The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MAC NEIL: Good evening. I'm Robert MacNeil in New York.

MR. LEHRER: And I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington. After our summary of the news this Friday, Kwame Holman and Susan Dentzer of "U.S. News & World Report" update the big Washington budget story. Mark Shields and Paul Gigot analyze that and other political events of the week, Lee Hochberg looks at Alaska's arctic wildlife refuge, and we say some good-byes. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: Democrats forced the Senate Budget Committee to postpone a vote today on the budget reconciliation package. It will now be on Monday, rather than today as scheduled. The giant tax and spending plan could then go to the full Senate later in the week for debate and a final vote. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle said today the Republican-controlled Congress is forcing the President to reject the bill.

SEN. TOM DASCHLE, Minority Leader: Obviously, the President has said as unequivocally as he can he's going to veto the bill. He has to veto the bill. If he doesn't veto this legislation, the vast majority of American people are going to be worse off and are going to be in a very, very difficult financial position in, in as early a time as the next 12 months. I mean, that's what we're up against here, and that's why this is so important. This isn't just politics. This isn't just another legislative fight. This is the whole ball game.

MR. LEHRER: The White House and Congress also can't agree on extending the government's authority to borrow money. A temporary extension is in the budget bill to be voted on next week. Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole said the Congress won't be at fault if the President rejects that measure.

SEN. ROBERT DOLE, Majority Leader: I don't want to shut down the government, but on the other hand, we want to make sure that we send the President, you know, all these--balanced budget by the year 2002, the tax cuts, welfare reform, saving Medicare, and in that package we're going to have an extension of the debt ceiling. And if vetoes that, you can't blame the Congress when we sent him an extension.

MR. LEHRER: We'll have more on all of this right after the News Summary. Robin.

MR. MAC NEIL: President Clinton today endorsed proposed legislation to prevent job discrimination against homosexuals. The law would make it illegal for employers with more than 15 workers to discriminate against gays and lesbians. The President announced his support in a letter to the nation's largest gay and lesbian group, the Human Rights Campaign. This is the first time a President has backed major gay rights legislation.

MR. LEHRER: Russian President Boris Yeltsin may not fire his foreign minister after all. Yesterday he said he would. But today there were signs of second thoughts as Yeltsin and Andrei Kozyrev left Moscow together for Paris. They will go from there to the United Nations' 50th anniversary celebration in New York. Yeltsin and President Clinton hold a one-day summit meeting in Hyde Park, New York, on Monday.

MR. MAC NEIL: NATO Secretary-General Willy Claes announced his resignation today one day after the Belgian parliament voted that he should be tried on corruption charges. The allegations stem from a 1988 military purchasing scandal when Claes was the Belgian economic affairs minister. Claes held NATO's top post for one year. He presided over the Alliance's first sustained military action, bombing rebel Bosnian Serbs in the former Yugoslav republic. Claes will be replaced by a deputy until a successor is formally appointed.

MR. LEHRER: The seventh time was a charm for the space shuttle "Columbia" today. The spacecraft lifted off this morning from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a 16-day science mission. The launch had been delayed six times because of bad weather or technical problems. The seven crew members will conduct gravity-free experiments that could aid research into semiconductors, drugs, and firefighting techniques. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the budget story, Shields & Gigot, wildlife in Alaska, and a farewell. FOCUS - BUDGET BATTLE

MR. MAC NEIL: First tonight, jockeying over the budget. A tax cut, reforming Medicare, Medicaid, and welfare, and government programs from farm subsidies to funding for the arts are all part of the balanced budget plans that both the House and Senate are expected to vote on next week. Today, all sides were gearing up for battle. Kwame Holman begins our report.

MR. HOLMAN: On Capitol Hill, all the talk is about reconciliation.

SEN. ROBERT DOLE, Majority Leader: I'll need 50 votes next Thursday or Friday on this big, big reconciliation package.

SEN. TOM DASCHLE: It's all wrapped up in the negotiations involving this and involving the, the reconciliation package.

SEN. PETE DOMENICI, Chairman, Senate Budget Committee: This committee is not taking testimony on a reconciliation bill.

REP. JOHN KASICH, Chairman, House Budget Committee: Reconciliation--the dumbest word I've ever heard in my life--you'd think it's something the Catholics do on Saturday.

MR. HOLMAN: In fact, reconciliation is the end game of the congressional budget process. All the spending and tax decisions made by the various committees during the year are rolled into one giant piece of legislation. It reconciles those decisions with the balanced budget targets set earlier this year by the budget resolution. Reconciliation is considered particularly critical this year because of the revolutionary changes made in the budget by the new Republican Congress.

SEN. ROBERT DOLE, Majority Leader: We're talking about big, big fundamental change, a balanced budget by the year 2002, strengthening Medicare, preserving Medicare, reforming welfare, and tax cuts that some of you might have an interest in.

SEN. TOM DASCHLE, Minority Leader: This is a very dramatic draconian change in priorities, the likes of which we're going to see unveiled and unrolled now for the next several weeks.

MR. HOLMAN: This afternoon, with all of those momentous tax and spending decisions piled before him, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici hoped members of his committee would act quickly in fulfilling their role in the reconciliation process.

SEN. PETE DOMENICI, Chairman, Senate Budget Committee: Our job is to package this up as debated and as reported by the 11 committees and send it to the floor of the Senate.

MR. HOLMAN: But Committee Democrats, little more than bystanders throughout the entire budget process, seemed reluctant to let the process end.

SEN. KENT CONRAD, [D] North Dakota: These are the budget priorities for the United States for the next seven years. That is going to have enormous consequences for the American people. I think the American people deserve, given the fact that we're to vote on this, a chance to have a debate and a discussion about what's in this. I hope you're not afraid of having a discussion about what's in it.

SEN. PETE DOMENICI: Look, man. You understand this, Senator. I'm not afraid of having a debate on anything.

MR. HOLMAN: And when Democrats wanted to bring out four sympathetic witnesses, Chairman Domenici immediately cut off their request.

SEN. PETE DOMENICI: I'm going to rule that taking testimony at a reconciliation report session is not in order, and we're not going to do that.

SEN. BARBARA BOXER, [D] California: Have we turned into a non- Democratic committee?

SEN. PETE DOMENICI: Yeah, we kind of have when it comes to whether you're going to open a committee that doesn't take testimony to taking testimony.

SEN. BARBARA BOXER: Well, that's an interesting kind of a statement that we suddenly can't have a vote, when so many members feel--

SEN. PETE DOMENICI: It's not--

SEN. BARBARA BOXER: --that this is going to impact so many people.

SEN. PETE DOMENICI: We're not going to take selected testimony from three or four people. What if we said we need ten, and then we ask the Finance Committee, how many do you need, and they said, to be fair, we want twenty? That isn't our mission; that isn't our role; and frankly, you all can raise it as much as you want. We're not going to have witnesses testifying before this committee.

MR. HOLMAN: But without the cooperation of Democrats, Domenici had no choice but to put off a committee vote on the reconciliation package until Monday evening.

SEN. PETE DOMENICI: Having said that, we are adjourned.

MR. HOLMAN: House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich had his problems too but within his own party.

REP. JOHN KASICH, Chairman, House Budget Committee: Well, we're facing the problem with sacred cows, literally.

MR. HOLMAN: Even though Kasich's committee completed its work on reconciliation last week, it had to leave out some controversial cuts in agriculture subsidies due to the objections of some farm state Republicans.

REP. JOHN KASICH: But I think that the agriculture changes have unleashed a momentum that everybody who is involved at all in agriculture understands cannot be stopped. In other words, a sugar program that relies on dumb subsidies and setasides and that lacks market-oriented foundations, that program's days are numbered, the same with peanuts. The milk program is going to undergo significant change. It's just we'll get as much as we can done this round, and then we get a farm bill, I think we're going to see even more change.

MR. HOLMAN: Both the House and Senate expect to vote on their respective versions of reconciliation by the end of next week. In the meantime, members of both parties will be fighting the battle of public opinion.

MR. LEHRER: Now, more on where this story seems headed from Susan Dentzer, chief economics correspondent for "U.S. News & World Report." And where is it headed? I mean, is there--obviously, there's a collision today. Is there still going to be a collision a week from today?

SUSAN DENTZER, U.S. News & World Report: Well, Jim, if only we knew the answer to that question. In effect, what's happening now is that the Republicans are moving down a track that they've wanted to move down for some time. They're drawing up a large plan now to balance the budget over seven years. They've put together the pieces of it. The House vote yesterday on Medicare was a large piece of the House's side of that equation. But actually, President Clinton has stepped out of the bushes and yelled, "surprise," which is that he's thrown a monkey wrench into this process and effectively said that he too is in favor of a seven-year budget deal. This throws everything open and up for grabs.

MR. LEHRER: Why? Why is that?

MS. DENTZER: In the sense that, as I say, I think the Republicans were assuming that they would be moving down the track; they would be sending the President a reconciliation bill. And, remember, reconciliation is tax changes--law changes, and the mandatory program changes.

MR. LEHRER: Why is it called reconciliation?

MS. DENTZER: Because it's an attempt to reconcile the fiscal policy of the nation with the budget targets set forth earlier in the year by both Houses of Congress. In effect, it changes tax policy, and it changes entitlement spending policy to bring it into line with overall budget targets.

MR. LEHRER: Okay.

MS. DENTZER: And as the Republicans attempt to move this forward and have been hoping to move this forward, they essentially wanted- -who were thinking that they were going to, in effect, ram it down the President's throat because they were going to tie it to an increase in the ceiling on the federal debt, which has to be expended if the government is going to continue to run its business.

MR. LEHRER: So they stuck that on there feeling that the President wasn't about to veto this and shut down the government, so he had a little game going on.

MS. DENTZER: Exactly right. Now, as I say, the President has st p ed out of the bushes and, in effect, yelled, "Surprise! I'm willing to talk about a seven-year budget deal."

MR. LEHRER: Before it was a ten. He wanted a ten-year plan.

MS. DENTZER: Yes. Technically, nine years. Right.

MR. LEHRER: Okay.

MS. DENTZER: And, in fact, now we have everything thrown open. It's really not clear how things are going to proceed from here on out.

MR. LEHRER: When Sen. Daschle says, as he said in our piece just now, hey, the President is going to veto this, the President must veto this, who's he talking for?

MS. DENTZER: Well, he is speaking for the President, because out of the other side of his mouth, the President has, indeed, been saying that he's going to veto this particular set of changes that the Republicans have put through on Medicare in particular, and he's also talked about vetoing the Medicaid changes. But in a way, that's just a way of saying I don't want your particular sizes of cuts, $270 billion in Medicare over seven years, $182 billion in Medicaid over seven years. He's, in effect, by saying he's open to a seven-year budget deal, saying, I'm open to some bigger numbers that I personally, Bill Clinton, have been talking about, and as I say, leaving the door open for a deal to be struck.

MR. LEHRER: And do you smell a deal?

MS. DENTZER: I think there's no question but that there's going to eventually be a deal. It's in the interest of President Clinton to have a deal. He's clearly trying to carve out an image for himself as a new Democrat, a Democrat that essentially is going to take the fiscal problems of the nation seriously and put us on a path toward a balanced budget. So I think it's clear that it's going to happen. I think that the stakes are very high. One of the things he clearly is going to insist upon and one of the reasons he's able to even talk about a seven-year deal is he knows that he's got some economic assumptions in his budget that the Republicans probably have to sign onto if they're all going to agree on a deal. So he--he's going to have to force them to do what they have said that they don't want to do, which is accept his assumptions about the economic forecast in order to have this deal come together.

MR. LEHRER: And the word "big deal" applies in this case, the two words, "big deal," applies in this case, does it not? This is a big thing that's happening there.

MS. DENTZER: Well, no question about it, because certainly in the last 10 years, we've never had a deal struck that would actually eliminate the budget deficit over even a seven/ten, whatever year period, so if this actually were put through, it would be, indeed, a big deal, and it's--it's also important to note that the changes in Medicare would be far reaching perhaps beyond the seven-year horizon because, in effect, we start to get into a position with Medicare when the baby boomer retires, where the costs of Medicare become totally unsustainable. If the President really is willing to accept some of the changes that the Republicans have proposed, that is in a way setting the stage for a broader series of changes that would rein in the costs of Medicare over time.

MR. LEHRER: Okay. Susan, don't go away. FOCUS - POLITICAL WRAP

MR. LEHRER: We want to get some analysis now of this matter and other political events of the week from Shields & Gigot. That's syndicated columnist Mark Shields, "Wall Street Journal" columnist Paul Gigot. What are the politics of this, Mark?

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: The politics are enormous, Jim. I think that there's no question that--in my judgment, anyway- -that the President came away weakened this week, weakened not only by what was going on in the, in the dealings and sort of the posturing imposing over the issue, itself, and what else was going on in his own political life. He did not look as someone's going into a foxhole, the other side, he did not look like a guy you wanted to be in a foxhole with. It's a fellow who went down--

MR. LEHRER: Are you talking about the--

MR. SHIELDS: I'm talking about the--

MR. LEHRER: We'll get to that in a minute.

MR. SHIELDS: Okay.

MR. LEHRER: But on this particular thing, you know, I had to ask Susan just now, okay, tell me again what reconciliation means. I have a hunch that--I was asking on behalf of myself as well as for the audience.

MR. SHIELDS: Sure.

MR. LEHRER: I've got a hunch that an awful lot of people don't know what this is.

MR. SHIELDS: Well, this is the whole ball game all wrapped together.

MR. LEHRER: Okay.

MR. SHIELDS: This is welfare. This is--

MR. LEHRER: All--

MR. SHIELDS: --Medicare. This is tax cuts. This is everything put together. The President is going to veto it. All right. The President has to veto it.

MR. LEHRER: Because?

MR. SHIELDS: He has to veto it to show that, first of all, Gingrich has to show and Dole has to showthey can do--they can get it through. All right. They get it--

MR. LEHRER: They have to put their version on the President's desk.

MR. SHIELDS: They put their version out there. The President then vetoes it. Then the moment of truth hits.

MR. LEHRER: That's when the dealing--that's when the dealing--

MR. SHIELDS: The moment of truth is: Does Bill Clinton then do what George Bush did in 1990, which was to move to the majority of the other party controlling the Congress and cut a deal there? Because he's not going to pass anything that Newt Gingrich isn't for.

MR. LEHRER: Yes.

MR. SHIELDS: Does he forsake his own party, as Bush did in 1990, as Richard Nixon did time and again during his own presidency? What Bill Clinton seems to have assumed is that there will never be a Democratic majority again in the Congress under his watch.

MR. LEHRER: So that--

MR. SHIELDS: That's how he's behaving right now.

MR. LEHRER: How do you see it? PAUL GIGOT, Wall Street Journal: I think he's already made that decision, which is to abandon his own Democratic Party in Congress and to--

MR. LEHRER: Because they don't have the numbers in order to get something done.

MR. GIGOT: Because Gingrich has the most powerful thing under the American Constitution, the power of the purse. And we've seen that time and again, and we're going to have another lesson in it, that when you control the purse strings in Congress, you can make life awfully uncomfortable for a President who, who wants to resist your priorities but doesn't have the same levers. He can veto the whole thing, but when--if he vetoes the budget, the Republican strategy is to set it up, okay, Mr. President, we'll send you up a temporary budget six weeks or so, but it's a 10 percent cut across-the-board, and it's not going to have your favorite programs like National Service, and it's not going to have education spending. They're going to make life as, as difficult as possible for him as a way to induce him to sign the budget.

MR. LEHRER: Why? Why are they going to do that?

MR. GIGOT: Because they want to win. Because they think that they had a mandate in 1994.

MR. LEHRER: And this is all in this bill.

MR. GIGOT: This is all in this bill, and they're willing to negotiate on some of the details, but in the end, they want 70 or 80 percent of what they got.

MR. LEHRER: What is your reading of the public perception of what's going on on this thing?

MR. GIGOT: Well--

MR. LEHRER: I mean, politically I mean.

MR. GIGOT: I think that the Republicans, as Chris Shays, one of them Connecticut, told me, a moderate--

MR. LEHRER: House member.

MR. GIGOT: House member. "We burned our ships. There's no going back. We're going to do it. We promised"--

MR. LEHRER: They're on the beach, in other words.

MR. GIGOT: We don't know--we don't know--in 1996, we'll find out whether we win or whether we lose, but we're not going to stop and say, we didn't do it.

MR. SHIELDS: Not to rain on Paul's parade, but the problem that Gingrich has is he's a victim of his own success. Newt Gingrich did this week on Medicare, Jim, what people, many of his critics, including this one, had said was going to be impossible to do. I mean, he's done the impossible for the second time really in the past 10 months. He won the Republican majority in the House last November. He got through the Medicare and the cuts, enormous cuts in Medicare, basically to cover the cost of the tax cuts, but he did it, when it was supposed to be--the problem he has--what Paul's strategy has outlined--is that people see him in charge. If a thing really bogs down, breaks down, and people are inconvenienced or maybe even suffer from it, and there's a sense that things are not working at all in Washington, then inevitably, he will get some of the blame.

MR. LEHRER: Rather than the President.

MR. SHIELDS: It's not a zero sum game where all of the blame goes to the President.

MR. GIGOT: Right. You can construct a kind of a partial budget that does the essential things government needs to make sure it has--Social Security checks are going out, to make sure that the essential business is going on, but the President's priorities, discretionary priorities, the things he'd like to have, are in there.

MR. LEHRER: Well, let me ask a simple-minded question. Forget all of the complicated stuff that's in that reconciliation bill. Let's say that it does get to a point where the government of the United States shuts down. Who takes the heat for that, Mark?

MR. SHIELDS: Well, I think--I think at that point, the President, whoever the President is, has enormous advantage. The President has the bully pulpit of the office. The President has the right to go on the networks and make the case that I am the one person elected by everybody. And I think in that case he probably does. But I think it's a very high-risk strategy. I think it's in the interest, that you can make the case that it's in the self-interest of all three--of Bob Dole, who's a Presidential candidate, of Newt Gingrich who'd like to be one if Colin Powell doesn't run, and of Bill Clinton, who obviously is one, to make sure that it works, to show that they're not part--and their fingerprints aren't all over something that's really a tragedy.

MR. LEHRER: Do you agree that nobody wins if the government shuts down?

MR. GIGOT: Well, it depends on how long it lasts and under what circumstances. It could go either way. But I agree with Mark. Everybody has an interest in doing a deal, which is why I think there will be one.

MR. LEHRER: Do you agree, Susan, that the likelihood of the government shutting down is remote?

MS. DENTZER: I don't think it's even going to happen at all. I think that clearly we've come to this brink many times in the past and walked away from it. We'll do that again this time around. It's fairly obvious that we'll have another continuing resolution which, in effect, will extend the expending ability of the government for maybe another month or so while negotiations continue to take place between the Republicans and the White House and will probably extend the debt ceiling, at least on a temporary basis, so we can get past this fear of the government defaulting on the federal debt.

MR. LEHRER: History--

MS. DENTZER: It's the kind of thing that goes on again and again in Washington and will happen this time as well.

MR. LEHRER: You can change the names of the players and the faces but history does repeat itself on this--

MS. DENTZER: And the rhetoric switches from side to side.

MR. LEHRER: Okay, Mark. Let's go to the flip-flops. There were two of them. You mentioned the one that President Clinton did on taxes.

MR. SHIELDS: Okay. The President, for the second time in a week, went before a group of big rollers, high givers, big givers, however you want to put it, Democratic Party. He's raised, to his campaign's credit, $20 million, raised every nickel. He's kept everybody out of the race. But with the irresistible urge that has beset him on many occasions that has afflicted more politicians than not, he wanted to endure himself to the group in front of him. And to a group of big givers, he said, millionaires, I feel your pain, I feel your pain. Let me tell you, you poor guys, I had this tax increase in 1993, and you know, some people think I tax too much. I do. Now, Jim, this is a guy who fought tooth and toenail for every vote. He won it with a single Republican vote on Capitol Hill. Understand this. Understand this first of all, that the easiest vote in Washington in 1993 was the Republican vote, their vote not to cut any spending and not to impose any tax increase. Every vote had to come from the Democrats. He had to bend. They had to deal. Democrats, I mean, people who used to be on this program, I mean, Marjorie Margolis-Mezvinsky--

MR. LEHRER: A lot of them are home now.

MR. SHIELDS: They're now in private life because, because of that vote.

MR. LEHRER: Karen Shepherd, who was one of our freshmen--

MR. SHIELDS: Karen Shepherd, one of our people, and a terrific member from Utah. And so what happened was that everybody on the Hill now as they're going in this foxhole that Susan was describing, the Democrats against the Republicans, they're looking to say, wait a minute, where is this guy going to be? I mean, we walked the plank for him. We stood there, and out of nowhere this guy stands up and says, you know, the biggest thing in my administration where I cut the deficit three years in a row, where we kept inflation down, where we really did this, hadn't happened since Harry Truman they cut the deficit three years running, he said, you know, it really was a mistake.

MR. LEHRER: Paul, do you want to defend the President?

MR. GIGOT: I do as a matter of fact, sort of. Mark broke the code when he said these people are in private life. I mean, it may have been the tough vote, but it was also not the smart vote.

MR. LEHRER: Politically.

MR. GIGOT: The President does not want to be in private life in 1997, and he has to think about ideologically repositioning himself with a body politic which is taxophobic. It does not want tax increases.

MR. LEHRER: And he is just saying, I'm not one of those, meaning I'm not one of those Democrats.

MR. GIGOT: He's saying--he's saying--he's offering an explanation to the voters as he's leading up to '96 of the first two years that says, you know, remember that Bill Clinton who ran in 1992 on a middle class tax cut? I got into Washington, the Democrats were in Congress, they made me do it, I didn't have any Republican votes to help me on the spending side, so I had--I had to raise taxes more than I would have liked.

MR. LEHRER: Politically, is this a serious gaff the President has made, or is this a one-week story?

MR. GIGOT: No. I think it's going to show up in television ads right up to 1996.

MR. LEHRER: Speaking of that, that's a cue. The Republicans, in fact, made an ad already about this. It's 15 seconds long, and they put it out this afternoon, and we're going to look at it right now.

PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: [Republican Ad] Probably people are still made at me at that budget because you think I raised your taxes too much. It might surprise you to know that I think I raised them too much too.

AD SPOKESPERSON: Republicans agree. That's why we intend to keep our word and give middle class families a real tax cut.

MR. LEHRER: That's tough stuff, Mark.

MR. SHIELDS: Jim, I disagree, respectfully, with Paul. Bill Clinton's problem has never been ideological. It has always been one of character, reliability, dependability. That's why this hurts.

MR. LEHRER: That's why that commercial hurt him.

MR. SHIELDS: That's why it does. I mean, in other words, he said he believed it. He's the one that came up with the $359 billion in tax increases and then backed off on the BTU, but then--so here he is. He's vulnerable on the character--

MR. LEHRER: British Thermal Unit.

MR. SHIELDS: British Thermal Unit. He's vulnerable on the--he's vulnerable on the character issue, on the constancy, whether he's a guy to be counted on, and so you got Bob Dole to run against him, 36 years in the Congress. Whatever you say about Bob Dole, he's old shoe, he's an old suit. You know who he is. So what does he do? He seeks $1,000 from the--

MR. LEHRER: I was just going to get to that.

MR. SHIELDS: I got to tell you. I mean he made Clinton look like Mount Rushmore this way. He seeks $1,000 from a gay Republican group, Log Cabins, thanks him for it, then returns it after the Iowa Caucuses, where he runs neck and neck with or straw ballot, where he runs neck and neck with Phil Gramm and scared stiff the right wing is going to take him over. Now, he's apologizing for returning the money, and what does he do? A classic leadership position--blames it on his staff. I mean, these guys, don't they ever learn?

MR. LEHRER: Paul, what do you think about what Dole did?

MR. GIGOT: Well, he pulled a Clinton, to quote Don Quayle from the 1992 campaign. There's no question about it. I mean, the original decision was a campaign staff decision made--

MR. LEHRER: You mean to return the money?

MR. GIGOT: To return the money, and it was made for a strategic reason. They have long believed that the race for the Republican nomination will be a two-man race between Bob Dole and Phil Gramm, that Phil Gramm would use the gay issue in the South. I'm not saying whether it's smart enough. I'm saying that's what they thought, and they would use it in the South against Bob Dole. Now, you know, unfortunately the timing on that return of the check was awful in the summer, because it came after a series of moves that looked like he was moving, trying to pander to the right. But to turn around now, as Bob Dole did, on his own, with--the staff was not delighted with this--the campaign staff--kind of reinforces the pandering because it points more attention to him.

MR. LEHRER: And this blaming things on a staff, you know, that, that--that's kind of wearing thin on--when anybody does that--

MR. GIGOT: Well, he's going to take the heat for it, there's no question about it.

MR. LEHRER: Serious heat?

MR. GIGOT: Well, I mean, I don't think it reinforces--Bob Dole's biggest problem in the campaign right now with a lot of Republicans is, answer this question. Why do you want to be President? What is your reason for being President, other than that you think you're the next in line? Give us some vision. Give us some constancy. And this really underscores that, hurts that, because it makes it look as if he's just slip sliding, whatever direction the current votes are.

MR. LEHRER: Serious problem?

MR. SHIELDS: Serious problem, Jim, because what Washington has come to represent is finger shifting--finger pointing, blame shifting, and that's what this is. These guys, you know, there's no sense of history. Bay of Pigs, 1961, terrible botched invasion of Cuba by--as supported by the United States. It totally goes wrong. John Kennedy, new President, three months, comes out and says, my responsibility, it happened on my watch, success has many fathers, failures, and orphans. He goes to 83 percent in the polls. And Americans say, hey, finally--

MR. LEHRER: Well, look what happened to Janet Reno!

MR. SHIELDS: Janet Reno, same thing. Finally, somebody's willing to take responsibility, be accountable. And here you have Bob Dole. You think he'd know better. I mean, he just--you know, it really looked bad, and it looks worse, and a technical point for the campaign, Bob Dole in 1988 micromanaged his campaign. I mean, he'd get on the plane in the morning, he'd decide where they were going to fly that day. It looks like he's micromanaging his returning.

MR. LEHRER: Just politically, does it, in fact, hurt him with the Christian right and the people that Gramm is trying, trying to get from Dole?

MR. GIGOT: Oh, I think it does. I think it does, because it leads them to believe, well, you weren't serious before.

MR. LEHRER: Oh, I got you.

MR. GIGOT: And now when you get some other pressures, you just turn the other way. In the words of Marvin Olasky, Bob Dole is a walking political tactic, not a serious--

MR. SHIELDS: Paul Gigot, Paul Gigot wrote today that Phil Gramm couldn't beat Hillary Clinton, I mean, and that--I think that may be the most insightful thing I've ever heard out of Paul Gigot in at least 72 hours.

MR. GIGOT: One side of my brain is speaking, Mark.

MR. SHIELDS: The reality--the reality is they're basing a campaign about running against Phil Gramm. I mean, they ought to rethink that strategy.

MR. LEHRER: The reality is that we have to go. Susan, gentlemen, thank you very much. FOCUS - ARCTIC REFUGE

MR. MAC NEIL: Now, to preserve or to develop. One small but controversial part of the budget that will be voted on next week involves protected land in Alaska, the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve in the remote Northeast corner of the state. Correspondent Lee Hochberg of Oregon Public Broadcasting traveled there and has this report.

MR. HOCHBERG: It's a wilderness unlike any other in the United States, a place where every year 150,000 caribou come a daunting 1500 miles from the mountains of Canada. Every summer for perhaps 10,000 years, caribou have streamed to this narrow strip of land, coastal plain of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR. There, in 48 hours, caribou cows give birth to thousands of baby caribou.

DON RUSSELL, Biologist: I've been at it for 20 years, and I'm always--it never fails to inspire you that there is something like this in North America in the world.

MR. HOCHBERG: Because of cool arctic breezes that drive away mosquitoes and rich tundra vegetation that provides nutrients to pregnant cows, the caribou are drawn to this place, but so too is America's oil industry. Beneath ANWR's coastal plain may lie petroleum reserves worth billions of dollars.

ROGER HERRERA, Oil Industry Spokesman: We're hung up on titles. Because it's called a wildlife refuge, gosh, you can't drill. I think that if you're looking for oil, you have to look logically in that--beneath the coastal plain. To walk away from that area on the basis of geology would be nonsense. You have to look there.

MR. HOCHBERG: The industry's desire bewilders wildlife biologists like Canada's Don Russell.

DON RUSSELL: Oil's development with its pipelines and roads have no place in this, in this ecosystem. If you were going to do activity anywhere in the range, say it was like a dart board, you couldn't throw a dart in a worse spot than right here where we're standing, and this happens to be where they want to develop.

MR. HOCHBERG: For years, a battle has raged over ANWR. The Eisenhower administration designated the Arctic Range in 1960. Congress expanded it and renamed it the Arctic Refuge in 1980, but it ordered the Interior Department to assess its oil and gas potential. Interior in 1987 recommended a 125-mile swath of the coastal plane be open for development. Congress rejected the idea at the time for fear of threatening wildlife, but now that Republicans have the majority, Alaska's own Republican delegation has attained powerful positions atop key congressional committees, and they're mounting the most formidable pressure yet to begin drilling.

SEN. FRANK MURKOWSKI, [R] Alaska: The fact that we're in positions of chairmanships gives us an opportunity that we never had before.

MR. HOCHBERG: Alaska's Senator, Frank Murkowski, is chairman of the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee. He convinced GOP budget planners that they could increase government revenue and help cut the deficit by leasing ANWR's oil. He says it could generate $1.4 billion for the government. And he says America needs the oil.

SEN. FRANK MURKOWSKI: The Mideast is a very unstable area, as we have seen, and the fact that that situation could blow up tomorrow, then where would we be? We would be right back where we were in '73, with gas lines around the block, and the public would be screaming as to why government couldn't have planned to avert this.

MR. HOCHBERG: The state of Alaska would receive 50 to 90 percent of the proceeds from ANWR oil leases. The state's Democratic governor, Tony Knowles, supports the GOP plan.

GOV. TONY KNOWLES, [D] Alaska: The state would receive over $1 billion in that, and on the royalties, at 50 percent of the royalties, it depends on how much is there and the price of oil, but it would be, it would be hundreds of millions of dollars.

MR. HOCHBERG: The push to develop is on, despite this draft report from the U.S. Geological Survey. It concludes oil resources within ANWR are significantly smaller than previously believed. Earlier estimates have ANWR providing American oil needs for 200 days. The new report cuts the amount of recoverable oil by 50 percent.

BRUCE BABBITT, Secretary of the Interior: What they want to have is the absolute right to destroy that refuge in the future at a time and place of their choosing for their convenience.

MR. HOCHBERG: Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt says Republicans are exaggerating the amount of money ANWR oil would provide for deficit reduction, and he says the U.S. doesn't even need the oil.

BRUCE BABBITT: We do not need ANWR in this decade. The price of oil has dropped 50 percent. The Cold War is over. There are no restraints on the world oil supply, and, indeed, the Alaska delegation tells us out of one side of their mouth that we need this for America and out of the other side of their mouth they are pushing legislation to enable them to send this oil to Japan.

MR. HOCHBERG: Babbitt says there's increasing evidence that development at ANWR could imperil the caribou herd. He's also worried about the other wildlife that emerges under the 24-hour sunlight of summer, 500 musk oxen. There are majestic Dahl sheep, polar and grizzly bears, packs of wolves and arctic foxes and moose, millions of migratory birds, and golden eagles.

BRUCE BABBITT: It'll be gone, and there's nothing to replace it. There's no equivalent anywhere in the world.

ROGER HERRERA: The technological ability to build oil fields which won't interfere with caribou becomes, becomes an issue which you really have to look at very carefully, and of course, the biologists don't do that. They just look at their biological information and say, oh, the sky is falling or whatever they're saying. The, the oil technologists say we can now develop oil fields and design oil fields which won't interfere with the caribou to nearly the extent that they used to.

MR. HOCHBERG: It's not just a matter for nature lovers. The caribou herd spends its winters near this village of Gwitchen Indians near the Alaska-Canada border. Like 7,000 other Gwitchen across Alaska and the Yukon territory, the people here have built their culture around the caribou.

LYDIA THOMAS: And if we've got no caribou, what are we going to eat? Nothing.

MR. HOCHBERG: Caribou have long been the mainstay of the Gwitchen diet. Elders still hunt caribou, and in many homes, caribou meat hangs from a line to dry. Seventy-nine year old Lydia Thomas stores dry meat in a bag she made from caribou skin.

LYDIA THOMAS: You could keep it there one or two years, it wouldn't spoil. That's our deep freezer. That's the way we use caribou. Every little bit we use.

MR. HOCHBERG: From the marrow of caribou bones, the Gwitchen get grease to make candles.

LYDIA THOMAS: We do this.

MR. HOCHBERG: From the meat itself, they make a thread-like substance with which they sew.

ELIZABETH KAYE: This is Malee, Chilee, caribou meat.

MR. HOCHBERG: Gwitchen two- and three-year-olds learn about the importance of caribou at their day care center.

ELIZABETH KAYE: If we lose our caribou, we lose our culture, and this--I get really emotional when that part comes to mind, because of these little children here.

MR. HOCHBERG: Murkowski counters their fear about the caribou by distributing videotapes of the animals grazing in the oil field at Alaska's Prudhoe Bay Development. And he says there's something else that can be learned from pictures of the North Slope wetlands, with their 1500 miles of roads and pipelines. Despite the abandoned buildings and chemical waste pits, the Senator sees an economic boon, the same kind of boon from which the Gwitchens could benefit.

SEN. FRANK MURKOWSKI: If you go into the Gwitchen community today, you find a proud people dependent upon subsistence and also dependent on welfare. And that's just reality. Now, we're cutting welfare benefits, there's job mandates associated with welfare. Should these people have an opportunity for an alternative lifestyle?

MR. HOCHBERG: Murkowski and his fellow Alaskans in Congress also have their eyes set on other protected sites for development, like Alaska's Tongass National Forest, considered by biologists to be the last intact temperate rain forest on Earth. Each member of the delegation has sponsored legislation to increase industrial clearcut logging in the forest. Forty years of logging 400-year- old trees already have turned parts of this 17 million acre forest into a patchwork quilt. Timber from the Tongass goes almost entirely to one private pulp mill in the nearby town of Ketchikan. The mill employs 600 people, but Murkowski introduced a bill that would require the Tongass be managed in a way to generate 2400 timber jobs. That's the employment level before recent environmental protections were phased in. Mill spokesman Troy Reinhart says the rain forest can easily support more jobs.

TROY REINHART, Ketchikan Pulp Mill: If it wasn't for the federal government selling logs, the Ketchikan Pulp Company wouldn't be here; this facility wouldn't be operating; our two sawmills wouldn't be operating. Preservationists, they want to go back to a time when we had smallpox and we had typhoid and people in Alaska hardly had enough to eat and didn't get TV, or there wasn't TV then, but, you know, didn't get fresh food, and all those kind of things. And that isn't where we're at now. I don't want to go back to those times.

MR. HOCHBERG: The bill was widely opposed by Alaska's tourist industry and Southeast Alaska communities, and this time by Gov. Knowles.

GOV. TONY KNOWLES: Are we listening to good science, or is it a special interest that is writing the ticket? It's a short-range, ill-advised approach to how to manage a national asset.

MR. HOCHBERG: Alaska's other Senator, Ted Stevens, recently attached a rider to the Interior Department's spending bill. It mandates a 1/3 increase in timber cutting on the Tongass. State biologists say it will put bears and eight other species at risk. Murkowski says logging would only decrease the number of bears and deer, not eliminate them.

SEN. FRANK MURKOWSKI: The environmental community that's attempting to block this is searching to find something warm and cuddly that they can identify as endangered and they haven't been able to find it yet.

MR. HOCHBERG: Those who say Murkowski is wrong also allege he is guilty of conflict of interest. Though he recently sold $30,000 worth of stock in the company that owns the Ketchikan Pulp Mill, he retains $1 million in stock in the First Bank of Ketchikan. That bank has sizeable holdings in the local timber industry.

SEN. FRANK MURKOWSKI: My constituents certainly are aware of my interest, and I think it's good business to put your assets back in the state that you represent.

MR. HOCHBERG: Constituents at the mill are just glad their Senators and Congressmen are wielding their new power.

TROY REINHART: For the first time in decades and decades, we have two Alaskans in Ted Stevens and Frank Murkowski, and Don Young, fighting for Alaska, and I think that makes me feel very good, makes Alaskans feel very good.

BRUCE BABBITT: Well, I think the people who are pushing this are once again living proof of what's wrong with our political system. The oil companies, the timber companies, the resource users are plowing millions of dollars into political campaigns, and then they show up in the halls of Congress saying, okay, we got you there, now it's time, the pay-off for us is due.

MR. HOCHBERG: Babbitt says he'll recommend President Clinton veto the bills to develop ANWR and the Tongass. Congress's decision on ANWR will come within days when it votes on its fiscal year '96 spending bill, which includes the provision to open the refuge. Final decision on the Tongass is expected shortly afterwards. FINALLY - FAREWELL

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight, some words from and about our man, MacNeil, who leaves the NewsHour after tonight. The first words will be spoken by me over videotape.

MR. LEHRER: Robert Breckenridge Ware MacNeil. That's what they named him then. Robin MacNeil is what we call him now. His parents in Canada gave him much more than a name. They gave him an appreciation for words and ideas. And that helped him grow up to be our Robin MacNeil, the man who gave us the "Story of English."

MR. MAC NEIL: Our story is not about the correct way to speak English but about all the different varieties and how they came to be.

MR. LEHRER: He's the man of television who realized that television was more than an electric box that made sounds and transmitted moving pictures, that it was also an instrument for transmitting the words and ideas of serious people, of people with things to say that deserve to be heard; the man of television who for 40 years has practiced what he realized, who's always walked ahead of his class in journalism, as a reporter for Reuters, a correspondent and anchorman for NBC:

ROBERT MAC NEIL: Robert MacNeil, NBC News, Liverpool, England.

MR. LEHRER: For the BBC, and for the last 20 years for PBS, public television.

MR. MAC NEIL: In a few moments, we're going to bring you the entire proceedings in the first day of the Senate Watergate hearings.

MR. LEHRER: It was his day in 1975 to do a nightly program that looked seriously at one story a night for 30 minutes.

MR. MAC NEIL: Good evening.

MR. LEHRER: Those in charge at WNET, New York, supported him in his idea, and eventually so did the entire Public Broadcasting family. In 1983, he joined with others in offering another idea. The half hour program had been a supplement to nightly newscasts on the commercial networks.

MR. MAC NEIL: And I think--

MR. LEHRER: He said, How about doing a program that was an alternative to them, something to be watched instead of them, rather than in addition to them. Not everybody in public television thought that was a terrific idea, but enough did to give him and his colleagues a fair and good, clean shot.

MR. MAC NEIL: When we return on Monday night, it will be in our new format.

MR. LEHRER: The end result was, is the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour.

MR. MAC NEIL: After the news summary, our entire focus tonight is the Soviet nuclear disaster.

MR. MAC NEIL: We lead tonight with a look at teen-agers and the AIDS epidemic.

MR. MAC NEIL: Still to come on the NewsHour, what's ahead in Bosnia and rethinking affirmative action.

MR. LEHRER: It's a program that's many things to many people: serious, too serious to some, O.J.-less, too O.J.-less to some-- even-handed, too even-handed to some.

MR. MAC NEIL: We get four outside views now.

MR. MAC NEIL: We get three assessments now.

MR. MAC NEIL: Now, four views of welfare reform, two from the states, two from Congress.

MR. LEHRER: But whatever, most of the critics and the fans of the program agree on one thing. It's a civilized place, and that is no accident. It's civilized because its creator is a civilized man who believes civilized discourse is the way to real revelation and understanding.

MR. MAC NEIL: How are your orders communicated to the millions of your followers? Would you, Fidel Castro, who values the independence and integrity of a small country--

MR. MAC NEIL: What is it about the kind of flower in the Amazon Forests that attracts you, the artist?

MR. MAC NEIL: You say you have feelings.

MR. MAC NEIL: How do you feel? Can you explain in simple terms to perhaps bewildered Americans why there is so much equivocation- -

MR. MAC NEIL: Are you saying that in order to get a maximum audience that some talk show hosts are actively and consciously promoting, you said, paranoia and anger and hatred?

MR. MAC NEIL: How, without growing cynical, can citizens protect themselves against stubborn ignorance or misplaced zeal of their leaders?

MR. LEHRER: He's not perfect, though. He has problems, huge problems, for instance, with names, particularly those of guests on the program.

MR. MAC NEIL: Sen. Owens, what's your--I mean, Sen. Hopper, I'm sorry.

MR. MAC NEIL: Mister--I beg your pardon--I called you Seith-- Reef--are you in favor of--

MR. MAC NEIL: Ed Grubbs in LA, do you hear me?

KEN GRUBBS: That's Ken Grubbs.

MR. MAC NEIL: Ken Grubbs. I beg your pardon. I'm sorry, Ken. I beg your pardon.

MR. LEHRER: There will be no more of that after October 20th, but that's about it, as far as what we will have no more of. Television is often called the most transient and fluid of mediums, here for a minute or even an hour, and then gone and forgotten. But Robin MacNeil will never be gone or forgotten. He will be there when his immediate colleagues of today carry on the NewsHour and when anyone practices serious journalism of any kind on any television. He's leaving permanent tracks along the way he traveled and worked and created. They are tracks of courage to do what he knew to be right, and to actually do it right, and to do it with grace and class and with good humor. Yes, Canadians really do have a sense of humor. [Mr. MacNeil whistling]

MR. MAC NEIL: Thank you, sir. That is very generous.

MR. LEHRER: We're going to miss everything about you, except the whistling maybe.

MR. MAC NEIL: The only thing that leaves out, Mr. Lehrer, in your modesty is that you've always been more than 50 percent of the creative energy behind the NewsHour and the program that went before it.

MR. LEHRER: Well--

MR. MAC NEIL: But I have to say one other thing, and you know this. It is not creeping senility which causes me to forget names on the air. I've been forgetting names for more than 40 years. The very first television interview I ever did, which was live in Canada, I forgot the names of both the people I was interviewing and had to say so to them.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah, yeah.

MR. MAC NEIL: Why don't you--why don't you tell us something about what we've all been calling the new world order that starts on Monday.

MR. LEHRER: Well, it's--the fact of the matter is it's going to take hundreds of people to replace you, sir. No, the big emphasis is going to be on the repertory company. It isn't going to be on me. It's going to be on all the folks, and the people who watch this program regularly know who they are, the correspondents who are going to be functioning in kind of sub-anchor roles. The kinds of things that you and I now do most of is now going to be done by a group of folks, correspondents who are now familiar to us, and they're going to be familiar to the audience. They're going to be all over the country, as well as here in Washington and elsewhere. And then, of course, the existing team, Shields & Gigot, of course, the new Gergen dialogue, our regional commentators, the essayists, the historians, and other specialist reporters, and my plan is to, as I say, have a multitude of voices and, and perspectives on this program. As I say, it's going to take hundreds to replace you.

MR. MAC NEIL: I think the neat thing about that is you lose one almost 65-year-old white male and you gain a lot more attractive, younger, varied people from all over the country and all that. So that's--

MR. LEHRER: Well, we will see about that.

MR. MAC NEIL: Look, I honestly feel--I've been telling people everywhere when they ask about it--I think every institution benefits from change, even forced change, and, and I really believe that with the program consolidating in Washington under your very inspired leadership, it's going to be reenergized, it's going to be revitalized, and it will benefit from the change. And I think the viewers will see that.

MR. LEHRER: Well, I hope they do. The only--the only positive thing is that in order to replace--not--we can't replace you--but compensate for your not being here is it is going to tax all of our imaginations and all of our energies to do that, and, and I'm sure on Monday that will be exciting, and I will concentrate on that. We're ready. We're all ready for it, and I feel--I feel good about it. As I say, I'll probably feel better about it once I'm doing it. Right now that's a little hard to think about.

MR. MAC NEIL: There's another idea I'd like to kick around a little bit.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah.

MR. MAC NEIL: I've been saying this kind of stuff outside the program when people come and ask how I feel about leaving and all that, and I just--if you'll forgive a little partisanship--I know you will--

MR. LEHRER: I will.

MR. MAC NEIL: I--I think there is a growing need for this kind of program. We were very confident, remember, in the half-hour form that it was something different and needed then, and we were scared but confident when we went to the hour, but I think the, the environment in which this program operates, looking at the whole spectrum of television today, there is more need for it. There is a relentless drive in our medium to make everything more entertaining.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. And it's been borne out in the--in our audience. I mean, our audience continues to grow, and the people who are watching for the first time in twenty years actually sit and talk to each other, they must be stunned. But, anyhow, they have--they have seen--they have seen how this thing has progressed, and I agree, in many ways you could make the case--and I would make the case--and I know you would make the case that we're needed more now than ever before as there are so many outlets now for news and for everything else. One place that you can go every hour--I mean, every day for an hour and find out what's been going on and what's important, I mean, that's our function, that's our mission, and that's not going to change with your leaving, of course.

MR. MAC NEIL: You know, I'm constantly asked, and I know you are in interviews, and there have been a lot of them just now--I'm constantly asked, but isn't your program a little boring to some people, and I find that amazing, because, well, sure, it probably is, but they're people who don't watch. The people who watch it all the time don't find it boring, or they wouldn't watch.

MR. LEHRER: That's right.

MR. MAC NEIL: And it's the strange idea that's come out of this medium, because it's become so much a captive of its tool--as its use as a sales tool that it's driven increasingly, I think, by a tyranny of the popular. I mean, after all, you and I've said this to each other lots of times--might as well share it with the audience--what is the role of an editor? The role of an editor is to make--is to make judgments somewhere between what he thinks is important or what they think is important and what they think is interesting and entertaining.

MR. LEHRER: Sure. And we think we have found, Robin, that if you pay taxes, if there's a story about the possibility of their going up or down, that ain't boring. If you're on Medicare and there's an opportunity--there's a possibility that you may get more or less of it, that ain't boring. If you are a young person or related to a young person who might or might not have to go to a foreign shore with a weapon in his or her hand, war and peace ain't boring, and it's, it's--we know that. And the folks who watch the program know that. Look, tell us about--I know--but tell the audience what you're up to now. What are you going to do after tonight?

MR. MAC NEIL: Well, I'm going to have the great luxury, I think it is, for the first time in virtually forty years that I've been mostly in daily journalism of being able to wake up in the morning and not have to fill my head up with the sort of stuff you're just describing. And I can do it with--in the same way the average citizen does, when he chooses, and so when Mr. Gingrich does something or something happens in Bosnia or the President does something, I can read about in the afternoon or the next day, if I want to. And I can spend my time writing books, which I really want to do. I'm not like you, as you know very well. I can't write a chapter of a book in one hour and then work on the program in another.

MR. LEHRER: I don't write 'em in one hour. It's an hour--it usually takes ninety minutes or two hours. [laughing]

MR. MAC NEIL: Right. And I--I just have to tear myself away from one thing and then do something else, and so that's going to be a great luxury, and then, as well, we have this partnership, MacNeil/Lehrer Productions and Liberty Media, who are now 2/3 owner of MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, and while you oversee the NewsHour side of that, I'm going to oversee whatever programs or series we're able to do outside the NewsHour.

MR. LEHRER: Like the story--comparable to the "Story of English."

MR. MAC NEIL: Yeah. I hope so, if we can land that. And so that's what I'm going to do.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah.

MR. MAC NEIL: But there's one thing--I didn't quite finish on the other point. You must be amazed, as I am amazed all the time, the number of people who were amazed about why did you do O.J. Simpson so little, why--what's your answer when you're asked that question?

MR. LEHRER: Well, it's a matter of news judgment. We believed, you and I and our whole team believed that when O.J. Simpson, when the murders occurred, that was news. The white Bronco thing, that was news. When O.J. was arrested, that was news. When he was indicted, that was news. When the trial started, that was news. The Mark Fuhrman tapes were news. The verdict was news. Everything else in-between that, those eight and a half months, has been fascinating, it's been interesting, but it's been--and it's been real, but it's been a soap opera, and it has not been news. That's our judgment. That doesn't mean that everybody else who disagreed with us is wrong, but that was our basic judgment, particularly when you compare it to all these other things that I was just talking about in terms of what's important, that just didn't fall into our--into our judgment as something that was as important on any given day.

MR. MAC NEIL: Amen. Amen.

MR. LEHRER: Hey, Robin.

MR. MAC NEIL: I guess that's it.

MR. LEHRER: Hey! Good night, Robin.

MR. MAC NEIL: Good night, Jim.

MR. MAC NEIL: Finally, I'd just like to say to the audience how grateful I am to public television nationally and to all the 300 local stations who carry us for the opportunity you've given me to work in a manner I could be proud of when I went home every night. But that applies equally to our viewers. Without you, no program. There are now some 5 million of you a night, and you express a loyalty to this program of a quality I've never experienced anywhere else. Thank you for understanding what we do. You'll find all the same values there on Monday night and in the years ahead. Thanks and good night.