The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening, I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, two outsiders take a hard look at education politics at the federal budget level; Ray Suarez examines the new report about race in the U.S. military; Margaret Warner analyzes the election results in the southeast Asian nation of Malaysia; and essayist Roger Rosenblatt praises a new book about losing sight. It all follows our summary of the news this Monday.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: President Clinton signed the budget bill for fiscal year 2000 today. The $390billion compromise helps fund the hiring of 100,000 new teachers, 50,000 more community police officers. It also pays back dues to the United Nations, among other things. Mr. Clinton said the budget fell short of his goals, but still represented the nation's values. He spoke in the White House Rose Garden.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: We value prosperity and this budget will help to extend it; it avoids risky tax cuts that would have spent hundreds of billions of dollars from the Social Security surplus and drained our ability to advance education and other important public purposes. The budget keeps us on track toward paying down the debt so that in 15 years our nation will be debt-free for the first time since 1835. This will mean lower interest rates and greater growth for a whole generation of Americans.

JIM LEHRER: We'll have some more on the budget story right after this News Summary. Police evacuated the Seattle Convention Center for several hours today after a suspected break-in overnight. It was related to the opening tomorrow of World Trade Organization talks, and it forced the delay of meetings with environmental and labor leaders critical of WTO policies. Anti-WTO activists have promised mass protests this week, as trade ministers from 135 nations meet. President Clinton will speak there on Wednesday. White House Spokesman Joe Lockhart said Mr. Clinton was not concerned protests would overshadow the event.

JOE LOCKHART: I think the President believes that these are very important issues, crucial to the future of our economy and the world economy, and there are people are strong views on all sides, and they -- it is quite appropriate for them to express their view. But he ultimately believes that the WTO free trade organizations that help promote free trade are very useful in continuing this unprecedented economic expansion in this country.

JIM LEHRER: The U.S. Supreme Court agreed today to hear cases involving hate crimes and human rights. The Justices will decide if judges may impose longer sentences for hate crimes without asking the jury. A New Jersey man appealed the sentence of a judge who ruled on his own that racial bias was a motive when the man shot at a black family's home. The Justices will also decide whether states may base their purchasing decisions on moral issues such as human rights. That case involves a Massachusetts law. Russian President Yeltsin was hospitalized today. A government spokeswoman said doctors detected signs of pneumonia. She said he will remain hospitalized for about a week. He was diagnosed with acute bronchitis and a viral infection just four days ago. Yeltsin has had a variety of health problems in recent years. This is the third time he's had pneumonia. Northern Ireland's Catholics and Protestants formed a government today. The move means the longtime enemies will share power for the first time. Members of the provincial assembly drew equally from both sides to name the ruling 12- member cabinet. The government was to have been formed more than a year ago, but the major Protestant Party insisted the Irish Republican Army disarm first. Over the weekend, the Protestants narrowly voted to drop that demand. In Southeast Asia today, Malaysians gave the ruling coalition a two-thirds majority in parliamentary elections. The 14-party group has ruled Malaysia since 1957. Mahathir Mohammed has been prime minister for the last 18 years, longer than any current elected leader in Asia. The Islamic opposition gained additional seats in the parliament, as did the wife of a jailed rival. We'll havemore on Malaysia later in the program tonight. Also coming, the federal argument over education; racial tensions in the military; and a Roger Rosenblatt essay.

FOCUS - BUDGET VALUES

JIM LEHRER: Budget politics and education. Kwame Holman begins.

KWAME HOLMAN: As he signed the $390 billion omnibus budget bill into law at a Rose Garden ceremony today, President Clinton singled out one of his prized initiatives, agreed to after weeks of negotiations with congressional Republicans.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: We value education, and this budget truly puts education first -- continuing our commitment to hire 100,000 highly qualified teachers; to lower class size in the early grades; which common sense and research both tells us leads to improved learning.

KWAME HOLMAN: The $38 billion approved for education is an increase of nearly $3 billion from the year before. The President stressed that increase went to fund many of the initiatives he personally lobbied for.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Under this budget for the first time, we will help states and school districts turn around or shut down their worst performing schools, schools that year after year fail to give our most disadvantaged students the learning they need to escape poverty and reach their full potential. And the budget provides further help for students to reach higher standards by doubling funds for after-school and summer school programs, which will enable us to reach hundreds of thousands of more students, and by increasing mentoring programs, including the gear-up program to help students go on to college.

KWAME HOLMAN: Congressional Republicans also claimed victories on education, with provisions to give local school districts more flexibility in spending federal dollars; increase funding for teacher training; and to repeal President Clinton's Goals 2000 Program, which Republicans claimed was ineffective in improving student performance.

SEN. PETE DOMENICI, Chairman, Budget Committee: We accomplished everything we wanted in this budget. First, we said we're going to increase education, and we did. The President got what he wanted-- targeted teachers-- we got some flexibility for 20 percent of that money. That's a good start, and that's going to be the philosophical battle this coming year: How much flexibility can be built into the education funding?

KWAME HOLMAN: Money for education was one of a handful of issues that delayed a final budget agreement for several weeks.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: We had a lot of late-night, long phone calls which led to it. I thank the leaders of the relevant committees and subcommittees for their special efforts in this regard.

KWAME HOLMAN: Still, when compared to local and state expenditures, federal dollars make up a small amount of the money spent on public education every year-- about 6 percent.

JIM LEHRER: And now some additional perspectives on the education component in the federal budget. It comes from two longtime education activists. Chester Finn, formerly with the Reagan administration, is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. And Richard Rothstein - he is a professor of public policy at Occidental University, and a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute. Mr. Finn as a practical matter what effect will this legislation signed today have on the public schools?

CHESTER FINN, Manhattan Institute: Well, it's not really a very big amount from the standpoint of the public schools. It work out to about $400 per kid in American K-12 Education -- about 6, 7 percent of the total budget. It is about the same amount as last year. Meanwhile, state and local spending rises faster than the federal spending rises. The main effect it's going to have, I'm afraid, for public school systems overall is it's going to keep their hands tied in terms of federal rules and regulations that come with this very small amount of money.

JIM LEHRER: So the flexibility that Senator Domenici was just talking about, you don't think is real flexibility?

CHESTER FINN: The Senator overstated - I'm afraid -- how much flexibility actually resulted from this deal. The President got about 95 percent of what he wanted, and I think the Republicans got about 20 percent of what they wanted. The flexibility a little bit with some of the money, but the basic framework remains the same. The basic rules remain the same. The program structures are unchanged. This is a stand pat kind of appropriation.

JIM LEHRER: Stand pat kind of appropriation, Mr. Richard Rothstein?

RICHARD ROTHSTEIN, Economic Policy Institute: Well, I don't think so. I think this appropriation reflects what is clearly a national consensus, that we need to try to do more to bring up the bottom in terms of student achievement in this country. Over the last generation, we've narrowed the gap between, for example, black student achievement and white student achievement by cutting it about in half. And this bill gives us the tools to try to address this further. President Clinton has focused on trying to hire more teachers in high poverty schools and reduce class sizes. There is good reason to believe that is one of the things that will make a biggie difference if we can get qualified teachers. I think that Mr. Finn and Senator Domenici actually understate the flexibility in this bill. In the first year of President Clinton's plan, last year, the Department of Education granted waivers to any number of states to apply the money in more creative ways than the bill originally foresaw and the same thing is going to happen with this bill so that while the bill itself increases required flexibility a little bit, the Department of Education clearly is going to grant waivers for a lot more flexibility where states and districts show that they can use money in ways to further the underlying purposes ever the bill.

JIM LEHRER: Let's go back to the overview on this, Mr. Finn. There is tremendous national debate among federal politicians -- people who run for President, people who run for Congress -- about the need to improve education.

CHESTER FINN: Absolutely.

JIM LEHRER: Put, give some perspective on what the power is at the federal level to actually improve education in America.

CHESTER FINN: These monies flow through hundreds of separate programs -- some of them very tiny, a few million dollars here and there for the whole country -- a few of them big, eight billion dollars for disadvantaged kits and six billion dollars for handicapped kids, for example, mostly lots of small programs. The leverage is not very much there with money. The leverage tends to come if you can persuade a state or district or school to do something it wouldn't otherwise do, and for that, use a combination of car rots and sticks. The money is, of course, the carrot. The regulations are, of course, the stick. This has been the pattern since Lyndon Johnson was in the White House. The basics presumes is -- and it's very presumptuous in my view -- is that Washington knows best and states and localities must seek permission, must seek waivers, must seek exceptions from the federal regulations to do it the way they think best. Meanwhile, there is a revolution going on in education reform bubbling up from states and communities that have radically different approaches to doing things -- that are seeking to empower parents, students, individual schools. They don't need permission from Washington, except with respect to this little federal bit of their budgets.

JIM LEHRER: So, what should the federal government do, butt out?

CHESTER FINN: It should trust states and communities to make their own priorities rather than try to superimpose its own. And it should trust parents to get their kids a good education with the help of the federal dollars especially for disadvantaged kids. The federal government should stop trying to tell state districts how to educate their kids.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Rothstein, how do you feel about that?

RICHARD ROTHSTEIN: Well, I think that, in general, he's right, but the federal government is not telling states and districts very much how to educate their kids. As I indicated a minute ago, there is enormous flexibility in these proposals. The trend over the last decade under the Clinton administration and before has been to add more flexibility all the time. For example, in Title I, we now have predominance of whole school programs that is compensatory education for disadvantaged kids where the money no longer has to be assigned to particular children but could be used for whole school programs that benefit the education of children in disadvantaged communities. In the last years, I indicated a minute ago, the Department of Education has given waivers pretty much any time a state can show that the specific requirements of a bill are more difficult to implement than some other idea that the state had that might work better for the same purpose. So I think it's a little bit of a straw man to talk about the tight federal control. There is some federal control but it's loosening and the states are getting more flexibility all the time provided they use it for the basic underlying purposes of the bill.

JIM LEHRER: What would you say, Mr. Rothstein, how would you characterize the power of the federal government to affect public education in America -- with its 6 percent of the money it puts up?

RICHARD ROTHSTEIN: I think it's largely symbolic. Obviously 6 percent is marginal money and marginal money has a lot more power than the underlying, ongoing money has. So it is substantial even if it is only 6 or 7 percent, but a lot of it is symbolic. What this bill does is it states a national purpose to try to bring up the bottom in student achievement. Many states will be adding their own money to this kind of program. For example, Title I, the compensatory education program is now supplemented by state compensatory education programs around the country. Those state programs probably would not exist had not the first Title I program been adopted in the in the mid 1960's at the federal level. So, it is a symbolic program, but it also prods states to move in the right direction.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Finn, specifically the bill today authorizes or says there are going to be 100,000 new teachers. Is that the kind of thing the federal government should do, is say, okay, we're going to give money for 100,000 new teachers, or should it be more generally and let the school districts decide whether they want more teachers or they want more this or that?

CHESTER FINN: Some want more teachers, some want better teachers, some might want fewer teachers and more computers. This is exactly the sort of decision you don't make in Washington for a country with 16,000 school districts. It's exactly the kind of thing you can, you let them decide for themselves. There is a whole alternative idea out there which some people in Congress have been at least flirting with. The House passed a version of it a few months ago, which is Washington should insist on academic achievement gains by states and communities that should be completely laid back.

JIM LEHRER: Don't tell them how to get there. It tell them where to go?

CHESTER FINN: Yes, exactly.

JIM LEHRER: But isn't there even some objection to that?

CHESTER FINN: There is plenty of objection from people that would rather regulate and control.

JIM LEHRER: What I mean is setting a federal standard for a local school district.

CHESTER FINN: Yes, you can find people that don't even want to prescribe results. I'm not there. I think that it's, in return for $39 billion it's reasonable to demand results, but I think we have got to free up the people to produce the results the way they think best in their own communities. I mean, the very notion that you have to ask for a waiver from Washington assumes that the rules are made in Washington. This is backwards.

JIM LEHRER: What do you think about the 100,000 teacher idea, Mr. Rothstein, does that bother you the way it does Mr. Finn?

RICHARD ROTHSTEIN: Not at all, because I think that it targets the right idea even if it's not practical to implement it everywhere. I think we know what disadvantaged kids need is smaller classes, more individual attention and more qualified teachers. Now in some states, there aren't enough available teachers to hire so you can't add enough teachers to reach those goals but in those states the federal government has shown that it's willing and anxious to give waivers to those states in order to achieve the goal in a different way. For example, last year Indiana received a waiver. California received a waiver. California already had reduced class size to 20. It couldn't go down to 18 that the bill required to the federal government gave them money with a waiver and enabled them to use the money to train the teachers they already had, rather than to hire new ones.

JIM LEHRER: Well, what about Mr. Finn's point that the states shouldn't have to ask permanents of Washington to do those kinds of things?

RICHARD ROTHSTEIN: Well, this is federal money. It's only six or 7 percent as you said. The states don't have to ask permission to spend the other 94 percent of their money, but if they want the federal money that is designed to bring up the achievement of disadvantaged kids by targeting smaller class sizes and more qualified teachers, if they want that money, they should fulfill the purposes for which the money is granted. I don't think that is an unreasonable proposal.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Finn?

CHESTER FINN: It is just crazy. If you ask the serious reformers in the states, they say that that 6 or 7 percent of the money occupies 50 percent of their administrative time and attention -- enormous numbers of hoops and hurdles that they are expected to jump through and jump over. It gets in their way. It ties their hands. It makes it impossible for them to achieve their own goals.

JIM LEHRER: As a general thing, final word from each of you beginning with you Mr. Rothstein, if improving education in America is a good thing, what the President signed today, does it take a step toward doing that?

RICHARD ROTHSTEIN: I think it take a step, it takes both a symbolic step and a real step by targeting the money towards the disadvantaged kids who needit the most.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Finn?

CHESTER FINN: Jim, it's a step back to 1965. It's failed programs -- refunded for another year at about the same level with a little bit extra money for some of the President's pet schemes.

JIM LEHRER: Gentlemen, thank you both very much.

FOCUS - RACE AND THE MILITARY

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, race in the military; elections in Malaysia; and a Roger Rosenblatt essay. Ray Suarez has the race story.

RAY SUAREZ: The researchers who did the study responded to the questions picked as vital by Pentagon brass.

ANITA LANCASTER, Pentagon Personnel Official: They wanted feedback on policy areas like how much training is going on; do members feel free to report problems; what's their use and satisfaction with the complaint systems; what's their perceptions of leaders' enforcement of and commitment to equal opportunity?

RAY SUAREZ: In other words, it was a survey of attitudes, sentiments, perceptions, as much as a search for concrete racial incidents. But the researchers also asked armed forces personnel to report on racial incidents in the past 12 months.

ANITA LANCASTER: Well, what did we learn? We learned that 62 percent of whites, compared to 69 percent to 78 percent of the other racial ethnics, the four other groups, said they had at least one offensive encounter with another DOD person during the previous year. Let me tell you what offensive encounters were. They were items that said... they were items like the following: Told stories or jokes which were racist or depicted your race, ethnicity, negatively; made unwelcome attempts to draw you into an offensive discussion of racial ethnic matters.

SOLDIER: Keep going, keep going. There, there.

RAY SUAREZ: The 76,000 personnel in the survey were asked to compare their opportunities for progress and advancement in military and civilian life.

ANITA LANCASTER: For freedom from harassment and discrimination, only 7 percent thought it would be better to be in the civilian sector. Over one-third-- 35 percent to 37 percent-- said these conditions were better in the military. And similarly, although only 43 percent said that education and training opportunities are better in the military, only 16 percent said they would be better in the civilian sector.

RAY SUAREZ: But minorities in uniform are far more pessimistic about their chances for advancement than whites are. Secretary of Defense William Cohen reacted strongly to the report.

WILLIAM COHEN: To the extent that any of it exists, to the extent that there are complaints about lack of promotion, actions that involve discrimination, they have to be eliminated. And I and everyone who is working in this department will do everything we can to achieve that result.

RAY SUAREZ: Of the 1.4 million active duty personnel, nearly 20 percent are black and 7 percent Hispanic, and minorities now compromise 16 percent of the commissioned officers and 36 percent of the noncommissioned officers. This is the latest of several reports and studies on racial attitudes in the services. In the mid-90's, when Americans were telling public opinion researchers that a black general, Colin Powell, was one of the most admired men in the country, three white enlisted men in fort Bragg, North Carolina, were tried for the murder of a black couple. Two were found to be members of organized hate groups. A follow-up investigation found 22 more members of white supremacist groups at Fort Bragg. They were discharged or barred from reenlistment. In the new survey, organized hate groups were not found to be a widespread problem. When the highest-ranking enlisted man in the army was tried for sexual misconduct, sergeant major of the army Gene MacKinney maintained that part of the motivation for his investigation, trial, and loss of rank and pension benefits was racial. The new study shows that black personnel are far more likely than their white peers to see racial slight in their work.

ANITA LANCASTER: We asked, is the military paying the right amount of attention to racial ethnic harassment and discrimination? 62 percent of blacks, 38 percent of Hispanics, 28 percent of Asian Pacific islanders, and 17 percent of whites said we were paying too little attention. So you see the disparity in the perceptions across the race ethnic groups.

RAY SUAREZ: Despite those numbers, active duty personnel reported in category after category that despite problems, race relations in the military were better than in civilian life.

ANITA LANCASTER: When asked about the progress in race relations over the last five years for both the military and the nation as a whole, 46 percent of our members said military race relations were better today, compared to 30 percent who responded similarly about race relations in our nation.

RAY SUAREZ: And for more, we get three views. John Butler is Professor of Sociology and Management at the University of Texas. He is the co-author of "All That We Can Be: Black Leadership and Racial Integration the Army Way." He was in the Army from 1969 to 1971. Herman Bulls was an Army officer from 1978 to 1989, and is now a lieutenant colonel in the Army reserves. He is also managing director of Jones Lang LaSalle, a real estate management company. And Colonel David Hunt retired from the Army in 1998, after serving 28 years as an infantryman in special operations. He's now a consultant. Well, John Butler you've been looking at these questions for quite a long time. What do you make of the results?

JOHN BUTLER, University of Texas: First of all the results are not surprising given the research historically. We've always known that blacks and white do not see race relations in the military the same. The other thing that is important as Charles Moskos and I note in our book, "All That We Can Be" is that the mort important thing is behavior and the opportunity structure. So, you have an organization where 40 plus percent of people in managerial positions are black and, of course, there seems to be an interesting sort of disjunction between that statistic and the perceptions. The other thing that is very, very important is to really, really concentrate as we say on opportunity and not white racism. We think very strongly that the opportunity structure for black Americans in any organization is much more important than white racist attitudes. That is, we liken the military for their significant number of blacks and lots of racists to an organization where there are lot of liberals and no blacks. So I think the study itself is in a long tradition of looking at racial attitudes I think it adds to our understanding of how people perceive the military but in terms of the opportunity struck here, as noted in the survey itself, for blacks noted that comparatively civilian society was worse off than the military in terms of race relations. So I think that is a continued contribution to this massive literature.

RAY SUAREZ: Herman Bulls, what did you find significant about this set of data?

LT. COL. HERMAN BULLS: Well, I find it alarming but at the same time I see myself personally being a product of the military and the consistency of the training and the opportunities that result from that. But at the same time I think we need to be aware of the demographic shift that is going on and be aware that the message that we need to send to the young Americans as this demographic shift continues is that we'll need you for the Army, for our Air Force and for our Navy. At the same time you look at the management structure at the senior level. You heard the secretary's comment. That was very compelling indicating that he would not tolerate this type of behavior in the military. The Secretary of the Army, Louis Calendara is an Hispanic. The Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower is Al Maldon, an African American. The chief of staff of the Army, General Shinseky, is also a minority -- the deputy chief of staff for operations, General Ellis, a minority. So I think this in itself says even though the data is three years old, I think the current leadership has an opportunity and an obligation to market and make sure that the American people know that there is equal opportunity in the armed forces.

RAY SUAREZ: Yet, David Hunt, you found very little comfort in the evidence provided by senior staff who come from minority groups and from those favorable compares sons to civilian life.

COL. DAVID HUNT (Ret.), U.S. Army: I'm sorry, are you asking me?

RAY SUAREZ: Yes.

COL. DAVID HUNT (Ret.): I think that is a bad news story. First of all the Department of Defense had to be told to make the study. I believe Congress dictated that this study is be done. Number two, I got a real problem with this taking a year to come out. It sounds to me like spin doctoring which is very disturbing for people in uniform or at the Department of Defense. One of the things that is very upsetting in this study is the percentage of some 79-82 percent of the soldier, sailors, airmen, and marines who said they did not bring these type of problems to the change of command. That is a leadership issue which cuts across all other issues in the military. I don't think we have come even close to turning the corner with race. I think it's disingenuous to suggest that it's a little bit better than it is in civilian life. In the military we control our soldiers live with rank, money and time and we with just about dictate policy on race. And to have these perceptions come out this way is disturbing.

RAY SUAREZ: Yet John Butler, you are more worried about achievement than perceptions, the measuring of attitudes doesn't concern you as much?

JOHN BUTLER: Yes, we must understand that the purpose of the military is to defend the country. That is the most important thing for the military. We always bring out that race relations has been a byproduct of that goal. Defending the country is the most important goal. What the military has done is to bring people into the situation to defend the country. Bring me a soldier, man or woman, and I'll make a soldier out of them and I'll make an excellent person out of them. The purpose of the military is not to get involved in the feel good politics of race that other institutions have gone through. I would rather see people -- of course we're in a peacetime military which means that the goal, the defense of the country are not clearly defined. Let's keep in mind that the excellent quote unquote race relations and of course all scholarly work is comparative. You cannot do scholarly work without comparing it to other institutions. So let's keep in mind that the purpose of the military is to first of all defend the country and that race relations is simply a byproduct of that defense of the country. What we don't want to see -

RAY SUAREZ: What about David Hunt's point that the military is very different, that you can order people to do things, behave in a certain way, respond in a certain way?

JOHN BUTLER: What we did was to switch from the draft to the all volunteer divorce force and myself being a veteran, I can remember that draft military. The all volunteer force takes on as my co-author Moskos will note more of an occupation of format. Therefore we have a military based on marketplace standards. My distinguished colleague is talking about a military based on an institutional format -- where you did not recruit people, rather you drafted people. So therefore much of the problems that we have in the civilian society is seen under the organization format. And you can look at the change in race relations in essence as somewhat a byproduct also of the switch from a military based on values and service of country to one based on marketplace standards.

RAY SUAREZ: David Hunt, let me go to David Hunt with that point, because the survey also noted that there was a wide variation in these racial incidents, these moments of conflict over race. And if you take out the ones that actually involve physical harm or threat, the vast majority of what was being reported were more the attitudinal things, jokes, remarks, feelings of uncomfortableness in social situations. Should we bring the same sort of attention to those as we do to the one that is involve harm or threat?

COL. DAVID HUNT (Ret.): Absolutely, I mean the, those issues lead to physical harm, but again you've got to go back to the point that the survey found the perception of soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen, 79 to 82 percent were very, very high would not bring the issues to the change of command. You have an equal opportunity person in the chain of command. You've got the inspector general. You have the chain of command itself. You've got civilian leadership; you've got four or five avenues that a service member can go to to address grief acts. And this survey it said they didn't perceive that those avenues were listening to them.

RAY SUAREZ: Herman Bulls, what about that?

LT. COL. HERMAN BULLS: As I mentioned earlier I think that's a real concern, and I think our leadership has to make it apparent, a wear and open that people who perceive that they have a problem with come forward with the problem. Having served both in the military and been in the civilian world, I feel within the military I had more of an opportunity to perhaps bring those type of issues up than perhaps some people do in the private sector experiences because the military as an institution has traditionally supported equal opportunity.

RAY SUAREZ: There is a big split between attitudes that involve a single other person and ones that involve the entire institution. One of the results showed that among all racial and ethnic groups, vast, vast percentage, 80, 90 percent, socialized with, invited to their homes or to their personal quarters people of other races and ethnic groups; yet those same members of the service responding to the survey said that they didn't always have faith that the system was going to take as good care of them. What does that tell you?

JOHN BUTLER: Well, let me comment on that. First of all we must understand that unlike my university, the University of Texas at Austin, where it is against the law basically to call somebody a name, unless of course you are the law school -- it is very noteworthy to note in the military it is not against the law to call somebody a name. If it disrupts discipline, if it relates to command, then it becomes a problem. So, therefore, what you can do is you can have two soldiers who called each other names and of course you can report that but the sergeant can say can we work this out or maybe put them in the middle of the ring and let them box it out, as the old saying goes. So actually the military does not have a set rule unlike a lot of civilian feel good institutions like universities have become. It does not have a rule against these kinds of acts. So, therefore, reporting that essentially can be different in civilian life. Let me also comment on the friendship variable. What we need to know about the attitudes is how much of the contact, significant contact that people have with different groups, how much of that contact is quality contact. Because since the American soldier, since Stouffer and his colleagues published "The American Soldier," racial contact and the quality of that contact has been the best predictor of racial attitudes. People who have lots of high quality contact with high-quality people report less racist kind of attitudes. So we need to know a lot of the control variables or background variables as we discuss this excellent report.

RAY SUAREZ: Herman Bulls, people were talking about not reenlisting, not pursuing longer term careers in the military because of some of the experiences they had. They also reported less trust in unit cohesion. Does this mean that the military is, has to really change something drastic right away?

LT. COL. HERMAN BULLS: Well, I think the attitude is what is most important coming from the senior membership, leadership of the military. If you think of the military and I can think to my times, you think to a ranger school, or combat which I cannot serve it but it's truly a meritocracy, in the end you are going to the person to the left or right and say are you going to be able to cover my back? Can you help me achieve the goal and safe my life? In order to have that type of camaraderie it is very, very important that we have respect for the individual and respect for one another. It's up to our leaders to enforce this in the sense of sensitivity training that may be required, in the sense of training particularly at the senior, at the enlisted soldier level. That first line of defense is so important that make sure that the appropriate standards are set and it is appropriately enforced.

RAY SUAREZ: And, David Hunt, do you see a crisis in retention and enlistment coming on the heel of the ones that we already seem to have?

COL. DAVID HUNT (Ret.): Absolutely, the Navy, Army has got two combat divisions now that are not combat ready. The Navy and the Air Force are screaming for guys. The problem is that we've wound down the military and ramped up the deployments. Bosnia and Kosovo are just examples. So there is a straight strain on the system and on the leadership. But what has happened is in my opinion is we have not paid enough attention to this issue and that surveyed slapped us right in the face and said we better pay attention. It's not just race. If they don't trust the chain of command to talk about something like this, what else don't they trust the chain of command to talk about?

RAY SUAREZ: David Hunt, Herman Bulls, John Butler, thanks for being with us.

FOCUS - MALAYSIA VOTES

JIM LEHRER: Elections in Malaysia. We start with a report from Spencer Michels.

SPENCER MICHELS: Malaysians cast their votes Sunday and Monday for a fifth term for their outspoken prime minister, Mahathir Mohammed, giving his coalition a two- thirds majority in parliament. Opposition parties did better than ever before, but failed to shake Mahathir's grip on the country. Now 73, he has served for 18 years, longer than any current elected leader in Asia. Since Malaysia gained its independence from Britain in 1957, Mahathir's 14-party coalition has ruled the predominantly Muslim nation of 22 million, more than half of them ethnic Malays. The question in this election was whether Mathathir would maintain his two-thirds majority in the parliament. It gives him the power to amend the constitution, among other things. The campaign has been as bitter as any in the country's history. Helping fuel the four-party opposition's campaign was the lingering controversy over Mahathir's longtime heir- apparent, Anwar Ibrahim, who was jailed last year on charges of corruption, and is now on trial for sodomy. Anwar's backers used his case, and especially his alleged beating while imprison, to call for a less autocratic government, and especially to rally younger voters with the slogan of reform. Anwar's supporters claimed one victory today as his wife won 62 percent of the votes for his seat in parliament from the northern state of Penang. Mahathir's campaign took him on a whirlwind tour of Malaysia's 13 states, spread over the Malay Peninsula and the Island of Borneo. And in a dramatic campaign tactic, he brought Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji to Malaysia last week. More than a quarter of the population is ethnic Chinese. The prime minister's campaign rhetoric, often critical of the U.S. and other countries, was a reminder of his go-it-alone policies, especially during the recent Asian financial crisis. He had rejected the aid and advice of the International Monetary Fund, and instead instituted currency controls and other nationalist measures on his own. He now claims personal credit for Malaysia's success in weathering the economic storm. During the two-day election, soldiers were on hand for possible disturbances. But the polling went smoothly, with about 70 percent of the population turning out to vote. Still, one election monitoring group said that waxy marks had been placed over the space to mark opposition votes in some places, making it difficult to vote for the opposition candidates.

JIM LEHRER: Margaret Warner takes it from there.

MARGARET WARNER: For more on the Malaysian elections and what they mean, we turn to Ronald Dewayne Palmer, U.S. Ambassador to Malaysia during the Reagan administration, and former president of the Malaysia- America society. He is now a professor at George Washington University. And Murray Hiebert, a journalist who covered Malaysia for the "Far Eastern Economic Review" from 1995 until just last month. He was jailed for writing an article criticizing the Malaysian judiciary system. He is now Washington bureau chief for the magazine. Welcome, gentlemen.

Mahathir was portraying this a couple of hours ago as great victory. Is that how you read it?

MURRAY HIEBERT, Far Eastern Economic Review: In a sense there was a victory. There was a lot of anticipation by the opposition and a lot of observers that he would have trouble maintaining his two thirds majority. He got that but he still lost much more than he, his majority is much dented, much less than it was before and it raises questions whether there will cause people -- people within his ruling coalition to raise questions about his leadership and whether in the long run we'll see some political change.

MARGARET WARNER: How do you read these results?

RONALD DeWAYNE PALMER, Former U.S. Ambassador, Malaysia: Basically, a victory is a victory and we start from the premise that, the national front won, they retained their two thirds majority. Clearly there are some problems ahead in terms of the future of the prime ministership, future of the, of his basic party and, in the front, questions about succession and so forth. But I think for the time being that the prime minister has got good reason to feel content tonight. It is I guess in the morning over there. I don't wish to in any sense demean the effort of the opposition; the opposition did a terrific job. It has revealed, however, that there are some serious problems that need to be addressed in terms of Malay attitudes.

MARGARET WARNER: And by Malay attitudes, you are talking about the dominant ethnic props within Malaysia.

RONALD DeWAYNE PALMER: I am. It is about 50 percent of the population. This is a moment to say something about a very successful effort that Mahathir, the prime minister, has been a part of. And that is the question of what has been called the new economic policy. It's very easy to forget that in 1969, there were race riots in Malaysia in which hundreds of people lost their lives.

MARGARET WARNER: They were predominantly between the Malays and the Chinese who had all the economic power?

RONALD DeWAYNE PALMER: That is exactly right. The result of those race riots with the Chinese being the victims often of the Malays led to a decision on the part of the Malay leadership that they had to do something dramatic to attempt to cope. That was a program of affirmative action, of quotas, of efforts to provide legs up in business, in industry, and in education. Among other things, I was fortunate enough to be there in 1981-'83, when the government of Malaysia decided that it would start sending students to the United States. It ran it -- Malay students. It ran at about 10,000 a year for any number of years. There must be 100-200,000 Malay officials who have had U.S. educations. In short, there are many complications behind this vote that I think we will have a chance to get into.

MARGARET WARNER: And why do you think Mahathir did so well? I mean, do you think it is because essentially the population is still grateful for his leadership, the economy has rebounded to some degree?

MURRAY HIEBERT: I think that's part of it. There is a lot of appreciation for what Mahathir did. He took the country from what was basically a commodity exporter to one that's a large manufacturing base, electronics products. But the other factor in the opposition -- affecting the opposition was that people don't entirely trust that coalition. It is very disparate. It is made up of an Islamic party that wants to introduce an Islamic state. It had the Democratic Action Party, which is largely a Chinese party, and would really look askance at an Islamic state, and then it has the party of Anwar Ibrahim, the former deputy prime minister, whose wife won the election -- but there is always fear that if these three groups got together and won, that they had no common platform; they had no common agenda and they would end up squabbling. And I think that hurt them as much as anything.

MARGARET WARNER: If you look at the Asian economic crisis, in a lot of Malaysia's neighbors, Indonesia, Thailand, South Korea, the economic crisis sparked political change, real change in leadership. Why in the biggest picture sense why hasn't that happened in Malaysia?

MURRAY HIEBERT: Well, I think one of the big reasons is it didn't cause the unemployment and inflation that it caused in the other countries. People really didn't -- the economic crisis, the recession didn't really hit people really hard. Malaysia has always had - for a long time has had a negative unemployment rate and the economic crisis did not throw a lot of people out of work. Prices did not go up very much, and so the bread and butter issues just really never hurt people to the extent that they did in Indonesia or Thailand or Korea. So I think that's the main reason.

RONALD DeWAYNE PALMER: I would just like to add that the fact is that the Malays area also -- the Malaysian government has been generally pretty well run. It was not perfect, but some of the problems that arose in Thailand -- that arose in Indonesia had been worked on. This is again to suggest that nothing is perfect in this world. They didn't do a perfect job but in many respects, the Malays -- the Malaysian government was in a sense better prepared to deal with some of the problems that came up.

MARGARET WARNER: But Mahathir, the way, one way he dealt with it was by blaming foreigner, currencies, traders, the IMF, the West.

RONALD DeWAYNE PALMER: Using nationalism.

MARGARET WARNER: Using nationalism -- impose currency control, did that resonate well? Do you think that was a kind of winning message for him?

RONALD DeWAYNE PALMER: Well, winning message I'm not sure, but Malaysia -- like all of the countries out there -- is highly nationalistic and if you can find a successful way to blame the foreigner, we know something about that here. If you can find a successful way to do that, it can have a very useful effect in terms of getting public support behind you. The other thing is that from the beginning, Mahathir has been a go it alone guy. He has -- this is not the first time he has gone against the --

MARGARET WARNER: Prevailing international sentiment.

RONALD DeWAYNE PALMER: Well, even prevailing national sentiment. He has criticized the first prime minister of Malaysia who was considered to be a saint, and ended up being kicked out of the party. But he was a useful person and he was brought back into the party and has subsequently done what he has done.

MARGARET WARNER: What do you think of the implications of these results both for the West, the United States, I want to remind our viewers that just last December Vice President Gore -- when he was in Malaysia -- hailed the reformers, the liberal reformers of Anwar's party. One, do you think it's going to cause any problem for the U.S., and what about the western investors who are now being invited to reinvest in Malaysia?

MURRAY HIEBERT: I'm not sure it has a lot of implications. The government of Mahathir will continue and so will his policies in large. The thing about Mahathir, he talks a lot, criticizes a lot what is going on in the West, but on the other hand, he is a friend of foreign business, foreign investors -- in fact played a large role in the economic rebirth in Malaysia. He has military ties with the United States. He has joint military exercises. He has aircraft care years calling. He doesn't publicize it but he is friendly despite his rhetoric.

RONALD DeWAYNE PALMER: I would support that. Rhetoric is one thing. Money, investments, having important and potent friends is something else. And I would suggest there is a certain, I wouldn't call it love-hate but ambivalence in the relationship between had a Mahathir and the United States in particular. I think, among other things, Mahathir would like to have 250 million people.

MARGARET WARNER: Explain that.

RONALD DeWAYNE PALMER: I mean simply that he has a nation of 20 million people. And he a person with 18 years experience. Sometimes he thinks he probably could do as good a job.

MARGARET WARNER: As the President of the United States. Do you think that this economic recovery is for real? There has been a lot of criticism that it really isn't, that restructuring that other countries did has not been done there?

MURRAY HIEBERT: He started on the economic restructuring, the country has. They've started ding on the banking reform. They've tried to do some things there. They've taken the nonperforming loans off the books of the banks. They've worked out mergers - it's been facing a lot of opposition. I think the area in which it's the larger corporate restructuring that probably hasn't happened and largely Mahathir has refused that prescription from the IMF and other financial institutions because he thinks that it will put Malays out of business so he tries to avoid that.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Well Murray Hiebert and Ronald DeWayne Palmer, thank you both very much.

RONALD DeWAYNE PALMER: Thank you.

MURRAY HIEBERT: Thank you.

ESSAY - DYING LIGHT

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, essayist Roger Rosenblatt admires a new book about going blind.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Henry Grunwald, former editor-in-chief of Time, Incorporated and former U.S. Ambassador to Austria, has written a book called "Twilight" about the dying of the light-- his light. Grunwald is losing his eyesight. There is no self-pity in this book. Rather, it is the clear-eyed inspection of an erosive disease, macular degeneration, and of the life that is lost when one's vision is taken away, and of the life that is gained. Sometimes nearsightedness becomes farsightedness. On the subject of beaches, for example, Grunwald notices this: "A beach is not only a sweep of sand, but shells of sea creatures, the sea glass, the seaweed, the incongruous objects washed up by the ocean." It is also an insistent reminder of change and of the need to look many times. It is possible to miss the forest for the trees, but the greater danger is to miss the trees for the forest, to miss the individual sunflower for the whole field of sunflowers. The acuity of such observations is not all that rare in talented people who go blind. John Milton wrote a famous sonnet on his blindness, the one that ends "They also serve who only stand and wait." But the sonnet begins, "When I consider how my light is spent," a line that suggests how precious the light is. Jorge Luis Borges, the great Latin American writer who died in 1986, wrote a beautiful essay on blindness in which he cited the realm of the blind as "inconvenient." Colors were confused for him. Worse, he was losing his eyesight just at the moment he was appointed director of the national library in Argentina. It was the job of his dreams, which were dimmed by irony. "There I was," he wrote, "the center, in a way, of 900,000 books in various languages. But I found I could barely make out the title pages and the spines." Testimonies such as that of Borges and Grunwald remind those of us lucky enough not to be suffering a dying of the light how important eyesight is. As a writer, my principal responsibility and my desire is to make the reader see. I don't mean understand, I mean see-- shape, action, gesture, a door, a face. How much more difficult that would be if I did not see myself. On the other hand, there was blind Homer, who made the world envision the indispensable sea voyage, the fundamental war; and James Thurber, who saw into the magnificent nonsense of the mind most clearly, even as his own light failed. I grew up living next to a blind writer, a clever and generous man named Hector Chevigny. He wrote for radio, "Mr. and Mrs. North," a good medium for the blind, and produced a wonderful autobiography centered on his seeing-eye dog called, "My Eyes Have a Cold Nose." Love is blind. Justice is blind. Samson was blinded. The absence of sight can be made into a virtue, but reality bites. "I was blind, but now I see," goes "Amazing Grace." But the truth is that one wants to see actually as well as spiritually. I don't know if the great blind people of history would've traded insight for sight, but in any case, they had no choice. So one is left staring inwardly at all the astonishing objects they discovered in the dark. In a way, they became remarkable sights themselves. One could not take one's eyes off Helen Keller in her struggles, watching a human being deprived of the essential senses displaying what being human is about-- adjustment to misfortune, courage in the night. This is the season of the dying of the light. From now through the end of the century, the sky closes down and the world comes up with faith to see it through the winter solstice. Henry Grunwald would say that this is a valuable time of year, when one is aware of how much light means and yearns for the light as all creatures do. But his book makes a less abstract and more useful point. "One must measure and conduct one's life on its own terms," he writes. No one sees clearer than that. I'm Roger Rosenblatt.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Monday: President Clinton signed the budget bill for fiscal year 2000. Police evacuated the Seattle Convention Center for a bomb search. It was part of stepped up security at the World Trade Organization talks set to begin there tomorrow. And Catholics and Protestants formed a new power-sharing government in Northern Ireland. We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.