The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

INTRO

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. The leading headlines this Friday: new gross national product figures show the economy slumping more than expected. Walter Mondale calls for the ouster of CIA head William Casey over the Nicaraguan guerrilla manual. Two new opinion polls show Mr. Mondale trailing President Reagan by 25 points, and a lower court approved an Illinois town's ban on handguns. Robert MacNeil is away tonight preparing to get married tomorrow. Charlayne Hunter-Gault is in New York. Charlayne?

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Leading the list of stories we pursue tonight is the economy. Top Wall Street analyst David Jones interprets for us what the slowdown means for now and the future. We also look at the flap created by one of President Reagan's top economic advisers over his swipe at comparable pay for women and, in a documentary report, we see how the issue itself is reflected in an on-going strike at Yale University. We look at campaign politics from several different angles, starting with an analysis of the latest poll giving President Reagan the biggest lead he's had over Walter Mondale since the debate and moving on to predictions about the next debate on Sunday with our regulars Alan Baron and David Gergen. In our continuing series on the styles of the political candidates, Judy Woodruff goes on the road with the man called "the President's cheerleader," Vice President George Bush. And we get our weekly dose of good humor about it all from the candidates' caustic critics, political cartoonists. We have a review of Studs Terkel's new book about World War II, "The Good War." And we have memories of the late Alberta Hunter.

LEHRER: First in our summary of today's major stories, the new gross national product figure. It showed a July-September growth rate of 2.7%. The label put on it was "sluggish," the most sluggish since the 1982 recession. The GNP measures the nation's output of goods and services, and Secretary of Commerce Malcolm Baldrige explained what happened this way.

MALCOLM BALDRIDGE, Secretary of Commerce: This moderation in the second year of an expansion is consistent with the historical patterns of occasional slow quarters during expansion. Nevertheless, this upturn in GNP remains the strongest since the 1951 recovery. This is the strongest recovery, as a matter of fact, in the entire postwar period for business, investment and job creation.

LEHRER: Also today, an index tied to the GNP showed inflation remaining at a modest 3.8%, and the Veterans Administration lowered its basic interest rate on home loans from 13 1/2 to 13 percent. There's much to discuss in the economic news of today and the week, and we'll be doing just that in a few minutes. Charlayne?

HUNTER-GAULT: It was a quiet day in the presidential campaign. Both President Reagan and former Vice President Mondale were busy preparing for their debate on foreign affairs ad defense Sunday night. But Mondale took time out to attack the President on the matter of a manual prepared by the CIA suggesting so-called "selective violence" to neutralize some officials in Nicaragua. The President has ordered an investigation of the matter. Today Mondale stepped outside his Washington home to call for the dismissal of CIA Director William Casey and the Democratic candidate said he would make the CIA manual an issue in the debate.

WALTER MONDALE, Democratic presidential candidate: So what we have is actions by the CIA that injure that crucial agency, hurt our interests in Central America and strengthen the forces against us in that region. This and other steps compels me to make one of three challenges to the President today. The first is that he fire Bill Casey as the director of the CIA before the Sunday debate. The second challenge to the President is to tell us what went on. Did he know this was going on? If he didn't know, how could that possibly be? I don't know which is worse -- knowing that this was going on or having a government with no one in charge so that these things, contrary to our public interest, could go on without the knowledge of the elected president and possibly without the knowledge of others. So if our objective is to overthrow the government of Nicaragua, then the legitimate question is whether this administration plans to introduce U.S. combat troops to achieve that objective, and that also ought to be answered by the President of the United States.

HUNTER-GAULT: We'll have more on the campaign later in the program. In Illinois the state's highest court ruled today that a local government does have the authority to forbid the possession of handguns. By a vote of four to three the Illinois Supreme Court upheld an ordinance enacted in the village of Morton Grove, which is a suburb of Chicago. The majority opinion said the ordinance does not violate the state's own constitutional right to bear arms. The minority opinion said the ordinance was inconsistent with what the authors of the state constitution had in mind. Lawyers close to the case said the Illinois court's decision may clear the way for the United States Supreme Court to take up the issue.

In Utah 100,000 homes were blacked out overnight by a storm that dropped more than two feet of snow in some areas. Twenty thousand homes were blacked out in Salt Lake City alone. More than 18 inches of snow fell in the city during a period of 24 hours, setting a new local record. Today the utility crews had to work in freezing cold when they tried to restore power by nightfall tonight. Some schools and businesses were closed for the day, and a winter storm watch was posted for more snow later today and over the weekend. The storm stretched from the Rocky Mountains to the Mississippi Valley, and it was described as the kind that happens once in a half century.

Jim?

LEHRER: President Reagan today signed the anti-terrorism appropriation bill. It includes $10 million in reward money for information about planned or past terrorist attacks, and $366 million to beef up security at U.S. embassies overseas. The administration sent the request for the extra money to Congress after the Beirut Embassy bombing in September. Seventy of the most threatened U.S. diplomatic posts will get additional protection.

And there's more on one of this week's top stories, the announcement that a naturalized U.S. citizen renounced his citizenship because of past Nazi ties. On Wednesday the government said a former top NASA scientist left the United States to avoid charges he used forced labor at a World War II factory. Today the Justice Department said another naturalized U.S. citizen has made the same deal. John Ad-Jay of Roselle Park, New Jersey, is now back in West Germany. Ad-Jay, a 79-year-old former draftsman, is accused of persecuting Jews as a Nazi official during the war.

And that ends our summary of the day's news.

Charlayne? State of the Economy: Looking Ahead

HUNTER-GAULT: In our first major segment tonight we take a look at the different signals being sent out in the economy, the good news and the puzzling news, and try to find out what it all means now and for the future. Today's news of the economic slowdown represents a sharp change from the first six months of the year. The gross national product grew at a robust 10.1% rate during the first three months of 1984, continued at a still-strong 7.1% rate during the second quarter, and now has dramatically fallen to below 3%. But there were also signs this week that the economy may be picking up steam. The government reported healthy rises in personal income and consumer spending. Major banks dropped their prime rate to 12.5%, and housing starts rebounded strongly. To sort all that out and tell us what we might expect next year, we now talk with David Jones, senior vice president with Aubrey G. Lanston, a Wall Street securities firm. David Jones, why did the economy slow down and so dramatically?

DAVID JONES: The economy clearly his ground with a thud in the third quarter really for three reasons. First, the consumer paused in spending. In the second quarter of this year the consumer was on a spending binge, and in May borrowing went up as much as $10 billion in terms of consumer installment credit -- four or five times normal. As we came into the third quarter of the year, into the June-September period, consumers finally said, "I'm going to pull back, pause a little bit, cut back in my spending on durables like furniture and carpets and household goods." And so we saw a pause --

HUNTER-GAULT: Is there any reason for that? I mean, did the consumers know something?

Mr. JONES: The consumers still have good income growth, but what was happening, in effect, they were borrowing at a rate faster than could be sustainable. Those borrowings were going up faster than income, and finally the consumer said, "Wait a minute, let's pull back." It's not a collapse in terms of consumer spending, just a breathing spell as we look ahead. Secondly, we had a dropoff in industrial production in part related to the auto strike, in late September, but only about a third of that drop in industrial production was auto strike-related. So there was a little bit something more basic in the economy. And finally, and maybe most importantly, one of the drags on this economy in the third quarter was our very deep trade deficit. What consumers did in the third quarter was pull back a little bit and then spend on imported goods. And when you buy imports to the tune of about a 14% increase, that means jobs are created abroad, not here. Incomes go up abroad, not here, and that may be a cloud on the horizon as we look ahead to next year and beyond.

HUNTER-GAULT: All right, we'll get to the clouds in a moment, but right now to the predictions. And Commerce Secretary Baldrige also said in that press conference from which we just saw an excerpt that the consumers were on an extended summer lunch break, but that that was over, that we can expect growth to return to normal and continue at about 4%. Do you share that optimistic assessment?

Mr. JONES: That's perhaps a bit optimistic. Many economists, for example, have been revising down even the fourth quarter estimates now. We're not talking -- many economists are not talking about 4% in the fourth quarter in terms of real growth; after inflation's taken out the numbers are down to maybe 2 1/2%. So in general what's happening is there has been a change in attitude. The economy was soaring, moving ahead at a very strong pace through the first half of this year. Maybe, just maybe, things aren't quite as good as some people thought, even through the end of the year.

HUNTER-GAULT: What to you see in terms of next year?

Mr. JONES: It looks like the economy can continue at a three to four percent growth rate in the early part of next year, but as we move toward the latter part of the year we still have problems. For example, interest rates are still much too high to be sure that we can sustain growth. The federal deficit is much too large, and young couples have to compete effectively with the government when they want to go out and get a mortgage, particularly on these adjustable rate mortgages. They're nose to nose with excessively heavy government borrowing. So we still have on the horizon, maybe late 1985 or 1986 some problems that could exist.

HUNTER-GAULT: All right, what about right now, though, one of the good signs also this week was that the banks lowered their prime rate to about 12 1/2%, isn't that right? I mean, why did they do that?

Mr. JONES: That is the silver lining, particularly through the end of the year. That decline in interest rate is a favorable piece of news. Really two things are happening. One is our monetary authorities, led by Fed chairman Volcker, have begun to ease credit and increase the supply of credit in hopes of perhaps keeping the economy from falling too far below a desirable growth trend. The Fed's fear is that now we've seen some slowing in economic activity and also some slowing in money growth, that unless the Fed does a bit of easing and push rates down here, we may come into a hard landing situation next year. So the Fed's easing a bit, interest rates are coming down, and the good news is by the end of the year that prime rate could be perhaps even below 12%, maybe 11 3/4.

HUNTER-GAULT: Is that right?

Mr. JONES: The Republican National Committee could not have written a better script for this economy at least through the end of the year.

HUNTER-GAULT: The same is true for housing starts. They're up, too.

Mr. JONES: Well, housing starts stabilized, we might say. They were soaring early in the year, over two million units at an annual rate. We came down to about 1,500,000 mid-year, and then bounced up in September to 1,600,000. That's not great news for housing, but it suggests that things are still moving along okay.

HUNTER-GAULT: All right. The other thing that happened this week was that three countries -- Britain, Norway and Nigeria -- cut their crude oil prices. Now, what's that going to mean for the U.S. economy? I mean, are we going to start seeing lower gas prices at the pump?

Mr. JONES: That may be the most important piece of news we've seen recently. I think we're headed toward a world of what we might call disinflation. That's big word, but what it means in effect is prices are going to be growing much more slowly than people thought as we look ahead to next year and perhaps even the years beyond, and this drop in oil prices is a symptom of that process. What we've got here is a world that's still only crawling out of this deep recession we saw from 1980 to 1982. Demand is still weak, and there's a lot of oil supply from non-OPEC sources. It means, in effect, that prices will stay low. That's both good news and bad news. For consumers we're going to see lower prices at the pumps --

HUNTER-GAULT: How low?

Mr. JONES: The average American -- well, we can see, even on the basis of the $2 drop that we've seen, perhaps a few cents in terms of decline in gasoline prices already, and fairly soon, and we may not be finished yet. We're down around $28 a barrel in terms of oil. We may be $25 before this is all over, and that could mean several declines in gasoline prices as we look ahead. So the consumer comes out well. The only problem is we have a lot of borrowers who were borrowing on expectation that energy prices were going up, not down; they may have trouble paying off loans at banks and that puts the banking system in some further jeopardy.

HUNTER-GAULT: Well, I guess that leaves you in your usual position of being sort of cautiously optimistic, right?

Mr. JONES: That's right.

HUNTER-GAULT: All right, well, thank you for being with us, David Jones.

Mr. JONES: Thank you.

HUNTER-GAULT: Jim? Political Flap: Comparable Pay

LEHRER: We stay with economics now for our second focus story, which had its beginning yesterday with William Niskanen, the acting chairman of President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisors.

WILLIAM NISKANEN, President's Council of Economic Advisors: His only new proposal is something called comparable worth, a truly crazy proposal by which salaries would be based on credentials rather than accomplishment and would be set by some committee of social scientists rather than by the market.

LEHRER [voice-over]: Later Niskanen was asked to elaborate on his position.

Mr. NISKANEN: Comparable worth is an idea whose time I think is long past, based upon a rather medieval concept of the just price of a just wage, and most of the difference between men and women's salaries is a consequence of the fact that many, if not most, women have interruptions in their job experience over a period of time associated with marriage and the childbearing, child rearing, and that that -- that reflects, I think, very real economic conditions.

LEHRER [voice-over]: And it prompted comparable worth supporter Walter Mondale to respond this way.

Mr. MONDALE: He said that?

REPORTER: He did.

Mr. MONDALE: This administration, on the question of justice for women and fairness for women, is the most hopeless crowd I've ever seen in my life.

LEHRER: Today White House spokesman Larry Speakes said Mr. Reagan doesn't use words like crazy, but Mr. Reagan did believe comparable worth was a nebulous idea at best. Comparable worth, of course, is a women's rights concept and means equal pay for work considered comparable -- a secretary, traditionally a woman's job, and, say, a truckdriver, traditionally held by men. It is the subject of much debate, many legal proceedings throughout the country, and at least one strike, that of clerical and technical workers four weeks ago at Yale University in Connecticut. Correspondent June Massell has a report on that.

JUNE MASSELL [voice-over strikers singing]: For 16 years Lucille Dickess was proud of her job as registrar of the Yale geology department. Now she is angry, fed up with this prestigious Ivy League university. She's become a leader of a new union, Local 34 of the Federation of University Employees. The union claims wage discrimination.

LUCILLE DICKESS, union spokeswoman: The example that has been cited so often is that of an administrative assistant whose duties include managing, decisionmaking judgments, all kinds of responsible duties, versus that of a truckdriver. This is not to minimize a truckdriver's job. Make no mistake about that. And the salary that the truckdriver is earning now has been fought over long and hard. We understand that. What we are saying is that there should be comparable worth here. An administrative assistant who has a two-page job description which includes running anentire department, managing, handling all sorts of responsibilities surely is worth as much as a truckdriver is here.

MASSELL [voice-over]: The average salaries for Yale clerical workers and technicians is about $14,000 a year. Yale truckdrivers average more than $18,000. The striking union says that's unfair, and is asking for a 29% wage increase over three years to correct what it calls an historical inequity. But the university says it can only afford a 24% increase. Michael Finnerty is Yale's vice president for administration. He heads the university's negotiating team and denies all charges of wage discrimination.

MICHAEL FINNERTY, Yale University spokesman: The fact is that a truckdriver does make -- the average truckdriver at Yale does make more money than the average administrative assistant is too simplistic approach. The fact is that the truckdrivers at Yale work 40 hours a week, the administrative assistants at Yale work 37 1/2 hours a week. Truckdrivers at Yale earn one week vacation until they've had 10 years at Yale. An administrative assistant at Yale gains four weeks vacation in the first year of employment, plus they're given seven paid days off for recess days and given four personal days that are not available. When you do comparable calculations on the arithmetic alone, you find that the wages are not that much different.

MASSELL [voice-over]: The strike has upset life at Yale.

POLICE OFFICER: -- gentlemen, this is your third and final warning. The arrest procedure will now commence.

MASSELL [voice-over]: Recently 190 strikers were arrested by New Haven police after a well-orchestrated group of protestors blocked entry to the university president's house. Because some professors refused to cross picket lines, many classes have been moved to church basements, local movie theaters and campus lawns. While many students are sympathetic to the striking workers, the disruption is forcing them to make choices they'd rather not make.

DAVID FRANK, Yale senior: It's really an impossible situation for somebody who's sympathetic to the union because there is no way to avoid crossing picket lines. I mean, unless you're really willing to sacrifice your life for the union and sacrifice your grades, which is really what we're all, you know, working for here. And I don't think I'm willing to do that, and I don't think other people are willing to do that either.

MASSELL [voice-over]: Because the union's complaints focus on the plight of women clerical workers, the strike has attracted visits from national leaders such as Judy Goldsmith, head of NOW, the National Organization for Women.

JUDY GOLDSMITH, National Organization for Women: -- to not pay people decent living wages --

MASSELL [voice-over]: AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland has also been on hand to lend support.

LANE KIRKLAND, President, AFL-CIO: Your strike is not just about better wages, although I do never underestimate the importance of better wages. But it is also about economic discrimination. It's about a system that has for too long denied female and black workers equal pay for comparable worth.

MASSELL [voice-over]: Only 15% of female office workers in the country are organized. So labor leaders like Kirkland have targeted this group as an organizing opportunity to broaden and strengthen the labor movement. And the issues of discrimination and pay equity are powerful rallying points. Law school student Gary Isaac says he became an active supporter of the union because the university treated its women employees with such little respect.

GARY ISAAC, Yale law student: But, it's certainly clear that one of the reasons that these people are paid so little is because they have been looked upon by the university as second earners in the household, as wives of graduate students earning pin money, and it was thought that, you know, they didn't need to make a living wage, that it was simply a supplemental wage for their families. But at this point it's pretty clear that a majority or most of the people in the union are single heads of households or certainly it's important that they contribute to their households and that their families can't live on their current salaries. That's why they need to earn more.

MASSELL [voice-over]: Yale senior Elizabeth Denney works in the law school library. She's been crossing the picket lines. She does not think Yale discriminates against women, nor does she agree with the idea of comparable worth.

ELIZABETH DENNEY, Yale senior: I don't think that you can judge whether or not a secretary should make the same amount of money as a truckdriver. That is something which the market has to decide. And that is why we're in this country. Once you have people coming in and deciding what everybody should make, you're opening us up into a whole can of worms that is not the United States.

MASSELL [voice-over]: The faculty is as split on the issue as everyone else is. Professor Julius Getman, an expert on labor law, supports both the union and the concept of comparable worth.

JULIUS GETMAN, professor, Yale Law School: I think the comparable worth principle is very much behind the organization of the clerical workers, and it's what gives a real push to the whole movement. I don't think this is an isolated strike. I don't think this is an isolated example of union organizing. I think it's a historic one largely because I do believe that this is the forerunner of a widespread organization in this field, and these people are pioneers. I don't think they intend to be pioneers, but I think they are.

HUNTER-GAULT: Still to come in the NewsHour, a pollster gives us his views on Reagan's new lead in the polls. Political pundits Baron and Gergen give us their views on the upcoming presidential debate on Sunday. Judy Woodruff goes on the road with the man called "the President's cheerleader." And we'll get our weekly does of good humor about the candidates and the campaign from the nation's political cartoonists. Also, Studs Terkel's new book about World War II is reviewed, and we share memories with Alberta Hunter.

[Video postcard -- Colonial Beach, Virginia] Political Cartoons

LEHRER: If it's Friday then it must be time to look again ar another week of the 1984 election campaign. We begin it as we have before with a sampling of what the nation's editorial cartoonists have had to say.

Mr. MONDALE [MacNelly cartoon, Chicago Tribune, Tribune Media Services]: Did you find out about the strange noises I keep hearing?

AIDE: Yes, sir. It seems to be polite applause.

Rep. GERALDINE FERRARO, Democratic vice presidential candidate [Ben-son cartoon, Arizona Republic, Tribune Media Services]: Our Marines did not die in shame. They died, uh, over here somewhere.

Pres. RONALD REAGAN [Wright cartoon, Miami News, Tribune Media Services]: Atta boy, go get her! Oh, now she's accusing him of patronizing her. She's lost her cool. Hoohooho. Whine, on, harvest moon! What a funny line! Hey, Nancy, Fred won the debate.

IMAGE MAKER [Basset cartoon, Atlanta Journal, United Press Syndicate, voice-over Hank Williams singing "Hey, Good Lookin'"]: A little more portrait pink, a touch of cadmium red and a dab of brilliant orange.

Pres. REAGAN: Okay, Mondale. This time I'm ready.Heh, heh.

Mr. MONDALE [Toles cartoon, Buffalo News, United Press Syndicate]: I'm here to discuss arms control, not arm wrestle.

Pres. REAGAN: Oh, pooh! That's just what Gromyko said.

NEWCASTER [Wright cartoon, Miami News, Tribune Media Services]: The Justice Department has launched an investigation into charges leveled by the Reagan campaign organization. They have accused the Democratic Party of stealing President Reagan's index cards and then replacing the purloined index cards with another set with the President read during the recent debate. Where Things Stand: Polls & the Pundits

LEHRER: Next there are the polls. Four major ones were out this week. Tuesday the Harris Poll showing Reagan over Mondale by nine points, Wednesday ABC/Washington Post with a lead of 10 points, and then two today -- NBC and USA Today, both showing Mondale trailing by a whopping 25 points. William Schneider is here to help us all read and understand these polls. Mr. Schneider is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He's a political scientist who specializes in helping others read and understand polls. Mr. Schneider, I also understand CBS/New York Times is just out this evening showing Reagan with a 13-point lead.

WILLIAM SCHNEIDER: Yes, that's what I've heard.

LEHRER: Okay. Nine, 10, 13, two 25s. Make sense out of it, please, sir.

Mr. SCHNEIDER: Well, the bottom line is in every one of these polls Reagan has a significant lead over Walter Mondale. In fact, he's had a significant lead over Mondale all year long. Basically what you see in the polls is some trends going one way, some the other way. My feeling is that what is happening is that there are a lot of Democrats who haven't yet made up their minds how they're going to vote, and there's been a lot of tradeoff between support for Mondale and undecided. I'd say around 45% of the electorate doesn't agree with Reagan on the issues. They don't approve of most of his policies. But most of them like him.And so in some polls they'll say they're for Mondale and in some polls they'll say they're undecided, and one of the differences between polls is how hard they press the undecided voters. The harder they press the uddecided voters, the more support they get for Mondale. My feeling is --

LEHRER: The more support they get for Mondale?

Mr. SCHNEIDER: For Mondale, that's right. Reagan's support has been fairly stable in the polls, but Mondale's support goes up and down along with the undecided vote. My guess is that as the campaign goes along a lot of these undecided voters, many of whom -- most of whom are Democrats, will begin making up their minds, and I think they'll go disproportionately to the Democratic side.

LEHRER: So that explains why one poll could show a 9% gap and another one a 25% right now.

Mr. SCHNEIDER: Well, first of all the polls that are showing the biggest gaps have generally been showing large gaps all year long.The NBC poll, for instance, has been showing the biggest lead for Reagan this entire year, and so, I believe, has the USA Today' poll that is now showing a 25-point gap. There appears to be some systematic differences among the polls, but the bottom -- and that has to do with their methodology. The bottom line is always --

LEHRER: How they phrase the question?

Mr. SCHNEIDER: How they phrase the question and how hard they press the undecided voters and how they define the people most likely to vote. Different polls have different ways of doing that. But the bottom line is the same -- namely, that Reagan still has a significant lead over Walter Mondale, and there are a lot of people who haven't quite made up their minds. And also that the Reagan percentage is fairly stable, usually in the upper 50s, where Mondale's percentage varies a good deal more across these polls, as does the undecided vote.

LEHRER: In the final analysis, what was the effect of the debate, of the first Mondale-Reagan debate, on the polls? Is it possible to say?

Mr. SCHNEIDER: Yeah, I think so. What happened as a result of that debate is that Mondale made himself acceptable to those voters who don't think Ronald Reagan deserves reelection. And that may be as much s 45% of the electorate. I would say that he de-McGovernized himself. He got rid of the weak, vacillating image that he had carried into the campaign, and so people who don't want Reagan to be re-elected felt that they could note for him and a lot of them began moving in is direction. But it wasn't quite enough. Remember that Reagan did the same thing in 1980 as a result of that debate. He made himself acceptable to those voters who wanted Carter not to be reelected. But in 1980 Carter's approval rating was in the 30s and there were a lot of anti-Carter voters who wanted to vote against him, and Reagan finally made himself acceptable to them. In 1984, Mondale was in a position to absorb the anti-Reagan vote but Reagan's approval rating is about 20 points higher, which means there just aren't as many anti-Reagan voters as here were anti-Carter voters.

LEHRER: Historically, Mr. Schneider, how do candidates this far behind 2 1/2 weeks before an election -- in a poll, now, we all know what polls mean and don't mean, and everybody can have their own opinions of them, and I'm sure just the fact that we're talking about them tonight, we're going to have people who are going to say polls don't matter that much. But at any rate, what's the history on this as far as catching up?

Mr. SCHNEIDER: As far as I know, since we've been doing polls in this country, no candidate this far behind has won at this kind of deficit, a deficit larger than 10 points. Sometimes they get awfully close, as Humphrey and Nixon did in 1968, but I think it would take a very dramatic event to really turn this election around. As I say, the Reagan approval ratings and Reagan support have been fairly steady this year, and they've been running in the mid- to upper 50s. The debate changed people's minds about Walter Mondale, but if Mondale was really going to turn the election around, he's going to have to do something much more difficult. He's going to have to change people's minds about Ronald Reagan. And those opinions have been fairly steady all year.

LEHRER: Speaking of dramatic events, that brings us to our resident political wisemen, David Gergen and Alan Baron. Mr. Gergen is a Republican who used to be communications director at the Reagan White House. He is now at the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Baron is a Democrat who publishes a political newsletter called The Baron Report. Don't go away, Mr. Schneider, I want you to participate in this as well. You heard what Mr. Schneider said. Do you agree that the crucial thing here is Ronald Reagan and his approval rating and that's what Walter Mondale has to overcome and probably can't, David Gergen?

DAVID GERGEN: Jim, listening to all those numbers I must say I'm reminded of a poll that was taken in France a few years ago. The first question was, "Do you believe in God?" And well over half the people said, "No, we don't believe in God." And the next question was, "Do you believe that Jesus Christ was the living Son of God?" And well over half the people said, "Well, yes, we do." I think that the issue all along has been Ronald Reagan. This is essentially a referendum on Reagan. The reason he has been so steady in the polls, he personally has been -- and he has been around 53, 54, 55 percent in almost every poll -- rarely gone below that, even though the margin has varied -- is that people generally feel that Reagan, for whatever reason, particularly on the economic performance, has done a good job and they want to stick with him. Mondale, as Bill has said, has done a good job in moving some Democrats back, but he has to crack into the hardcore Reagan vote in order to win this election. That's his challenge.

LEHRER: Can he do it, Alan Baron?

ALAN BARON: Well, I think that Ronald Reagan's got to do it, or undo it, so to speak, and I would say that the odds against that are fairly heavy. But that's clearly the case and even, Jim --

LEHRER: In other words, Mondale can't do it himself?

Mr. BARON: No. I think that's right. I think you've got 53, 54 percent, some percentage like that, that are pretty well decided. You know, you hear a tremendous number of quotes now and statements about candidates who have caught up and closed gaps and so forth. And the most famous are most certainly Jimmy Carter in 1976 with Gerald Ford, starting out 23 points behind and ending up two points behind. Or you have a situation like Humphrey gaining 15 points. But, you know, in each of these cases you've got to remember something, that in the Humphrey case Nixon all year was at 45 or 43 percent. And he ended up with 43. Humphrey went from 29 to 43 and got a lot of people who didn't want to keep the Democrats in office but didn't want to vote for Richard Nixon, and in the end Humphrey got them back. And with Carter it was the same thing. That poll that showed Carter 23 points ahead showed Carter at 57 and Ford at 34. Well, Carter went from 57 to 51. It was very similar to Eisenhower who was ahead 59 to 31 against Stevenson, and in the end Stevenson came up from 31 to 45, and Eisenhower dropped four points to 55. What you've got here is that you start with Reagan's 54%, then what Mondale can do, if you us 54, 55, whatever number -- what Mondale himself can do is to get up to 46. He was down at 37. If he can get up to 46 that means he's got everybody, I think, that at that point was inclined to say, "Well, I'd prefer somebody other than Reagan." Now, can Mondale get to over 51? Or over 50? Mondale can't. Can Reagan drop from 54 to 49? Well, I think if he's going to do it we're probably going to see it Sunday night. If that happens. I don't think it will, but it could.

Mr. GERGEN: One other aspect about the polls that might be mentioned, Jim, and perhaps Bill could comment on this as well, is that the internal polls in the Reagan campaign did show a drop after the first debate. They showed several points, five or six points. But several days after that debate they started climbing back up again, and their polls --

LEHRER: These are the polls that Richard Wirthlin does?

Mr. GERGEN: That's right. He does a daily tracking poll, and every night they're on the phones calling people all over the country. And they now show that their margin is about what it was before the first debate. It's bounced back up like that.

LEHRER: Does that surprise you, Bill Schneider?

Mr. SCHNEIDER: Well, as I say, it varies with the way the poll operates and how they define the electorate. My feeling is there's an upper limit right now to Mondale's support, which seems to be about 45%. He's been varying between 35 and 45 in all the polls because the 45% who don't particularly approve of Reagan's policies for the most part like him, and a lot of them are wavering back and forth. They're volatile because they can't make up their minds whether they're going to vote for him because they like him or vote against him because they don't approve of most of his policies. I agree with Alan, that it's going to take Reagan to lose it. I don't think Mondale can win it.

LEHRER: All right. Let's talk about Sunday night. The subject is foreign policy. What do you think the odds are that Mondale can do as well or better than he did in the first debate?

Mr. BARON: Well, in terms of Mondale I think he'll do as well as he did. I think what Mondale did in that debate last week was to focus on -- speak to individuals in the audience, something that he had not been doing in his kind of coalition politics up 'til then, and I think that was a change. The issue, again, comes back to Reagan for a minute. Now, we've heard a tremendous amount that the reason the President didn't stand up well on that debate, from people who down the line, I think if I were the President, I'd fire, is that he wasn't briefed well enough. "We didn't give him his cue cards enough." I can't imagine why, if I were President of the United States -- I mean, you know, some places you can't be briefed, you know, and he can't have cue cards. They were, in effect, doing Walter Mondale's job of saying this man only speaks from cue cards. Now, I want to tell yoiu, Mr. Baker, Senator Baker, the Senate Majority Leader, said that on that TV debate he saw Ronald Reagan in as close to the way he's seen Ronald Reagan in the White House and in his meetings and dealings with the President as he's ever seen Reagan in public. Now, if that's the case, and if this next debate we're going to see Ronald Reagan and it's going to be the Ronald Reagan we saw before, then I think the effect will not be three plus three is six; it'll be three times three is nine. It'll be kind of a bolstering. Now, he's had time. Everybody has an off night and doesn't have the right makeup people and the right cue cards. And he has had an off night, and I'm sure, as David said, that as time goes by and people say, "Well, gee, I've seen him on all these TV ads. He certainly looks fit and firm and strong when he's on TV on these ads or when he's at a dinner." But if on Sunday night we get the same Ronald Reagan and the subject's tougher for him -- it's not his favorite subject -- we get the same Ronald Reagan then people are going to say, "Well, you know, maybe the ads are a little -- not giving us the real picture."

Mr. GERGEN: It's always lovely to hear Alan whistling past the graveyard. You know, that's one of our great pleasures.

LEHRER: That's all it is?

Mr. GERGEN: I think this. Alan, with due respect, I think the point that a lot of the people in the White House and in the campaign have made is that they felt that the President was overburdened with a lot of the briefings and the mock debates and so forth beforehand and he arrived in Louisville at the podium tired. And they have changed their preparation schedule this time.They had mock debates Wednesday and Thursday. Today they had a session with him. And that's it. The briefing sessions are over. He's got a chance now for the next two days to put his feet up, look at his briefing materials, think about what he wants to say. So I think it's likely that Ronald Reagan on Sunday night will arrive there relaxed, fresh, and you'll see the kind of Reagan that you've seen on many other occasions in the four years of his presidency.

LEHRER: And we'll see both of you again and hopefully you, too, Mr. Schneider, to talk about all of this before this is all over. Gentlemen, all three, thank you very much. Charlayne?

HUNTER-GAULT: On many of these PBS stations we'll be covering the presidential debate on Sunday in a special edition of the MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour. Meanwhile, over the past few weeks we've been looking at the campaign style of all the campaign style of all the major candidates. Judy Woodruff went on the campaign trail out West this week with Vice President Bush, and tonight she's in our Denver studio to tell us what she found. Judy? "The President's Cheerleader"

JUDY WOODRUFF: Charlayne, the political experts are in almost total agreement that the vice presidential candidates have little or no impact on the outcome of the election. But because Geraldine Ferraro is the historic first that she is, and because if Ronald Reagan is re-elected he would be the oldest person ever to serve il the job, more attention is being paid to the number-two man on the Republican ticket. Well, to find out how George Bush is reacting to all this, we decided to spend a couple of days out on the campaign trail with him this week.

Vice Pres. GEORGE BUSH: I'd like you to just take a look at that. That's a commemoative stamp. The commermorative stamp's from Nicaragua. Who's on it?The Communist Manifesto on the cover. Who's the stamp about? It's Karl Marx. Now, is that democracy or not? That is their stamp. Answer.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: He's been called "the President's cheerleader," and the description seems to fit. It's hard to imagine anyone more enthusiastic in praising the policies of the Reagan administration or the President himself.

Vice Pres. BUSH: I am proud to serve with a President who does not apologize for the United States of America.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: George Bush was beaten out of the Republican presidential nomination by Ronald Reagan four years ago. Then, after Gerald Ford said no, he was Mr. Reagan's second choice to be his running mate. But all that seems in the distant past now.

Vice Pres. BUSH: Go for it. Okay. All right.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: While Mr. Reagan's campaign has consisted of only White House events or very carefully staged appearances on the road, his Vice President has been out literally pressing the flesh, plunging into crowds and at least looking as if he's enjoying it -- even when the response is only lukewarm. In fact, Bush has not had an easy go of it during this campaign, popping up in the headlines more than he ever intended. Lately Walter Mondale has kept him there by zeroing in on the comment Bush made in last week's debate with Geraldine Ferraro, accusing the Democratic nominee of saying the Marines killed in Beirut died in shame. After Mondale indignantly challenged Bush to prove his charge, Bush resorted to a dictionary to try to get himself off the hook, but Mondale blasted back.

Mr. MONDALE: The American people see somebody who's sort of like a political hit-run driver, and he's hit us with a false charge, he doesn't have an answer and he doesn't have the manhood to apologize.

Vice Pres. BUSH: It's frantic desperation politics. Why don't they go ask him what he meant when he said "humiliation", which the dictionary describes as shame? Put him on the defensive, not me.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: In fact, with the election getting closer and the race getting tighter, the rhetoric from all sides, including Mr. Bush, is getting rougher.

Vice Pres. BUSH: I do feel sorry for Mondale, I'll tell you. I've never seen such a gloomy man. Gloomy about America. Gloomy about our future.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: Dale Russakoff of The Washington Post, who has covered Bush for much of this campaign, has another theory about -- why he finds it easier to go on the attack now than he did earlier in the campaign.

DALE RUSSAKOFF, The Washington Post: I think basically there's a certain confidence about how far ahead the ticket is, even though it's slipped a little since the debate. And I think particularly the fact that the vice presidential debate is over seems to have given him a new sense of relief that he never had.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: The fact that there's a woman running for the number-two spot on the Democratic ticket has changed the dynamics of this race in more ways than one. The vice president has only half the number of press people traveling with him as Ms. Ferraro does, and his press secretary complains she's been getting more favorable coverage lately. But the biggest headache has been the charge the Bush campaign is sexist because of a series of remarks, from Mrs. Bush, from Press Secretary Pete Teely and from Bush himself when he was overheard boasting that he had "kicked a little ass" in the Ferraro debate. He scoffs at Ms. Ferraro's charge that the remarks were all planned.

Vice Pres. BUSH: I must be a real good planner when I can whisper in a guy's ear and then hope that some guy with one of these long booms is listening in. But that one is something I'll stand behind, and I would'nt have probably got up there publicly and said it. If I'd have wanted to stand on that speech place and said it, I would have. But inasmuch as I was eavesdropped on and overheard by the prying, felt-covered boom, they're not going to get me to change that. Not one bit! Every athlete in this country knew what I was talking about.

WOMAN: I think there's an incredible amount of sexism. I think just his choice of calling her Mrs. Ferraro when in fact she's Ms. Ferraro and Mrs. Zaccaro is indicative to me of his rather patronizing attitude.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: What has been even more troublesome for Bush have been charges that he's become a sycophant to Ronald Reagan, that after years of having relatively moderate views on a variety of issues, he has sublimated his own opinions in order to be a loyal vice president and to win over the influential right wing of the Republican Party which has serious misgivings about him. Normally, reporter Dale Russakoff says, Bush is reluctant to let any daylight appear between his own views and those of Mr. Reagan.

Ms. RUSSAKOFF: I think his main problem in this campaign with the press has been when he's been scrutinized and questioned about the ways in which his record does and has differed from President Reagan's, and rather than answer that, he takes that as an insult that we would even suggest that there's a difference.

PETER TEELEY, Bush press secretary: Some people have criticized him simply because of his loyalty to the President, the fact that he has strongly supported the President's programs, articulated those programs on the debate. The question I have is, do they expect him to go out and criticize the President? I mean, it makes no sense. You owe the President two things -- your judgment and your loyalty.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: Appearing this week in Oregon, a state with voters known for their moderate views, Bush did acknowledge at least one point he disagrees with the President over, abortion.

Vice Pres. BUSH: And I do favor a human life amendment. The one I favor would have an exception for incest and rape, and we come down on the side of life. And there's differences on this, of course, but that's our position. The President and I are very, very close together. The only exception he favors is the life of the mother -- exception, you know, for the threat to the life of the mother.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: For the most part, however, Bush plays down such differences and says if that means he's losing the respect of some people, that's too bad.

Vice Pres. BUSH: I'm not out here for individual glory or individual respect. I'm out here as vice president serving with a president that I respect. And I'll take a few shots like that in order to be a good vice president.I couldn't do now or in the future what I think Mr. Mondale has done some -- not too much, maybe, but some -- Jump away from the President later on and say, "Well, everyone knows I differed with him on that or differed --" I just couldn't do that.

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: What Bush doesn't say is that if he wants to run for President himself in 1988, which most observers expect him to do, sticking close to a popular conservative president is the politically smart thing to do.

2nd WOMAN: I think he's a very good match with Reagan.

3rd MAN: I'd be for him in 1988.

Vice Pres. BUSH: What do you think? Is it me?

WOODRUFF [voice-over]: Even so, Bush's popularity still ranks well below that of President Reagan's. Some blame that on a preppy image he can't seem to shake.

Vice Pres. BUSH: I always read about the buttoned-down look. I don't think I've worn button-down shirts for -- maybe, I hope I don't have one on here -- you know, for 30 years, 20 years. And I don't think I own one. But that's the image. That's the mold. It has to fit, has to be the striped tie. I mean, that's -- and yet it's some of it's your profession, let's face it, and some of its the opposition. But I don't worry about that.

WOODRUFF: We also found Bush surprisingly still defensive about his performance in the debate with Ms. Ferraro. He asked us repeatedly why, when the polls had shown him to be the winner, many commentators persist in calling it a draw. In any event, Bush said since he went into the debate perceived as an underdog, the results have been pretty good for his morale. Charlayne?

HUNTER-GAULT: Finally tonight we have a book review. The author is the well-known radio personality Studs Terkel. In the past, in books such as Working and Hard Times, he has used interviews of people in all walks of life to illuminate either a period of history or attitudes about the way we live. In his new book he returns to that technique. It's called "The Good War", an oral history of World War II. Our reviewer is author, critic, teacher and bookstore owner Doris Grumbach, whose own latest novel, The Ladies, has recently been published by Dutton. Book Review: "The Good War"

LEHRER: Doew Studs Terkel really mean it when he calls it the good war?

DORIS GRUMBACH: Well, you'll notice he puts it in quotation marks and he explains at the beginning that of course he does not believe in that oxymoron, the good war. He puts it in quotes because that's the way it is mentioned by many of the people he interviews.

LEHRER: What's the spectrum of the people?

Ms. GRUMBACH: Very wide. He talks to soldiers, both generals and privates. He talks to people who worked on the home front in the industries that supported the war. He talks to Germans who were in the German army. He talks to people in concentration camps. He talks to blacks, to women. He made a very great and I think successful effort to get a very wide view of how people felt about the war.

LEHRER: That was my next question. What kind of questions did he ask them: "Tell me your story," or "Tell me what you think about it?"

Ms. GRUMBACH: Yes, "What did you do? How did you feel about it? What do you think about it now?"

LEHRER: When it's all said and done, Doris, after you've read all these people have said, what is the message?

Ms. GRUMBACH: Well, you know, I found it an interestingly unified message. Most everybody looks back on that war as a good and just war. Most everybody believes that, unlike imperialistic wars or other such wars that followed, it was justified. There was a reason to be there. Many people in this book say, "It was the highest point of my life," and these are people who are now in their late 60s. "It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I learned great things about companionship. I learned about courage. I never had had an experience like that again."

LEHRER: Even people that experienced great tragedy or --

Ms. GRUMBACH: So they say. Some of them -- a few of them came out hating war and became war pilgrims -- persons who travel around for peace. But not a great many. Many of them look back and say, "Yest, it was terrible." The interesting thing is how many of them say, "I'm glad they dropped the bomb on Hiroshima because otherwise I was on my way to the Bay of Japan to fight and it saved my life."

LEHRER: From a reader's point of view, is it basically an excursion into nostalgia -- "This is what the war was like. If you want to know, read this book"?

Ms. GRUMBACH: If you think of nostalgia as a sort of sentimental thing, no. It's pretty hard-nosed. But if you had any part in the war or if you've heard about the war or if, as you say, you were playing in the backyard when the war was on, it's a wonderful re-creation of what that period was like. You do indeed feel part of it and you understand better why people felt as they did.

LEHRER: Well, you in fact were a naval officer in World War II, and as you said, I played the war in the backyard. Do you have to be like you and me to get something out of this book?

Ms. GRUMBACH: Oh, no, no. I don't think so. I think young people reading it will be impressed by how strongly many of these people feel about the unjust Vietnam War. They come, many of them, to think that was the good war, those were the days of glory and innocence. Those were right. Whatever came later -- the Korean War, the Vietnam War -- were unjustified.

LEHRER: What do you think of the oral history technique?

Ms. GRUMBACH: Well, I have been reading Studs Terkel for a long time and I think it surpasses sociological studies of a period like this. You hear directly the voices of people who have something to say about their experiences, and what comes out of this chorus, this welter of voices, is a very real sense of the event. There are no battles described; there are no naval adventures. It's not the tales of the South Pacific. What it is is a sense of what stuck in people's minds about the war -- where I was on V-J Day, where I was on V-E Day and how I felt.

LEHRER: Thank you, Doris.

The book we were talking about is Studs Terkel's "The Good War", published by Pantheon. One last story now before we turn to a recap of today's top news. Late this afternoon the White House announced that four Americans died in an airplane crash in El Salvador. The four were under contract to the United States government. White House spokesman Larry Speakes said the plane's mission was to spot weapons being brought to the rebels. According to Speakes the plane crashed during a heavy rainstorm. According to the Associated Press, one of the four men on the plane was a CIA officer; the others reportedly were CIA contract employees.

And now a last look at the major stories this Friday. The gross national product grew at a sluggish 2.7% rate from July to September, the slowest quarterly growth since the 1982 recession. Most analysts said it was nothing to be concerned about, though, because inflation remained low.

Walter Mondale joined Democratic colleagues in calling for the ouster of William Casey as head of the CIA. Mondale said the CIA's distribution of a revolutionary handbook to Nicaraguan rebels was a profound embarrassment to our country.

And two new national polls out today show President Reagan's lead over Mr. Mondale as they go into Sunday's second presidential debate at 25 percentage points.

Finally tonight, some moments of appreciation for Alberta Hunter, the 89-year-old blues singer who died Wednesday. She first sang in a Chicago brothel at the age of 15, later retired and then made a comeback at age 80. Four years ago she appeared in a public television program with Eubie Blake, and here's an excerpt. Alberta Hunter: Memories of You

ALBERTA HUNTER, blues singer: ". . . at sunrise, every sunset, every sunset, too, seems to be Eubie and seems to be bringing memories, memories of you. Here and there, everywhere, scenes that we once knew. And they all -- they all just look for memories of you. How I wish I just could forget those dreamy yesteryears, that just bring a rosary, a rosary of tears. Your face gleams in all my dreams, in spite of all I do, everything, everything seems to bring memories of you, memories of you."

LEHRER: Good night, Charlayne.

HUNTER-GAULT: Good night, Jim. That's our NewsHour for tonight. We'll be back on Monday night. I'm Charlayne Hunter-Gault. Have a good weekend.