely by disinvesting the retirement programs of federal workers. Now if he's run out of those options, if it's in fact true that he has no more creative financing options, and if he and the President want a debt ceiling increase, this is a serious public policy matter, they ought to seriously communicate that to the majority who controls both the House and the Senate. But since they haven't made any official request of either the Senate or the House, it's hard for me to take them seriously, especially when I hear all the political rhetoric that still flows from people like Tom Daschle. It strikes me that they are, in fact, continuing to do a political process here. If they want a serious public policy initiative out of Congress, they must contact the leaders of Congress.

MS. WARNER: All right. Okay, Congressman, but, but Sec. Rubin says he has written to the Speaker and let's say the Speaker received this letter tomorrow, and the Treasury Secretary says, absolutely, positively, I'm out of creative accounting options by the end of February, are the Republicans going to go ahead and still insist on attaching conditions to the debt limit bill?

REP. ARMEY: Well, let me say first of all, given the Secretary's poor track record here, his assessment is not reliable, he is the boy who cried "wolf" in this case. We, we have already determined that this is something that the President must make as a request to the leaders of Congress. The Secretary's simply not reliable, given his past record here on this matter.

MS. WARNER: All right. Excuse me, Congressman.

REP. ARMEY: If the President of the United States asks for an increase in the debt ceiling, he will get one. And I hope when he does so, he will choose to not veto it, as he did the last time.

MS. WARNER: All right. So what you're saying is you want to have these representations come from the President, himself?

REP. ARMEY: Well, again, what--this is probably something we would not feel so strongly about if the Secretary didn't have such a bad track record of inaccurately representing what his needs were and what he could or could not live without from past experiences, beginning early in November.

MS. WARNER: All right. What if the President tells you that he refuses as his spokesman said today, that he would not accept any kind of extra restrictions or conditions?

REP. ARMEY: Well, we would send the President a debt ceiling increase. He is not--it is not possible to get one through the House, i.e., as it were clean. You would have to attach something of some significance to get it through the House. I know that. The Speaker knows that. The President knows that. When it comes to the White House, the President would then have the option of signing it or not signing it. If the President did not sign that, then he would, of course, be the person that would put the nation in peril of some, of some insolvency or whatever would be the consequences.

MS. WARNER: But are you sure the public would see it that way? You just heard Sen. Daschle call your position irresponsible and extreme and said the Republicans were playing politics with the economy. I mean, are you ready to take the political risk?

REP. ARMEY: I'm willing to bet that the American people are as tired of listening to Sen. Daschle's political rhetoric as I am, and I'm not much concerned about it. Talk about the boy who cried "wolf," they can't open--he and his colleagues, people like Gephardt and Daschle--they can't open their mouths without saying words like "irresponsible," "extreme," et cetera, and so forth. People are just bored with listening to 'em.

MS. WARNER: Well, now how do you explain--let me ask this a different way. How sure are you that the President would respond to this pressure? When you tried to do this with the government shutdown, he did respond and, in fact, the polls suggest the public blamed the Republicans.

REP. ARMEY: Well, you know, the President has got to make up his mind. What is the story he's going to tell? Are we in a state of near crisis because, in fact, the Secretary of the Treasury after the President's first veto on the debt ceiling increase has exhausted all of the retirement reserves of federal employees available to him, in terms of his creative financing, and therefore must absolutely 100 percent have a debt ceiling increase or put the government into insolvency, if that's going to be his story, then I would think he would be more than happy to sign any debt ceiling increase he got. Unless he were to think that signing a debt ceiling increase that allows some modicum of the success of the agenda that this Congress was trying to put forward is a more dire thing for him to have to live with than putting the country in insolvency, he'd have to weigh that.

MS. WARNER: All right. Let me ask you--

REP. ARMEY: The President, again, he has to come to terms with some responsibility for his actions.

MS. WARNER: And let's turn finally to prospects for a balanced budget deal. Do you agree with Sen. Lott, who said yesterday he considered the prospects for a balanced budget agreement now quite doubtful?

REP. ARMEY: It appears right now that the President is so captured by the left wing of his party that he is not able to accept the necessary entitlement reforms, programmatic changes in welfare. Remember, he promised to end welfare as we know it, and he vetoed that, the kinds of, of reforms in welfare, Medicare, and Medicaid that everybody in this town has known for years must be done if you're going to have a real balanced budget effort, he is not willing to break with the left wing of his party enough to sign such a package. Until he can break with the left wing of his party, get away from the liberals a little bit, I don't think we'll be able to reach a balanced budget agreement.

MS. WARNER: Okay. And what's wrong with the suggestions made by the President and made by Sen. Daschle that there are enough cuts on the table in which both sides agree now if you were to give up the tax cut and just go with the spending savings that everyone agrees with, you could get a seven year balanced budget plan and then wait for after the election to, to refine it further?

REP. ARMEY: Well, a few things that are wrong with it, first of all, I have--I sat through all those 50 torturous hours at the white house, along with Sen. Daschle. Tonight, right now, on your show is the first time I heard anything about a $700 billion number that he just apparently created for tonight's show, so there's a fiction that attaches to these proclamations they've made. Secondly, you don't have a balanced budget deal unless it, in fact, is real and will stick through the whole seven years. The President has put some options on the table. The cuts that he talks about don't take effect until after he would leave office even if he got a second term.

MS. WARNER: Okay, Congressman.

REP. ARMEY: So it's not a real deal, and we're not going to take a real deal--

MS. WARNER: Thanks very much.

REP. ARMEY: --a non-real deal.

MS. WARNER: We're going to have to leave it there, but thanks very much for being with us.

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, State of the Union Addresses and Secretary of State Christopher. FOCUS - STATE OF THE UNION

MR. LEHRER: Now, some historical perspective on tomorrow night's State of the Union Address. Elizabeth Farnsworth is in charge of that.

MS. FARNSWORTH: When President Clinton addresses the Joint Session of Congress tomorrow, it will be the fourth time he has done so since taking office. We begin with this background report from Kwame Holman.

KWAME HOLMAN: Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution requires the President from time to time to give to the Congress information of the State of the Union. The idea was patterned after England, where the King or Queen addressed both Houses of Parliament at the start of each session, but at the first State of the Union George Washington cut any royal edge off the proceedings by wearing a suit of brown broadcloth made in Connecticut. The third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, took the anti-royalist sentiment a step further and sent his address to Congress by letter. That tradition held and no President gave the State of the Union in person again until Woodrow Wilson in 1913. In the interim, the messages were fairly routine, mostly devoted to relations between the United States and foreign nations, as well as various Indian people. The Presidents rarely inserted their own policy proposals, with a few exceptions. President Jackson suggested there be two Supreme Courts, one for each side of the Appalachian Mountains, and in his second State of the Union Address, Abraham Lincoln proposed a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. Twentieth Century Presidents became much more activist in their State of the Union Addresses. Theodore Roosevelt epitomized that transition, once clenching his fists and saying, "Sometimes I wish I could be President and Congress too." In his messages, Roosevelt called for active federal regulation of industry, tougher anti-trust laws, and conservation of natural resources.

PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON: [1964] And this administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.

MR. HOLMAN: In similar fashion, Lyndon Johnson used the State of the Union to present his Civil Rights and Great Society programs. Johnson also was the President who changed the time of the addresses from their traditional noon start to the evening so that prime time television would broadcast the speech. Television coverage enabled Presidents to speak to the nation, as well as the Congress, and established a modern tradition for State of the Union Addresses.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Now to an examination of Presidential State of the Union Messages. It comes from three "NewsHour" regulars: Presidential Historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Michael Beschloss, Journalist and author Haynes Johnson, and they're joined tonight by former Reagan/Bush Cabinet Official and author William Bennett. Welcome, all of you. Doris, how important is a State of the Union Address historically?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN, Presidential Historian: Well, I think what it is, is a source of potential power for the President which only becomes real power if he does it right, if he's got the enthusiasm, if he's got something to say, if he presents some sense of the future, and it hasn't been used very much as a real force of power. And the interesting thing is it's one of those moments when the President is in the well of the Congress. You see the Supreme Court come in; you see the Congressmen come in. You can't help but feel emotional if you're a citizen watching one of the few occasions when the whole government is together. A couple of times when Presidents used it brilliantly, Roosevelt presented his lend lease package in 1941 to a State of the Union. And at the time, the majority sentiment was way against lend lease. And, in fact, when he delivered his State of the Union and called for lend lease, the Republicans didn't clap at all. And Eleanor was so mad that they didn't clap that she wrote a column the next day and said, they should have clapped; they should be Americans first and partisans last. And then the next day the Republicans yelled at her and said, who does she think she is, a queen, but two months later, the-- after that State of the Union, lend lease passed. And as we saw on the beginning, Lyndon Johnson in 1965 presented his whole Great Society program in that simple address, and by the end of the year, it almost all was passed. That's a wonderful story connected to that. After it was over, he said to Jack Valenti, "Hey, who many applause did I get?". And Valenti said, "Oh, Mr. President, you got 79 applause. It was amazing." And he said, "You're wrong, Valenti. I got 80. I was counting them." So I think it depends on whether they use it right. Truman didn't use it very well in his first time. Bush certainly didn't use it well in 1992, but we can talk about that.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What do you think about that, Michael, how important do you think they are?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS, Presidential Historian: I think it does a couple of other things too. You can change the national mood. 1961, Dwight Eisenhower leaving office, a few days before leaving office gave a speech saying the State of the Union is very good and also America is doing a very good job opposing the Soviet Union in the Cold War; we have a situation of predominance. John Kennedy comes in nine days after being inaugurated, gives exactly the opposite portrait. The nation is in bad shape, and also we are in a state of crisis against the Soviet Union and the tide of events, he said, is running out, in every theater a potential war. That was something that was an enormous jolt to the national psyche. I think the other thing that the State of the Union Addresses tend to do is they help to change a President's presentation of himself. The best example in recent years has been Bill Clinton. You saw the first one in '93, a President who was asking for the second largest tax increase in American history. Then the second one he asked for universal health care, threatening to veto bills that fell short of that. Then last year you heard a speech that was almost the speech of a Republican showing that he had really gotten the message of that very bad 1994 defeat. So when you've got a President who is to some extent changing his personality as he goes through the Presidency, as this one has been, I think that's a very useful tool.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Haynes, do you think there are times when a State of the Union Address is more important than other times, war time for example.

HAYNES JOHNSON, Journalist/Author: Oh, sure, and I think this one by the way tomorrow night is important, and they usually aren't as a rule. I think the President's right to send 'em up by letter in the old days, because if you read the actual addresses, they're a laundry list of all kinds of things. They aren't speeches as such, but when it's really an important moment in American History, as we have now a great division we just saw tonight between Sen. Daschle and Mr. Armey, really fundamental differences about the role of government, the purposes of the society, and in the times of real crises, I remember going up here to watch Nixon in his last State of the Union Message, you could feel in the room what Doris says about a vehicle, a vehicle, the whole country was watching, the chamber, and America is wrapped onto that scene. The same was true of Lyndon Johnson when he was at the end of the Vietnam War. It was a very different period from the Lyndon Johnson if you had seen the scene at the end when--of his Presidency as opposed to that high moment of the Civil Rights period. Now we have Mr. Clinton who is voluble, as we know. He can speak too long, and the country will be watching him. This is his presidential address for his campaign, but more than that, there's a lot of uneasiness, so there will be people chemically watching how well does he do, what does he say, how does he come over?

MS. FARNSWORTH: Bill Bennett, do you agree with Haynes that this is a time when the address is more important than usual?

WILLIAM BENNETT, Former Reagan/Bush Cabinet Office: Yeah. These are very important times in terms of presenting a point of view. But what makes it, I think, more important and perhaps more interesting is Bill Clinton, and we just saw a great divide between Armey and Daschle. We don't really know which side Bill Clinton is on. I mean, I don't think you know with Bill Clinton until he comes and shows up. We might get the, the liberal President of the first two States of the Union, as Michael talked about, or we might get a President standing up tomorrow night saying, I'm for a balanced budget in seven years and I'm for reducing taxes, and I'm for reducing even capital gains taxes, all of which I think have recently become, some more recently than others, Bill Clinton's positions. So with Bill Clinton, the State of the Union takes on an added kind of effect, which is who will he be tonight, which person will stand before us, and what will his view be? What will be the guiding metaphor? And I'm sure we'll have some metaphor will be rising and shining or we'll be funking or we'll be something. Whatever we will be, we will not be what I'd like to see in some State of the Union by some Republican or Democrat, which is, all right, we're now 219 years old, we're going to act like grown-ups, we're going to talk about things in a straightforward way, but the setting, as has already been so well described here, is so glorious and intoxicating it must just lift people up into this kind of rhetoric and applause--

MS. GOODWIN: It's one of those few moments when it's almost like our kingly ceremony, where you can feel the pomp and the circumstances, and that's an important piece. It melds us together as people. And that's why if Presidents don't use it well, they've really lost a chance. I think the real challenge for Clinton that makes it hard is he has that majority Republicans there, so he can't depend on the applause that the Democrats normally would have outnumbered the Republicans, but on the other hand, what I think he's really got to talk about is the future, how are we going to get somewhere, and how am I going to make the Democrats more likely to bring us that future, without making the Republicans so angry that they sit on their hands; it's a very difficult mine field that he's walking through, more than other Presidents, when their own Congress could have been the majority.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Is that kind of a rule of thumb, do you think, Michael, that you have to talk about the future, you have to be optimistic, or the best? Is there something that the best addresses have in common?

MR. BESCHLOSS: Well, you have to be optimistic when you're an incumbent President. Gerald Ford, for instance, came in in 1974. His first State of the Union was a few months after taking office in the wake of Watergate and at a time of great recession that he could at least argue was the result of the Nixon economic policies and not his, and so he was able to say the state of the union is not good. The other thing is that as much as it is helpful for a President to do that, oftentimes it is useful to a President to declare a period of crisis in the way that Kennedy did. Jimmy Carter, for instance, in 1980, at the beginning of the campaign year, was in a period of very high inflation, Afghanistan had just been invaded, the United States was moving into a period of much more truculence toward the Soviet Union, so he had to show that he had gotten it, that he had changed from his first year in office when he was saying that Americans had traditionally had an inordinate fear of Communism.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Was he able to do that, do you think, in the State of the Union?

MR. BESCHLOSS: He was, although I think to some extent Americans remembered what he had done in 1977 and 1978, and when you got into the Fall of 1980, I think there were very few people who voted for Carter on the thought that this was someone who was going to be more of a Cold warrior certainly than Ronald Reagan.

MR. JOHNSON: We say we want good news and we want positive. Americans certainly do, but there's also a time when you can speak to when the people are troubled, and this is the role for a leader. I mean, Churchill, we forget our own Presidents, we have nothing to offer but blood, tears, toil, and trouble, and we look back at one of the all-time great addresses, Franklin Roosevelt at his best, the war is going to get worse before it gets better, so there is an opportunity for a President or a leader to speak to the country in a way that you don't normally have. One other thing about this, people are going to be watching the Congress too. This is a very highly charged emotional time. And you remember, we've had jeers and cat calls from each side, unusually so in recent years, so that's going to tell us too where the tone is going to go.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Do you think people are paying more attention now, or less than in the past? Any feeling about that, any of you?

MS. GOODWIN: Well, I think one of the difficulties is that even 10 years ago if it were on all three networks and it was the only thing you could watch, more people are going to be watching the State of the Union.

MS. FARNSWORTH: TV has made a difference, hasn't it?

MS. GOODWIN: Oh, I think there's no question when you can see the event it makes a difference, and that's one of the problems, when Presidents go on too long, there's impatience. That was Clinton's great problem when he went on too long. In fact, it's interesting when Lyndon Johnson was doing his first State of the Union, he remembered the first one he had ever heard, which was Harry Truman's first State of the Union, which went on for 25,000 words, and Lyndon Johnson said he almost fell asleep, and so he was determined, he told all of his people, 3,000 words, that's all I'm going to give, but it's hard for them to be too short, because every cabinet member wants something from their department mentioned because it is an agenda for the future, although Clinton can't easily make it an agenda because he doesn't control the Congress, so this is going to be more philosophic, in my judgment. He can't give out a laundry list. It doesn't make sense.

MR. JOHNSON: It should be, don't you think?

MS. GOODWIN: It should be. He may--that may be a blessing in disguise for him.

MR. BENNETT: I think it would be nice to do something between one of those horribly long speeches and a sound bite, something twenty- five/thirty minutes, so people can then move on, maybe thirty- five/forty minutes, but a little philosophy and maybe he could say what he truly believes about things, what things, what problems he sees in the country, what problems he thinks government can address and perhaps some problems that he thinks government can't address. This might be his last State of the Union, some of us hope it is; others don't, but he can use this opportunity to say, look, this is what I really think; I know I've confused some of you over the last few years, here, let me lay out what I really think and what the challenge is, because there is, it seems to me, a significant philosophical divide between the President and the man who will be sitting on his right shoulder. As you look at the camera--you got him between Gore or Gingrich--I mean Gingrich--

MS. FARNSWORTH: But it makes a big difference that it's an election year, doesn't it? That's different because it's an election year.

MR. BENNETT: Yeah, and look--

MS. FARNSWORTH: Tell me about that.

MR. BENNETT: Bill Clinton is a political figure. I think we all know that. The question some of us have is, is he anything more than a political figure, is he governed by anything other than political motives? This is a great opportunity, given the setting, given that it is among the most Presidential of settings, for him to present himself as a person of conviction, and let's see what that is, but surely, this is the beginning of the '96 campaign from his perspective, and it'll be interesting to see what he has to say about themes.

MS. FARNSWORTH: You think it makes a big difference that it is an election year, Doris?

MS. GOODWIN: Oh, absolutely. I mean, in 1992, when George Bush gave his State of the Union, and it was a very pedestrian State of the Union, people said in some ways he lost the campaign right then because he didn't give a vision of where he thought the next Republican administration, if he were to win, should go, so I think Clinton is going to be judged that way, but the Republicans in the audience are going to be judged too. I think they all want to be comporting themselves with dignity tonight. I don't think they want to look like attack dogs tonight because the people aren't going to want that.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Tomorrow night.

MS. GOODWIN: Tomorrow night, right. Exactly so.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Yeah.

MR. BESCHLOSS: One other point, if I might come in, one thing that George Bush lacked by '92 and really through '92, as Doris has suggested, is he wasn't terribly good in suggesting the kind of things programmatically he would do in a second term. That's what we really missed from that speech; he was terrific as a chief of state, it was a wonderful unifying speech in that respect. And Bill Clinton, as in so many other ways with George Bush, is really his mirror image. What we've gotten in these speeches, and I think throughout the Clinton Presidency, has been a lot of programs, some of them changing, but we haven't seen him in that role. This is the last time he will be seen as a real President and not a candidate, at least in this year.

MS. FARNSWORTH: The addresses can actually hurt a President, can't they? They can actually do significant damage.

MR. JOHNSON: Oh, sure. You see things through television that you don't see otherwise. I used to go up and sat always there in the chamber there to look down on it and I realized later it's better to watch it through camera because that's the way the American people are seeing it, and you see something in the face, you see something in the temperament that you really can't quite possibly see unless you're looking through the screen.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What about the pomp and ceremony, has it always been sort of the way it is now? It's very impressive to see everybody as you've said file in. Has it changed?

MS. GOODWIN: Well, it's interesting, as we saw at the beginning, when Wilson first came back to give it in person after it hadn't been done in person ever since Jefferson decided not to, he was really lambasted by the opposition, saying, who does he think he is, we didn't want a king, we've created a President, because they saw that with that pomp and circumstance, no matter how badly the President does, he is still the President at that moment, he's the last one in the room, the music plays, everyone stands up. You really have a feeling of his centrality, so that I think it does have that impact and is one of those few times when it does, and Presidents have got to use it. That's why it's an enormous loss.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Well, thank you all for being with us. NEWSMAKER

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight, a Newsmaker interview with the Secretary of State, Warren Christopher. Mr. Secretary, welcome.

WARREN CHRISTOPHER, Secretary of State: Thank you, Jim.

MR. LEHRER: First, let's talk about Bosnia. The big deadline, the first big deadline, came and went on Friday. What is your overall assessment of how the mission is going?

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: Jim, I think the overall compliance rate is relatively good. On the most important issue, i.e., whether or not there would be a separation of forces, whether they move back from this line, there was good compliance there.

MR. LEHRER: And that was the deadline on Friday, one of the deadlines.

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: That's right. Now, there was good compliance there, good spirit, I think, on behalf of both of the forces that are moving back from that line, so the most important task was accomplished. With respect--

MR. LEHRER: Excuse me. Did, did--do you have the feeling that, that the only reason they moved back was because there were armed Americans and other NATO forces there, or was--did they do it in a spirit of hey, this is what we need to do, and we want to do?

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: I think there's a lot of spirit there. Let's comply with the Dayton agreement. Let's see if we can't get this war behind us now. Certainly, the man in the street, the common person there, wants to have this war behind him. I think a lot of the soldiers are very war weary too now. No doubt, it was helpful to have the American troops there in great strength. They knew there'd be consequences if they didn't move back, but overall, I think our, our leaders, i.e., the leaders of our forces there, find a good spirit of compliance by the troops so far. Now, the second aspect of it was whether or not there would be a removal of the foreign forces. There has been some removal of the foreign forces.

MR. LEHRER: Now we're talking about the Mujahedeen and the Muslim--for the Muslims, it's some others--

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: The Croatian forces moving out to Croatia, and so forth, all the foreign forces were supposed to be back out of the country by the same deadline. I think there's been some compliance there, but there probably is not full compliance. It's a tricky thing to deal with, Jim, because some of the foreign forces have married Bosnian woman, some of them really blended in, melted into the society. It probably would be quite hard to find out whether or not they actually have left the country. So we have some distance to go there as well. Pardon me, Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Sure. Who's making the decision on, on that, as to what constitutes a foreign troop or a foreign force?

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: Well, that's one of the things that our military commanders, Adm. Smith, the other military commanders there, will have to be judging that in the final analysis, but we'll also have to judge that as the United States because we've had it very clear to the Bosnians that our obligation to equip and train their forces is completely conditional on the foreign forces being gone, and we've made that point to President Izetbegovic that if they expect us to furnish equipment to train their forces, then they must get rid of all the foreign forces. Now, I think that's a fairly high incentive. Now, another thing that was to have happened by the 19th in a place where we're somewhat disappointed, and that is in the exchange of prisoners, the release of prisoners. Both sides were supposed to release all their prisoners, those were unconditional. There was some prisoner release that took place but it's not been satisfactory yet. Amb. Holbrooke is in the region. In the last few days he's been trying to insist on that. And one of the lessons of this period, Jim, is that we're going to have to monitor it closely, we're going to have to keep reminding the parties of their commitment until we really get the kind of compliance that makes it set in, welded into the picture.

MR. LEHRER: Well, the Bosnian--be specific--the Bosnian Muslims said we are not going to release all the Serb prisoners until we get an accounting from the Serbs of 24,000 of our people who are missing. Now, is that, in your view, a legitimate demand on the part of the Bosnian government?

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: It's not a legitimate demand in the sense that they're entitled to keep back their prisoners until it happens. It was an unconditional obligation that both sides give up their prisoners.

MR. LEHRER: So that's a new thing that they have put in? That was not part of the Dayton accord?

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: Exactly. Now, certainly it's legitimate, the request on their part. And we'll work with them to try to achieve that request, but there is no solid basis for their keeping back the prisoners that they hold until they get this information.

MR. LEHRER: So what happens then, Mr. Secretary? I mean, if they continue to hold out, and they continue not to release their prisoners, what happens?

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: Well, Jim, there's a number of incentives we have; there are a number of things basically they'll only achieve if they comply with the agreement. As I mentioned, we will not go forward with the equipment and training unless they are in compliance with the agreement. They'll not have a right to the reconstruction fund unless they're in compliance with the agreement. So there's a fairly strong incentive for them finally to get into compliance. What I think is happening, it's the dead of winter; people are just getting accustomed to this new status; they're trying to work their way through it, so I'm not by any means discouraged, Jim. I think the overall compliance is relatively good. In an overall sense, people seem to be trying to comply. There's still some debating points. We'll have those for a long time, but I don't think we ought to be discouraged. I think we ought to redouble our efforts to help them comply.

MR. LEHRER: But this is a serious matter, that they have not complied.

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: Oh, it is a serious matter, especially with respect to the prisoners.

MR. LEHRER: When you said at the beginning that the NATO forces made the consequences clear, in other words, the failure to disengage, that those consequences were clear to all sides, how was that done? What were the consequences that, that faced the failure to disengage?

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: Well, the way it was done was by giving warning to the leaders of the, of the troops there that needed to move back, and frankly, NATO was prepared to forcefully move them back. We are not going to be in a situation like the UN forces were, the so-called UNPROFOR forces, who really did not exercise the authority. You can be sure that if those forces didn't move back, they would be moved back.

MR. LEHRER: Is the same kind of consequence there on the prisoner exchange matter as well?

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: No, I would not say it's the same kind of consequence, Jim. The moving the forces back was the highest priority. The other is our commitment to the Dayton agreement but the, the NATO forces are not going to enforce those in exactly the same way as they would of the separation of forces.

MR. LEHRER: All right now on the war crimes investigation, there have been all kinds of, of statements coming from State Department officials and also from Defense Department officials and a lot of other people. What exactly is the U.S. policy toward helping the investigations of these war crimes?

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: Well, we have a very strong policy to help the investigation. The United States has done more for the war crimes tribunal than any other country in the world. They've given them more money, more staff, and we're helping in any way we can. We're turning over all the information we have, including intelligence information. Right now, of course. Asst. Sec. John Shattuck is in the region. He's been permitted to visit a number of the sites of the terrible atrocities--and there were terrible atrocities there. We're going to be turning that information over to the war crimes tribunal. I'm very glad to tell you, I think perhaps you already know, that there was today an agreement between Adm. Smith and Judge--Justice Goldstone, who's the chief prosecutor of the war crimes tribunal, which calls on the IFOR to cooperate with the war crimes tribunal and Justice Goldstone said he was satisfied with the agreement of cooperation between the IFOR forces, i.e., between the NATO forces and the war crimes tribunal.

MR. LEHRER: Now, does that mean that U.S. forces or IFOR forces, NATO forces, will, in fact, escort people into the sites, they will provide security of the sites, keep other people out of there who might want to come in and destroy evidence and all that sort of thing?

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: Well, the agreement between Justice Goldstone and Adm. Smith indicates that in the right circumstances when the NATO forces have the capacity to do so, that they will provide security for those who are coming to, to view, to investigate the war crimes, and I think we'll see that evolve. It's clear that the NATO forces will, to the extent that they have capacity, will to the extent that their priority tasks, which is moving the parties apart, are done, they will assist the war crimes tribunal. I think it was a very important meeting today between Adm. Smith and Justice Goldstone because they, they worked out a modus vivendi between them. They worked out a way that they can work together, so that was an important step.

MR. LEHRER: All right, sir, on Russia, President Yeltsin said today he'll probably run for reelection. Does he remain America's candidate?

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: Jim, America doesn't have a candidate in that election. We've worked with President Yeltsin. He is the President of the country. He's been a reformer. We've been able to accomplish a number of things together, particularly in the de-nuclearization field, but America is for an election being held, we are very strongly supportive of the reformers who will want to continue the reform, but we don't have a candidate in that election. It would be entirely improper for us to do so.

MR. LEHRER: Sure. I meant that in a general sense. I mean, we've always supported President Yeltsin. What do you make of his, the recent resignations and firings of some of the reformers from his cabinet and replacing them with people who are considered hard- liners, is that going in the wrong direction?

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: Jim, let me step back from this just a moment- -

MR. LEHRER: Sure.

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: --and say this is a very important relationship we have with Russia, the relationship over the nuclear arsenal that they have obviously is important. They're a very powerful country. We've worked together in a number of areas, such as Bosnia, such as in getting the nukes out of the various countries in the former Soviet Union, so there are a number of areas where we need to work together. On the other hand, we see in recent days and weeks reform under considerable strain in Russia, and that's obviously a matter of concern to us. It's in the very strong self-interest of Russia to continue on the reform path. Our partnership with them is dependent upon their continuing on this reform path. Russia's access to funds, for example, from the International Monetary Fund, and they're looking toward a $9 billion supply of funds, that really is contingent on their continuing the path to reform, so I think it'd be quite short- sighted of them in the broadest sense not to continue on, on the path of reform. I would not try to make it in terms of individuals. In the past, sometimes we've seen individuals replaced, and we were quite apprehensive. Perhaps when Fedorov and Gaidar replaced, but the reform in the economy has continued to this point, so I hope the people who have been fired will be replaced by people who have a strong reform bent. We're not going to pre-judge that, but as I say, it would be quite short-sighted, I think, of the Russians not to maintain that path of reform. I think it's right for them, but it also, it's going to affect very importantly their access to western institutions.

MR. LEHRER: And finally, on the Middle East, Mr. Secretary, what is your reaction to Yasser Arafat's big victory in, in being elected president of the Palestinian Authority by 88 percent?

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: Jim, first, I think I ought to apologize to your viewers for this very scratchy voice today.

MR. LEHRER: No apologies are necessary.

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: Well, it was real a milestone. The Palestinian election is something that was really a turning point in that area. It's a mandate for peace. You know, it's very interesting to me, Hamas, the opponents of Arafat, the opponents of peace, urged a boycott of the election, and yet there was an 85 percent turnout in the Gaza area where Hamas is supposed to be strong. Isn't that really quite incredible? So this is a very important factor for the future. The monitors indicated that it was a credible election, I think, in an overall sense, although they're still counting the votes, it apparently is a free and fair election, so it's a real milestone and one of the things we can take some little confidence in, we had another important development today in which here in Washington the Tunisian government and the Israeli government agreed that they would establish, in effect, an official facility in each other's country which is called an interest section. There's a transition going on, a transformation going on in the Middle East. The election was one indication but this development here in Washington today was also important.

MR. LEHRER: And then of course the Syrian/Israeli talks as well and they're proceeding, are they not?

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: Yes, they will open again at the Center in Eastern Maryland, in the shore of Eastern Maryland on Wednesday of this week. Delegations will be coming from both countries, and this time they'll be bringing their security experts, their military experts, and that really gets down to the core, core problem, perhaps the most important problem, a long ways to go on that track, but we've got a new process that's very promising, I think.

MR. LEHRER: All right, Mr. Secretary, thank you very much.

SEC. CHRISTOPHER: Thank you, Jim. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Monday, First Lady Hillary Clinton will testify Friday before a Whitewater grand jury in Washington. Deputy White House Counsel Mark Fabiany said Mrs. Clinton received a subpoena last Friday, and Treasury Sec. Robert Rubin said default on the national debt could come next month. He said Congress must raise the federal debt limit, but House Republicans have threatened to block such a move. We'll see you tomorrow night with Shields & Gigot--Shields & Gigot on the State of the Union Address, among other things. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.