The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight two House members debate what documents and tape from the Starr investigation should be made public; Andy Kohut reviews the results of the Starr report opinion polls, and our regional commentators assess the fallout in their communities. Then Betty Ann Bowser reports on a move to test teachers and essayist Richard Rodriguez considers speaking out about being gay. It all follows our summary of the news this Tuesday.% ? NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: The House Judiciary Committee today privately debated releasing evidence from the Starr Report. At issue was the videotape of President Clinton's August 17th grand jury testimony from the White House. Republicans urged it be made public this week; Democrats resisted that move. Presidential Spokesman Mike McCurry said, if the videotape became public, it could be manipulated for campaign advertising. He spoke to reporters at his daily briefing.

MICHAEL McCURRY, White House Spokesman: It's really up to the House of Representatives to decide what to do with the evidentiary material they've been given by the Office of Independent Counsel. We had fully expected that the President's deposition before the grand jury would be released in some fashion, certainly the transcript. The House is going to have to employ the video however they see it. We just hope that it's not misused. It'll be up to the House to decide how to use it.

JIM LEHRER: We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. In related developments, Speaker Gingrich said the House will not formally adjourn when legislative business concludes this year. He said that will allow the Judiciary Committee to continue its work and permit the House to be summoned back, if need be. In the Senate, Majority Leader Trent Lott echoed the advice top congressional Democrats gave the President yesterday.

SEN. TRENT LOTT, Majority Leader: Right now I don't think I'm expecting or looking for the president to do anything more, other than I think that for his lawyers to continue to attack and smear and dissimilate with legal arguments is useless and even counterproductive. I think what we have to do now is to have the House go forward, review the documents, make a recommendation, and have the House act to go forward or not to go forward, based on what they find. And I'm sure that the American people's feelings will be considered in all that.

JIM LEHRER: President Clinton went about other business today. He spoke to family farmers this morning about emergency federal assistance. This afternoon, he attended a military readiness conference at Fort McNair in Washington. The chiefs of the military branches and other top brass briefed him on the strains and stresses on the nation's armed forces. They told Mr. Clinton the planned annual defense budget of $250 billion needed to be increased by $15 billion. He had this to say.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Readiness must be our number one priority. It is being monitored and addressed every day at every level of command. Our forward-deployed and first to fight units are highly recommended, and our overall force is fully capable of carrying out our national military strategy. But I'm determined that we don't relax our vigilance to keep our forces ready to protect our security today and well into the 21st century.

JIM LEHRER: In economic news today retail sales were up in August. The Commerce Department reported they rose .2 percent. That increase followed last month's sharp decline, the worst in 15 months. On Wall Street today the Dow Jones Industrial Average held steady. It closed up 79 points at 8024.39. On the Swissair crash story today investigators said the cockpit voice recorder stopped six minutes before the airliner slammed into the North Atlantic. The flight data recorder also quit at the time. The two devices are powered by different sources, leading to speculation the plane suffered a systemwide failure. The gap on the voice recorder means investigators may never learn exactly what was happening in the cockpit moments before the plane went down. All 229 people on board died in the September 2nd accident. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the videotape debate, the latest polls, our regional commentators, testing teachers, and a Richard Rodriguez essay.% ? FOCUS -WHAT NEXT?

JIM LEHRER: The argument over what more to release from the Starr investigation and to Elizabeth Farnsworth.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Since late last week, House Judiciary Committee members have been reviewing not only Kenneth Starr's report on the Monica Lewinsky case, but also 18 boxes of supplementary evidence provided along with the report. The committee must now decide how much of the supplementary material should be released to the public and specifically, should the videotape of the President's August 17th grand jury testimony be released? We hear from two members of the committeenow, Republican Charles Canady of Florida, and Democrat Zoe Lofgren of California. Thanks for being with us.Congressman Canady, what's the procedure you're following to make the decision about whether to release the videotape?

REP. CHARLES CANADY: Well, let me say, I'm not going to comment on the contents of any of the executive session material. That's prohibited by the rules of the House, but we have been given a responsibility under the resolution passed by the House last week to make a determination if any of the materials accompanying the report of the independent counsel should not be released. We've got to make that judgment by the 28th of this month. So it's important for us to carry on that work. The resolution that was passed by the House I believe essentially sets up a presumption in favor of full release, and we should only withhold that information which is needlessly embarrassing to third parties or for some other compelling reason is not relevant and should not be released for that reason.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Congressman, the wires have been discussing the fact that Judiciary Committee members are debating the videotape. Could you just tell us what arguments are being made by your colleagues in favor of releasing it?

REP. CHARLES CANADY: Well, let me say this. The resolution says a presumption of releasing information. I think the American people are entitled to full disclosure of what's going on here, and the American people need to understand the basis on which any judgment we ultimately make will be based. That's very important if this process is going to have credibility. But, again, I'm not going to comment on whether there is a tape or isn't a tape in any executive session or material. That's inappropriate under the rules. I will say that in judging the credibility of a witness, it can be very valuable to observe the demeanor of that witness while the witness is testifying.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Congresswoman Lofgren, what do you think about this, about the videotape?

REP. ZOE LOFGREN: Well, I'm a little troubled by the process. We had a vote just Friday to really take our time till the 28th to decide about the 2600 pages of attachments and the 18 boxes full of stuff. And I understand that we're going to hurry up and have a vote on this tomorrow. And I don't see what the rush is. I think we have a constitutional job before us. Step one is to outline what the constitutional standard for impeachment is -- and I can tell you what it is because I have researched it - as they did in 1974. It is conduct so seriously wrong that it threatens our constitutional form of government. Then I think we have an obligation to take a look at the allegations in the Starr referral and say, okay, if all these things were true, would they constitute a threat to our constitutional form of government? Only if the answer to that question is yes do we need to proceed further into the evidence contained in all of these referrals.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Congresswoman, when you say that you understand there's to be a vote tomorrow, you mean you understand there's to be a vote on whether to release the videotape of the August 17th grand jury testimony?

REP. ZOE LOFGREN: That is my understanding. Now I do think that we need to stop, get a grip, take a deep breath, and be very deliberate and orderly. There ought to be a lot more talk about the Constitution than there has been and a lot less talk about smutty stuff.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Congressman, I understand you can't talk about specifics, but tell us how you're proceeding. All ofthis material is in a room outside the capital, do all 37 members of the committee go over and read it? How are you proceeding to make the decisions you have to make?

REP. CHARLES CANADY: All the members of the Judiciary Committee have access to the executive session materials. Designated staff members also have access to that material, so that the work of the Judiciary Committee is carried on both by the members and designated staff. And some of the work that would need to be done to identify sensitive material can be carried out by staff. But there are certain things obviously that members are going to ultimately have to make a judgment on. And let me say, I agree with Rep. Lofgren. We need to conduct this in a very thoughtful, deliberative manner. I do think we need to be mindful of the need to handle this expeditiously also. The American people don't want this to drag on for month after month after month, after month. It's dragged on too long already, in my opinion, and in the view of the vast majority of Americans. So we need to handle this as expeditiously as we can consistent with having a process that is thoughtful, deliberative, and fair. And if we should move to the conclusion that an impeachment inquiry is justified on the basis of the evidence that's available, it would be very important for the President to have an opportunity to put on his defense before we make any final judgment about whether an impeachment is warranted in these circumstances.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Congressman, but just specifically, if there were a videotape, when you would go look at it, have you gone over to the room to read through some of the materials?

REP. CHARLES CANADY: I have spent some time over in the Ford building carrying on my work as a member of the Judiciary Committee. And, again, the presumption here that the House, as established, is in favor of releasing material. Now one thing that's mentioned in the independent counsel's report is that there is a videotape of the deposition that the President gave in the Jones case. That's in the report that's been published. I would think that it would be important for us to obtain that. The report indicates that it's not provided but is in the custody of the district court here in Washington, with the district court in Arkansas. I think at the appropriate time if we proceed with an inquiry, it would be important for us to obtain access to that. Again, if the essential issue here is whether the President committed perjury, being able to observe his demeanor - and that's a central issue raised by the independent counsel's report -- being able to judge the President's demeanor while he was testifying I think would help us understand whether he was - whether he was being truthful or not in giving that testimony.

REP. ZOE LOFGREN: We've put the cart before the horse here though, Charles, because the first question we have to answer is the constitutional question. We do know from our - I hope we know from our research and our rich history that the standard for impeachment of a President -- and it was reviewed in the '74 document "Grounds for Impeachment of a President--" is conduct that threatens our constitutional form of government. And we need to have a discussion about the type of conduct that could threaten or destroy our constitutional form of government before we take any other steps. That hasn't occurred yet.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Congresswoman Lofgren, let met come back a minute to these specific issues. Do I understand, from what you're saying, that you don't think many of the supplementary - much of the supplementary evidence should be released?

REP. ZOE LOFGREN: I can't say that yet. I mean, for one thing, I haven't seen it.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: But you also are going over to look at it, right?

REP. ZOE LOFGREN: I haven't done that yet. But I think --

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Why haven't you, just so --

REP. ZOE LOFGREN: I haven't had time. I have been reviewing not just the Starr referral, but I have been reviewing the constitutional documents and reading some of the original documentation, again, the Federalist Papers and some of the materials generated during the '74 inquiry, because that is at least as important as the referral. We've got a bunch of allegations, and we need to measure those allegations against the constitutional standard. There is a crucial step that has been missing here in this process.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Congresswoman Lofgren, is there at this point no consensus about what should be done with the supplementary materials?

REP. ZOE LOFGREN: There has been no discussion, except with the media. That's another problem here. We need to have processes that are orderly and that match the dignity of the constitutional question that we face. We haven't even met as a committee to discuss the Constitution.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Congressman Canady, what about that, is it not an orderly procedure?

REP. CHARLES CANADY: I'd have to disagree with my good friend and colleague. She's prejudging these proceedings before the proceedings have even begun. There will be ample opportunity for members to express their views on all issues that are dealt with by the committee. I don't happen to agree with the view of the constitutional standard for impeachment. It's an undeniable fact that the House of Representatives has impeached a federal judge within the last ten to fifteen years and the Senate has removed that same federal judge for perjury - perjury before a grand jury!

REP. ZOE LOFGREN: They served during good behavior. It's a different standard --

REP. CHARLES CANADY: The standard for all federal officials for impeachment is treason, bribery, or high crimes and misdemeanors.

REP. ZOE LOFGREN: And judges during good behavior.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What happens next? Congressman Canady, what happens next this week? What should we expect? Tomorrow will there be a decision on at least one or some elements of the supplementary materials?

REP. CHARLES CANADY: I can't tell you exactly what's going to happen this week. I believe that it's likely that tomorrow or the next day there will be a meeting of the Judiciary Committee, probably an executive session, to deal with the matters that the House of Representatives has asked us to deal with under the resolution that was passed last week. But we're going to go through this in a very careful way. We should not rush to judgment. No one should jump to any conclusions. But, again, we cannot let this drag on month after month. That would be wrong. That's not what the American people want. And we would not be doing our duty as members of the House of Representatives if we allowed that to happen.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Congresswoman, we just have a few seconds left for any remarks you have.

REP. ZOE LOFGREN: Well, you asked what's going to happen next. One of the things that's going to happen next is later on this week the House of Representatives is scheduled to vote to dismantle all K-12 education programs that exist in this country. So while all of this is going on, there's some serious other business that the country ought to be paying some attention to.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay. Thank you both very much.% ? UPDATE - PUBLIC OPINION?

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, the latest polls, our regional commentators, testing teachers, and a Richard Rodriguez essay. Margaret Warner has the polls.

MARGARET WARNER: Sixteen newspapers have called on President Clinton to resign since Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's report was released last Friday. They include such major papers as USA Today, the Detroit Free Press, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. According to the political report "Hotline," that brings to 45 the number of daily newspapers that have called for resignation since the President publicly admitted he'd had a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Yet, these editorial opinions remain at odds with public opinion. For more on this apparent disconnect we're joined by Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. Andy, you've been looking at a whole collection of polls taken over the past few days. What, in general, was the public's reaction to the Starr report?

ANDREW KOHUT, Pew Research Center: Well, the public looked at the findings of the report, and they said, this is confirmatory; it's not revealing. Basically, they said that the evidence that was presented was about what they expected - 21 percent in the ABC-Washington Post poll - said it was stronger evidence of Clinton wrongdoing. But for the most part people said this is what we thought happened. One of the important questions is what did all of these details do to public opinion -

MARGARET WARNER: All these graphics.

ANDREW KOHUT: All these graphics, sexual - what was the emotional reaction? And we have a slide showing reaction to President Clinton. And it shows that 64 percent said these details made no difference. 30 percent said they had a less favorable view of the President as a consequence. But, interestingly, 45 percent - only 45 percent - said they made no difference with regard to the public's view of prosecutor Starr and 45 percent said they had a less favorable reaction to the prosecutor as a consequence. There's some sense of backlash and negative reaction to these details. Most people say that they were put out to embarrass the President, not to make the case for perjury.

MARGARET WARNER: So does the public believe the charges that Starr outlined against the President, or do they believe the President's denials?

ANDREW KOHUT: Well, they may have a less favorable opinion of the prosecutor, but they believe him more than they believe the President with regard to these charges by a margin of five to three, the percentage of people in the ABC-Washington Post poll, saying that the President did something wrong, or committed a crime with 40 to 50 percent, the percentage in the Gallup Poll saying that the President urged Lewinsky to lie went from 50 to 60 percent. So the President's credibility problems increased further with regard to these charges.

MARGARET WARNER: And what did all this do to his job approval, that most important benchmark?

ANDREW KOHUT: Nothing. There all these national surveys, and there were 11 nationwide surveys conducted in this two-day period, lead with a question, do you approve or disapprove of the President's job performance?

MARGARET WARNER: All right. And we have a graphic of about six of them, I think.

ANDREW KOHUT: You can see, if you came down from Mars and looked in on the President and said, how's he doing in his second term, you'd say, wow, 67 percent to 59 percent, those are - those are in historic terms veryhigh ratings, and they ain't much different than they were a week ago. In fact, they're not statistically different than they were a week ago. The public still continues to have a favorable view of the way the President is running the country, or doing his job.

MARGARET WARNER: How do you explain this?

ANDREW KOHUT: Well, the way you explain it is what people say. They say these crimes, this lying, perhaps even this perjury relates not to the President's official duties; it relates to his private life and relates to an embarrassing sexual affair that perhaps we shouldn't even know about.

MARGARET WARNER: And his personal popularity, I gather, is down?

ANDREW KOHUT: Very much down. 36 percent in the Gallup Polls say they have a positive opinion, and our survey conducted before this - 61 percent or 62 percent said they don't like him as a person - very unusual responses for a popular - policy popular President.

MARGARET WARNER: So let's look at what the public wants to have happen, first of all, what do they want the President to do? Do they want him to resign, as all these newspapers suggested Jesse should do?

ANDREW KOHUT: There has been a small increase in the ABC-Washington Post poll showing 39 percent now saying the President should resign. But the Gallup Poll has 36 percent, the LA Times Poll has 32 percent. The important issue here is this resignation sentiment, while it may have grown a little bit in some polls, it's still very much minority point of view. The American public does not want the Clinton presidency to end as a consequence of reading this report, or in reaction to reading this report. I would like to add that by last night we found that 51 percent said they had actually read the report, themselves, which is amazing, and 11 percent - or 13 percent had read it on-line, had gotten this off the Internet. So there's been a lot of activity with regard to this report.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, what do they want Congress to do? First of all, as you know, Congress is debating right now, or the Judiciary Committee is, whether to even have a full-blown impeachment inquiry. Does the public have a view on that?

ANDREW KOHUT: Well, the public is divided. 46 percent said we should have hearings - there should be congressional hearings. 52 percent want to see the matter end. The public isn't clear as to whether Congress should go further. It has more definite views about what the conclusions should be, but the - it's not clear about the process.

MARGARET WARNER: And what do they think the conclusions should be?

ANDREW KOHUT: Well, the public does not want to see the President impeached based upon their reading of the Starr Report. This graphic shows 30 percent say based upon their reading in the Gallup Poll only 30 percent think that he should be impeached and removed from office. When the question is pushed a little bit and the subjunctive phrases are used, if the President lied, if the President encouraged perjury, that percentage goes up to 40 or 48 percent. But the important bottom line measures now based upon what people have seen - these are still - it's still very much a minority view that the public wants impeachment. And the reaction - the rejection of impeachment isn't because they don't want the process. We asked the question, is it because you don't want the country to go through that process, or simply because how you feel about Clinton's wrongdoing. And by two to one they say it's not the process. It's that we don't feel the wrongdoing justifies impeachment.

MARGARET WARNER: Because they think it's more - as you said - personal.

ANDREW KOHUT: More personal. It's not that serious.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, the option being discussed among many in the White House and some on Capitol Hill is, is some sort of censure. Did you ask how does the public feel about censure?

ANDREW KOHUT: Three national surveys this weekend - CBS News - around 57 in favor; ABC, the same percentage - 57 percent; in the Gallup Poll 59 percent. Censure, condemnation by the Congress, some official wrist slapping or condemnation seems appropriate to the public, or is much more in keeping with the public's views about this than impeachment. That's clear.

MARGARET WARNER: So they do feel something wrong has been done here, and they do want something to happen?

ANDREW KOHUT: Clearly, they want something to happen, but they're not. They haven't gotten to the point where they want that to be - to represent the end of - or go to the end - mean the end of the presidency.

MARGARET WARNER: And quickly - I'm sorry - quickly, what is their view on whether this whole thing is affecting the President's ability to lead?

ANDREW KOHUT: Well, the public recognizes -

MARGARET WARNER: And we do have a graphic on that, yes. Thanks.

ANDREW KOHUT: That there's a preoccupation with it - 70 percent say that it's getting in the way of doing business in Washington and there has been an increase in the percentage of people who think that the President does not have the moral standing to lead. 48 percent of the public feel that in the current survey and a week or two ago it was 36 percent.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Well, Andy, thank you again very much.

ANDREW KOHUT: You're welcome.% ? FOCUS

JIM LEHRER: Now, how this looks to our regional commentators: Patrick McGuigan of the Daily Oklahoman; Lee Cullum of the Dallas Morning News; Robert Kittle of the San Diego Union Tribune; and Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Constitution, joined tonight by Jim Boyd of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.Bob Kittle, based on any polls or reporting your paper has done, where does San Diego fit into the national polling that Andy Kohut just went through?

ROBERT KITTLE: Well, I really hesitate, Jim, to try to speak scientifically about how San Diegans feel, but I suspect that if a poll were done strictly in San Diego county, that it would reflect many of the same numbers that Andy Kohut has just outlined. I think certainly if we look at our letters to the editor that we've received over the last few days, the reporting we've done asking people what they think. We've seen two real themes here. One is a kind of revulsion that these details have made public. The other is - is a very deep sense of disappointment in our President but yet no one it seems - or a majority of people at least it seems to me are not rushing to a judgment that the President should be impeached over this. I think their views today are pretty much the way Andy Kohut's poll numbers suggest. They think this is something that needs to be condemned; they think it's atrocious behavior, but they haven't reached a point that they believe the President should be removed from office. I think their judgment, however, is a little fluid. It could change. I don't think they're ready to make the definitive judgment on this yet. So it could change. We'll just see how things play out.

JIM LEHRER: Jim Boyd, how does it look in Minneapolis?

JIM BOYD: I agree with a lot that Bob said. I tried an exercise this weekend. We haven't had a poll, but I tried an exercise this weekend in the non-stop discussions that we've been having, and I found people arguing past each other, some people seeming to defend Clinton to an excessive degree, in my opinion, and some attacking him successively. And I tried an experiment. I said, look, if we can get impeachment off the table, can we get agreement here, and it was a fairly simple process of them then saying, yes, we agree. He did something wrong. We especially don't like the lying, but we don't think it rises to the level of impeachment. But we would like - I agree very much with what Mr. Kohut was saying. We want some punishment meted out. We want it to be over fairly soon. The other thing is we published extensive excerpts of the report with the seamy bits left in, and the response to the newspaper has been from many people we don't appreciate this. But an undercurrent in that is not to blame President Clinton. They're actually angry at the newspaper on the President's behalf. We don't -

JIM LEHRER: They blamed you - you shouldn't have published it.

JIM BOYD: We were invading his privacy in the same way that they felt that the independent counsel had.

JIM LEHRER: I see. Were they offended by it, or they felt it was a privacy issue?

JIM BOYD: Some were offended by it, but some were offended by it on behalf of the President.

JIM LEHRER: Yes. Lee Cullum, what's the reading from Dallas?

LEE CULLUM: Jim, there was a poll taken by the Dallas Morning News and the Houston Chronicle that showed that in Texas the President is certainly holding his own. 63 percent approve of the job he's doing; 61 percent have a negative view of him personally. About 42 percent want to see the matter dropped. 27 percent want to see him resign. 14 percent are for censure, and 11 percent for impeachment. So you can see that here in Texas, which is a very Republican state, there is still a great deal of forbearance where this President is concerned.

JIM LEHRER: You heard what Jim Boyd said about the non-stop talk. Has it become - because there's a lot of conversation before the Starr Report came out that the American people didn't care about this anymore. Was there non-stop talk in Texas about this?

LEE CULLUM: Absolutely. Yes, they care. There's non-stop talk everywhere you go. People are riveted to the story.

JIM LEHRER: And the newspapers covered it extensively?

LEE CULLUM: Oh, yes.

JIM LEHRER: What about in Oklahoma, Pat McGuigan?

PATRICK McGUIGAN: [network audio difficulty] You have to remember that President Clinton's high water mark was here in 1996. He only got 40 percent. This was one of Bob Dole's strong mistakes, the same thing back in 1992. So I think there's a critical view of the President from the get-go, to put it with a radio expression.

JIM LEHRER: Excuse me, Pat. Excuse me, Pat. The first - your first sentence was not heard for audio reasons. You were saying - just repeat what you said at the beginning - well, I can repeat it. You said that in Oklahoma it's slightly different because the President has never done that well there at any rate, right?

PATRICK McGUIGAN: Yes. I think that people here have been a little more critical of the President all along, and that was the observation that I made. I think that's holding up. Our letters to the editor are overwhelmingly critical of the President's behavior. Now, I think there's two clusters of people - it might be worth sharing this - that one is people who have paid close attention, a certain level of exhaustion, if you will, is beginning to set in; they're beginning to get very tired of the issue and the details. But the other cluster of people that's really surprised me is it's very clear thata lot of people had not paid close attention to, if you will, the explicit details that we got in the report, some of which, of course, had been revealed in news stories previously. So that's the reaction we're seeing in the letters. I don't sense what Mr. Boyd saw in Minnesota -- maybe I just haven't picked it up yet - that there's anger in the local news media, including this newspaper.

JIM LEHRER: Did the Daily Oklahoman run the whole thing, Pat? Did you run the whole thing?

PATRICK McGUIGAN: Jim, I lost you there.

JIM LEHRER: I'm sorry. Did the Daily Oklahoman run the entire Starr Report?

PATRICK McGUIGAN: I don't know if we ran the whole thing. It was very long. It was what we call open pages. It was five open pages inside with a few ellipses. So they might have edited something out. But that would probably amount to at least a couple of hundred pages.

JIM LEHRER: Was there a conscious effort to take out the explicit sex things, or do you know?

PATRICK McGUIGAN: Well, a lot of it was there, just like in these other newspapers, and, again, I think it's more shock here - what I perceive is it's shock at the President and at this kind of behavior, more than shock at the nature of the material being presented, because a lot of this - at least verbally - you can see on the sitcoms most any night of the week.

JIM LEHRER: Now, Cynthia, your paper has called for the resignation of the President. You did that even before the Starr Report. And has anything changed, and does it pretty much match what you're picking up from the folks in your area?

CYNTHIA TUCKER: Actually, Jim, we have gotten a lot of disagreement from our readers about our editorials calling for the President to resign. We haven't done any polls at the Atlanta Constitution either which would give you a scientific view of what the readers in metro Atlanta or Georgia are thinking. But I can give you a thumbnail sketch of what I've gleaned from our letters to the editor. It seems to me that they come down about 50 percent in favor of the President and 50 percent against him, which would roughly reflect what President Clinton's standing was in Georgia before any of this came up. He narrowly won Georgia in 1992. He narrowly lost Georgia in 1996. And it seems to me most people - with some notable exceptions - it seems to me most readers have not moved away from their partisan views of the President if they liked his policies, they want him to stay in office, if they didn't like his policies in the beginning, they want him out of office. Now, there are a couple of notable exceptions. One of those is Governor Zell Miller, who broke his silence on the affair on Monday and said he was very disappointed in the President and thought the President had lost his credibility and lost his moral authority. And what's significant about that is Governor Miller and President Clinton have been very close for a very long time. They're both - they both fashion themselves as new Democrats. And so I thought that Governor Miller's criticism of the President was significant.

JIM LEHRER: Well, let's go back through here quickly and just bring us up to date on where your papers stand on the three options: resignation, impeachment to proceed or censure. Jim Boyd, where does your paper stand on those issues right now?

JIM BOYD: We said if you get the impeachment option off the table as quickly as possible - because it's not going to happen - we can have a national discussion about our dissatisfaction with the President's behavior, agreement on some form of appropriate sanction, and be done withit and get on to the serious work we have to do.

JIM LEHRER: Pat McGuigan, you've called for resignation. Is it still there?

PATRICK McGUIGAN: Yes, we've called for resignation. We have not called - we have not written an editorial, the title of which is "Impeach Clinton," we have not done that. It's not presently on my agenda.

JIM LEHRER: All right.

PATRICK McGUIGAN: That's an awfully big step. It's not something that necessarily scares me for the sake of the country, because, after all, it's a constitutional process, and I think we could weather it, but I think it is a big step. In terms of censure, I share personally David Broder's view. The problem with censure is it's not in the Constitution. We already have a process for dealing with high crimes, misdemeanors, offenses by the President, and it's called the impeachment process. So if we're going to go down that route of sending some kind of a strong signal, I think that that's more appropriate constitutionally than trying to find some magic way out of this difficult situation that the President's behavior has presented to us.

JIM LEHRER: Bob Kittle, where does your paper stand now?

ROBERT KITTLE: Jim, we've urged the House to move forward as expeditiously and in as fair a manner as possible to take a closer look at Starr's evidence. We have not urged the President to resign. We haven't called for his impeachment. We've certainly raised the possibility that censure will be needed, and we've said some sort of punishment is needed to resolve this issue short of the President's resignation, which appears highly unlikely. But, frankly, we want to see Starr's report held up to scrutiny, itself, through the process that the House Judiciary Committee is about to embark upon, and we want to see a cross-examination of the Starr Report. We want to see the President's answers and rebuttal in more detail than we've seen thus far. We're still looking at the evidence. We're trying to stay, more or less, as the American people are, in judging the facts as they have come out but not yet rush to a definite judgment on what should be the fate of Bill Clinton's presidency.

JIM LEHRER: Lee Cullum, what has the Dallas Morning News said editorially?

LEE CULLUM: The Dallas Morning News agrees somewhat with San Diego, Jim. There was an editorial this morning saying that Congress must begin an inquiry into the Clinton matter with dispatch as soon as possible. At the very least, he should be censured and fined, but he should have an opportunity to defend himself. So I think that here in Dallas there's also a "wait and see" attitude and let's discover the facts and the response to the facts and where they lead.

JIM LEHRER: Now, Cynthia, your paper has called for resignation but not impeachment, correct?

CYNTHIA TUCKER: Not impeachment, Jim, and, in fact, I see a significant difference between the two. We have had some preliminary discussions around the editorial board about impeachment. And we agree that based on what we've seen so far these - the misconduct by the President even as outlined in the Starr Report does not rise to the level of impeachment. In fact, I have some skepticism about Kenneth Starr's advocacy for impeachment. I don't believe that the evidence, as he has presented itself - presented it, calls for impeachment.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Well, thanks again to all five you of you.% ? FOCUS - TESTING TEACHERS

JIM LEHRER: Testing teachers, one of many back-to-school ideas for improving the quality of education. Betty Ann Bowser reports.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Never before has the performance of American public school teachers been under such scrutiny.

TEACHER: -- going over more idioms today --

BETTY ANN BOWSER: In classrooms from Massachusetts -- to California - politicians, school boards, and parents are demanding that public school teachers take proficiency tests to prove they are competent. It's happening because a number of studies have linked low student test scores to poor teaching. Linda Darling Hammond of Stanford University knows a lot about the quality of teaching in America. She is executive director of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, a group of educators, business leaders, and legislators who did extensive research on teaching issues.

LINDA DARLING HAMMON: Well, it turns out that the single most important factor in student achievement is the expertise of the teacher. We used to think we could teacher proof education, that we could somehow change the curriculum, change the textbooks, change the management system, and that would fix schools. And what we've learned in research over the last couple of decades is that in fact you can't improve education without investing in teachers who know a lot.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: In recent years 43 states have required new teachers to pass a basic skills test. 32 other states now require teachers to take tests demonstrating proficiency in the subjects they teach. And when teachers have taken these tests, they haven't done all that well. In some states failure rates have been between 20 and 30 percent. But no one was prepared for what happened in Massachusetts this spring when all new teachers had to take proficiency tests for the first time. An unprecedented 59 percent -- all college graduates -- failed to make the grade. Danielle Pelletier flunked the test not once but twice -- and that had serious repercussions.

DANIELLE PELLETIER, Prospective Teacher: I went on an interview, the school seemed to be interested in me, in what I had to offer and waited for my results to come back for the test and when they did come back, the job was no longer mine.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: College graduate Meghn Bond flunked the literacy test.

MEGHN BOND, Prospective Teacher: I can't speak for everyone but I'm going for elementary. My goal is to teach the third grade. And they're just starting cursive, and they're just starting to form their paragraphs, and I can do that. But that's not what they're scoring us on here. They're scoring us on as far as high school. And I'm not teaching high school.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: That kind of comment threw Massachusetts speaker of the house Thomas Finneran into a rage; he publicly called people like Bond "idiots."

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Did you mean that?

THOMAS FINNERAN: I do stand by it. I got chills up and down my spine because it was described to me quite accurately as a test that a reasonably educated 9th grader could pass. These applicants were college graduates. That is appalling in and of itself that they made it through college.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: The high failure rate became the subject of newspaper editorials -- one said the test results were an "utterly abysmal performance." State officials were humiliated. Not only is Massachusetts currently involved in a massive education reform effort, it's also an election year. Reaction from the state's acting governor Paul Cellucci was swift. Cellucci -- who's running for governor in his own right in November -- introduced a bill 11 days before the end of the legislative session that would require not just new teachers -- but all teachers to be tested.

GOV. PAUL CELLUCCI: My bill will ensure that the most important resource in our classrooms, our teachers, are capable of bringing out the best in our children.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Critics accused the governor of election year pandering because the bill had virtually no support on the joint education committee.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: If this was not an election year, would you have introduced that bill eleven days -

GOV. PAUL CELLUCCI: Sure.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: -- before the end of the session, knowing it had very little chance of passing?

GOV. PAUL CELLUCCI: I would have introduced the bill based upon the 59 percent failure rate whether it happened in an election year or any other year. I'm not doing this for political reasons. I'm doing it because I think its the right thing to do for students.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Celluci's bill was dead on arrival. Still, all the criticism from the politicians has left experienced teachers like Joy Oliver bitter.

JOY OLIVER: I think that this test in the whole process has just been used as a way to bash teachers. And I find it very, it hurts. From talking to my friends who are teachers and other professionals, they don't understand why they're being treated this way. I don't think that the people who are doing all of the talking, the politicians really have any idea what it means to be a teacher. And yes, you certainly have to reach a standard of academic competence, of academic excellence -- absolutely. But also there are skills that just cannot be tested.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Some of the fallout from the test results revolved around the test itself. The board of education has refused to release the actual questions on the tests but did give examples of the kind of questions asked. One sample question was: "Define the word 'abolish'". Another asked: "What is a preposition?" But according to those who have taken the tests, there were other more difficult questions. Teaching commission chairman Linda Darling Hammond says the tests were too hard and passing grades were raised too high.

LINDA DARLING HAMMOND: They're really not minimum competency tests. If you've seen the tests, they're really at a pretty complex level and among the folks who have so called flunked the tests are graduates of very fine institutions like Harvard, and Boston University. The test is so much more difficult than any others that states are using and the cut off score was set so high, it's very hard to know what it means.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Dr. John Silber is the chancellor of Boston University and chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Education that approved the use of the tests.

DR. JOHN SILBER: I'm quite satisfied that with the easy standard we set for passing, which required students to get only about 70 percent of the items correct, or 75 percent correct, which is roughly a C performance, that standard was set so low that I don't see what basis there would be for complaining about the fairness of the test.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Ron Hambleton is a methodologist and nationally recognized expert on teacher testing.

RON HAMBLETON: I think that the people who feel that this test is easy really ought to sit down and take it under test-like conditions. I think they'd be surprised at how difficult the test was. But that's an empirical question. And there are some predictions that tenth graders would be able to pass this test. I don't believe that for a second.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: The proficiency tests were given again in July at a local community college. All over the state professors in schools of education like Clark Fowler watched closely.When the results were in, Fowler termed them wildly unreliable.

CLARK FOWLER: 750 people who failed in April took the test again in July and 57 percent of those who failed reading the first time passed it. 52 percent of those who failed writing the first time passed it on the second time. Now we were told these people were idiots. We were told they couldn't read and couldn't write. But over half of them can now read and write. So either the test is fatally flawed or some kind of miracle happened.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: But Fowler's own Salem state students did poorly. Only 33 percent passed the first time, 41 percent in July. Board of Education Chairman Silber says that's because schools of education like Salem State aren't doing a good job.

JOHN SILBER: Schools of education have dropped their standards to negligible, risible proportions and they give grade inflation and they graduate without competence, and everybody knows that the average student in a school of education is below average. That is a safe generalization. There are very few schools of education in which the average combined SAT score of their incoming freshman exceeds the national average. Most of them fall about 50 points below the national average.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Again, Darling Hammond of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future.

LINDA DARLING HAMMOND: There are, in fact, probably 200 schools of education that have been really radically redesigning their programs in the last 10 years; at the same time we do not require schools of education to be accredited; we do not require all of them to meet standards; and some of them are really quite poor.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Diane Lapkin is dean of the Schools of Human Services at Salem State, which includes the department of education.

DIANE LAPKIN: The first and foremost and most important thing that goes through my mind is what can we do to fix this? How can we make it better. It's a wake up call. It's a chance to do things better, to improve. If our students do not know the basic skills, if they need help in grammar, if they need to write better, if they need to think more critically, then we as a school of education must respond absolutely to that.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Silber has put schools of education on notice -- even his own school of education at Boston University where 33 percent of graduates failed the test in April and 25 a percent in July.

JOHN SILBER: If our school of education can't reach a standard where no more than 10 percent of the people who take that test fail, we'll shut it down. We'll recommend to the trustees just to close the school. I think this is our obligation to offer a first rate education and to insist on high standards or get out of the business

BETTY ANN BOWSER: The state of Massachusetts may soon require that all schools of education in the state produce graduates -- 80 percent of whom can pass the proficiency tests -- or as Silber threatens -- face being closed down.

JIM LEHRER: Now another back-to-school view from NewsHour contributor and Poet Laureate of the United States, Robert Pinsky.

ROBERT PINSKY, Poet Laureate: School is beginning, with a lot of emotions for small children and their parents: dread, relief, excitement, sadness, loss, hope, and maybe all of the feelings of any complicated party. In small or large ways nothing will be the same again. Here is a poem on that subject by Louise Glick. "The Schoolchildren" "The children go forward with their little satchels, and all morning the mothers have labored to gather the late apples, red and gold, like wordsof another language. And on the other shore are those who wait behind great desks to receive these offerings. How orderly they are - the nails on which the children hang their overcoats of blue or yellow wool, and the teachers shall instruct them in silence, and the mothers shall scour the orchards for a way out, drawing to themselves the gray limbs of the fruit trees - bearing so little ammunition."% ? ESSAY - LANGUAGE OR SILENCE

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, essayist Richard Rodriguez of the Pacific News Service considers talking or not talking about being gay.

RICHARD RODRIGUEZ, Pacific News Service: I'm old enough to remember when gay was a carefree little word, more innocent even than happy. Children were gay, people said. Flowers were gay. A bright morning in May was gay. One said, "I am gay," and nobody snickered. Language is a social event - people talking, making sense of each other talking. Look, all around the city, words passing from person to person to person. The air is filled with nouns and verbs and adjectives - the simplest of conversations cements the entire city. But to describe oneself with a society's words is to acknowledge oneself as belonging to that society. But what happens when a society doesn't have the words to describe what I am feeling, or doesn't want to acknowledge me in words? The homosexual oppression has always been silence - wanting to say, not being able to say the love that dare not speak its name. No wonder that the language of homosexuality was best expressed through irony, double entendre, and code words. A man I know - elderly now in Florida - when he was a boy went to a public library. There was no place else he thought to go in his early adolescence to find himself in a dictionary. No one he knew - least of all those people he loved best - would have allowed the word he was looking for in the dictionary. Before it became a public word, a defiant political term, "gay" was a code word, a nonsense word spoken in private, in shadows, nothing innocent or carefree about it, but a word coded with irony, a way of saying without having to say, I am homosexual, at a time when it was a criminal offense. The Castro District of San Francisco today is one of the most striving of the city. The revolution of the 1970's that made possible these homosexual bars and churches and stores was nothing less than a linguistic revolution. Words made these buildings possible, more than mortar and bricks and steel. Foremost among those words was that little word "gay."

DEMONSTRATORS: Gay power now. Gay power now.

RICHARD RODRIGUEZ: In the 1970's, men and women on these streets and in large cities all over America suddenly were inclined to speak, to shout out the absurd little word, to say that they were gay, making the code word public, coming out of the closet with nothing less than a willingness to speak, to tell strangers, tell one's friends, tell one's boss, and, hardest of all, to tell one's family. A counter movement has been forming in recent years, a movement back towards silence. A few days after President Clinton took office, for example, he met considerable opposition when he proposed changing the U.S. military's prohibition against gays in the military - a compromise. "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was no compromise at all. It was, in fact, a victory for silence. Now, there are signs that a new offensive is being organized by Americans, who are morally offended by homosexuality and consider it a serious offense against God and the natural order. A new candor has sounded lately in the Congress, congressmen speaking bluntly of homosexuality as a thin, more psychological affliction. The cultural war ahead will be a war between language and silence, where if gays can be kept from saying aloud that they are gays, then homosexuality in some sense will diminish as a political issue, an employment issue, a civil rights issue, as a reality at all. Both sides seem to recognize the importance of the moment, because language is social. To force a word into currency can be a revolutionary act, or to suppress it, counter-revolutionary. In the end, there is no more central book to any society than a dictionary, the words it admits or omits from its pages. How do you suppose future editions of this dictionary will define the word "gay?" I say it today. I am gay. I toss the word in the air. I say it in the plain light of day. Brutally, I force this word upon you. I say it in a louder voice: I am gay. It is in your power to accept my sentence as meaningful or appropriate in this public moment, or to resist it, to turn away toward silence, to make me invisible. I'm Richard Rodriguez.% ? RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major story of this Tuesday continued to be the Starr report aftermath. The House Judiciary Committee privately debated releasing the videotape of President Clinton's August 17th grand jury testimony. Republicans urged it be made public this week. Democrats resisted. And Senate Republican Leader Lott echoed the advice of Democrats and called on the president to have his lawyers end their legal hair-splitting. We'll see you on-line and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.