The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

RAY SUAREZ: Good evening. I'm Ray Suarez. Jim Lehrer is off today. On the NewsHour tonight, the second in our series of presidential candidate interviews; Margaret Warner goes one-on-one with Bill Bradley; Paul Gigot is joined by Tom Oliphant to review the week in politics; the great pantomime Marcel Marceau speaks in a conversation with Elizabeth Farnsworth; and essayist Jim Fisher visits the Rusty Zipper Club in Warrensburg, Missouri, to hear what rural Americans think the issues should be in the 2000 elections. It all follows our summary of the news this Friday.

NEWS SUMMARY

RAY SUAREZ: Treasury Department officials and congressional leaders announced early today they had a deal on banking reform. The financial services bill would erase Depression-era laws and allow banks, insurance companies, and securities firms to merge or provide each other services. The agreement now passes to House and Senate negotiators for their approval before a final vote. On the budget story today, white house and congressional negotiators met again. There was no breakthrough, and the war of words continued. President Clinton said he'd turn the other cheek after House Majority Whip Tom Delay accused him of trying to raid the Social Security surplus. Republicans prepared the last of the 13 spending bills for the new fiscal year. It contained $310 billion for the Departments of Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services. Mr. Clinton has threatened to veto it. He said it did not finance his proposal for hiring 100,000 new teachers. He spoke at an education event.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: That's bad educational policy. We need to help the school districts hire more teachers. Last year we agreed, and we should do it again. So one of the things the budget debate is all about is whether we will continue our commitment to help our schools hire 100,000 well-qualified teachers. And we have to reject the idea that we can't raise both the numbers of teachers in the classroom and the standards we hold them to.

RAY SUAREZ: Last night, House Republicans joined Democrats in rejecting a school voucher plan. It was advanced by Majority Leader Dick Armey. It would have provided $100 million a year for students in below-standard public school districts to attend private and parochial schools. The provision had been part of an education bill aimed at lifting achievement of poor and disadvantaged students. Blue Chip stocks rebounded today. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 172 points at 10,470. Stocks suffered yesterday when IBM reported fears of a Y2K glitch had hurt sales. The NASDAQ Index rose 14 points to end at 2816. Chechen officials said today at least 143 people died in a Russian rocket assault last night. We have more from Mark Webster of Independent Television news.

MARK WEBSTER: Picking through the wreckage, survivors said scores of civilians had been killed and injured as the Russian rockets smashed into the all-night market. The Russian authorities at first denied they were responsible, then said they'd targeted an area where weapons were for sale. As dazed locals surveyed the damage, others say the Russians had deliberately targeted civilians. "They're not killing militants," she said, "they're killing civilians." Most of the 200 wounded were brought to this hospital in Grozny, where Chechens said they were desperately short of medicines and frequently without power. Russia has made it clear it intends destroying the rebel forces, which have made Chechnya virtually independent since the last war here. After that, Russian forces were forced into a humiliating withdrawal.

RAY SUAREZ: An earthquake rocked southern Taiwan today. There were no immediate reports of deaths, but at least 230 people were injured. A powerful tremor there last month killed more than 2,300 people. Seismologists said the two quakes were unrelated. Today's measured 6.4 on the Richter Scale. Emergency officials said several houses and buildings collapsed. At a university laboratory, bottles of chemicals exploded and caught fire. Exiled guerrilla leader Xanana Gusmao returned to East Timor today, after seven years as a prisoner of the Indonesian military. He spoke to thousands who wept and cheered, "Long live East Timor." The former poet and teacher was secretly flown into East Timor Thursday night by international troops. On Tuesday, Indonesia's parliament accepted the province's vote for independence. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to playing one-on-one with Bill Bradley, Gigot and Oliphant, talking with the master of mime, and the 2000 agenda in rural America.

SERIES - ONE ON ONE

RAY SUAREZ: Tonight, the second in our series of extended interviews with presidential contenders. Margaret Warner has that.

MARGARET WARNER: Tonight we hear from Democrat Bill Bradley, the former basketball star and U.S. Senator. He's 56, a graduate of Princeton University, and a former Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. After Oxford, he played with the New York Knicks for 10 years. In 1978, he won election to the Senate from New Jersey and served three terms. I spoke with Bill Bradley earlier today.

MARGARET WARNER: Thanks for being with us, Senator Bradley. When you left the Senate and Washington, you said, "We live in an era in which on a very basic level politics is broken." Why are you returning to it?

SEN. BILL BRADLEY: I'm returning to try and restore public trust in the process and confidence in our collective will. When I left, I said I thought politics was broken and, by that, I meant there was way too much money in politics to start the democratic process. The media is often superficial or sensational; it doesn't give people the information they need to make the judgment that only a citizen can make, which is about the whole. And politicians don't speak enough from their core convictions. And I thought that was a set of problems that resulted in a rather passive electorate; a little more than 25 percent of the people elected the last President of the United States. So I decided, after being out of the Senate for two years, and having a chance to rejuvenate and refresh and having engaged in extended dialogue with the people, that I had a sense of where the country was, and that I thought that I was the person that could offer the leadership that would improve the quality of life for millions of Americans. And so that's why I decided to run.

MARGARET WARNER: But how could a Bradley presidency or any one presidency change that, change what was broken?

SEN. BILL BRADLEY: I don't think that it is a matter of one person. I think it's a matter of the relationship you establish with the people. Clearly, campaign finance reform would be an enormous step in the right direction. I think what the Senate did this week is just outrageous. I mean, you know, we all know money is at the root of a lot of the problems in our democratic process. We all know we live in a country where we have one person, one vote, but the people with more money have more vote or more power or more clout, and that that simply has to change, so that is a specific thing that we can do and that we should do in order to restore trust in our political system. But what I'm talking about is the relationship that you establish with people. You go out and respect people, you pay respect to them, you listen to them, and out of that engagement comes a kind of mutual confidence that allows them to find through the political process a sense of fulfillment that they might not have found in other aspects of their life, and at the same time creating and increasing our collective possibilities. And I think that that begins with how you run a campaign; it begins with how you govern. And I think that people are responding to that kind of respect that I'm giving them.

MARGARET WARNER: You brought up money a couple of times, and, yet, as you well know, not only have you raised a lot of money, but one of the reasons certainly the media and everyone is taking your candidacy very seriously, is you seem to have the money to go the distance. You have had to raise it wealth under this current system. Does that trouble you, that you're as dependent on it as anyone else?

SEN. BILL BRADLEY: Sure it does. I'm a very strong advocate of campaign finance reform for Senate and congressional elections. For example, I think we ought to have public finance -- taxpayers ought to finance it, and we spend $900 million a years on promoting democracy abroad. It seems to me for about the same amount of money at home we could take all the special interests out of politics. To me, that's the best investment the taxpayer will ever have for that amount of money. So, I mean, I think that it is very important to take this step. Now, I'm in a bit of a dilemma because I'm an advocate for campaign finance reform. So how do I raise the amount of money that you need to raise if you're running for President? There is a contradiction there. Well, how I've tried to deal with that is to say, well, I'm going to hold myself - because of my advocacy of campaign finance reform - to a standard a little higher than existing law. So I'm not accepting PAC contributions. I'm not setting up sham state PAC's in places like Virginia where ten friends could give me a hundred thousand dollars, and I could put a million dollars on TV in Iowa or New Hampshire. And I'm reaching out to a large group of Americans who have never been a part of the political process before. We're raising more money over the Internet, for example, than anybody has ever raised before. And we're drawing people into the process that have not participated before. And I'd like to think that the reason, in part, that they're being drawn into the process is they know that I'm serious when I talk about campaign finance reform.

MARGARET WARNER: You told the New York Times Magazine this spring that you thought for President people really vote on issues, they really vote on trust. What elements of character do you think are really important in a President? In other words, what do you think voters should be looking for in that regard?

SEN. BILL BRADLEY: Obviously, you want honesty, you want a certain ability to see beyond today to tomorrow. You want a certain level of sensitivity and compassion. It seems to me that there has to be courage involved as well. I mean, I think those are the elements. But it all has got to kind of come together in a way that says to the person who's trying to make that decision this is somebody I can trust with my life, somebody that I can trust with my job. It's somebody that I trust has a view of life that is remotely similar to my own. And I think that those are all the things that flow into this decision, based on my own experience of looking at for a long time.

MARGARET WARNER: Clearly, your basketball experience is a big part of your political appeal -- I mean, certainly the external way -- money and name ID and -- what would you say to someone who knows nothing about basketball about what it was you took from that, or how that experience to which you gave many years of your life shaped you in a way that's germane to the presidency?

SEN. BILL BRADLEY: Well, it gave me an understanding of what excellence was. It gave me a sense of how important it is to follow your passion, to do something that you care deeply about, on a very practical level. It gave me the opportunity as a professional to travel around the country with a diverse group of extraordinary individuals and see the country, in part, through the eyes of my teammates, as well as through my own eyes. It put me in the eye of -- shall I say -- the well-known syndrome, as well as in the middle of a press swirl. It gave me a real sense of how important resilience is and how every day, every week, every season, every campaign is a matter of ups and downs, and the key is to keep your perspective and to move forward. I'd say that all those were things that I derived from the experience of playing basketball all the years that I did. I wouldn't give up the experience for anything.

MARGARET WARNER: In the campaign you're talking a lot about big ideas. In your announcement speech you said you thought leaders shouldn't be doing trifling things abut a few big, essential things. Take that generalization, if you will, and tell us what it would mean in practical terms. In other words, how would it be different say from the presidency we're currently living with under another Democratic President?

SEN. BILL BRADLEY: Well, let's take a very specific subject. Let's take, for example, the fact that 44 million Americans don't have any health insurance, that we're at a time of unprecedented prosperity, and yet in the last year, an additional million Americans lost health insurance. And twenty to thirty million Americans have inadequate health insurance. This is a big problem in the country. And it requires a big solution, not incrementalism, but a big solution. And so I've offered a program that would get us to 95 percent of all Americans being covered with health insurance. And to me that is the best example in this campaign so far that illustrates the point I was making that the government should do fewer things, but they should be bigger things, and we should do them more thoroughly.

MARGARET WARNER: Do you think Americans really want that, though?

SEN. BILL BRADLEY: I believe that Americans are basically good people, and I believe that we understand what troubles some of our neighbors have, and we understand that we strengthen our social fabric if everybody has better health, ultimately, it will help us pay less ourselves for health care in America, health insurance, and so I think there's very powerful support for this. I think that this is a different time than 1992/93. This is a different approach than 1992/93, and I think that people now, across the board, think something is wrong with our current health care system and want real change.

MARGARET WARNER: And you think they're ready to pay - I mean, yours is certainly much bigger than say Al Gore's - I think $65 billion a year versus $5 billion. And you said you'd take it out of the surplus. You would spend the surplus, rather than put it towards retiring the debt?

SEN. BILL BRADLEY:Well, it's a big surplus. It's a trillion-dollar surplus. I think that when it comes to health care costs, that there are savings that we haven't even begun to touch. For example, out of $1.2 trillion we spend on health care, $450 billion of that is administrative costs. A big part of that administrative cost is paper - I fill out a form, send it to you, you fill out a form, send it to somebody else, fill out another form, and another form. If we had the paper on the Internet, I saw it would save between forty-five and two hundred billion dollars. Now, that's astonishing, but that's the world we're heading toward. Health care is changing so dramatically not only in terms of treatment possibilities, but in terms of cost savings, that I think when you look out at a ten-year period, we won't even recognize what it is, if we do this the right way. Not only will we be able to have everybody covered in America, but we'll be able to have a healthier society. The idea isn't just health care; the idea is health.

MARGARET WARNER: Since we can't go through every issue, let me try to ask a question that gets at how you approach issues. Now, many pundits and headline writers have written, you know, Bradley enters race from the left, and that you're appealing to liberals with a more expansive view of government; other people have said, no, you're very hard to pigeonhole, you look at your Senate career -- you voted for Reagan's budget cuts but against welfare reform. If a voter were saying, "What's the common thread here? What's the common theme? How would I know how Bill Bradley, or President Bradley would respond to an issue that isn't even on the table now?" -- what would you tell them?

SEN. BILL BRADLEY: I would say that the two characteristics would be common sense and the willingness to take the long-term view. And I think that those are both ways to describe a Senate career and this current campaign, and a presidency if the people thought that's what it should be. And, you know, I think that we have tremendous opportunities now; we're in unprecedented prosperity; it's driven by technological change and globalization. That's as likely to continue as it is to wane. So we have the luxury and, indeed, the obligation now to think, what should we do with this prosperity? And how do we strengthen our social fabric so that in the future we can have more prosperity, so we can have more economic growth, more broadly shared, so that more people can get on the prosperity train in America? Now, is that left or right? I think it's common sense, particularly given where we are now. We're not in another age, we're not in another decade; we're living now, and these are our circumstances. And these are our opportunities, if we'd simply seize them.

MARGARET WARNER: Vice President Gore has taken your record - and, as you know, in the last couple of weeks - said, essentially, he's not a good Democrat, he's not a loyal Democrat - he points to your vote for the Reagan tax cuts; he also points to the fact you left the Senate shortly after the Republicans took over; you thought of running as an independent for President. Do you think those two issues are legitimate issues to raise?

SEN. BILL BRADLEY: I think anybody can raise any issue they want.

MARGARET WARNER: I guess what I'm asking is: What's your response to that?

SEN. BILL BRADLEY: Well, my response to that is - I don't know, sometimes when I hear it, I actually laugh a little bit, because it's so off the mark. I mean, let's take 1981 - remember, we're running for President in the year 2000 - so, we're talking about something that took place 20 years ago -- but just so the record shows what happened, I was the Democratic point man in 1981. I went on national television opposite Ronald Reagan arguing the Democratic point of view that the Reagan tax cuts were not in the interest of the United States. I was also the head of the Economic Policy Task Force for Senate Democrats in those years, formulating the strategy to reduce the impact of the Reagan proposed budget cuts. And if - at the end of the day I ended up voting for the budget cuts -- if everybody in Congress had voted the way I had voted -- against the tax cut but for the budget cuts -- there wouldn't have been the big deficits of the 1980's and 90's; we would have had more economic growth, we would have had more money coming into the Treasury, just as today we have more money coming into the Treasury because of economic growth -- and that would have been more money to do the kind of things that I'm specifically proposing to do now that we're in that enviable economic position. So I look at this and I say, what? I mean, -- and I think that most of these criticisms are in that - shall I say -- in that particular line. And my view is, look, I'm running a positive campaign. That's how I intend to run. I want somebody to decide they want to vote for me, not that they want to vote against an opponent. And I think that if you define yourself positively, you offer the people an opportunity to be a part of something that they haven't quite been a part of for years. They have something to be enthused about; they have something dedicated to; they have something to believe in; as opposed to politics simply being at the end of the day not two candidates - both of whom we esteem -- but one we can barely tolerate but still do. And so the way I'm approaching this to really have faith that the people want a different kind of politics.

MARGARET WARNER: That raises a final issue I wanted to ask you about, and maybe it's your laidback style but there have been questions about, well, how hungry is he for this, how much does he really want this -- how much do you want this?

SEN. BILL BRADLEY: I wouldn't have taken the first step toward becoming President of the United States if I didn't think I could become President of the United States -- could get the nomination and could win and could serve in a way the American people would be proud of. And, again, it's a matter of how you approach things. I think you have to be true to who you are. It took me some years to realize that - you know - not just manipulating the externals but just be who you are, and that's what I'm doing. That's how I'm running the campaign; I'm having the time of my life. I describe it as a joyous journey. It's an incredible experience, an awesome job, the most powerful job in the world. So anybody that it has got to feel a little modest about seeking and yet it is really the people that give you that opportunity, and the point is the people also have powers that they don't fully realize yet -- they could also not only elect somebody but could achieve things that we haven't begun to think we could achieve in this country.

MARGARET WARNER: So even if next year, even though you have the money to go, you're bound take some hits, I mean, it's bound to be contentious and defeats - are you in this for the long haul?

SEN. BILL BRADLEY: On, of course. I mean, the point is that the people are going to make this decision; they're going to say, yes, or no. I'm going to try to run a positive campaign, I'm going to do it the best wayI can -- you know, I've been in sports long enough to know that, you know, you only take elbows so long, and then you've got to return it. But my hope is that a campaign can be run that will allow the American people to see the best of our possibilities, as opposed to constantly saying, oh, well, I've got to make a choice between two people I don't really like or two people I wish were better or whatever - that doesn't have to have that kind of politics - and it's the way we conduct campaigns, I believe, that shapes the way people think about their politics, and about the country, and about our future.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Well, thanks, Senator, very much.

SEN. BILL BRADLEY: Thank you.

RAY SUAREZ: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, Gigot and Oliphant, talking about the silent art of pantomime, and Agenda 2000.

FOCUS - POLITICAL WRAP

RAY SUAREZ: The week in politics as seen by Gigot and Oliphant. That's Paul Gigot of "The Wall Street Journal," and Tom Oliphant of "The Boston Globe," sitting in tonight for Mark Shields.

Tom, let me start with you. Another vote in the Senate on the partial birth abortion ban, same result. It passed but not by enough, a sure veto promised. What was different about the debate and the vote this time?

TOM OLIPHANT: Three things, and they were a lot different, Ray -- symbolized I think on the moment of the last day of the debate when the chief sponsor of this proposal, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, was at the Senate desk changing the language of his proposal. And he was doing in it part because the environment for this vote is much different this year. Partly, it's a legal environment that's different. I think we're up to 18 courts now in the country that have just shredded these statutes, issued injunctions to prevent them from going into effect, because they go right at some of the most basic principles in the decision "Roe V. Wade." I think what was also different about this fight this year is that you saw for the first time some real common ground emerge between supporters and opponents -- a proposal by Dick Durbin of Illinois that got 38 votes, not bad the first time out, it will be back -- and finally, you saw an effort to put this into next year's political campaign, symbolized by Tom Harkin's proposal to put the Senate on record supporting "Roe V. Wade." It passed, but as Tom Harkin said afterwards, by only one vote, which to him means that abortion rights in the Senate right now are literally hanging by a thread. So you have the same determined advocacy on one side, I think maybe a little bit more life in the pro-choice world as a result of what's happened.

RAY SUAREZ: Paul?

PAUL GIGOT: Of course the Senate can't do anything about "Roe V. Wade," that's a Supreme Court issue. I think the reason Rick Santorum -- the sponsor on the Republican side of this bill - was at the desk was to try to get one vote, Bob Kerrey of Nebraska's vote. He had said in the past that he was open maybe to moving. And what the pro-life community wanted to show on this was some progress. They wanted to at least show they were inching closer to the veto override. Bob Kerrey -- the 14 Democrats who voted for it this time, as last time, but they want today get an additional one, and they were trying to work the language that might get Senator Kerrey on board. Senator Kerrey is up in 2000. I think the backdrop of this actually is the last election. In 1996, Tom Harkin barely won against a Republican in Iowa, and this issue was used against him. And that informed an awful lot of his colleagues two years later this is a tough issue. Last time, Mark Neumann, Republican from Wisconsin, tried to use this issue and he overplayed his hand, I think; a lot of Republicans think that too in Wisconsin against Russ Feingold. He lost, and I think a lot of Democrats are thinking this isn't as powerful as we once thought.

RAY SUAREZ: Is this an issue that has a different power that's going to play out in a different way in the congressional campaigns versus the presidential campaigns, is this shaping up?

PAUL GIGOT: I think so, I really do. I think the Bush campaign has decided that they don't want to make-- and frankly, the McCain campaign and even Forbes' campaign to some extent, the three leading contenders -- they don't want abortion to be a centerpiece issue of their agenda. So I think they're going to have it be -- they're going to talk about it a little bit in passing, but for some Senators and some Congressmen, if they use it against their opponent, particularly in pro-life states, Pennsylvania, some others, they might be able to use it effectively there.

RAY SUAREZ: So the difference between just having it one place and having to run everywhere.

TOM OLIPHANT: Yes, though in the primaries, and even in the general election, it could be a problem for a Republican presidential nominee who sort of sloughs abortion off because it is one of the great motivating factors on the right today, so you do have to s how your colors. On the other side, though, I come back to the fact that Senator Kerrey did not go on this bill, and the reason he didn't was because there's an absolute refusal to accept any proposal that allows exceptions to protect the health of the woman involved. And Harkin made his proposal because there is now sentiment on the pro-choice side that abortion is not a liability but an asset, including this aspect of it.

RAY SUAREZ: Paul, another issue that got another vote this week was campaign finance reform, and again, a very similar result from the last votes. Did we see anything new on the horizon this time?

PAUL GIGOT: We saw something new. We saw the supporters of it, John McCain and Russ Feingold, try to strip this thing down to boxer shorts, to get into fighting trim, get rid of whatever they could to try to get more votes. And in fact, they ran into trouble not so much from the Republicans, but from the Democrats who decided that they didn't like the fact that they dropped off a portion of it that they had thought was significant on issue advocacy, those outside ads that other groups sometimes run against candidates. So what happened was they -- in trying to get more Republicans on -- they ended up being, I think sabotaged, as reformers, by of Bob Torriccelli, the head of the Democratic Senatorial campaign committee, and Tom Daschle, the leader of the Democrats, who really want this -- they're not so enthusiastic about campaign finance reform either, but they really do love the issue to use against Republicans.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, some Democrats were probably secretly relieved that they didn't have to cast a vote on the stripped-down bill.

TOM OLIPHANT: Paul is very right on that point. I think maybe the bill could be said to have been stripped down to briefs, not boxer shorts. But there were a few things different about the vote: 52 votes to break the filibuster the last time, 55 votes this time. And there were some negotiations going on for another Republican or two, notably Chuck Hagel of Nebraska; negotiations which the democrats helped block, with what Paul talked about, but there was also a change in position by Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, who had made a commitment to allow five days of debate and negotiation to proceed, and he cut this thing off on a party line vote after three days, which has some of the supporters threatening to bring it back. I doubt that they will, but it shows, I think, that there's still life in this dog, and while it has no impact as the issue in any race I can think of in America, and probably never will, it may have some legs as an issue.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, it's sort of amorphous sometimes, it's there, it's the elephant in the room, Elizabeth Dole talked about how money ended having a big part in her demise, the campaign's demise.

TOM OLIPHANT: To me that's a different system, that's the presidential-- we're talking the soft money system here. The presidential system I think is a legitimate test of your ability to organize, frankly. And I think George W. Bush deserves -- even though voters tend to resent the size of his stash -- his effort in organizing it was out front and up front, and I don't quite understand Mrs. Dole's complaint about a system - I mean, I don't know if Paul remembers this, but at the beginning of her campaign some of her people were even talking about taking off like a rocket and rejecting the federal match just like Bush ended up doing, right?

PAUL GIGOT: I do understand her complaint in this sense, though: She's talking about, and she said this explicitly, the $1,000 limit on presidential contributions, which hasn't changed since 1974. That makes it very, very difficult if you're not either a millionaire or very well-known with a huge network like George W. Bush, his father's network, the governors' network, to raise money. Before that reform - that limit passed in 1974, you could do what Gene McCarthy did in 1968 -- you could go to some rich liberal supporter who didn't like the war in Vietnam and say write a check for $50,000, $100,000, we'll know who it is, but you can finance a campaign. Now you can't. Now you have to spend all your time on the phone or going to fund-raisers. And Mrs. Dole said raise that limit to $5,000 at a minimum, which would be more in line as if inflation -- where it had been taken into account. Where I disagree with Tom is I don't think campaign finance reform is going anywhere in the Senate until the reformers themselves make some accommodation to that kind of a reality and to -- and strictly don't try to pursue the tilted windmills that you're going to find some other Senators here without taking that into consideration.

TOM OLIPHANT: Paul is absolutely right on that point, and I think the evidence in support of it is the effort that was being made by McCain and Feingold to talk to some republicans about doing precisely that. They got Hagel kind of interested in this, and that's the trade that is available to the so-called reformers, and I think if they make it and if the Republican majority maybe settles a little bit after next year's election, that's why I believe it's still alive.

PAUL GIGOT: Only if John McCain wins the White House.

RAY SUAREZ: This week we also saw a controversy over an unlikely ambassadorial appointment, Carol Moseley-Braun, former Senator from Illinois, hoped to be heading to Wellington, New Zealand. But Jesse Helms stood up and made it clear that she wasn't going to get a vote anytime soon.

PAUL GIGOT: Well, Jesse Helms made a mistake you shouldn't make in confirmation politics, which is letting personal peek get in the way of political judgment. You know, in "The Godfather" they always say, "it's not personal, it's business." That's the way you're supposed to think about confirmation politics. If you don't want somebody to be confirmed, you don't say, as Jesse Helms did when he was cornered by a reporter, well, maybe she can get through if she'll apologize for the way she treated me in the Senate. That made this look as if it was personal peek, that made it look petty and not a question of principle, and because Carol Moseley-Braun is black, is also played right into a Democratic strategy, which is to try to hit the Republicans for racial insensitivity. Tom Daschle took to his news conference this week and listed a whole series of things where he hit the Republicans on race and Carol Moseley-Braun was Exhibit A.

TOM OLIPHANT: Actually, I think she was Exhibit C. There was a black state Supreme Court judge from Missouri, who was rejected after two favorable votes in committee. The disparity in terms of judges who are held up or delayed is greater, sadly, for minorities and women than it is for white people. Insensitivity is a very interesting word to use in a setting like this, because what it means is not knowing or caring what other people think, and that's not a wild description of Senator Helms' conduct in the Senate. Sometimes he's an equal opportunity destroyer. But this question of insensitivity has bothered many people, not just in the Democratic Party, but in the minority community in America, and I think one of the sad features of white people sometimes is that they are insensitive to the way other people feel.

RAY SUAREZ: Tom Oliphant, Paul Gigot, good to see you both.

CONVERSATION

RAY SUAREZ: The art of mime, and Marcel Marceau. Spencer Michels begins our look.

SPENCER MICHELS: The artist is Marcel Marceau, the world's best known pantomimist, who at 76 is still performing his silent roles, here during a recent run at San Francisco's Theater on the Square. This is Marceau as Bip, the character described by one critic as "torn on the battlefield of life between comedy and tragedy." Bip is Marceau's most famous and familiar creation. Here he is as a porcelain salesman, climbing to the top shelves to satisfy a customer, who then breaks a large pot, and costs poor Bip his job. Like Marceau, Bip is no youngster. He was created in 1947 in Paris, just three years after Marceau began studying drama and mime. Marceau was born Marcel Mangel to a Jewish family in Strasbourg, France, in 1923. During World War II, his father was deported to Auschwiz, and never seen again. Charlie Chaplin, in silent films like "The Gold Rush," was an early hero for the young mime. In fact, Bip is modeled partly on chaplain's Little Tramp, and on other early film stars like Stan Laurel of Laurel and Hardy. Marcel Marceau's first big triumph came in this country in 1955, even before he was well known to the French. His repertoire includes 100 sketches. In "Le Petit Cafe" he plays a much- harassed waiter.

MARCEL MARCEAU: Everything is forgotten so quickly, and this is why it's so important to have tradition.

SPENCER MICHELS: Marceau is a passionate advocate for the art of mime, which he helped revive. He runs his own school in Paris, and on the road visits classes like this one at San Francisco's High School of the Arts.

MARCEL MARCEAU: Everything is technique.

SPENCER MICHELS: He gave these young dance students and their teachers a taste of that technique.

MARCEL MARCEAU: Courage would be this. (demonstrating) And what would be revolt? It would be... you see immediately the force of the attitude. This is why we say mime is art of attitude, dance art of movement.

SPOKESPERSON: He's able to grab you and connect you to that place so that you see what he sees, and you feel what he feels. I think that's power and that's like art at its best.

SPENCER MICHELS: Marceau has influenced a generation of performers, including Michael Jackson, who acknowledges his famous 1983 Moonwalk video was inspired by the master of mime. Like Michael Jackson, Marcel Marceau is known to audiences throughout the world. He still performs 200 times a year, and will be on stage in Washington, D.C., in January.

RAY SUAREZ: Elizabeth Farnsworth spoke to Marcel Marceau last week on the stage of Theater on the Square in San Francisco.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Thank you very much for being with us, Marcel Marceau.

MARCEL MARCEAU: Thank you.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Tell us about "Mask Maker," the last part of that wonderful sketch. Tell what's happening from your point of view when he can't get off the smiling mask.

MARCEL MARCEAU: Well, I think that it's symbolic, you know, because the man is trapped in a laughing mask he cannot take off. He plays this mask like we play with characters, being funny, being sad, being hilarious, you know? And the laughing mask, when that doesn't take off, he's crying and all that, but the public is laughing because it looks terrible and funny at the same time. And in the end is revealed the solitude of man -- the moment of truth, also, when man is himself left in a certain solitude. It's not sad for me, because solitude is not sad, because it's a deep reflection about life.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: I thought of this watching this program. It's certainly very entertaining at times and very funny and enjoyable, but it's deeply philosophical. One critic from the "LA Times" said that your art is actually metaphysical. Do you think it is?

MARCEL MARCEAU: Absolutely. But on the other way, it's not so intellectual.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: No.

MARCEL MARCEAU: Because I like to reveal to the essence of the weight of our soul, the inside of ourselves and this is why I think that I like to show them that of our feelings. In that sense, even simple people understand it. It has to be very clear.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Do you think that the philosophical underpinning that is so evident in what you do, is strong partly because it's such an old art, it has such deep roots?

MARCEL MARCEAU: Yes. It has deep roots because maybe it's old as long as man have existed. It had a great tradition in the past in Greece and it went to Rome, which became Italy, and went to France with the white-face Poirot, it was pantomime from the Greek word. And then it ended in films as Chaplin, Keaton and because they were mimes, and not because there were no sounds. But I think that the art is revived today through grammar; without the grammar, an art cannot exist.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What do you mean grammar in this sense?

MARCEL MARCEAU: Grammar means that all the gesture movements, what the Indians called the moudras, you see -- hand for the scene, for fish, for birds, for saber -- when I do this, you see nothing, when I do you see the saber. When I do this, you can't see. (demonstrating) But it's not just movement, it's behind any movement, the feeling, the musicality and this is why very often musicians say do you sing inside? I say, "How did you feel it?" The stream of silence when I do...then a musician will tell me like Hughie Manouen, who died unfortunately, told me that it's the spirit of sound. I tried to bring complete silence in the theater because I think it would show that revealing with the body, the essence of life, like walking in the wind in the beginning, like struggling with push and be pushed -- like the struggle between life and death will show the best in silence, the depths of ourselves, because we all are silent in certain moments -- writers before writing, singers before singing, athletes before sports. Concentration is the most important medium and then when I go into grays I call it la sacralisation -- I don't know the word in English.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Making sacred.

MARCEL MARCEAU: Yes. When the movement is... a priest asked me, "Marcel Marceau, are you religious?" I said, "I don't practice really, but when I do the creation of the world, God enters in me -- the feeling of the best of man can be revealed through the best. It comes from cosmic world, maybe from the Godly world, you see, of God. But it's important to go deep in the roots of ourselves, and from the silence, there's music.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What difference has age made to your art?

MARCEL MARCEAU: Well, age has helped me to go deeper. I think that with age, I cover more the experience of my life. (pantomime segment)

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What do you hope your legacy will be? Is it the teaching that you're doing, the continuation of the art?

MARCEL MARCEAU: The understanding of the teaching; the grammar is there, but grammar and movement alone are not enough. What is important is that they understand why the gesture is there, the motivation for the attitude, and this is why I have created the grammar, the conventions of character, for sadness, for anger, for every feeling -- the way you have to adjust, like music, like words, not one word too much, not one gesture which is over them. I think also that this time it has become accepted as a universal language and very important for every art form -- for dance, for music, for speaking, you know? And it's part of American culture now, and I think that it's beautiful to feel that you have brought, that I could have brought something in the art field who show really the depth of our outcry, and of making people laugh and cry without words -- like Chaplin did, Keaton.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Marcel Marceau, thank you very much for being with us.

EMPHASIS - LECTION 2000 - CAMPAIGN AGENDA

RAY SUAREZ: Next tonight, more on our special emphasis on what the 2000 presidential campaign should be about. Essayist Jim Fisher recently spoke with members of the Rusty Zipper Club in Warrensburg, Missouri. The club is an informal group of men who have been meeting for coffee six days a week, for over 40 years.

JIM FISHER: What do you think the issues should be in next year's election?

JOHN PRICE, Retired Veterinarian: Social Security, Medicare and maybe here close to Whiteman Air Force base would be defense. That would be some of the issues I would say would be important.

JIM FISHER: What about them? I mean, do you want more Social Security?

JOHN PRICE: Well, I want the Social Security to remain, I don't want them to cut it anymore. And Medicare, they've already cut Medicare to some extent.

RICH LAWSON, Stockbroker: We continue to raise the amount that we must pay into Social Security, but at the same time for myself, I seriously doubt I'll be able to draw Social Security prior to age 70 and maybe not then because it's constantly changing and pushing backward. If the report put out by the Social Security system is correct, and they expect the whole thing to really be bankrupt by 2019, and this is one of the problems I have. One group says, "There's no problem. Social Security is not in trouble whatsoever." And then you have the group itself that says, "we got a lot of trouble here, and some major changes have to be made." All that major change is dumped on the back of the middle man in America that is paying for all of that. Everyone else is able to participate in Social Security that comes into our country, yet the people who pay into it are constantly being pushed farther and farther back.

JIM FISHER: Who else?

KENNETH CARTER, Retired Businessman: You have crime, you have schools, you have world peace, you have a lot of things to talk about here as far as what you'd like to see your politicians do.

JIM JOYNER, Insurance Agent: Well, I think the Kansas City school system is a prime example of throwing all the money at the world at it, and they're still not educating the students that are there. I think that if they had taken that money and...

PERSON IN GROUP: About a billion dollars.

JIM JOYNER: About a billion dollars. And put more teachers in the school system, where the student to teacher ratio instead of 25 to 1 was 10 or 15 to 1, especially in the early classes, kindergarten through fifth, sixth grade, that those students would be a very viable part of the community today.

JOHN PRICE: The quality of teachers is important, I think. I think they need to raise the quality of our teachers, especially in the lower grades.

BOB PIERCE, Retired School Administrator: But people aren't going to go into teaching, John, unless the salaries are not adequate.

JOHN PRICE: That's right.

BOB PIERCE: And the salaries are not adequate.

MARSHALL LEDERER, Retired Physician: I think that when I hear that 25 percent of the high school graduates are functionally illiterate, this is a bad commentary on the function of the public school, and I'm wondering about vouchers.

JIM FISHER: You think that's going to be an issue-- vouchers?

MARSHAL LEDERER: I don't know that, but I think that it's something that ought to be addressed.

VERNON LOVALL, Retired Engineer: I think that the federal government ought to get out of our business and run the federal government as what it was intended for, instead of this micro stuff that they've been giving us. "We can't do this, we can't do that. We've got less money, more money, no money," and it's just all confusing. It's all a bunch of smoke.

EARL UHLER, Retired Air National Guard Pilot: I'm concerned about defense, the money we're spending on that. It's one thing people understand, that's strength. And these foreign countries, if they think we're weak, weak in our defense they're going to try us, somebody's going to try us. We've got to keep our defense spending up. I hate to see the money go to some of the places it goes, but we got to keep that defense spending up, or we're going to be in big, big trouble. We're in enough trouble as it is because we have dropped our defense spending. We've dropped our armed forces from down to a very minimum, and we've got to keep our defense spending up to keep these people from thinking that we are weak.

JIM FISHER: Do you think that's going to be a big issue?

EARL UHLER: Yes, I do. I really do.

JIM JOYNER: We talk about our military being everywhere in the world. Our foreign policy, our embassies are everywhere in the world. I mean, the United States can only do so much. I don't think we're the cure-all for the world. We have to take care of ourselves first. You know, charity begins at home. And there are millions of people in this country that are below the poverty line. And in the business that I'm in I see people come in and they talk about health insurance which is probably an issue we need to address -- you know -- prescriptions for the elderly.

JIM FISHER: Well, maybe one of the issues, do you think one of the issues is going to be prescription drugs?

GROUP: I think it will be.

VI BIELEFEDT, Retired Air Force Pilot: Because we're all greedy in one way or another, we elect our politicians to get what we want as a group, or as an individual for our area, or for our way of life, and so we elect them that way.

JIM FISHER: Do you think campaign finance reform will be an issue?

VI BIELEFEDT: We already passed a campaign finance bill, did we not? We limited it to a $1,000 a piece, and now we have a thing invented called soft money which is bigger than the original.

BOB PIERCE: What we're seeing is these people are groomed, and you've got to be nice to a lot of people to get elected and you've got to be able to raise money and the first thing you know, here's some guy going into office, but he has so many favors to pay for all the money that he's had, and all the support he's had, that he ends up walking into the office for the first time and he's already corrupt.

JIM FISHER: You don't mean corrupt money- wise, but corrupt...

BOB PIERCE: Corrupt because he's paying back favors. He will do things that he would not do normally in order to satisfy those people so that he can be reelected.

JIM JOYNER: Are you willing for our taxpayers money to pay for the election?

BOB PIERCE: No. Because the people are going to distribute it to the same people that are stealing now -- the same crooks.

RICH LAWSON: Our politicians come on TV and they say we're going to do this, this is number one, so on and so forth, but when it comes right down to delivering, you run into the brick wall, you hit the wall and finally you just go home and say...

JIM FISHER: Why don't they care?

RICH LAWSON: It doesn't matter. And that's bad. When you come to a point when a nation, any people come to the point they don't even vote because they feel like it doesn't matter, what I say or what I want, it does not matter because the politician has taken too many big bucks, and he's going to listen first to those people that gave him the big bucks.

JIM JOYNER: You know, most people who are out here, blue collar workers are out here working everyday, whether they're running a bulldozer or, you know, working in a hospital or whatever. What they, I think what they believe what goes on in Washington really has very little effect on them.

RAY SUAREZ: A reminder that you can participate in our agenda 2000 project, by visiting our web site. At pbs.Org/newshour, add your contributions there, or you can reach us by regular mail. Send it to: The NewsHour, Box 2626, Washington, D.C., 20013.

RECAP

RAY SUAREZ: Again, the major stories of this Friday: Treasury Department officials and congressional leaders announced they had a deal on banking reform. It allows banks, insurance companies and securities firms to merge or provide each other services. And Democratic and Republican budget negotiators met again. There was no breakthrough, as Republicans prepared the last of 13 spending bills for fiscal year 2000. We'll see you online and again here Monday evening. Have a nice weekend. I'm Ray Suarez. Thanks and good night.