The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, Kwame Holman has a day-after summary of the New Hampshire primary; Senator McCain is here for a Newsmaker interview; and Mark Shields and Paul Gigot offer their analysis of it all; plus Susan Dentzer reports on the gene therapy controversy; and Betty Ann Bowser tells the story of paying for child care. It all follows our summary of the news this Wednesday.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: The Presidential candidates moved on to explanations and the next primaries today. Republican Senator John McCain said he was still high from his 19-point win over Texas Governor George W. Bush yesterday in New Hampshire. Vice President Gore said his victory in the Democratic contest had dealt Bill Bradley a devastating blow. We'll have more on it all, including an interview with Senator McCain later in the program tonight. The Coast Guard today gave up on finding survivors from the Alaska Airlines crash off Southern California. Spencer Michels reports.

SPENCER MICHELS: In deciding to abandon the rescue effort for the 88 passengers and crew aboard Alaska Airline Flight 261, the Coast Guard said it had conducted a massive search in good conditions. Vice Admiral Tom Collin said the decision was very difficult.

TOM COLLIN: We have tried to err to give every chance for success in finding survivors. I think we have reached that point that we must proceed to the next phase of this incident.

SPENCER MICHELS: The National Transportation Safety Board now takes over the primary role in recovering the wreckage of the airplane. In another development, NTSB officials said taped conversations between the pilots and a maintenance crew in Seattle may shed light on exactly what went wrong in the final minutes before the crash Monday. NTSB Chairman Jim Hall said that on the tapes, the pilots can be heard troubleshooting a problem with the horizontal stabilizer. That device controls the pitch of the aircraft's nose.

JIM HALL: I think this will be a very important piece of information for the investigation. That tape will be taken to our Washington headquarters this morning from Seattle. It has 16 channels. There is quite a bit of noise on the tape, so I want our laboratories in Washington, D.C. to carefully read the tape out and then the contents of that information will be released. And we will have that in addition to the information we already have off the air traffic control tapes.

SPENCER MICHELS: Flight 261 was traveling from Puerto Valarta, Mexico, to San Francisco, and then to Seattle, when it nose dived into the sea. An ocean search of the crash site expanded slightly today. Four bodies have been found but no survivors. A Navy spokesman said salvage ships were making their way to the site from San Diego. Among them are vessels with advanced sonar capabilities to search for the plane's flight recorders which have been detected pinging 700 feet below the surface.

JIM LEHRER: Elsewhere today, an American Airlines jetliner made an emergency landing in Phoenix after the pilot reported a stabilizer problem. The plane was an MD-80, part of the same series as the Alaska Airlines flight. The Federal Reserve raised short-term interest rates today for the fourth time since last June. It said it acted to keep inflation down. It bumped the Federal Fund's rate up by 1/4 point to 5.75 percent. That's the rate banks charge each other on overnight loans. The discount rate rose to 5.25 percent. The Fed charges that rate on direct loans to banks. The Wall Street reaction was undramatic. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 37 points at 11003. The NASDAQ Index was up 21 at 4073. The Federal Trade Commission today rejected BP Amoco's takeover of Atlantic Richfield. It said the merged companies would have too much control over Alaskan oil and drive up gasoline prices on the West Coast. The companies disputed that claim. The FTC will now ask a federal court to block the $30 billion merger. Overseas today Secretary of State Albright urged Russia's Acting President Putin to end the war in Chechnya. They met at the Kremlin for nearly three hours. Albright said nothing was resolved. In Chechnya, Russian forced tried to block rebels from regrouping south of Grozny after they fled the city yesterday. We have more in this report from Julian Manyon of Independent Television News.

JULIAN MANYON: This was the night that Chechen rebels broke out of Grozny. Russian troops near the city opened fire on moving shadows and the cameraman is told to turn his light out. The fighting goes on in the dark as the rebels try to slip into the countryside. In daylight, some evidence of the casualties the rebels are believed to have suffered: A Chechen's fighter's hat with a bloodstained bullet hole through the front. Russian troops fan out looking for fleeing rebels, but it's still not clear how many have managed to escape. As the Russian army takes control of much of Grozny, it's playing down the breakout, claiming that hundreds of rebels are still trapped in the city's center. But refugees say that at least 2,000 rebels broke through to a nearby village where their commander, Shamil Basuyev, is said to be gravely injured. Russian armor is moving to try to cut them off, and federal troops emerge smoke-stained from the battle.

SOLDIER: (Translated): We have been fighting them the whole night. I don't know how many of them got away, but I think quite a lot.

JULIAN MANYON: And pictures have now emerged of rebel units relaxing in the forest after their desperate breakout. These men at least have lived to fight another day.

JIM LEHRER: In Scotland today, two Libyans pleaded not guilty today in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. Their attorneys entered the pleas at a pretrial hearing. The plane exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing 270 people. The trial is set to begin May 3rd before a panel of Scottish judges at a site in the Netherlands. Back in this country, CIA Director George Tenet said today that his predecessor, John Deutch, was sloppy in handling secrets. He told the Senate Intelligence Committee Deutch stored classified material on an unsecured home computer. He said there's no evidence the information fell into the wrong hands, but he said he could not rule out that possibility. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the day after New Hampshire, Senator McCain, Shields and Gigot, gene therapy and paying for child care.

JIM LEHRER: Campaign 2000 after New Hampshire. Kwame Holman begins.

KWAME HOLMAN: Senator John McCain wasted no time getting back on the campaign trail following his victory yesterday in the New Hampshire primary. McCain flew overnight to South Carolina, site of the next big Republican contest, and spoke at an early morning rally.

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: My friends, we had a great ride so far. It's been exhilarating. It's been uplifting, and a great opportunity to have this one more mission - and I'm calling on all of them - young and old - old geezers out here like me - the young ones and everybody to get going. We can get fired up here. We've got a great chance to make history, a great chance. This is a great crusade we embarked on in New Hampshire. We can carry this crusade on through the state of South Carolina and on to victory and in the White House.

KWAME HOLMAN: Final results from New Hampshire showed the Arizona Senator captured 49 percent of the vote, easily defeating Texas Governor George W. Bush. Bush too traveled to South Carolina to resume his campaign. He spoke with reporters on his flight from New Hampshire.

GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH: I knew everything wasn't going to go the way I wanted it to. And last night was certainly-- would certainly fall into that category. But today's a new day, and I am ... I'm looking forward to getting down to South Carolina. I'm looking forward to making my case.

REPORTER: Have you talked to anybody on the ground in South Carolina? And do they or do you worry about a bounce for McCain?

GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH: Listen, this'll be a nice period for him. As you know, I mean the stories will be "wounded Bush" and this that and the other and that's just inevitable. But it'll settle out. The campaign will settle out. There'll be a time when then, you know, the prop wash from the primary will have settled down and people are going to take a good hard look. And yes, our people on the ground welcome the challenge. They are pleased with the opportunity to get after it.

KWAME HOLMAN: The other Republican presidential hopefuls, Steve Forbes, Alan Keyes, and Gary Bauer, finished a distant third, fourth, and fifth respectively in New Hampshire. Despite his worse-than-expected performance, Forbes vowed last night to continue his presidential campaign.

STEVE FORBES: Now I make this appeal to conservatives who may have backed others because of inevitability: I plead with you, please come home.

CROWD: All right (applause).

STEVE FORBES: Make no mistake, this fight has just begun.

CROWD CHANTING: Go, Steve, go!

KWAME HOLMAN: The Democratic winner in New Hampshire, Vice President Al Gore, also scheduled a full day of campaigning, beginning with a stop at New York's Grand Central Station.

VICE PRESIDENT AL GORE: I'm here in New York. Later today I'll be in Ohio. This evening I'll be in Los Angeles, and I'll be having one of my open meetings in Los Angeles tonight. I'm looking forward to competing coast to coast. It's a national race. I'm really excited about it.

KWAME HOLMAN: But Gore then abruptly changed his schedule and, instead, went directly to Capitol Hill.

VICE PRESIDENT AL GORE: Is there a sufficient second? There appears to be. The clerk will call the role.

KWAME HOLMAN: The Vice President presided over a Senate vote on an abortion-related amendment to a bankruptcy bill in case his vote was needed to break a tie, but Republicans decided not to take issue with the amendment for now, and it passed easily.

VICE PRESIDENT AL GORE: On this vote there are 80 yays, 17 nays -

KWAME HOLMAN: Gore got just a few hours sleep after scoring a 4 percentage point victory over former Senator Bill Bradley. But Bradley called his second-place finish a victory, and today in Hartford, Connecticut, assured supporters he would stay in the race.

BILL BRADLEY: We have the resources, we know what we need to do in health, in education, and gun control. We know what we have to do. What will prevent us from achieving it? Only one thing, and that is politics as usual. (Applause) that is politics as usual. The only thing that will stop us will be politics, Washington-based politics, the gridlock that takes place there, the division, the partisanship. I look out in the country and I say we can do better than this.

KWAME HOLMAN: Even though they'll continue to campaign and debate, candidates Gore and Bradley don't have another Democratic contest on their calendar until March. The Republican candidates, however, face tests in eight states over the next four weeks. Delaware holds its Republican presidential primary next Tuesday, February 8, while Hawaii conducts week-long caucuses. Then comes the Republican primary in South Carolina on Saturday the 19th, followed by primaries in Michigan an Arizona on Tuesday the 22nd. U.S. territories in the Pacific and Caribbean hold Republican contests the following before Virginia, North Dakota and Washington State take the turns on Tuesday the 29th. The next decision day for the Democratic candidates isn't until Tuesday, March 7, when North Dakota, Idaho, and Hawaii hold party caucuses. But those events certainly will be overshadowed by presidential primaries for both parties in 13states, including delegate-rich New York, Ohio, and Carolina.

GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH: It feels a lot warmer here in the state of South Carolina, if you know what I mean.

KWAME HOLMAN: Governor Bush was warmly received today by both the weather and a large crowd at South Carolina's Bob Jones University. Since Senator McCain chose not to launch a campaign effort in Delaware, South Carolina becomes the next major bend in the road for the two Republican front-runners racing for the White House.

JIM LEHRER: And we'll return to politics later in the program with an interview with Senator McCain and analysis by Shields and Gigot.

UPDATE - GENE THERAPY

JIM LEHRER: But now, the controversy over gene therapy, reported by Susan Dentzer of our health unit, a partnership with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

SUSAN DENTZER: The promise of gene therapy has long seemed spectacular: Prevent or cure illness by injecting healthy copies of defective or missing genes into the body. But the death of a teenager last fall in a controversial gene therapy clinical trial focused a harsh spotlight on the ways these experiments are being carried out and monitored. That was the subject of a senate subcommittee hearing today chaired by Republican Senator William Frist of Tennessee.

SEN. WILLIAM FRIST: If we ask patients to participate in moving science forward, then we must be assured that gene therapy clinical trails are safe. I hope that today's hearing will be a thoughtful discussion and provide a thorough review of the oversight mechanisms that are in place. There is absolutely no room, no place for mistakes that compromise patient safety.

SUSAN DENTZER: The death of the teenager, 18-year-old Jesse Gelsinger, who suffered from a rare liver disorder, occurred during an experiment at the university of Pennsylvania. Gelsinger was injected with special viruses designed to carry healthy copies of a gene into his body. His father, Paul Gelsinger, told Senators today that his son's disease was actually under control, but that he agreed to participate in the clinical trial to help other sufferers from the disease.

PAUL GELSINGER: Jesse was doing exceptionally well on his medications, and nothing should have prevented him from living a full and happy life. He believed, after discussions with representatives from Penn, that the worst that could happen in the trial would be that he would have flu-like symptoms for a week. He was excited to help.

SUSAN DENTZER: 17 other patients had preceded Jesse into thetrial and were apparently treated with few ill effects. But Gelsinger's case quickly turned to tragedy soon after he was injected with genes carried by the viral messenger, known as a vector.

PAUL GELSINGER: Less than 24 hours after they injected Jesse with the vector in the amount that only one other person had ever been given, Jesse's entire body had been reacting adversely. He went into a coma before I could get to Philadelphia and see him, and died two days after my arrival, directly as a result of that gene therapy experiment.

SUSAN DENTZER: Precisely how the gene therapy and viral messenger precipitated Gelsinger's death is still unclear. But last month, the federal Food and Drug Administration shut down the University of Pennsylvania experiment, charging that investigators at the university had violated federal research regulations and failed to adequately protect the lives of patients. Then, earlier this week, officials at the National Institutes of Health disclosed that they had recently received delayed reports of more than 600 other serious adverse events. Those had occurred in similar gene therapy trials under way since 1993.

SEN. BILL FRIST: The events of the past few months involving gene therapy have given all of us, our government and our society, reason to pause. If we learn that the appropriate systems and guidelines are in place on paper, we must then ask, are they working in reality? I suspect they're not.

SUSAN DENTZER: Today's hearing focused on three main issues. Perhaps the foremost was whether patients like Jesse Gelsinger are adequately informed of the risks before they enter gene therapy experiments, especially from the special viral messengers, called adenoviruses, that are commonly used to transport genes into the body. In the University of Pennsylvania case, the FDA's preliminary findings suggest much information was withheld from patients, including the fact that monkeys had died from similar procedures, and that earlier human volunteers in the study had suffered serious side effects.

PAUL GELSINGER: We were also unaware of the severity of liver injury incurred by several of the patients prior to Jesse. I learned that a pharmaceutical company had conducted experiments similar to the one Jesse was in and had obtained adverse results, which if disclosed, would have fully informed Jesse and me of the real risks in this procedure. I had very close contact with the doctors involved until December 10, 1999, immediately following the RAC meeting. Looking back, I can see that it was very naive to have been as trusting as I was.

SUSAN DENTZER: Next, the Senators questioned officials from the FDA and NIH about delays in reporting to federal agencies on adverse events in other trials. Federal guidelines require that both the FDA and NIH be informed about these events under strict time limits, in part so that the agencies can share the information with researchers in other clinical trials. But in the case of the NIH, that apparently wasn't happening, says Dr. Amy Patterson. She directs the NIH office that oversees gene therapy research.

DR. AMY PATTERSON: We recently became aware that there was widespread noncompliance with NIH's requirements for reporting adverse events. We're actively analyzing the extent of this noncompliance and the possible contributing factors for this noncompliance. Investigators have violated the federal guidelines.

SUSAN DENTZER: Finally, Senators today questioned whether there were too many gaps in federal oversight of gene therapy research. There was broad agreement that such gaps needed to be plugged so that gene therapy research could safely proceed. Otherwise, patients could lose out on the enormous potential benefits. Eric Kast is a patient with cystic fibrosis, a crippling lung disease, who has participated in earlier gene therapy research.

ERIC KAST: We can continue with the appropriate oversight and the caution that we require, or we can let the fear paralyze us into inaction. One of my greatest fears is that, if we delay greatly, that I may die just a year or two before a cure is found for CF. If that happens, my wife, Sherry, is going to have to live the rest of her life knowing that if I had just survived or made it one more year, we may have lived happily together for the next 30, 40, even 50 years. We really are that close, and we've really come that far.

SUSAN DENTZER: The NIH And FDA are now developing proposals to improve oversight that are likely to be topics of further discussion in Congress later this year.

FOCUS - PAYING FOR CHILD CARE

JIM LEHRER: Welfare, work, and child care. Betty Ann Bowser reports.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Michelle Gillette is one of those single moms politicians love to brag about.

MICHELLE GILLETTE: Homework?

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Three years ago she was on welfare. Today Gillette picks up her children at the end of the day from her full-time job at a California county jail. She gets medical benefits with her job, and she loves it.

MICHELLE GILLETTE: I have the best job. I have a blast. I do very important work. It's great. It's the best I've ever had.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: But at the end of March, Gillette will lose the one thing that makes her new life work. She will no longer receive a government subsidy to pay for child care. Without it, she can't afford daycare, and without daycare, she says she can't work.

MICHELLE GILLETTE: I'm going to have to probably go back on welfare.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Why?

MICHELLE GILLETTE: Because I have no way to pay for child care at all. I mean this is money I just don't have at all.

MICHELLE GILLETTE: Do I need to sign this?

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Gillette takes home $1,700 a month. Her rent is $1,000. That means when she loses her subsidy for child care, she will have only $700 a month left over, and her child care costs $680. For her, it is a catch-22 situation. (Children shrieking) as deadlines for ending child care subsidies loom in California, single parents all over the state are facing Gillette's dilemma. Nationwide, child care advocates say there is also a shortage of licensed child care centers, and funds for subsidies are extremely limited. So states are trying to figure out what to do.

SPOKESPERSON: We are now consumed in the next tidal wave of welfare reform.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: In California, child advocates are brainstorming.

CHILD ADVOCATE: They have done what's expected of them. They have gotten off of welfare, they have jobs, they make $2,000 a month. They have three children and are pregnant, and their child care is $1,575 now. They are just kind of in shock. But when you play by the rules, the changing rules of welfare reform, and you are successful, and then two years down the line you're looking at going backwards... All these parents say "please don't make me go back."

BETTY ANN BOWSER: They've asked the governor and the legislature for help. And Patty Siegel, who runs the California Child Care Resource and Referral Network, says there can be no meaningful welfare reform without a long-term commitment to child care.

PATTY SIEGEL: If you're looking at, you know, two kids and an average child care cost in this country of over $11,000, the math is really clear. I don't know whether our Congress... I don't even know if our President really understands that math. And I think that's the math, that's the reality that the American public needs to understand how hard it is for low-income working families to pay for child care, and how much child care is the lynch pin in a family's economy, and really their sort of whole economic and family fabric and structure. I mean, it's the key, it's the center, and yet we've treated it as if it was a sidebar.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: But Darcy Olson of the libertarian CATO Institute says there is funding for that. Under welfare reform, Olson says, states were given sweeping block grants that provided plenty of child care money for families coming off welfare.

DARCY OLSON: The Congressional Budget Office says that there is a $9 billion surplus right now. That means there's excess welfare money that isn't being used that can be used if the states think it's necessary to pay for child care.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Still, short of a special dispensation, Gillette will lose her child care subsidy soon. And if she manages to stay off welfare, she will join the ranks of one of the country's fastest- growing economic groups, the working poor. They're people like Rachel Brown, a mail carrier in Alameda County, California. She makes $1,600 a month after taxes, and she has good medical benefits. But just like Gillette, the deal breaker every month is child care. In her case, it costs up to $900. That's more than half of what she takes home.

RACHEL BROWN: We struggle. Every month, I have a bill that I can't pay. And I had to move out of my old apartment into this apartment, which I'm not really happy with, because I couldn't afford to pay the baby sitter and pay the rent and pay all my bills.

RACHEL BROWN: Come on, come on, come on. I've got to go to work.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Ironically, Brown is poor enough to qualify for the child care subsidy in California, but because families coming off of welfare get priority, she's stuck on a waiting list with 200,000 other parents. And brown says the cost of child care is holding her back.

RACHEL BROWN: I was actually taking some classes in the evenings, which... I mean, I was working all day and then going to school at night, and I have a 4.0 grade point average. But I mean that's additional child care that I have to get for the evenings, and I just... I had to let it all go.

DION ARONER: I'm not going to stay for the whole thing, but I think we should go together.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Brown's representative in the California legislature, Dion Aroner, says welfare reform is creating a new class of working poor, and policy makers aren't addressing the child care problem.

DION ARONER: Child care is a basic issue for workers in this country, and not just for welfare recipients and not just for low-income workers, but for workers. And if this country were interested in ensuring that its children were taken care of, they would have dealt with that very issue. We are the only industrial country in the world that doesn't have publicly subsidized child care for everybody.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: But Cato's Darcy Olson says her research shows there is no shortage of affordable child care. And she argues even if there was a day care crisis, it shouldn't be the government's problem.

DARCY OLSON: On this question, the Constitution is very clear. There is no enumerated power for the federal government to spend money on child care. There are better ways than having the government get involved in it, and those things can range from arranging things within your own family, to do exchange care with the neighbors, which a lot of people do. It can be the local church, your local community organization if you're not involved in a church.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Still, some parents have a hard time finding good day care, even when they can afford it.

PARENT: I mean, it's been, like, six months since, you know, we've been on the list.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: This affluent Berkley, California, father discovered there were no openings when he visited the St. John's daycare center in Berkley recently. Kate Nichols is the center's director.

KATE NICHOLS: I've actually had people call me, planning to get pregnant and wanting to get on the list. And I take unborn babies, but not unthawed babies -- not unconceived babies.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Right now, Nichols' biggest problem is personnel turnover. It's running at about 40%. Nationwide, the turnover rate for daycare workers is 31%. That's higher than for parking lot attendants, another high- turnover job.

KATE NICHOLS: And you've been a teacher's assistant? But you haven't been fingerprinted before?

WOMAN: No, they didn't.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: On this morning, Nichols hired a former welfare recipient who had limited job experience of any kind.

KATE NICHOLS: Okay, so Monday probably 8 o'clock to 5:00, so it would be all day.

WOMAN: Okay.

KATE NICHOLS: You will start... I'm not sure exactly what the wage will be, but I think it will be around seven dollars an hour, so it's not very much

WOMAN: Okay, but that's all right. I have to start somewhere.

KATE NICHOLS: Yeah, you got to start somewhere, and right now, you'll start as a substitute. A substitute doesn't have any benefits. Once you... If you are hired as a permanent employee, then you will have the benefits.

CHILD: Daddy!

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Nationwide, most daycare workers receive no benefits. The average salary for a daycare worker is $14,000. And Director Nichols says those conditions are contributing to poor-quality care.

KATE NICHOLS: You can't take somebody off the street, really, and just put them in here and expect them to know what to do, and to really be able to give the children what they need.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: And yet you're facing doing that?

KATE NICHOLS: And this is exactly what I have to do. This is exactly what I'm facing. This is what you saw today. I hired somebody off the street, and we just have to see if she is going to be trainable.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: California has been carefully watching an experimental program started in 1993 in North Carolina. It's called smart start, and it's a way to attack the turnover problem in daycare centers. Under Smart Start, the state pays medical benefits for teachers like Beth Pierce.

WORKER: Where'd it go?

BETTY ANN BOWSER: She also gets cash bonuses for taking college courses in early childhood development in return for a signed promise to stay in the profession.

WORKER: Look. Who is this?

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Karen Ponder runs the North Carolina Partnership for Children, which oversees Smart Start.

KAREN PONDER: We've reduced the teacher turnover rate in child care for as much as 60% just over the past five years, so we know it makes a difference. People can't afford to stay in something all their lives when they don't make a living wage.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Smart Start also continues to pay child care subsidies for the working poor up to $38,000 for a family of four, as long as they stay within income guidelines. There are 13 million American preschool children currently in daycare. As more mothers enter the workforce through welfare reform, that number is expected increase, as is the debate over the government's role in child care.

NEWSMAKER

JIM LEHRER: And now back to Presidential politics and to Senator McCain, who joins us now from Columbia, South Carolina.

Senator, welcome and congratulations.

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Thank you very much. We were very exhilarated by the win, and it's been a great ride.

JIM LEHRER: Do you feel as good now as you did last night when it happened?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Yes. Let me give you an example of kind of an unexpected thing that happened. We've now gotten $500,000 in contributions over the Internet today, which is more than we've ever had. By the way, that's McCain2000.com.

JIM LEHRER: Just from all over the country?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: All over the country, $500,000, and most of that's matched, so we may have the first million dollar day we've had in the history of this campaign.

JIM LEHRER: Wow. You said last night that this was the beginning of a national crusade. A crusade for what?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: A crusade to take the government out of the hands of the special interests and give it back to the people of this country and allow them again to be connected with their government. Young people don't vote; young people are cynical; they've become alienated because the special interests have taken over and their hopes and dreams and aspirations are no longer represented. That's what we find out from talking to them. For example, the lowest voter turnout in history of the eighteen to twenty-six-year-olds was in the 1998 election.

JIM LEHRER: But the man you defeated last night was George W. Bush. And you've said you want to send a message to Washington. He's been the governor of Texas. Is he - how does he fit into your crusade?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Well, he fits - he defends the status quo. He will not support campaign finance reform. He says that it's bad for our party. I've always believed that's what's good for our country is good for our party. He is obviously - or his people are now setting up organizations where tens of millions of dollars of soft money are going to be funneled into the campaign. And obviously the establishment is all behind him because they want the status quo. I'm going to break the iron triangle of lobbyists, money, and legislation, and he's defending it.

JIM LEHRER: What do you say to those who suggest, though, hey, wait a minute, Senator, you've been chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, which is kind of center of the establishment, at least one part of the establishment in Washington in terms of legislation, interests, and all of that, and Governor Bush has been in Texas while this has been going on. Why are you different? You've been here but you're not part of it. He hasn't been here, and he is.

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Because I have fought tooth and nail against the special interests, whether it be against the telecommunications so-called Reform Act of 1998 - 1996 - or whether it be against the giveaway of $70 billion of free spectrum to the television - to the broadcasters. I've fought against pork barrel spending. I've fought for the line item veto. I was responsible for the legislation on a gift ban and the lobbying ban, and I've been a reformer all of my time in Washington, and we've had some successes, and we've also had some failures. But there's no doubt what I've fought for, and that's against the special interests.

JIM LEHRER: There was a suggestion today from some of Governor Bush's supporters that maybe you're not really a true blue Republican, that some of the things you support like campaign finance reform and your opposition to tax cuts are more like Gore and Bradley and Clinton and Democrats than Republican.

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Well, I'm much more like Ronald Reagan, actually, than the present hierarchy of our party. I'm for tax cuts, but I'm for working Americans. Governor Bush wants to give 38 percent of his tax cuts to the wealthiest 1 percent. I want to give it to working families. But I want to give it also to pay into Social Security, and make it solve, Medicare, and start paying down the debt. And, by the way, the majority of Republicans supporting the polls support my proposal, over Governor Bush's. He has not one penny for Social Security, not one penny for Medicare, not one penny for paying down the debt. It's conservative to pay for our obligations when they have some money. And I think it's clear who the conservative is, particularly on the issue of taxes. But also, look, is it not conservative or Republican to try to take the government out of the hands of special interests, which prevent the American people from being represented? I think that's the tradition of Ronald Reagan and Theodore Roosevelt, to tell you the truth. Theodore Roosevelt got a ban on corporate contributions to American political campaigns in 1907. He's my role model.

JIM LEHRER: Well, then, but you don't deny you're a different kind of Republican, do you, than the "leadership" of the party right now?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Well, I think, you know, the party has lost its way to a large degree, because we've been captured by the huge amounts of soft money. Ronald Reagan is - I'm right in tune with him and with Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight David Eisenhower. It's a terrible thing, what all this money has done to our party, and we've got to break this grip or this Iron Triangle that I've talked about before.

JIM LEHRER: But wasn't Ronald Reagan supported by the leadership of the Republican Party when he ran?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Oh, no. In 1976, there was, I think, one or two Senators, one of them being Laxalt. In 1980, the party candidate was John Connolly. He ran from the outside.

JIM LEHRER: But you don't mind being considered a maverick, somebody that's a little bit different than the traditional Republican?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: No. And what I'd really like to be known for and respected for is my independence, but my commitment to principle and my ability to inspire young Americans to commit themselves to causes greater than your self interest. And the fact is I'm the only candidate that's fully prepared to be President of the United States, particularly as far as Commander in Chief is concerned.

JIM LEHRER: Fully prepared? You're the only candidate to be fully prepared to be President of the United States?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: That's right. The others are prepared; I am fully prepared.

JIM LEHRER: And what does fully mean?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: That means in every way I'm ready to take over the job; I don't need on-the-job training.

JIM LEHRER: There was a story today that one of the new tactics, strategies, whichever way you want to use it, to go after you in South Carolina, in particular, is to paint you as a liberal. Now you mentioned - you mentioned that a moment ago. Is that going to work? Is there something out there that we don't know that makes you a liberal?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: I don't know. If you inspect my 17-year voting record, it's a proud conservative Republican who acts on principles and one who obviously has a very strong commitment to the leadership role the United States has to play. I've never voted for a pay raise - excuse me - never voted for a pay raise - but more importantly, I've never voted for a tax increase, whether it was proposed by a Republican or Democrat administration. I'm proud of my voting record, but look, these things happen in campaigns so that, you know, you call people liberals and others. I'm not going to do that with Governor Bush. He's a good man, and we're going to campaign on the differences we have, rather than trying to label somebody as something which clearly they're not.

JIM LEHRER: Senator, yesterday was - marked the 107th month - straight month of economic expansion in the United States. If you're elected, President, what would you do to make sure it keeps going on?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: I think I would focus a lot of attention on education and training so that we can provide a trained and skilled work force to meet the needs of this dramatically growing technology. I think that's probably one of our first efforts - keep the regulation of the government as much as possible out of people's lives, have a permanent ban on Internet taxes so that we don't harm this technology, and also obviously, keep the policies that have been working. And that -- Alan Greenspan has done I think a very good job in that direction. And finally - free trade - free trade is important. We're in a global economy; we need to export our goods and services. We have the most productive work in the world in the United States of America. And any nation that will lower its barriers to our goods and products, I'll do the same for them in the United States, and that's a very important pillar, I believe, in the future prosperity of this country.

JIM LEHRER: President Clinton said yesterday that he thought he deserved some of the credit for this expansion or this continuing boom. Do you agree with that?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Yes, and - just as I would give him blame if it wasn't. I would argue that the men and women who made this thing happen that are the incredible genius of America - reduction in regulations, deregulation in the 80's, and a lot of other things - but I'll give him some credit. And the question is, is how we keep it going, and that's what I think I'm fully prepared to address.

JIM LEHRER: But you believe that the President has the power to keep it going, right?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Oh, I think that the President has a great deal to do with the power to keep it going. I don't say that the President is a dictator. You have to deal with Congress; you have to deal with various forces. For example, the WTO debacle out in Seattle, which was largely the President's -- or at least to some degree - the President's responsibility, has hurt our efforts to further free trade throughout the world. But there are obviously certain things which are not in the President's control, but largely, they are.

JIM LEHRER: Back to New Hampshire for a moment. The pundits, a lot of the pundits, not all of the pundits, but many of the pundits said that at the heart of your victory was actually the character issue and your resume. Do you flinch at that? Do you revel in that? What's your reaction to that?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: I think that voters vote for someone not based on what they've done but how they believe they can lead the country in the future. They think - they give you credit for what you've done, but they'll only vote for you as to how they think you'll lead. So I think part of that but I think specific positions - very straight, unambiguous positions on issues - and by the way the reason there was such a great gap between what pollsters were telling is that there were thousands of young New Hampshire, young people that went and registered to vote yesterday in order to vote for me. And that is what expanded the numbers to such an incredible degree. I've got to tell you - I never felt we would win by 19 points. I just didn't think that was possible. And I'm exhilarated by it.

JIM LEHRER: Do you think you're going to win the whole thing?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Oh, I think we've got a great shot at it. I think we're still the underdog. We were outspent in New Hampshire five and six to one and we still prevailed. We're being outspent here, but I think we can win the battle of ideas if not the bucks. We're still the underdog, still got a long way to go, still fighting an insurgency campaign, and I'm telling you, I'm loving every minute of it.

JIM LEHRER: You did over a hundred town meetings in New Hampshire. How are you going to do it in all these other states, beginning with South Carolina, how are you going to have to change the way you campaign in order to win this?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Well, we've done a whole lot of them down here already. We will get a megaphone and amplification and message out of this. I'll have town hall meetings that are covered by local television and radio; we're doing one with one of the local - one of the national talk shows here in a week or two. We'll do the same technique so we'll get the magnification of it. Look, I started New Hampshire with town hall meetings where 20 people came. I did one in Peterborough in July and gave away free ice cream, 40 people came. We did our last town hall meeting in Peterborough, the place was packed with well over a thousand people. So it's a technique, if I may sound so immodest, that a lot of other candidates are going to have to employ because that's the real essence of democracy, and that's interaction with the voters.

JIM LEHRER: And in your case at least it worked too, did it not?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Oh, yeah, but it was also marvelous. I mean, you hear from people, you learn, you listen. People, you can see them connect again after a period of cynicism and even alienation. So many people came up to me and said I haven't voted in 20 years and I'm going to go out and vote for you. I mean, whether I win or lose, what we've been able to do here is something that I will always cherish the memory, even getting up in Laconia when it's 35 degrees below zero.

JIM LEHRER: I got you. I got you. Well, Senator, again, congratulations, and thank you very much.

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Thanks for having me on.

FOCUS - READING THE RESULTS

JIM LEHRER: And to Shields and Gigot, and Gwen Ifill.

GWEN IFILL: That's syndicated columnist Mark Shields and "Wall Street Journal" columnist Paul Gigot, joining us for a political reality check. We just heard, Mark, John McCain talking about his big plans for the future. But what really happens to him now after New Hampshire? Can he make this work in South Carolina and beyond?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, Gwen, first of all, New Hampshire by itself, John McCain didn't overstate the reality there. I mean it was... he was outspent at least 2-1, maybe 3-1. He had all three previous Republican Governors lined up there. They brought in all the face cards of the Republican party-- Jack Kemp, the last Republican, Elizabeth Dole, his father the last president, Governor Bush-- and the entire establishment was lined up against him, and he just whomped them. He won by the biggest margin in the history of contested Republican primaries in New Hampshire's long...

GWEN IFILL: That said, where does he go?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, where does he go? The question is: What kind of a bounce is he going to get out of that? I mean the margin in South Carolina is about 20 points or maybe a little more. And if in fact it's down... Lindsey Graham, the Congressman from South Carolina who is up in frigid and absolutely frostbitten New Hampshire, said that if they could win by seven points, he said this Monday night, if they could win by seven points in New Hampshire, he could take it to South Carolina and make it competitive, bring it down to ten points by this weekend. If he gets that kind of a bounce, he's got a shot in South Carolina. It's a long shot. It's a different electorate. The religious right is a lot more prominent. And Governor Bush went down there today; his first stop was at Bob Jones University, affectionately known as a buckle on the bible belt, a place where interracial dating is not tolerated, where women wear nylons and skirts, and went in there and in the space of two minutes, by one report, used the word conservative 12 times. So he's got to run against John McCain as liberal, liberal, liberal.

GWEN IFILL: And we just heard John McCain do the same thing with Jim Lehrer, which is use the word conservative over and over again. My favorite quote today was a Bush aide today said that in spite of John McCain's win last night in New Hampshire, he's still a couple of French fries short of a Happy Meal, which is a terrible way of saying he's still got a long way to go.

PAUL GIGOT: Yeah, sure, he has to run the table. He has to win South Carolina and then he has to win his home state of Arizona, and then he has to compete against George Bush head to head all the rest of the way, and Bush has the money to do it, there's no question. It's daunting. But Judd Gregg, the head of the Bush campaign in New Hampshire, told me that John McCain had to win by ten or twelve points to get a big bounce. Well, he won by 18. This was when they thought they'd only lose by about three or four if they lost. So I mean there's a danger here for the Bush campaign that... two really: One is that head to head with John McCain, he doesn't look as presidential. He doesn't look like the same kind of leader. He lost 4-1 among...

MARK SHIELDS: Governor Bush you mean.

PAUL GIGOT: I mean Governor Bush. He doesn't have the some kind of stature. And unless he can present himself in a way that measures up to that, he may really... he could lose this thing because this is a year in which issues don't seem to matter as much as the man, as leadership, as character. And that's McCain's great appeal. His appeal may be like Jimmy Carter's in 1976 for Republicans... That was for Democrats. His appeal for Republicans this year may be similar in that it may transcend issues.

GWEN IFILL: Did the tax cut issue that George W. Bush was basing his campaign on so much in Iowa and New Hampshire, to a different degree, will it work for him as we go down the road in a better way? Does he need to figure out a better way to use it?

MARK SHIELDS: I hate to say that I thought the Bush people were running Jack Kemp's presidential campaign for the fourth time. There's nothing more durable -- there's nothing more durable in American politics than a political idea that once won the White House. Republicans are back... I mean Ronald Reagan won in 1980 pledging a tax cut. And every Republican - that's become the Holy Grail every since. And yesterday it didn't have traction, it didn't have saliency among New Hampshire voters. Only one in six listed it as that important to them. So you know, it's a real question whether in fact they look at a strong leader, stands up for his beliefs. And what Paul said about that looking for the person rather than the issue, that worked for John McCain yesterday.

GWEN IFILL: I want to move on to the Democrats. Al Gore won...

PAUL GIGOT: Let me answer the tax issue.

GWEN IFILL: Okay, go ahead.

PAUL GIGOT: I just think - I mean, I talked to Carl Rove, George Bush's strategist, and he said that the mistake they made was to let John McCain frame the tax cut issue as a Hobson's choice between tax cuts and Social Security, one or the other. In South Carolina, George Bush has to stop that and make the case that you can do both. If he does that, it may work better for him.

GWEN IFILL: Now to the Democrats. Al Gore won, but who did he win when he won, Paul?

PAUL GIGOT: He won Joe "Six Pack" Democrat. He won lower income Democrats. He won the rank and file. He won women, he won union members. He won the teachers. He won the standard-issue Democrats. He lost among men. If... 61% of the electorate in that primary was women. If it had only been 55% women, Bill Bradley would have won.

GWEN IFILL: What is appealing about al Gore to women?

PAUL GIGOT: I think prosperity. He drove that issue really hard. He drove the fact that times are good, that your circumstances are better, that there's more security, and that Bill Clinton has been good... The Clinton administration has been good for your lives. That... Bill Clinton has always done very well with women, and I think Al Gore's trying to capitalize on that.

GWEN IFILL: And Bill Bradley appeals to jocks. Where does this leave him? Does he have to start taking the gloves off?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, there's no question that the late deciders in the last few days went heavily for Bradley. Bradley was trailing badly -- even though he lost and Al Gore become the first non- incumbent presidential candidate since 1976 to win both Iowa and New Hampshire in the same year, which was really quite an achievement -- Bill Bradley was cheered, as were his supporters, by his closing of the gap. But there's little question that what worked for him-- or apparently little question-- was the charge on integrity, and that's a tough one to take. It's especially a tough one to take because it's going to be tough for the Democrats, but he's taking it to places where... Paul just outlined the demographics of the electorate of minority voters, of women, of blue collar voters, of older voters. Those are the states you're describing of New York and where the Democratic vote is going to be more traditional and where Gore has demonstrated greater support.

GWEN IFILL: Does Bill Bradley have to find some way to... He tried to base his attack in the last few days on the fact that Al Gore was tied to Bill Clinton. But Bill Clinton ended up being al Gore's ace in the hole maybe, somewhat.

PAUL GIGOT: Well, I think this is a contest, I mean, about how you define the Clinton legacy. If Al Gore is able to bask in Clinton era prosperity, he's going to run away with it. That's why I think the only chance that Bill Bradley has is he can connect Gore to the things a lot of Democrats don't like about this administration, which is integrity, trust, character, the status of the presidency. 55% of Democrats in New Hampshire had an unfavorable view...

GWEN IFILL: Personally.

PAUL GIGOT: ...As a person of Bill Clinton. Bradley won those, about 60% of those voters. Those are the voters he has to get elsewhere. I think it's the only chance he has.

GWEN IFILL: Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: Bill Bradley has to put, "look, what we have to did is we have to clean house. We have to clean up the Democratic Party." This is it. I mean he doesn't have to go after Bill Clinton personally. We want to feel good again as Democrats. That's the kind of party we are. It ties into campaign finance reform, it ties into all of Bradley's themes about taking care of children, that "that's the kind of Democratic Party we are, and let's start right now by cleaning up our own, then we can clean the nation."

PAUL GIGOT: Character to results, not just to principles and achievements, but also to results in November. "If we don't clean our house, the Republicans will clean it for us."

GWEN IFILL: Yeah. If he only could deliver that line the way you just delivered it. What happens with Steve Forbes? Steve Forbes is also running. I think if you put dollar per vote, he would have spent the most money in this campaign so far by far. What does he have to do if he's going to survive?

PAUL GIGOT: Well, they're going to fight on in Delaware next Tuesday because he won that primary in 1996, and he and Governor Bush are going head to head. I think they feel that if they can beat Bush there, or wound him, then it muddles the picture for South Carolina. Maybe John McCain can then beat Governor Bush again, and then it's a topsy-turvy world and they can somehow meander through the rubble and emerge as a challenger to John McCain. That's a Hail Mary pass, and I think there's going to be increasing pressure on Forbes to get out on the right so that... "National Review" Magazine, for example, Bill Buckley's magazine, is going to come out and say, "Steve, for instance, should withdraw." And I think that's because they see they wanted this race to be a conservative/liberal race, and the only way George Bush can win is if he unites all the conservatives.

GWEN IFILL: Mark.

MARK SHIELDS: I'd say Steve Forbes has a tough, tough decision. John McCain and McCain's people would like to have Steve Forbes and Alan Keyes competing vocally and actively and energetically in South Carolina because of the large religious conservative component in the Republican primary down there, which John McCain has not had a natural affinity with so far. And they'd like to have him pulling off some from Bush. But I just don't see how you make the case to go on. I mean he got whomped death. He got no lift out of his second-place showing in Iowa where he did get 30%. He ended up at a real standstill from what he got the last time in New Hampshire. I mean this is $35 million and four years later, Gwen. It's a tough case to make that we could spend some more, even with Delaware.

PAUL GIGOT: Nobody votes for Steve Forbes on charisma or personality, and...

MARK SHIELDS: And he doesn't say the Hail Mary.

PAUL GIGOT: And this is a year where the issues candidates have had a tough time. The character candidates have had a better time.

GWEN IFILL: Okay. Well, we'll get back on all this in South Carolina February 19 and then Super Tuesday on March 7. Mark Shields, Paul Gigot, thanks a lot.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: And, again, the other major stories of this Wednesday: The Coast Guard gave up on finding survivors from the Alaska Airlines crash, the Federal Reserve raised short-term interest rates for the fourth time since last June, and on the NewsHour just now Senator McCain said he was surprised he won the New Hampshire primary by 19 points. But he said he thinks he has a great shot at winning the Republican presidential nomination. We'll see you online, and again here, tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you, and good night.