The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, the news of this Tuesday; then a report on today's Senate confirmation of the man now known as Associate Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito; a look at the footprints left by departing Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan; a preview of tonight's state of the union address by David Brooks and Tom Oliphant; and some thoughts about Coretta Scott King, who died last night.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: The Senate confirmed Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court today. The vote was 58-42, mostly along party lines. President Bush congratulated the judge at the White House. Later, Alito took the oath of office in a private ceremony. With that, he replaced Sandra Day O'Connor, whose retirement is now official. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary.

The president delivers his fifth state of the union address tonight. He'll do it, as always, at the capitol before a joint session of Congress. We'll have more on the speech later in the program, plus complete coverage, including the Democratic response, beginning at 9:00 P.M. Eastern Time, on most PBS stations.

Coretta Scott King died last night after battling ovarian cancer. Her passing came two weeks after the holiday honoring her husband, Martin Luther King Jr. She carried on his work in civil rights when he was gunned down in 1968. A longtime friend, former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young, said Mrs. King lived a life of struggle and hope.

ANDREW YOUNG: She realized the good and the ill in each and every aspect of our society. But she always put her faith in the fact that with the right, you know, efforts on the part of people of goodwill that we would

overcome.

JIM LEHRER: Mrs. King was at a health clinic in Mexico when she died. The funeral was expected to take place in Atlanta but there was no immediate word on the arrangements. Coretta Scott King was 78 years old. And we'll have more on her life and legacy later in the program.

The U.N. Nuclear Agency has found new evidence Iran may be trying to build nuclear weapons. The Associated Press reported today it's a document Iran obtained on the nuclear black market. The report said the U.N. Agency concluded the document's only use is for weapons. Last night, permanent members of the U.N. Security Council agreed to take up the issue. That could result in sanctions.

In Iraq today, a British soldier was killed near Basra, in a roadside bombing. It was the second British death in two days, and the 100th since the war began. Also today, the Iraqi national security advisor projected U.S. forces in Iraq will fall below 100,000 this year. The current level is about 136,000.

ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt were flown back to the United States today. They'd been wounded Sunday in Iraq then taken to a U.S. military hospital in Germany. Today they were airlifted to Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland. A military doctor said their prognosis is "excellent."

Hamas insisted today it will not be "blackmailed" by western threats to cut off aid to the Palestinians. The U.S. and Europe are pressing the militant group to recognize Israel when it takes over the Palestinian government. Russian President Putin warned today against making any funding cutoff. He also urged Hamas to give up violence.

Nearly 70 countries and international groups pledged continued aid to Afghanistan today. A meeting in London adopted a five-year plan. It calls for Afghanistan to fight corruption, and wipe out the growing of opium poppies. But Afghan President Karzai warned that will take time.

PRESIDENT HAMID KARZAI: In my view and in the view of the United Nations that shares it with me, perhaps Afghanistan will need at least ten years of a strong systematic, consistent effort in eradication, in law enforcement, and in the provision to the Afghan farmer of alternative economy in order for us to be free of poppies by that time.

JIM LEHRER: Under the plan, Afghanistan promised to abolish armed militias by 2007, and work to end militant violence. Some 1,600 people were killed in attacks last year, the most since 2001.

A former postal worker shot and killed five people last night in southern California. Another was critically wounded. The woman opened fire at a mail processing plant near Santa Barbara. Then she shot and killed herself. There was no word on a motive.

The Federal Reserve raised a key interest rate again today. The Federal Funds rate went up another quarter-point to 4.5 percent to keep inflation in check. In response, major banks raised the prime rate to 7.5 percent, the highest in five years.

And the Senate today confirmed Ben Bernanke as the new Fed chairman. He replaces longtime chairman Alan Greenspan. We'll have more on Greenspan later in the program.

Income gains for American workers last year were the smallest in nine years. The Labor Department reported today, wages, and benefits rose 3.1 percent for civilian employees in 2005. But counting inflation, worker pay actually fell slightly, for the first time since 1996. Still, the Conference Board, a business group, reported consumer confidence hit a three-year high in January.

On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 35 points to close below 10,865. The NASDAQ fell about a point to close below 2306.

And that's it for the news Summary tonight. Now, Judge Alito becomes Justice Alito; the footprints of Alan Greenspan; Brooks and Oliphant; and memories of Coretta Scott King.

FOCUS - CONFIRMED

JIM LEHRER: Congressional correspondent Kwame Holman has our Alito story.

KWAME HOLMAN: Before it confirmed Samuel Alito this morning as the Supreme Court's 110th justice, the Senate's second-ranking Democrat, Illinois's Dick Durbin issued this warning.

SEN. DICK DURBIN: I fear on this January morning in the Senate chambers a chill wind blows -- a chill wind which will snuff out the dying light of Sandra Day O'Connor's Supreme Court legacy.

KWAME HOLMAN: Democrats had implored President Bush to replace retiring Justice O'Connor with someone like her, a moderate voice who would temper decisions on issues such as affirmative action and abortion.

Vermont's Patrick Leahy:

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: He could have nominated so many people that would have united this country, would have gotten ninety to one hundred votes here in the United States Senate; Republicans and Democrats would have felt united; the country would have felt united.

But instead of uniting the country, the president has chosen to reward a faction of his party at the risk of dividing the country.

KWAME HOLMAN: Republicans meanwhile argued that President Bush's re-election gave him the right to nominate any one of his choosing and Alabama's Jeff Sessions said that during the confirmation hearings Judge Alito proved to be an ideal selection for the high court.

SEN. JEFF SESSIONS: He was most forthcoming. He was asked more questions and grilled and grilled and answered them with such skill, fairness and reasonableness, he was unflappable in his testimony, so judicious in his approach to every question -- it was a tour de force, a really model of how a judge should perform. I could not be more proud of him and more proud of President Bush for nominating him.

KWAME HOLMAN: The president said he chose Samuel Alito because of his extensive judicial record. The 55-year-old New Jersey native spent six years as a lawyer in the Reagan Justice Department and three years as a United States attorney. For the past 15 years, Judge Alito has sat on the third U.S. Circuit court of appeals in Philadelphia.

SENATOR: Welcome, judge.

SAMUEL ALITO: Thank you, Senator.

SENATOR: Like I told you right out of my window I can see the Supreme Court.

KWAME HOLMAN: So, after countless meetings with senators, more than 600 questions answered during three days of hearings, and four days of Senate debate over his qualifications, final judgment came just after 11:00 A.M.

SEN. BILL FIRST: There's only one thing left to say. I ask for the yeahs and nays on the nomination of Samuel Alito to serve as associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

SEN. TED STEVENS: The question is, will the Senate advise and consent to the nomination of Samuel A. Alito Jr. of New Jersey to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States? The yeahs and nays have been ordered. The clerk will call the roll.

CLERK CALLING ROLL: Mr. Akaka, Mr. Akaka, no.

KWAME HOLMAN: As is Senate tradition for the confirmation of a Supreme Court justice, all members responded from their desks.

CLERK CALLING ROLL:

CLERK: Mr. Thune.

SEN. THUNE: Aye.

CLERK: Mr. Thune, aye.

Mr. Dodd.

SEN. DODD: No.

CLERK: Mr. Dodd, no.

KWAME HOLMAN: As the roll call progressed all but Republican, Chafee of Rhode Island, voted to confirm Alito. All but four Democrats voted against.

By comparison Chief Justice John Roberts got 22 Democratic votes while Justice Clarence Thomas, confirmed in 1991, got 11.

SEN. TED STEVENS: On this vote, the ayes are 58, the nays are 42. The president's nomination of Samuel A. Alito Jr. of New Jersey to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States is confirmed.

KWAME HOLMAN: As for Judge Alito he was spotted leaving the White House, having watched the vote on television with the president. Later he was sworn in, in a private Supreme Court ceremony. It's expected Justice Alito will be sitting with his new court colleagues at the state of the union address tonight.

FOCUS - END OF AN ERA

JIM LEHRER: So long, Alan Greenspan: Ray Suarez has our look at the departed Federal Reserve chairman.

RAY SUAREZ: He's arguably the most famous Fed chairman in history: The maestro. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan left it all behind today and stepped down after 18 years as America's central banker.

SPOKESMAN: I, Alan Greenspan --

ALAN GREENSPAN: I, Alan Greenspan --

RAY SUAREZ: Sworn in to office by President Ronald Reagan in 1987, Greenspan was charged with the task of keeping the nation's economy stable by adjusting interest rates.

He took over for Paul Volcker who won praise for taming run-away inflation in the early '80s.

Greenspan was not academically trained as an economist but had served as chairman of Gerald Ford's Council of Economic Advisors and on President Reagan's Social Security Commission. He was a private economic consultant when Reagan tapped him.

SPOKESMAN: Five hundred -

RAY SUAREZ: Just two months after Greenspan was sworn in, the stock market crashed on Oct. 19. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 508 1/3 points or 22.6 percent, its largest one-day drop since 1914.

Chairman Greenspan assured investors that the Fed would provide enough cash to keep the economy going, and it lowered interest rates with a rapid series of cuts. That response was credited with calming the markets and helping spur a recovery.

PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: Good morning.

RAY SUAREZ: Greenspan served a total of five terms as Fed chairman under four presidents.

When President Clinton re-nominated Greenspan for a fourth term, the Fed chairman talked about why he liked his job.

ALAN GREENSPAN: There's a certain really quite unimaginable intellectual interest that one gets from working in the context where you have to put broad theoretical and fairly complex conceptual issues to a test in the marketplace.

As I said to the president before, it's like eating peanuts. You keep doing it, keep doing it; and you never get tired because the future is always ultimately unknowable.

RAY SUAREZ: During his tenure, Greenspan steered the Federal Reserve through financial crises that rocked Wall Street and threatened the U.S. and world economy, including the 1997 Asian currency crisis, the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2000, and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that paralyzed financial markets for days.

Over the years, the words of Fed Chairman Greenspan were regularly parsed and pored over, sifted and spun. "Greenspan-speak" was notoriously hard to understand.

ALAN GREENSPAN: With the firming of monetary policy by the Federal Reserve widely expected, they built large short-term positions and long-term debt instruments in anticipation of the increase in bond yields.

RAY SUAREZ: But nonetheless his words had dramatic and immediate impact.

In a famous 1996 speech, he questioned whether zealous investors had bid up the price of stocks to an unsustainable level.

ALAN GREENSPAN: How do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade? And how do we factor that assessment into monetary policy?

RAY SUAREZ: The speech sent markets around the world tumbling.

Under Greenspan's watch, the American economy experienced the two longest expansions ever recorded, interrupted only by two mild recessions. He presided over a decline in both inflation and unemployment.

Greenspan has also become a cultural phenomenon, achieving near rock star status among some with his image gracing countless magazine covers over the years as well as canvases; larger-than-life portraits of the Fed chairman have been drawing crowds and about $2,000 apiece at a New York Gallery. Greenspan has even inspired a country song.

SINGING: Only in God and Alan Greenspan we trust.

RAY SUAREZ: Last year President Bush awarded him the presidential Medal of Freedom. The 79-year-old Greenspan reportedly has plans to open an economic consulting firm in Washington.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH (addressing Ben Bernanke): Ben, thanks for serving.

RAY SUAREZ: His successor, Ben Bernanke, officially takes over at 12:01 tomorrow morning.

RAY SUAREZ: For more on both Alan Greenspan the central banker and Greenspan the pop culture phenomenon we turn to Irwin Stelzer, director of economic policy studies at the Hudson Institute and contributing editor to The Weekly Standard; James Galbraith, a professor of public policy at the University of Texas at Austin; and Paul Levinson, chair of the Department of Communications and Media Studies at Fordham University.

And, Irwin Stelzer, let's start with you. If we look at Greenspan by the numbers, how do we assess his time in office?

IRWIN STELZER: I guess you'd have to say phenomenally successful; if the proof of the pudding is in the eating we've seen 18 years of almost uninterrupted expansion with no inflation and we've seen a Fed chairman who has preserved the political integrity of the Fed and who has developed a new methodology of sort of looking forward and not being a prisoner of historic models.

So I think on almost all counts-- he's not perfect-- but on almost all counts you have to say this was an "A" operator of monetary policy.

RAY SUAREZ: It's interesting that you say "new methodology" because a lot of the appreciations being written this week say that he had no hard-and-fast rules and that's what made him interesting.

IRWIN STELZER: Well, he doesn't have hard-and-fast rules but, I mean, I've known Alan Greenspan when he was a consultant, and the notion that he relies on intuition is really not correct.

He relies on data sources from which he extracts information, data sources that other people ignore, freight car loadings I remember way back and things like that. And so what he's done is he has jumped beyond the historical models in two ways: First of all with new data that he gets. It's enormously useful. And second, by saying, wait a minute, the future won't replicate the past; that's how he predicted and acted on the productivity revolution that was not captured by past data.

So it's more than just intuition and no rules; it's the application of judgment to masses of data within a -- an analytical framework that is not just random.

RAY SUAREZ: Professor Galbraith, when you look at the numbers how do you see the Greenspan tenure?

JAMES GALBRAITH: Well, I'm more critical in several respects, but tonight especially I want to salute him and underline his greatest achievement, which was in the late 1990s to ignore one of the hard-and-fast rules of the economics profession, which was that you couldn't push unemployment down below a certain value without having run-away inflation.

There were only a very small number of economists who thought that you could get unemployment lower, safely; Greenspan proved that we were right. And that was a greatthing for the country. It's also something for which I'm professionally and personally grateful.

RAY SUAREZ: When you say "proved," what did he do? What did he do and what was his job to do that showed that full employment could actually be a lower number without sparking inflation?

JAMES GALBRAITH: He resisted pressure, which was coming from a great many very influential voices to start raising interest rates in 1996, 1997. He waited. He let the economy grow, and the economy proved that it could go to full employment without inflation.

RAY SUAREZ: And you began by saying you're a little bit more critical but then you didn't mention why. What are the things that you were looking at?

JAMES GALBRAITH: I think notwithstanding that, he has on several occasions been overly fearful about rising inflation. Inflation was really squeezed out of the system by the mid 1980s, but he raised interest rates in 1987 which set off that big stock market crash. He raised them in 1994, which really upset the early days of the Clinton administration. He raised them briefly in 1997, and that had an effect setting off the Asian crisis. He raised them in 2000.

And in the last year he's been raising them, the last year and a half or so. And I think that's largely misguided. You say that -- one says that this is fighting inflation. But we don't have an inflation that's being generated by wages.

As your report said this evening, wages have not been keeping up with inflation. What little bit of inflation that we have, it's historically still a very low number, comes from energy and from the Iraq war. And that's not something for which monetary policy is an appropriate cure.

RAY SUAREZ: Professor Levinson let me get you in here. This is the second longest period as Fed chairman in history. Has there ever been one whose name is as well known, who is recognizable on the evening news the way Alan Greenspan is?

PAUL LEVINSON: No, definitely not. And part of that, of course, is the ubiquity now of media coverage, 24/7 cable, the Internet; that kind of coverage would make most people more famous than forty or fifty years ago.

But that said, there are a lot of things that Alan Greenspan had and has going which made him unique. He certainly has something of the philosopher/king about him.

In fact, he was a disciple of the philosopher Ayn Rand. And in his early years Alan Greenspan helped research one of Rand's most important books, "Atlas Shrugged." And he actually brought that philosophy and that flare into his work as chair of the Federal Reserve.

He also, I think, captured something that Henry Kissinger knew well. Kissinger said power is the ultimate aphrodisiac. And I think Greenspan projected that kind of power.

And the fact that he was in office much longer than any secretary of state, in fact only a Supreme Court justice could be in office longer than Greenspan, that increased his mystique as well, and he almost had a McLuhanesque, a Marshall McLuhanesque sense of phrasing. We saw the irrational exuberance. He talked about the real estate market being frothy.

His language was not completely comprehensible but it was always appealing and attractive and it invited public discussion.

Finally, I think his marriage to Andrea Mitchell certainly didn't hurt. Arthur Miller, when he stole Marilyn Monroe away from Joe DiMaggio, showed that even the nerd can sometimes, you know, get the beautiful woman.

And I think that Greenspan and Andrea Mitchell make a sort of author Miller/Marilyn Monroeesque couple although neither of them, of course, lookprecisely like Miller and Marilyn Monroe.

RAY SUAREZ: You mentioned the now ubiquitous availability of news and cite some of the Greenspan popularity there, but could it also be that the average person on the street is more likely to have a little position in a mutual fund, in a company savings plan, maybe be looking to refinance in a way that perhaps a generation ago they might have stuck with the same mortgage for their whole time in the house?

PAUL LEVINSON: I think that's definitely a part of it. And, of course, the Internet is a part of that with day trading and the ease with which people can now invest. I think the two played hand in hand. The easier it is for the average person to invest, the more interested they are in what Greenspan is doing.

I think though, in fact, few people understand what the Federal Reserve does. I think the average person, the average highly intelligent person, in fact, really doesn't understand how it is that when the interest rate is lowered, people have more money in their pockets; investors have more money to put into various projects.

And I think the nuts and bolts of what Greenspan did were not the thing that made him interesting. It was more the way in which he did it, the sort of Wizard of Oz, behind-the-curtain, pulling the strings and having this enormous impact on our economic lives.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Irwin Stelzer, this is ideally supposed to be a non-partisan job, even though they're appointed by an elected official. How was Greenspan as a political operator and when did it matter when you're Federal Reserve chairman to be one?

IRWIN STELZER: Well, I think he showed his independence by attacking both the administration and the Congress for their very poor record in controlling spending. This didn't appeal to anybody.

I think his support of the president's tax cuts were because he supports tax cuts. It wouldn't have mattered what president it was. He is for smaller government as a matter.

I think there's a real question of whether you want the Fed chairman to involve himself in these kinds of policy issues beyond strictly setting interest rates and so on. I think the answer to that is yes, because all of these things impinge on what the chairman can do in setting monetary policy.

RAY SUAREZ: He got rapped pretty heavily for coming out in favor of the Bush tax cuts at the beginning of the Bush administration. But you're sure that didn't taint him or question his independence politically?

IRWIN STELZER: I don't think so. I mean, I think he demonstrated his independence by repeatedly attacking the spending programs that the president has signed off on, never willing to veto, and the Congress keeps passing. So that wasn't going to win him friends on Capitol Hill or in the White House.

The tax position is his position. It's been his position for years. And when asked it, I think he had an obligation to state it because obviously he's interested in deficits because deficits constrain monetary policy. And as he saw it, the tax cuts were right; the spending was wrong; and he said so.

RAY SUAREZ: Professor Galbraith, do you think the Fed chairman maintained his political neutrality throughout his 18 years on the job?

JAMES GALBRAITH: No, I think it fell off quite a bit in the last five years. On the tax cuts, he spoke in their favor against his own private better judgment, which he shared with Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill at the time.

I think that's always a dangerous thing to do, if you're the chairman of the Federal Reserve from the standpoint of your long-term reputation, and coming out in support of the president's very ill-advised Social Security privatization scheme, he brought the Federal Reserve into the middle or he brought himself into the middle of the deeply divisive and partisan issue. And that too I think was ill advised.

I think that on those instances with spending political capital that he had accumulated over many years but he did spend it down quite a bit by taking those two steps.

RAY SUAREZ: But, Professor, at the same time looking at Social Security, wasn't he also one of the intellectual godfathers of the adjustments during the Reagan years that got Social Security solvent for the next generation?

JAMES GALBRAITH: All the more reason why he should not have turned around and endorsed a scheme that was based upon the false premise that Social Security was about to go insolvent because it is not.

RAY SUAREZ: And what about his pre-Fed time, Professor? He's also credited with, for instance, helping pull back his hometown, New York, from the brink of bankruptcy.

JAMES GALBRAITH: Oh, I was involved in the New York City bailout as a very young staff member for the House Banking Committee. That was largely accomplished by the work of the leadership of New York and the congressional leadership, Gov. Kerry and the congressional leadership at the time.

The Ford administration's role was really very ambivalent. You remember the famous daily news headline "Ford to City, Drop Dead." Greenspan may have been playing a role behind the scenes in getting the Ford administration to come along on that, and, if so, more credit to him. But he wasn't the central player.

RAY SUAREZ: Professor, guests, thank you all.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, Brooks and Oliphant, and memories of Coretta Scott King.

FOCUS - BROOKS & OLIPHANT

JIM LEHRER: President Bush delivers his state of the union address later tonight. And we'll have analysis afterward by New York Times columnist David Brooks and columnist Tom Oliphant, and they're with us now for some advance observations, but, before we go to that, quickly, a word about Alan Greenspan.

DAVID BROOKS: Well, he's one of the four or five people I admire most in Washington. And I'd say I admire him most in part because he is both theoretically very sophisticated and also very practical. He has practical and theoretical knowledge.

And if you go and call him up and ask him off the record about an issue like Social Security reform he will give you a very detailed, just clear and credible definition of the problem, definition of other problems, definition of competing problems so aside from his job and his power, he's a wise person who, if you ran across him, if you called him up, he could give you something that was really authoritative. And there are so few people like that in Washington so I just admire the heck out of him.

JIM LEHRER: Tom.

TOM OLIPHANT: Me too, and I say that as a lefty. As time passes, I think people will see Alan Greenspan as one of the handful of preeminent crisis managers at the end of the 20th Century not just abroad but at home as well.

And, secondly, he's lived his public life right at that spot where ideas and politics come together and has had an influence on so many things that go far beyond monetary policy: Trade policy, Social Security, protectionism. And, as such, you think of figures in the recent or distant American past; Bernard Bernanke is about as close as I can come, a colossal figure.

JIM LEHRER: It's interesting in the discussion that Ray just had, where somebody said he had become a media figure because he's also the one public figure who never gave an interview in 18 years.

TOM OLIPHANT: Not if your coat was on fire. (laughter)

DAVID BROOKS: Even at a party he would tell you about productivity rates. That was useful to have.

JIM LEHRER: But he never did interviews. He'd never been on television; he never did newspaper interviews or anything like that.

Okay. The state of the union, is this the important speech for the president?

DAVID BROOKS: It's the most important thing he'll do today. You know, as compared to the Sept. 20 speech after 9/11 or that state of the union, no, it's not one of the climactic moments of the Bush administration in part because there's not a lot of money to spend but I'm interested in it for a number of reasons.

I think if there were a normal society, this would be a speech that would be relatively bipartisan. I think a lot of the ideas we're going to hear tonight are ideas that are either lifted from Democrats or that Democrats can agree on, things like high-tech cars that will reduce our dependence on foreign oil, things like training more teachers to make us more competitive in math and science.

Even on the subject of Iran, which is a subject I'm going to be closely listening to, you know, what to do about Iran, that's something that has had no clear partisan division.

So here's a president who is down in the polls, who doesn't have much money to spend, who doesn't have any real super huge agenda items but who will be talking about some small, important things.

And it will be interesting to see the dynamic when he does that.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree, it's going to Democratic things he's going to talk about?

TOM OLIPHANT: Well, in a couple respects we'll get to, absolutely. And I suspect that they will help his political position when he brings them up. But I think precisely the unimportance, relatively of this speech is its importance.

When you're down and you don't have much political capital to spend, you can't borrow in politics; you either have it or you don't. And so I think the first thing that we're going to hear is that all of the things that have contributed to his problems are going to be folded in to a somewhat new and larger concept of America's role in the world, a kind of version of Madeleine Albright's famous phrase about the essential nature.

And rather than -- this won't be the president we've been hearing from in November and December, arguing the case for Iraq or saying the economy is perfect or defending the warrant-less eavesdropping. This is talking about how the war, the battle against terrorism and even the country's economic security depends on a larger view of America's role in the world.

It won't help him that much but it won't hurt him. And it's a tone that is in keeping with the fact that the people watching tonight are not just Republicans and committed conservatives. It's a bigger audience and the speech will reflect that.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree that tone and theme may be more important here than laundry lists and policy explanations and why I did this and didn't do that?

DAVID BROOKS: Yeah, no, I think so, and in part because there really is no money, and in some sense this is the first state of the union of the rest our lives because the rest our lives there's not going to be no money.

JIM LEHRER: What do you mean? Say it isn't so, David.

DAVID BROOKS: It's just going to be like "Ground Hog Day." We're going to be watching the same thing over and over again.

No, what I mean by that is we have these creeping entitlements that are just crushing everything else in the budget and making it very hard to afford big government spending programs.

Now for the past five years we've been ignoring that reality and running --

JIM LEHRER: And the president and the Congress have done that hand in hand as was just explained in the discussion about Greenspan.

DAVID BROOKS: Exactly. The political pressure I think has become very strong for both sides and so the president I think is going to stress fiscal responsibility and actually practice it.

JIM LEHRER: Around the edges today, it's leaked around that or not leaked around.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, leaked around.

JIM LEHRER: Okay. Leaked around -- that the president is going to try to stop or do his part at least rhetorically to stop this ugliness as apparently he says in the political climate of America today. Does he bear some responsibility for it, and is it time for him to step up to the plate?

TOM OLIPHANT: Well, he won't admit any, but I believe he does. But again I think that the concept of this speech is itself an answer. It's an attempt really for the first time in a long time on the president's part to speak to a larger audience of Americans.

And that is why while I agree completely with David's point about the government is broke, its finances are essentially wrecked, there is one initiative that I'm paying a lot of attention to tonight that he -- you know, one thing a president can do is steal other people ideas. The victim of the theft is always grateful -- but this initiative to put America back in to the science and mathematics business.

JIM LEHRER: That's really a big deal, a lot of money too.

TOM OLIPHANT: A lot of it came from discussions between the Hill and the National Academy of Sciences, one of the preeminent citizens in our public square. It is very bold, what the Academy has published by way of study. There are bills in Congress supported by Democrats and Republicans with over half the members as sponsors.

The president is joining a very serious effort to try to do something about a very serious national problem. But the question that will arise next week when the budget comes out is whether his actions, even in this one case, can match his rhetoric.

JIM LEHRER: Now, you said you were very interested, David, in listening to what he has to say about Iran. Why did you say Iran rather than Iraq? That's where he's got a problem today.

DAVID BROOKS: Well, he has the problem with the policy that's set.

JIM LEHRER: Okay.

DAVID BROOKS: Iran, the policy is not set, and there's been some supposition that the administration either expects Iran to get the bomb or has accepted that fact, and the question is, will he say no it's unacceptable, or has the administration made up their mind, no, it's unacceptable?

And if he says that in very strong terms, and I actually have heard that he will say it in pretty strong terms, then that suggests the administration is tougher than it has sometimes appeared over the past few weeks.

JIM LEHRER: But what if he says you can't have the bomb but we will help you have nuclear power with the Russians and all that, which he's already said?

TOM OLIPHANT: Indeed. And I think there's a similar question about Iraq. There isn't a partisan divide about Iran that I can discern. I think there are questions about effectiveness and tactics and strategy. And David is absolutely right to identify an uncertainty about the administration's commitment here that the president would probably do well to clear up. That will not cause him political problem at home which is precisely why you would expect to hear him say it tonight.

JIM LEHRER: What do you think he should say about Iraq -- what could he say about Iraq to help solve that problem he has?

TOM OLIPHANT: Well, in the most narrow sense, nothing. But in the broader sense --

JIM LEHRER: It is what happens on the ground?

TOM OLIPHANT: Well, this isn't like when he was traveling in November defending the war. This isn't a question of staying or leaving. There's some questions about how committed to staying we are actually right now.

Rather, what I want to listen to is an effort to put Iraq in a larger context. And that is America's role in the world. And, look, we'll all argue about details of the war later and the formation of a new Iraqi government.

But from what I've been told, the purpose of this speech is not to rally support for the war but rather to speak about it in a bigger context.

JIM LEHRER: Does that make sense to you?

DAVID BROOKS: I hope he does that. That's a tall order. I think he will do a little bragging or at least try and persuade that this is working with some concrete examples of how the training of troops is actually working and stuff like that.

I think, you know, this core mission that he's been on for six months of being honest about what's gone wrong but still saying we're winning this thing, that's got to take up a chunk tonight.

JIM LEHRER: Do you expect him to say, hey, we made a few mistakes here, a few mistakes there, but let's look ahead? I mean, is he to that point, do you believe, that mistake-admitting is on his list?

DAVID BROOKS: Now it's an addiction. You know, I think, you know, the best speeches he's given exactly did that. I think when you look at the speeches he gave, they had a clear strategy, which was admit some mistakes, get some detail, and granularity and also without mentioning silly things the Democrats say citing them and rebutting them and engaging them, giving people on your own side saying we're defending this policy; you should go out and defend it too.

It's a little more aggressive than what Tom is saying he might do tonight.

TOM OLIPHANT: I would be surprised because I think the premium here is on not exacerbating the tensions that exist politically in Washington and in the country today but rather to lower the temperature, to give him some more time to gather his resources though in support of David's point if you look at the membership in Mrs. Bush's box up there in the galleries tonight, this thing is totally out of hand. There's 20 or so people plus Mrs. Bush to be introduced. God help us.

JIM LEHRER: Okay. We will pick this conversation up later tonight on most PBS stations after the president's speech. And also we have the Democratic response as well. Thank you all very much.

FINALLY - IN MEMORIAM

JIM LEHRER: And finally on the NewsHour tonight, remembering Coretta Scott King, and to Gwen Ifill.

SPOKESPERSON: For justice, truth and non-violence everywhere.

GWEN IFILL: In the nearly 40 years that have passed since the death of Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta Scott King had become the face of her husband's civil rights legacy.

After lobbying hard for the King birthday holiday that finally became law in 1983, she returned each year to his Atlanta gravesite to honor his memory. Like her late husband she marched and like him she gave speeches.

CORETTA SCOTT KING (Feb. 12, 1988): It was a mission of black Americans during the civil rights movement not merely to obtain our freedom but to expand democracy for all Americans.

GWEN IFILL: In the years after his assassination, Coretta Scott King was transformed into a civil rights activist in her own right, speaking out against apartheid abroad and for women's issues at home.

CORETTA SCOTT KING: I always believed from a youngster that there was a purpose for my life, that there's a purpose for each one of our lives. We have to seek that purpose.

In the process of getting married to Martin Luther King Jr., and the movement getting started, I felt that that was my purpose -- my purpose had been discovered to be the wife of a minister because I believe that a minister's wife should be just as committed as her husband, and feeling that this was my purpose, to be at the side of Martin Luther King Jr., through whatever trials and tribulations and struggles that we endured was part of God's will for me.

GWEN IFILL: Coretta Scott, a child of the segregated South, walked five miles to get to school in Marion, Alabama, while white students rode buses to schools closer by.

She graduated at the top her high school class, earned a scholarship to Antioch College in Ohio and later to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. There she met Martin Luther King Jr., a theology student at Boston University.

On their first date, she later said, he told her: "The four things that I look for in a wife are character, personality, intelligent and beauty. And you have them all."

They married in 1953, moved to Montgomery, Alabama, and quickly became enmeshed in the modern civil rights movement. Mrs. King helped organize marches and sit-ins at segregated restaurants, all while raising four children. But the threat of violence often shadowed their lives.

CORETTA SCOTT KING (March 22, 1956): All along I have supported my husband in this cause. At this point I feel even stronger about the cause and whatever happens to him, it happens to me.

GWEN IFILL: She was at her husband's side for most of the major events of the civil rights movement including the 1963 march and rally on the Washington Mall.

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: I have a dream. That one day --

GWEN IFILL: But her life changed forever on April 4, 1968 when Assassin James Earl Ray fired the bullet that killed Martin Luther King in Memphis.

In the years that followed, she took up the mantel of his dream, founding the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change in 1969.

In 1984, she was arrested outside the South African embassy in Washington while demonstrating for an end to apartheid.

CORETTA SCOTT KING: Our government must take a position against the killing, the brutal treatment, the lack of representation and disrespect by that government for citizens who belong to that great nation.

GWEN IFILL: Later in life she became an advocate for gay rights and the fight against AIDS.

CORETTA SCOTT KING (Aug. 23, 2003): We must make our hearts instruments of peace and non-violence because when the heart is right, the mind and the body will follow.

GWEN IFILL: Mrs. King suffered a stroke and a heart attack last August. Her last appearance in public was on Jan. 14 when she had attended a dinner in Atlanta as part of the Martin Luther King Day celebrations.

Coretta Scott King died last night as an alternative medicine clinic in Mexico. Doctors there say she was battling ovarian cancer. She was 78 years old.

GWEN IFILL: For more on the life and times of Mrs. King, we are joined by two friends of the family: The Reverend Joseph Lowery co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Dr. King, and led the organization for 20 years. And Johnnetta Cole is president of Bennett College, a historically black liberal arts institution for women in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Rev. Lowery, what the legacy that Coretta Scott King leaves behind?

REV. JOSEPH LOWERY: Well, it's a compounded legacy. She was a great wife. Martin couldn't have chosen -- I believe just as God married Martin and Montgomery, he chose Coretta for Martin. And she was the perfect wife for him in the struggle.

She was a great mother, and then when Martin passed away, was killed, she carried her grief with such dignity and her growing influence with such humility.

So she was a great mother, a great wife, and in other own right she became the sentimental symbol of the civil rights movement as the first "first lady" of the movement.

And her legacy must include all of these facets of her marvelous life as a wonderful, beautiful woman whom I visited with my wife two or three weeks ago and she was beautiful. She walked on her own strength down the hall, long hall, to greet us in the living room, and she almost collapsed in a chair because she was weak from the effort.

But that kind of determination characterized Coretta Scott King. And as she fought for the holiday, fought and supported those who were leading movements, she became herself an icon and a great inspiration to millions of people.

GWEN IFILL: Johnnetta Cole, I'm struck by the term that Rev. Lowery used, a "sentimental symbol." What do you think he means by that? Take off on that for me.

JOHNNETTA COLE: There's nothing wrong with feeling emotion, with being sentimental, with feeling love for someone who is so in her own right strength with compassion, staying the course with always opening to new possibilities.

Yes, she was a symbol. But I think perhaps more than anything else, for me, Sister Coretta Scott King symbolizes the possibility that each of us has, that each woman has to indeed in some way make the world far better.

GWEN IFILL: Dr. Cole, was she the power behind the throne as people like to describe wives? Or was she someone who was actually side by side with Rev. King?

JOHNNETTA COLE: All of the images that we receive, we see Coretta Scott King with one arm locked in the arm of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. On the other side you may see Rev. Joseph Lowery or you may see Ambassador Young or you may see John Lewis. The photographs tell it all. She was not behind. She was to his side.

GWEN IFILL: Rev. Lowery, the civil rights movement in the 1960s was kind of a men's club. What was the role for the wives of especially someone like Coretta Scott King?

REV. JOSEPH LOWERY: Well, she was a great source of strength for Martin. I agree with Dr. Cole that she stood by his side.

But she also knew when to step back and let him take the front steps. And she knew when to come in and be a part of the movement. She knew when to encourage him and she also knew when to discourage him.

She was a great source of strength for him. But I don't want you to forget now, under Martin's leadership SCLC was the first major civil rights organization to have a woman executive director in Ella Baker, but I do admit that women did not play the role they should have played out front, although they were great sources of strength for the men who were out front.

And thank God for women like Coretta Scott King. She sort of epitomized the essence of the strong, black woman in our history who, for one reason or the other, lost their men either from slave-snatching or assassination as Martin experienced. She left a great legacy of courage, humility, strength and beauty.

GWEN IFILL: You know, in fact, Dr. Cole, it strikes me that one of the things that Coretta Scott King also symbolized, she was one of the three widows: there was Myrlie Evers-Williams, obviously Medgar Evers' widow; there was Betty Shabazz, Malcolm X's widow; and then there was Coretta Scott King. Did they have a collective impact on the sensibilities of the movement?

JOHNNETTA COLE: I don't think there's any question. Of course they did. And those three women, it is my understanding, had a very special relationship among themselves.

But when I think of each of them, I think of the choice that they made. After all, they could have wallowed in their grief. But each chose a different path, and that is to move forward, to continue a struggle.

And today, as I think about Mrs. Coretta Scott King, I think most of all of how she stayed the course for 40 years following the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She moved forward, innovating, creating, building and in a very definitive way taking on issues and questions which Dr. King never addressed, largely in my view because they were not issues of that time.

But she took them on: AIDS, homophobia. These were things that Coretta Scott King stood for. And at the same time she never let up on the question of nonviolent social change.

GWEN IFILL: Rev. Lowery, we have heard and read a great deal lately about what is happening at the King Center. Obviously, Coretta Scott King's baby that she created in 1969, that there's a family feud that there is some effort to try to sell it to the Park Service to put it basically put Humpty Dumpty back together again because it's deteriorated so. What is the status of the King Center tonight?

REV. JOSEPH LOWERY: Well, you know, I think there's a heated discussion, a warm discussion, among the siblings which is not uncommon among siblings. I had a few with my own siblings. They're going to work it out.

I think the main challenge to the center now-- and Coretta's death may sort of push it along, as death sometimes does -- is to get a board of directors that is stable and responsible and intelligent and democratically structured so that no one person controls the board and then to make the decision about its relationship to the federal government.

There's really nothing terrible about the people of this country through their government seeing that this shrine, this place that we all call precious and sacred because of Martin Luther king and Coretta, nothing wrong with the people seeing that it's maintained while the board would be responsible for program and policy. I think they'll work it out.

And it will once again become the institution that Coretta envisioned, being a library to keep the archives and the records and letting young people flow through there, being exposed to the efficacy of non-violence in achieving social change.

GWEN IFILL: Dr. Cole, if you had your way and you could find some way to outline what the future of this legacy should be, what the debate should be from now on, aside from whatever happens with the King Center itself, thinking as you do about Coretta Scott King tonight, what would you like to see it be?

JOHNNETTA COLE: Well, first, I would say that Coretta Scott King at a moment when our nation is at war spoke out consistently against war, it took a lot of courage for her to do it but she always found that courage.

At a moment when some would say that the struggle for equal rights for African- Americans is a struggle won, Coretta Scott King always had the courage to say, but that battle is not yet won.

And Ithink we must remember that she rarely failed to be in touch with her own soul as a woman. And though she may not have spoken in specific terms about women's rights, the very way that she carried herself said she had her rights.

And so I think her legacy is indeed in that wonderful, precious and powerful arena of peace with justice for all.

GWEN IFILL: Johnnetta Cole, Joseph Lowery, thank you both very much.

REV. JOSEPH LOWERY: Thank you.

JOHNNETTA COLE: Thank you.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: And, again, the other major developments of this day: The Senate confirmed Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court. The president made ready for his fifth state of the union address. He addresses a joint session of Congress tonight. And the Federal Reserve raised a key interest rate to 4.5 percent, as Fed Chairman Greenspan finished his tenure. And we'll be back at 9:00 P.M. Eastern Time on most PBS stations with the state of the union speech and the Democratic response. And we'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. For now, I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you, and good night.