The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. Leading the news this Thursday, the Senate passed the 1990 Civil Rights Act last night. Sponsors are now searching for ways to avoid a Presidential veto. Baseball legend Pete Rose was sentenced to serve five months in prison for tax evasion. We'll have the details in our News Summary in a moment. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: After the News Summary, we get four different looks at the new civil rights bill [FOCUS - CIVIL RIGHTS & WRONGS?], the ceremony that opened the Richard Nixon Library [FOCUS - THE NIXON YEARS] in Yorba Linda, California, a second look at a Charlayne Hunter-Gault Profile of Dr. Karl Menninger [PROFILE] who died yesterday, and our Thursday night essay, [ESSAY - SONG OF SPIRIT] Clarence Page on gospel music. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: The White House is taking the battle for a revised civil rights bills to the House of Representatives. Presidential Spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said the administration was disappointed that the version passed by the Senate last night by a vote of 65 to 34. Democrats and Republicans are looking for compromise language to avoid the veto President Bush has threatened because he believes the legislation would force businesses to impose hiring quotas. Vice Pres. Quayle had these comments for reporters in San Antonio, Texas.

VICE PRES. QUAYLE: The administration is not going to have a quota bill crammed down its throat in the name of civil rights. The President wants to sign a civil rights bill. I hope that he can sign a civil rights bill. But he's not going to sign a quota bill. The American people are supportive of social justice. They're for racial equality. They are for equal opportunity, but they are adamantly opposed to quotas.

MR. MacNeil: House leaders said they would listen to suggestions for compromise even though they believed there were enough votes to pass the bill in its present form. House Speaker Tom Foley said the legislation was not likely to reach the House floor until September. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Pete Rose was sentenced to five months in prison today. The former Cincinnati Reds baseball player and manager pleaded guilty in April to two counts of income tax evasion. Before sentencing, Rose told the federal judge in Cincinnati, "I have no excuses. I lost my dignity. I lost my self- respect." Rose was also fined $50,000, ordered to a halfway house after the prison term and to perform 1,000 hours of community service. Last year he was banned from baseball for life because of gambling.

MR. MacNeil: The commander of Soviet interior ministry troops has been sent to the Republic of Kirghizia to try to end the violence there. Kirghiz and Uzbeks, two Muslim groups, have been fighting each other for six weeks. The death toll is up to 212. The Soviet news agency Tass today said there are still reports of arson, fights, and pogroms. It said, people are stoning passing cars and building barricades. The death toll in the Philippines earthquake rose to at least 490 today. Rescuers said there still could be hundreds more dead in the buildings that collapsed.

MR. LEHRER: There was an explosion at a chemical plant in Cincinnati today. At least two people were killed, forty-five killed, when the building owned by the BASF Company burst into flames. The fire continued to set off explosions throughout the afternoon. About 200 people worked at the plant which makes resin linings for cans. There was no word on the cause of the blast.

MR. MacNeil: Former Pres. Richard Nixon opened his library today. It is located in his birthplace, Yorba Linda, California. Thousands turned out for the gala opening. There were marching bands and speeches. It was one of the rare occasions when one current and three former Presidents shared the same platform. After Presidents Ford, Reagan, and Bush spoke, Mr. Nixon reflected on his career and had this advice for the young.

FORMER PRES. NIXON: You will suffer disappointments in life and sometimes you will be very discouraged. It is sad to lose but the greatest sadness is to travel through life without knowing either victory or defeat. Always remember that only when during your lifetime you are involved in a cause greater than yourself can you be truly true to yourself.

MR. MacNeil: The $21 million library complex includes a museum and the home where Nixon was born in 1913. Unlike other Presidential libraries, it was funded by private donations rather than federal money. We'll have fuller coverage later in the Newshour. We'll also have the fight over a new civil rights bill, Dr. Karl Menninger, and our Thursday night essay. FOCUS - CIVIL RIGHTS & WRONGS?

MR. LEHRER: The civil rights bill fight is first tonight. Last night, the Senate passed it by a vote of 65 to 34. It now goes to the House. Pres. Bush says if it does not change, he will veto it. We'll hear the arguments for and against it after this backgrounder by Kwame Holman.

MR. HOLMAN: The existence of segregation laws and the protests they evoked provided the impetus for the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. It was clear that the law prohibited discrimination in voting and public accommodations, but the many successful applications of the law to job discrimination had been opposed by employers for years. Recently the Supreme Court joined that opposition. Ruling on six key cases, the High Court reignited civil rights protests by sharply narrowing how the 1964 Act applies to employment, making it harder for workers to prove discrimination.

SEN. EDWARD KENNEDY, [D] Massachusetts: The Supreme Court has issued a series of rulings that marked an abrupt and historic departure from its historic vigilance in protecting civil rights. The fabric of justice has been torn. Significant gaps have been opened in the existing laws that prohibit racism and other types of bias in our society.

MR. HOLMAN: The new civil rights act introduced by Sen. Edward Kennedy reverses the Supreme Court decisions in two main areas. It allows all workers, including women, to seek punitive damages against employers who discriminate and it places the burden of defending possible discriminatory employment practices on the employer, not the worker. But President Bush, addressing a group of Hispanic leaders yesterday, said the bill as written will force employers to establish quotas in hiring and promotions and is unfair.

PRES. BUSH: I owe it to you that this legislation does not say to the young kids, you only fit in if you fit into a certain numbered quota. That is not the American dream.

MR. HOLMAN: Senate Republicans had tried for weeks to work out a compromise bill the President could sign and when Democrats forced a final bill this week, Republicans charged it was an effort to force the President's promised veto.

SEN. ROBERT DOLE, Minority Leader: Forget about the bill, forget about working it out with those who have a different view, forget about those who are opposed to quotas in the workplace, shove it down their throat. Make the President veto it. Try to get a political victory.

SEN. GEORGE MITCHELL, Majority Leader: I want an agreement. I've done everything I can think of to encourage an agreement. And with the greatest respect to my distinguished friend and colleague, the Republican leader, this is not a political game. If it were, I would not have vitiated the cloture vote on the motion to proceed. If it were, I would have filed cloture on the bill a week ago. I've done everything possible, consistent with my responsibilities, to encourage a resolution of this matter.

MR. HOLMAN: Right up to the final vote that came last night, opponents and proponents argued over the quota issue.

SEN. ORRIN HATCH, [R] Utah: We have never argued that the bill expressly demands or requires quotas, but as a result of the way this bill rewrites the disparate impact theory the only way that employers can avoid costly losses they're almost certain to lose is to adopt quotas.

SEN. EDWARD KENNEDY: Quotas, schmotas; quotas are not the issue. Job discrimination is the issue. We need a strong law, not a watered down law, to stop it in its tracks. Let there be no doubt over what is at stake here. The administration is simply not willing to support a bill that bans job discrimination against women and minorities. The Civil Rights Act of 1990 has profound implications for millions of working men and women who count on Congress to protect their rights as Americans to be free from discrimination.

MR. HOLMAN: This debate is far different from the civil rights floor rights of the 1960s. There are not longer disagreements over the right to discriminate. The issue here is who has to prove it.

MR. LEHRER: Now to two Senators. One from each side of the battle. Senator Alan Simpson, Republican of Wyoming, Minority Whip of the Senate opposes the Bill. Chris Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut supports it. They join us from a studio on Capitol Hill. Senator Simpson is all of this a political game?

SEN. SIMPSON: Well a lot of it. You just heard Ted speak just then when he said that this Administration is against people, is in favor of job discrimination. That just isn't so. If the intent here is to wrap the anti civil rights moniker around George Bush that is a total failure. It is out there and the Bill the way that it has left here is a total mess. There was no amending done to it. Nothing was corrected and here we go and the American public will have six to eight weeks to figure it out and they will probably smell it.

MR. LEHRER: Do you think that they are going to smell politics that the Democrats are trying to set you and the President up?

SEN. SIMPSON: I don't think it was a set up. It's an unfortunate thing that I don't attribute to my Senate colleagues. I attributed to the Civil rights groups who are some how still thinking in terms of Robert Bork and Bill Lucas and ugly stuff where you are opposed to this thing then you are a racist and that is repugnant.

MR. LEHRER: Senator Dodd how do you respond to that?

SEN. DODD: Well there is always an element of politics. You can't avoid that. That is our business here. Really there was no debate or argument over whether we should be doing something about these 5 or 6 Supreme Court decisions. I think that most people abhor those results and it did turn back the clock certainly 20 years and arguably 124 years going back to section one of the civil rights Bill of 1864. So we weren't trying to break ground but undo the things that had been done wrong by those Supreme Court decisions and the Bill could not be more clear on the issue of quotas. That is not what this Bill was designed to do. It was designed to right the wrongs from those 5 or 6 Supreme Court decisions. That is where we should have been doing the work and frankly Senator Kennedy who led the charge on this spent months working on this legislation. The Bill was introduced in the early part of this year. We waited until after the July recess and finally you reach a point where you get a sense of no cooperation and you move forward. So unfortunately it is politics but the issue is job discrimination.

SEN. SIMPSON: What Chris is saying is just the essence of it. What Chris is saying is it was not a quota Bill and that when we denied them the opportunity because we knew it was a quota Bill. One of the Amendments that they desperately wanted to put in and about six others to clean it up they just denied it and said you have to live with what we got. And one of those Amendments said this is not a quota. Everybody wanted the Griggs decision then why didn't take the exact language of the Griggs decision and every time that we presented it was rejected.

SEN. DODD: We can get down to dotting the i's and crossing the t's the legislation specifically refers to the Griggs decision. Rarely does a piece of legislation identify a Supreme Court decision. That decision was reached in 1971 and testimony from the Administration during the consideration of the Bill clearly indicated that there have been no quotas established since 1971.

MR. LEHRER: Senator Dodd let me ask you this question. The point that Senator Dole then Senator Simpson picked up on that the civil rights interest groups put the heat on you all to really set up the President on this for a veto to make him look anti Civil rights?

SEN. DODD: Absolutely not. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Those negotiations were, in fact, word was last we thought we had an agreement. Some one got cold feet here and it seems to me that section 13 of the Bill says specifically nothing in this legislation shall be construed in any way to refer to quotas. In fact I will quote it to you. It says nothing in the Amendments made by this act shall be construed to require an employer to adopt hiring or a promotion quotas on the basis of race, color, sex or national origin. That is in the Bill Section 13.

MR. LEHRER: Senator Simpson do you think that it still calls for quotas?

SEN. SIMPSON: Sure it does because this is the language that we argued about. It says required. Why does it not say that quotas are prohibited. But no that failed too. There was not a single thing that we brought up with the Griggs decision language of quotas until the final hours when they could see they weren't going to get a chance to put in their Amendments and thus it all went in to the trash pit. The Bill is very weak it can not exist this way and the President will veto this Bill and the veto will be upheld in its present form.

MR. LEHRER: Let's bring two additional views in on this specific question of the legislation impact on the work place. Alec Brindle is President of the Wards Coe Packing Company in Seattle. The Supreme Court ruled in his company's favor last year in a dispute over hiring practices on minority workers. The Court said workers charging discrimination had to prove there was no business necessity of the company's hiring practices. That shifted the burden of proof to workers that has become a major point in this legislation passed last night. Mr. Brindle joins us from Public Station KCTS in Seattle. Elaine Jones is the Deputy Director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. One of the key civil rights groups supporting the Bill. Mr. Brindle to you in Seattle first. Do you see this legislation as it passed the Senate last night as requiring quotas?

MR. BRINDLE: Well I think that you have to define your terms. The Bill states that the Courts are not required and that is the first thing for the Senate to say but the impact of the Bill on the employer is to force you to quotas so you can avoid being hauled in to court and put through a very expensive legal procedure to try and prove yourself innocent.

MR. LEHRER: Take me through that. How would this force you or any other employer to impose quotas?

MR. BRINDLE: As the Bill presently stands if your job force is out of statistical balance then at that point and time the burden shifts to the employer to prove why your statistical balance is not correct. Now that puts you on the defensive. Now once you are on the defensive then the legal system you have a long hard road to go to prove that your employment procedures are correct. You are going to have to hire a lot of experts, you are going to have to go through statistical analysis and it is very very expensive. We are talking hundreds of thousands of dollars. To avoid getting to that point the only thing that you can do is put yourself in the right statistical balance and then you don't have to meet that secondary burden.

MR. LEHRER: Define statistical balance? What are you talking about there?

MR. BRINDLE: Statistical balance means that within your work force through all of your job classifications you match the available labor force from which you are hiring. So to give you an example. If you had an excess of minorities in any one job classification and this was one of the issues in our case. The claim was the burden fell to us to prove why we didn't have the same percentage of minorities in all other job classifications. That is an enormously expensive thing to try and approach.

MR. LEHRER: Ms. Jones do you agree with his analysis of the thing?

MS. JONES: I disagree. I disagree because he is wrong. I have been litigating these cases for over 15 years now. We are restoring the law to where it was. Now if what Mr. Brindle says is correct why then have we not filed cases against every employer in the country. Because all we would have to do is walking in and show a statistical imbalance and all of sudden you have a case of discrimination. It doesn't work that way. You have to show a qualified work pool. A pool from which that employer is drawing his people. You have to show qualifications, you have to show that he has vacancies, you have to show that he is hiring. You have to show it over an extended period of time. You have to show a pattern a of practice here of that behavior. Now in Mr. Brindle's case for example you have a situation there at his company according to the records in the case, of course, I am talking about the records established in the Courts. I have no personal knowledge. The Eskimos and native Alaskans, the Chinese Americans were all at the bottom, 70 percent or more at the bottom jobs in his company. Now on the opposite of the upper jobs 94 percent were white. They had segregated facilities and if you look at that case and you see that this is the kind of case the Supreme Court case trying to restore the law. The whole question about quotas it is a disservice to the Country. Who ever is suggesting to the President, the President of the United States that this Bill is about quotas it is not. If that is the case. Why for those 17 years have we not had quotas all over the place. Why hadn't all employers raced out to hire according to a racial number. That didn't happen because the law never required it and it does not now require it. Now what the law does do it addresses issues of employment selection policies that are adopted that have nothing to do with being able to preform the job successfully. For example one of the earlier cases under this law that we are restoring was of a women who applied for a job at a major corporation in the early 70s and she was told that she need not submit a job application because the company had a policy against hiring women with pre school age children although it hired men with pres school age children because the companies polices wa that those women should be at home not at a work force. Now we have got to have a law to deal with issues like that. That is not the type of policy a company can adopt. It is discriminatory and can have an impact on women. In fact that case was brought to the Supreme Court and it was won and that is why we are trying to restore the law. Height and weight requirements is another example. Why should that be a rule that police officers have to be 5 foot eight. I mean if you have a rule like that what impact would that have on women who are not disproportionately tall and other Americans who are not tall. So to rule out those kinds of policies have nothing to do with ones successful performance on the job. Now if you have a requirement that State troopers be 5'8" then it should be a burden on the employer to tell us why they have to be 5'8" to do their job.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Brindle in general terms do you disagree with that?

MR. BRINDLE: Well I didn't know that we were going to be here today to reargue our case which has been going on for 19 years in which the District Court and the Appellate Court and the Supreme Court all sustains us. But I couldn't disagree more with Ms. Jones analysis of where we are going. The requirements of the act. The attempt to shift the burden of proof not over comes about 300 years common law experience in civil litigation but it will put employers in a position of trying to protect themselves and the only way that they can do that is to try to match their employment profile to the relevant labor force and that is in any way that you look at it a quota situation and that is wrong. We shouldn't have to do that. That shouldn't be it. We should be looking at a quality of opportunity and equality of result and that is what this battle is all about.

MR. LEHRER: Senator Simpson how do you answer Ms. Jones point that the new law was in existence for all those years and was not seen as a quota Bill why is it suddenly now a quota law?

SEN. SIMPSON: Because, Jim, they did not use the exact language of the Griggs case and Ms. Jones knows that and I will challenge her. We said time for after time okay forget the quota by using the Griggs case for the litigation or legislation. We wanted the exact language of the new Bill to use the Griggs case language and that was refused at every turn of the word. It was lawyers at work on the head of a pin. Use this word substantial, use this word significant, use this word selection and the words of the Griggs decision are not in the Bill that passed the Senate last night period.

MR. LEHRER: Senator Dodd?

SEN. DODD: I just have to repeat here that the legislation refers to the Griggs language and the operative words are significant relationship because both those words are included in the Griggs case as well as the legislation that was adopted last evening. The important point to make here on the Griggs case and the burden of proof is that it does up hold a long standing principle. The prima facia case has to be of course made by the plaintiff but on the burden of proof on the business plan there the courts have upheld Griggs in 200 cases by the way from 1971 on for 17 years is that the business adopts the plan. That it is easier in another words to get to that particular question than it is for the plaintiff to get that plan. So that is the reason for it. It is a common sense approach to try to get exactly whether or not this plan does what the plaintiff claims it does or what the defendant claims it does.

SEN. SIMPSON: It over turns everything about the burden of proof that you ever learned in law school.

SEN. DODD: It is not unprecedented here. I makes sense to say that if you adopted you plan then you have to bring the plan forward as the defendant in this case. There are plenty of precedents for this.

MR. LEHRER: Ms. Jones?

MS. JONES: Going back to my example of the women who is excluded from even applying for the job because she had pre school aged children. She can establish that she was qualified to do the job, that there was a vacancy for the job. She has to show all of that and she showed up at the gate to file an application and they would not accept it. Now whose burden should it be to justify why the company has a policy of excluding women with pre school aged children. Should it be the plaintiff who doesn't know why the company has done. The burden ought to be on the company as it is in every other sort of defense to explain why it has adopted that practice. Now Senator Simpson I beg to differ with him. I am looking at the Bill passed last night and he is saying it is 90 degrees. Page three of the Bill line 9 through 13 the practice of who practice must by a significant relationship of a successful performance of the job.

SEN. SIMPSON: Yes but there is a lot in Griggs and everything we tried to et in there was rejected. So let's stay serious and honest here.

MR. LEHRER: Let me put to you Ms. Jones before you joined us Senator Simpson said you and your group in other words you and the civil rights community are the ones that really put the meat to the Senate and forced them not to compromise with the White House so you could set the President up to veto this Bill so he would appear to be anti civil rights.

MS. JONES: Jim you are looking at some one who for six weeks as an individual sat across the table from Representatives of the Department of Justice and the White House trying to see what it is that bothers them about this legislation. To look at it to hear their complaints. When we would hear their complaints we would take it and put in to language and give it back to them. They would make the modifications and say come back tomorrow we will see where we are. When we came back the next day we would say alright we'll take the language. We can live it. Well they would say let's put it aside and move on to this next issue. I have never been in a room with a group of people for six solid weeks and we never came to closure on one issue. And then on the other side of the table they would arguing among themselves more than they were discussing with us. Now we were there. We were there in good faith because we want the President to support to this legislation. It is important that the legislation is bi partisan as it was last night in the U.S. Senate. And we continue to be eager to talk but we have be met. They have to adopt the premise that they are willing to over turn the cases. They have been unwilling to say that.

MR. LEHRER: Senator Simpson is that right?

SEN. SIMPSON: Well maybe one of the cases should have been over turned. If you go and talk with the Supreme Court members and nothing wrong with that in the separation of powers they will look at you and say what in God's name are you doing in Congress. All we were doing was rendering a decision based on long litigation and actual statutory language and you have made the cause celeb of the nation about it. That is the sad part of it. SEN DODD: Well, let me just say, that's not entirely the case. Things do change. In the punitive damages area, for instance, regarding women, in which we find a lot more women in the work force today than was the case twenty or thirty or a hundred and twenty-four years ago. You have examples where a woman who is subjected to sexual harassment on the job, stays on the job, brings a case against the employer, and under the old law, she would only be entitled to compensatory damages, that is, days lost because of the harassment. If she never left the job, as was in the case, she ended up having to pay her own legal fees, winning the case, and paying the legal fees. I don't know anybody that agrees with that today. And the world is changing, and you do have to accommodate that kind of a situation.

SEN. ALAN SIMPSON, [R] Wyoming: I do agree with you on that, but at some point, we were told that were just putting the law back the way it was before with the exception of these little things, and it wasn't. It was the great open door and the civil rights group were just waiting for these series of cases, and they drove every trust they had --

SEN. DODD: Let me just make one point that's very important. Last July or August, Sen. Kennedy got in touch with Dick Thornburgh, the attorney general, and said, look, let's work together on this. That was a year ago. Finally in January, the administration admitted that in two cases out of the five, they believed changes ought to be made.

SEN. SIMPSON: True.

SEN. DODD: Negotiations went on all spring. We came into June and July. It's really, to suggest somehow that people have been trying to set up the President on this I think is really unfair. That is not the case.

SEN. SIMPSON: Well, Sen. Kennedy said that George Bush was a job discrimination President. I heard the rest of the debate during the whole thing and that's what was said.

SEN. DODD: Yeah, but the point is, this is not the way to do business.

MR. LEHRER: You don't --

MS. JONES: We don't believe that the President is interested at all in discrimination and that he supports it. We don't believe that at all, and we believe that if the President could get the right kind of advice as to what this bill means and people would advise him that this is not a quota bill, rather than just throwing out a red herring, that the President would understand and would gladly sign this bill.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Brindle.

SEN. SIMPSON: Last night in the debate, the Senator said the party of Lincoln, and look at it, read it, it's pretty heavy stuff.

MS. JONES: I'm telling you about the civil rights bill.

SEN. SIMPSON: Pretty heavy stuff.

MR. LEHRER: Let me ask Mr. Brindle a question. You're a man here from the business community. What would you tell the President to do with this bill?

ALEC BRINDLE, Businessman: As it presently stands, I'd urge the President to veto the bill, because it's turned the 1964 Civil Rights Act upsidedown.

MR. LEHRER: In what way?

MR. BRINDLE: It's a very, very pernicious peace of legislation.

MR. LEHRER: And what would it do you to and other business people?

MR. BRINDLE: Well, in our particular case, it would take 20 years of litigation and put us right back at the trial court and we'd be in court for another 20 years trying to explain to the judge the impact of this new language, so it would be a very damaging effect.

MR. LEHRER: What about the punitive damages point in this, the one that Sen. Dodd just mentioned, the one that adds punitive damages for discriminations against women, would that have an effect as well?

MR. BRINDLE: Well, that has an effect on everybody, and I think you've got to remember that punitive damages are a very big issue in the country right now because there is no way of adequately instructing a jury as to what measures should be used. When you add punitive damages to this type of legislation, all you do is ratchet down the lever on the employer a few more times to either concede in a case where he may have a good defense, or to make sure that his statistical profile is correct so he doesn't face some gigantic piece of, some gigantic judgment down the road that he has no way of adequately measuring.

SEN. CHRISTOPHER DODD, [D] Connecticut: Jim, could I jump in on that point? First of all, in the punitive damages case, it has to be intentional discrimination, which is a very difficult standard to reach. No. 2, there was an effort on an amendment that was never again allowed to be brought up that would have set a cap on punitive damages at $150,000, or equal to the amount of compensatory damages, whichever was larger, but we never even got to that issue. So you must remember intentional discrimination is a very serious offense.

MR. LEHRER: Let me ask you finally, Ms. Jones, is this thing over from your point of view? In other words, from the civil rights community's point of view, are you still willing to negotiate in the House and with the President to try to work out something?

ELAINE JONES, Civil Rights Lawyer: We are always willing to sit down and to talk about pending legislation. The point is though those representing the administration have to be willing to say they're willing to overturn the cases. I mean, that's the first premise, not only willing to say it, but to have the statute reflect it. Now one other point I wanted to quickly make --

MR. LEHRER: Very quickly.

MS. JONES: -- on punitive damages. As a black woman, why is that I can get punitive damages already as a black, but as a woman suffering gender discrimination, I cannot get one dime? And this law says there ought to parity; if blacks can get it, women ought to be able to get it. And I agree 100 percent.

MR. LEHRER: Ms. Jones, gentlemen, thank you very much.

MR. MacNeil: Still ahead on the Newshour, four Presidents open the Nixon Library, the late Dr. Karl Menninger, and Essayist Clarence Page on gospel music. FOCUS - THE NIXON YEARS

MR. MacNeil: There was another milestone in Richard Nixon's long public career today, the opening of the Nixon Presidential library at his birthplace, Yorba Linda, California. It also marked another stage in the political rehabilitation of the President, who resigned under threat of impeachment in the Watergate scandal. Three Presidents came to praise him.

GERALD FORD: Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President, if I've overlooked a President, will you please stand up. I'm frankly terrified that I might botch up the protocol for First Ladies, so I'll simply salute with great respect and tremendous admiration Barbara, Pat, Nancy, and Betty. [Applause]

GERALD FORD: It does not diminish the roles many others in our country have played in the expansion of democratic freedoms to say that you, Dick Nixon, have the gratitude of men and women everywhere who cherish peace with liberty because you loved your country and because you had the courage to serve, this day is a celebration richly deserved by you and by Pat. [Applause]

RONALD REAGAN: Richard Nixon is a man who understands the world. He understands politics, power, and the forces of history. Whether with Mao or Brezhnev, DeGaulle or Ghandi, President Nixon was the first among equals, a man whose foreign policy was universally acknowledged as brilliant. Accomplishments of the Nixon foreign policy will go down in history as truly great. I do not think it's an exaggeration to say the world is a better place, a safer place because of Richard Nixon.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Richard Nixon was a quintessence of middle America and touched deep cords of response in millions of her citizens. As President, upholding what he termed the silent majority from Dallas to Davenport and Syracuse to Siler City, he loved America's good, quiet, decent people, and he spoke for them. He felt deeply on their behalf. Teddy White, Theodore White would say, "Middle America has been without a great leader for generations and in Richard Nixon it elevated a man of talent and ability." For millions of Americans, this President became something they had rarely known, a voice speaking loudly and eloquently for those values, their values and their dreams. And finally and most importantly, I would say to visitors, Richard Nixon helped change the course not only of America, but of the entire world. He believed in returning power to the people so he created revenue sharing and that young people should be free to choose their futures, so Richard Nixon ended the draft, and he helped the United States reach new horizons in space and technology. He began a pioneering cancer initiative that gave hope and life to millions and he knew that the great outdoors is precious but fragile, and so he created the Environmental Protection Agency, a historic step to help preserve and widely use our natural resources. [Applause]

RICHARD NIXON: And I express my appreciation to myother colleagues and former Presidents, for their gracious comments, not only about me but particularly my wife, Pat. This is a very special day for us, and I think that I speak for all of those in this great audience today in expressing appreciation not only to President Bush and Barbara Bush, but also to President Ford and President Reagan and their ladies that they are here today. This is a very special occasion because there are four Presidents here, but what makes it even more special is that for the first time in the inauguration of a library, four first ladies are here. [Applause] Over the past years, Pat and I have had the opportunity to visit some wonderful places. We've been to Versailles. We've been to Westminster, to the Kremlin, to the Great Wall of China, to Ankurat in Cambodia. I must say that many of them were memorable experiences, all of them in fact. But nothing we have ever seen matches this moment, to be welcomed home again so warmly on this day by our friends in California. [Applause] I hope all of you will have an opportunity to take a tour of the library and I hope that you will share some of the things that my colleagues, the former Presidents, and President Bush have referred to. What you will see among other things is a personal life, the influence of a strong family, of inspirational ministers, of great teachers. You will see a political life, running for Congress, running for the Senate, running for governor, running for President, three times, won some, lost some, all interesting. And you will see also the life of a great nation, 77 years of it, a period in which we had unprecedented progress for the United States. And you will see great leaders, leaders who changed the world, who helped to make the world what we have today. Over life I can think what has happened in the years since I was born in this little house, 71 years ago. I have many memories, some of them good, some of them not so good. But I do know as far as that life is concerned I am glad that I had the opportunity to come from here and go as far as I have. Looking back over the years, when I think of what has happened in those 70 years, those 77 years, I remember that 70 years ago in that little house, I used to lie in bed. I'd hear a train whistle in the middle of the night and I would dream of places far away that I hoped to visit someday. I never dreamed that I would ever be, have the opportunity to visit over 80 countries during the period of my lifetime. And I must say that as far as those visits are concerned, they taught me something. You will hear sometimes these days that the United States is in decline, that we have seen our best days. You will hear that the United States no longer has the means or the will to play a great role in the world. Don't you believe it. I can tell you what I have found in my travels. In my travels to other countries, I have found some people like us, I have found some people who envy us, I have found some people who hate us, but most of the people in the world know in their hearts that without the leadership of the United States of America, peace and freedom would not survive in the world. [Applause] In 1971, after a White House state dinner, a splendid musical group from California entertained the audience. At the conclusion of the program, the chairman, or I should say the leader of the group, asked to say a few words. He expressed appreciation for being invited to appear at the White House, and he concluded by saying, "You know it's a long way from Watts to the White House." He was right. But letme tell you, it's a long way from Yorba Linda to the White House too. [Applause] PROFILE

MR. LEHRER: Dr. Karl died yesterday, Dr. Karl Menninger of Topeka, Kansas, age 96. He was the father of modern day psychiatry in America. Seven years ago, Charlayne Hunter-Gault spent some time in Topeka with Dr. Menninger. Here again is the profile and interview that was the result.

DR. MENNINGER: [1983] What is a hopeless case? Can you think of any case you're treating that's hopeless? Then why are you treating it? Is it just a fraud? Think that over. Don't tell me the answer, because the more you think about it, the more you'll worry about it. Whose hopelessness is it anyway, yours or the patient's? I'll see you in a couple of weeks.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Dr. Karl has continually challenged the status quo. That's been his style, disarming, sometimes arrogantly insisting that people he comes in contact with change their traditional way of thinking.

DR. MENNINGER: It's not so easy to challenge people. They have all kinds of defenses, you know. You can make unkind remarks or sharp remarks but that isn't very good, that isn't very useful teaching.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: One student said that you made him very uncomfortable.

DR. MENNINGER: That doesn't matter.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Dr. Karl has been trying to improve and clarify thought for over 70 years. He changed the world's outlook on mental illness by writing a book about it that everyone could understand. It was called "The Human Mind". Since then, he has continually challenged the status quo, not only in psychiatry, but in prison reform, politics, the environment, and all areas of social justice.

DR. MENNINGER: I'm speaking up for the children.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Now despite an operation for a brain tumor, he still works six days a week. His main target at the moment is child abuse.

DR. MENNINGER: You know, there are over a million children in the United States who have either impossible parents, cruel parents, sadistic parents, crazy parents, imprisoned parents, or no parents. The number of abandoned and neglected children is only exceeded by the number of abused and seduced children.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: No matter what the cause, Dr. Karl exhorts, demands, dares his audience think in the new way. When this task force on handicapped children asked him how to improve parenting skills, how to remove the causes of child abuse, he retorted --

DR. MENNINGER: You know what it is. It's the mother's lover, it's the drunken father, it's the stupid mother, it's the ruthless tax collector who wants you to pay the taxes and they haven't enough money, it's poverty, it's jealousy, above all it's vengeance, you know.

DR. ROY MENNINGER, Nephew: He can take a perfectly ordinary issue, and much as a mineralogist would pick up an ordinary stone, turn it over, and suddenly help you to see wonders in it you would never have seen by yourself, he's got that capacity with ideas, because it doesn't matter what issue he picks up, he manages to hook it to you. He speaks for it, pounds it into you, ridicules it, ridicules you, embarrasses you, challenges you, laughs at you, mocks you. All these things turn the listeners around. I'd say that I think one of his remarkable talents is his capacity to evoke a healthy shame.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Dr. Karl is not satisfied just with shaming other people into action. In 1964, he started these villages or group homes to help children with problems at home and children in trouble with the law. [GROUP HOME DINNER SCENE WITH

DR. AND MRS. KARL MENNINGER]

DR.MENNINGER: What we wanted to establish was a new and artificial home, like instead of an artificial heart, we have an artificial home, with a new father, new mother, new brothers and sisters.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Here at the village, as well as everywhere else, Dr. Karl is unrelenting in challenging his audience.

DR. MENNINGER: How do I know that Julius Caesar never have any mashed potatoes?

YOUNG BOY: [At Dinner Table] They probably didn't know how to mash potatoes back then.

DR. MENNINGER: Think again. [AFTER DINNER SCENE AT GROUP HOME]

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Dr. Karl challenges his youngsters and they challenge him in return [playing chess]. But Dr. Karl's biggest challenge is going against the current tide of opinion on the causes and cures of juvenile crime. The direction of most of the policy makers in this country these days is towards sharper penalties, stiffer sentences for juveniles.

DR. MENNINGER: Hit 'em harder.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: That's right. How harmful do you think that is?

DR. MENNINGER: Very. We want crime to decrease and you don't make crimes decrease by simply abusing the offenders. They can wait. They will get their revenge. They were taking revenge on somebody in the first place.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Child abuse is Dr. Karl's latest cause, but every chance he gets, he speaks out against abuse of any kind, against wife abuse, against vengeful punishment. He has also taken the side of the American Indian, of minorities. He has preached against nuclear war and against the neglect of the elderly, and the list of causes continues. He admits to getting discouraged these days. But he says he's too old to change course now. You know, there are people who say that people who think the way you do are really just bleeding hearts.

DR. MENNINGER: Well, that's me. I'm a bleeding heart. I see lots of things to bleed about. My heart bleeds for a lot of hunger in this country, a lot of corruption in this country, a lot of greed in this country, a lot of mistreatment of one another in this country, a lot of -- do you want me to tell you all the things my heart's bleeding about?

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So you don't mind being called a bleeding heart?

DR. MENNINGER: Not in the least; I'm flattered.

MR. LEHRER: Sunday would have been Dr. Menninger's 97th birthday. His funeral will be held in Topeka on Saturday. ESSAY - SONG OF SPIRIT

MR. MacNeil: Finally tonight our Thursday night essay. Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune talks about gospel music. [GOSPEL MUSIC]

MR. PAGE: It's an invitation as old as the Book of Psalms, "Oh come let us sing unto the Lord. Let us make a joyful noise for the rock of our salvation." For the past six years, some of the world's most joyful noise makers have come here to Chicago for a weekend of gospel fests and oh, what a joyful noise they make. [GOSPEL FEST]

MR. PAGE: Gospel may be the richest form of history in the African-American tradition, rich in history, rich in full bodied sound, rich in messages, so rich it's hard to believe the music we call gospel is only 60 years old, even though its roots go back much further. It was in 1930 that a young Chicago choir director named Thomas A. Dorsey unveiled what he called gospel music. It was a blend of solemn negro spirituals with the fire and brimstone energy of a Pentecostal preacher and the improvisational stylings of big city ragtime blues and jazz, all of it punctuated by tambourines, clapping hands, and stamping feet. [GOSPEL FEST MUSIC]

MR. PAGE: Listen closely and you can still clear references to Moses, or to Shadrak, Mishack and Abendigo, or other old testament stories that gave so much comfort to American slaves who dreamed that they too might someday have their Moses to deliver them from Pharaoh. But as much as gospel's identified with the black church, it is not found only in black churches. Rev. Dan Willis and the Pentecostals of Chicago show how the spirit of gospel crosses racial lines. And gospel fest's first Hispanic singer, Elizabeth DeJesus, exemplifies the rapid spread of charismatic and Pentecostal religion among Hispanic-Americans, and along with it, American gospel is getting more of a Spanish accent. [GOSPEL MUSIC]

MR. PAGE: Themes of salvation and resurrection make gospel a happy, uplifting counterpoint to its mischievous downbeat sister, the blues. Like the blues, gospel music often is built on tragedy, but gospel is mostly upbeat, uplifting in its professions of unshakable faith. [GOSPEL MUSIC]

MR. PAGE: Gospel comes from Godspell, the old English word for "good news" and the themes of gospel appropriately offer hope, a soothing, consoling, encouraging response to the blues. No matter how bad things are, salvation is at hand. That's the good news. So make a joyful noise. Like other dynamic art forms, gospel music is constantly being recreated, reformed, and born again. Perhaps inevitably a new generation of gospel performers is coming along to replace the tambourine with drum kits, the old church piano with electric guitars and electronic synthesizers, and the new wave rhythms and rap of today's urban street ministry. It's an ironic turn. Black church music nurtured black soul stars like Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Marvin Gay, and Al Green, to name a few. Now today's soul music is turning home like the Prodigal Son, to influence the gospel from which it came. [GOSPEL MUSIC]

MR. PAGE: Traditionalists may not like every direction it takes, but many others do. After all, the instrumentation and rhythm tracks may change but the message remains the same. It's good news, the gospel truth, a joyful noise. Take it whichever way the spirit moves you. [GOSPEL MUSIC]

MR. PAGE: I'm Clarence Page. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Thursday, Vice Pres. Quayle renewed the administration's pledge to veto the civil rights bill passed by the Senate last night. Democratic leaders said they would consider compromise language to overcome the President's concerns. And former Major League Baseball star and manager Pete Rose was sentenced to five months in prison and fined $50,000 for income tax evasion.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Jim. That's the Newshour tonight. We'll be back tomorrow night with a report on Neil Bush and the Silverado Savings & Loan. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.