The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: Gwen Ifill explores the rising price of oil; we look at Saturday's important South Carolina primary with pollster Andrew Kohut and representatives of the Bush and McCain campaigns; Terence Smith chronicles the year 2000 version of the boys on the bus; we have a preview report on the elections in Iran; and essayist Roger Rosenblatt looks at a disturbing photo exhibit about it all follows our summary of the news this Thursday.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned today about more interest rate increases. He said they may be necessary to contain inflation. He spoke at a House hearing after the Labor Department said wholesale prices were unchanged in January. But Greenspan said the booming economy could still cause an inflationary spiral.

ALAN GREENSPAN: Spending has remained robust. And the Federal Open Market Committee will have to stay alert for signs that real interest rates have not yet risen enough to bring the growth of demand into line without a potential supply. Even should the acceleration of productivity continue.

JIM LEHRER: Greenspan also said he was concerned the jump in oil prices could harm the economy. But he said the federal government should not use oil reserves to lower prices. We'll have more on oil prices right after the News Summary. On the Republican presidential race today, Senator McCain said he'd be unstoppable if he wins Saturday's South Carolina primary. A new Reuters poll had him dead even with Texas Governor Bush among likely South Carolina voters. Bush accused McCain of billing himself as a high horse candidate, but running a low road campaign. We'll have more on the South Carolina campaign later in the program tonight. Some Republican House members today urged the military to suspend mandatory anthrax vaccinations. They said the shots were based on 1950's technology and weren't proven against biological weapon attacks. Speaking at a news conference, they said the program should be voluntary.

REP. CHRISTOPHER SHAYS: It means you tell the military personnel what they are taking and why and what kind of vaccine it is and so on and the potential side effects and they get to make that decision. The President can overrule that and make it mandatory, but he has to take that action.

JIM LEHRER: A Pentagon official responded.

MAJ. GEN. RANDALL WEST: We should always want better medicine. We should always want to find a better vaccine. We should always want to find way to administer it that are less invasive if we can. And we're aggressively pursuing that, but those things take time. Those are months or years away, and we've got troops that are in danger of weapons such as anthrax today. We can't wait until we have a new and improved vaccine to give them the protection that they need.

JIM LEHRER: The military says several hundred service members have refused to take the shots. Today, the Air Force dropped plans to court-martial one of them: Major Sonnie Bates. Instead, he agreed to a process that could mean less severe punishment. Overseas today, an international human rights group claimed Russian soldiers were torturing Chechens at detention camps. Human Rights Watch said more than 1,000 Chechen males were rounded up after rebels retreated from Grozny. We have this report from Mark Webster of Independent Television News.

MARK WEBSTER: Detained in the Russian crackdown, many of those held in primitive conditions in local jails denied having anything to do with the separatist fighters, most of whom have fled to the mountains. Others, like this man, brought in with injuries and clearly in pain, couldn't explain how he had been hurt. Some Chechen civilians alleged they had been brutally treated by the Russians while in detention and human rights group say there is real cause for concern.

PETER BOUCKAERT, Human Rights Watch: People are being beaten and abused and we have received several accounts of rape in the camps. We are very concerned about what is happening in these camps.

MARK WEBSTER: The Russians answer that they've recovered dozens of rifles and hundreds of grenades and Chechens in civilian clothes whom they say have been fighting with the militants. The military has completely sealed off the capital Grozny in the search for other fighters.

JIM LEHRER: In Washington, the State Department urged the Russian government to conduct a full investigation of alleged atrocities in Chechnya. At least 2,000 students demonstrated today outside the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. They accused the U.S. of backing recent Israeli air strikes in Lebanon. They chanted "death to Israel, death to America," and threw rocks and tomatoes. Troops and police - and sprayed the crowd with water cannons and tear gas. NASA has released new images of the first asteroid to be photographed up close. A robot spacecraft went into orbit around Eros on Monday. Scientists said today the pictures coming back to earth suggest the asteroid is layered, like plywood. That means it may have been part of a planet at one time. And that's it for the news summary tonight. Now it's on to the price of oil, the Republicans' important South Carolina contest, the newest version of the boys on the bus, the Iranian elections, and a Roger Rosenblatt essay.

FOCUS - PRICE HIKE

JIM LEHRER: Gwen Ifill has the oil story.

GWEN IFILL: Americans have come to count on cheap oil. No longer. Energy prices are soaring. A gallon of gasoline, which cost an average of 92 cents a gallon a year ago, now goes for $1.35 a gallon and higher, up 32%.

CONSUMER: Well, there's not too much you can do about it. You have to have the gas, so you have to pay the price.

GWEN IFILL: The cost of heating oil has doubled as well in the Northeast, driven in part by the cost of crude oil. The barrel of oil that cost just $11 only a year ago now costs about $30. The last time oil was this expensive was during the Persian Gulf crisis in 1991. The impact has been felt at gas pumps, in homes heated by oil and at airline ticket counters, where $20 fuel surcharges have been added to ticket prices. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, and other inflation watchers are taking notice, worried that energy costs could also drive up the prices of other goods. Particularly hard-hit is New England, where three-quarters of the homes are heated by oil. Some low-income residents say they have been forced to choose between paying for food or paying for oil to heat their homes. At a news conference Wednesday, President Clinton announced that he had released $125 million in federal funds to help poor families pay energy bills.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: In the Northeast the impact has been particularly harsh because from the mid-Atlantic states to New England, many families still rely on home heating oil-- a source of heating no longer used in the rest of the country. These families have been especially hard-hit. That is a serious concern especially because the winter months have been colder this year than in the past few years

GWEN IFILL: Energy Secretary Bill Richardson admitted today the spike in oil prices caught the administration off guard.

BILL RICHARDSON: Everybody was caught napping. Nobody predicted what would happen. But it's not that we didn't have a response. We have a response, but at the same time we don't intervene, the government doesn't intervene in fuel prices and in oil markets.

GWEN IFILL: President Clinton has dispatched Richardson to meet with the leaders of oil- producing nations Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

GWEN IFILL: Joining us now are Phil Flynn, vice president and senior market analyst at Alaron.com, a brokerage house; Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates; and Joseph Kennedy, chairman and president of Citizens Energy Corporation which provides low-cost heating oil to the poor and elderly in Massachusetts; he is a former member of Congress.

Mr. Flynn, as clearly as you can, can you explain to us why oil prices are so high?

PHIL FLYNN, Alaron.com: Very simply, OPEC-- really a new OPEC-- when OPEC had the pain of low oil prices back in December of '98, when it fell to $10.35 a barrel, they were forced into a marriage of convenience with other OPEC members.

GWEN IFILL: OPEC being the oil cartel countries.

PHIL FLYNN: That's correct. And the most historic part about the agreement was that they brought on non-OPEC members, as Mexico and Venezuela, to jump on board. And that's the bottom line here, that's why we're moving higher.

GWEN IFILL: Daniel Yergin, do you agree with that? Is it some version of international price-fixing?

DANIEL YERGIN, Cambridge Energy Research Associates: I... Well, the OPEC countries were looking at a desperate situation, going bankrupt. They saw what had happened in Russia, which was devastated economically by low oil prices, and said, "we've got to pull ourselves together." The other thing that's happening is economic growth -- recovery in Asia, demand is up, higher than people had expected, consumption is up. And here in the United States, the economic machine just barrels on, and you're out there, you look out on the road, you see the sport utility vehicles. We're using more gasoline and oil as well. And so that, combined with the change in supply situation, together created a very tight inventory situation, which is reflected in these prices.

GWEN IFILL: So, Joe Kennedy, we are as consumers entirely held hostage by the actions of an international oil cartel, or are there things which are happening here in our economy that's also driving these prices up?

JOSEPH KENNEDY, Citizens Energy Corporation: Well, I think both the... Both Dan and I'm sorry, I don't know your...

GWEN IFILL: Phil, Phil Flynn.

JOSEPH KENNEDY: Phil, all right. Have identified the root cause of the problem. But Gwen, when all's said and done, that has very little to do with the actual heating oil crisis that's taking place really from Boston and Maine down to Washington, DC at this time. There simply is just not enough heating oil being provided to the consumers in this region of our country. So we have an enormous price difference between what the world price for heating oil would be-- which is about 74, 75 cents a gallon-- versus what we're paying here in Massachusetts, which is really around $1.75 to $2 a gallon.

GWEN IFILL: And Daniel, that translates into $30 a barrel for crude oil, roughly, which is a nine-year high. Is that price sustainable? Can that stand?

DANIEL YERGIN: I don't think so. I think that the producers themselves are surprised by their own success, in terms of stabilizing or bringing the market back to this level. And you can see the pressure mounting over the last week or two. The words have gotten louder from Washington, from Boston, from other cities, from other countries. And I think the OPEC countries and non-OPEC are going to be looking to how to ease oil back into the market, because they can see the impact economic problems in the United States would have on them. Take the case of Mexico. Mexico's economy is very tightly integrated in the United States, and Mexico has no interest in seeing U.S. economic growth slow down, or inflation raise its head again.

GWEN IFILL: So Phil Flynn, Secretary of Energy Richardson is on his way to the OPEC countries, basically to make a tour of them and say to each and every one... To jawbone them: Please bring prices down. Is that something that will work?

PHIL FLYNN: I definitely think it's going to have an impact. The key thing here is you have to remember is, OPEC has been successful with bringing the price of oil up, which was a desperate measure. But Mr. Richardson, though he has to be very careful to please the constituency in the United States of America, also has to be very careful not to upset the applecart, and get OPEC countries mad at us. We have to remember, there have been some positive things that have come out of this. We have a more moderate Iran. We have a new leadership in Venezuela. So we have an OPEC that we can work with. So Mr. Richardson has a very tough situation. He has to go to OPEC, but he can't come into the OPEC countries like the ugly American, saying, you know, "America says you have to raise production." He has to walk a very even keel.

DANIEL YERGIN: Yeah. Can I come in on that? It's true. Because I think it's very important what he's saying, because it also applies to Mexico. 40% of the Mexican government's national budget comes from oil. It's very important to them. And I think what Phil says about other countries applies there. You know, we're not the only country with a presidential election. So is Mexico. And if they suddenly see the Yankee to the North swinging too heavy a club, there's inevitably going to be a reaction.

GWEN IFILL: And Joe Kennedy, to what extent can we begin to point to things which are happening internally? One of the questions that has been raised to Secretary Richardson and others is that perhaps oil companies are engaged in some sort of price- gouging, especially in the northeastern states.

JOSEPH KENNEDY: Well, that's a very, I think, accurate concern. Although, I think, really, as I mentioned a minute ago, this isn't just about OPEC. I mean, OPEC, before they had a price increase, the price of heating oil in Boston was something around 50 cents a gallon-- a little bit more, maybe 51 or 52 cents a gallon. The OPEC price of heating oil is probably reflected at around 74, 75 cents a gallon today. But the big, huge, whopping price increases that the American consumer has had to deal with are really as a result of the lack of planning and the lack of diligence by the industry itself. We control... in electricity, we actually have a federal agency, which sets standards that that industry has to meet. We do the same thing in natural gas. The only industry that has no basic regulatory structure that is overseen by the government is oil. So we let the free market operate, and as a result, if there is, in fact, a shortage, whether it's, whether it's created by OPEC, whether it's created by the oil companies or whether it's created by weather, it doesn't really matter. They've got an obligation to make sure that there's enough product, whether it's heating oil, diesel fuel, or gasoline.

DANIEL YERGIN: I'd like to correct something that you said. The price of gasoline very closely tracks what happens to the price of crude oil. Last year when oil prices collapsed, Americans, when you adjust for inflation, were paying the lowest price they had paid for gasoline since the Great Depression. Now they're paying that are back now to the level of 1996, and they're probably going to go higher. They could go another dime or 20 cents higher, but this is tracking what happens with crude oil. What's driving the market is not, you know, what companies are doing, or machinations, but it is the fact that the supply- demand balance that is governed by the availability of supply coming out of these countries, and what happens to economic growth, whether it's low or it's high. And that's, you know, it's market fundamentals that are the real driver here.

JOSEPH KENNEDY: But when, you know it isn't-- just to follow up on Dan's point-- it isn't just these sort of macro policies. What I'm saying is that the reason why we're probably on this show is because there is an acute crisis, where millions of very poor and vulnerable Americans, middle income people, just simply can't afford to stay warm this winter.

GWEN IFILL: So let's talk for a moment about how you begin to find the solution. Do you find the solution after the fact, by saying, as the President has done, which is to release more money for low- income programs like yours? Like yours, Joe Kennedy? Or Phil Flynn, do you find the way to fix this on the front end of this?

PHIL FLYNN: I believe that the best thing to do... Of course you have to start with the problem first. Part of the problem that we had with the East was partly because there was not a lot of profit in it for the oil companies when they were $30 -- or when they were $10 a barrel, they were having a hard time making a profit creating heating oil. So you had a real problem there, and that... their main concern at that point was survival. And that's why we saw so many mergers in the oil industry. Right now, obviously we have a concern of a shortage. And it was a combination of many factors that brought us to that point, and I think that what we have to do is learn from this, and look to the future for some solutions. But the bottom line is right now, when it comes to the heating oil situation, when you basically squeeze supplies so tight, it doesn't take that much to upset the applecart, and that's what we've seen on the east coast. We've lost a refinery here, we've had some problems there. We had a cold front. You put it all together, and that's the recipe for disaster, and that's what we've seen.

GWEN IFILL: But you do have-- excuse me-- we do have a strategic petroleum reserve-- basically oil that's stashed away in caves in Texas and Louisiana-- that Secretary Richardson has said he's not inclined to tap in to, but the president has suggested that he hasn't ruled it out. Would that help at all, if we were to tap into that reserve?

DANIEL YERGIN: I think that... I mean, the existence of the strategic petroleum reserve is really to protect our national security, if there's a major disruption in say the Middle East or in other countries, and our security and the basic health of our economy. It's a kind of slippery slope if you start saying, "well, the price has reached this level, we should take a little out, at that level we should take a little out," and it turns into the kind of, government trying to, kind of to manage the price of oil. On the other hand, it does sit there, it is a deterrent, and I suspect what the President's remarks are meant to do is to send a message. But it's only a finite volume, and once you use it up, then you don't have a strategic petroleum reserve to protect you against disaster.

JOSEPH KENNEDY: Gwen, in my opinion, we don't need to tap the strategic petroleum reserve. The fact of the matter is that if we did, you'd have to take the crude oil out, you'd have to run it into a refinery, you'd have to break it down from everything from gasoline to Vaseline.

DANIEL YERGIN: And Joe, what does that take? That takes six to eight weeks?

JOSEPH KENNEDY: I mean, everybody's going to be frozen by the time that stuff happens. What we really need to do is just... It's a very simple to answer to this problem, which is that the government should just set minimum inventory standards. Right now in Massachusetts and throughout New England, you have the lowest levels of inventory that have ever existed since they started recording it. So if you don't have oil in the tank... I mean obviously, at some point, in New England, you're going to have a cold snap in the wintertime. And the industry kind of likes that, because the price skyrockets, and it goes up very, very quickly, and it comes down very, very slowly. So all I'm saying is look, if you had in fact kept in place... You look at the amount of money in Massachusetts alone that consumers have had to pay in the last month, it's probably risen by something like $150 million to $250 million. That's on top of their base load of about $250 million. So there's about $150 million to $250 million worth of excess costs that they've had to incur.

GWEN IFILL: Phil Flynn, a final word: Do you agree with that or is there another way?

PHIL FLYNN: Yeah, well, I definitely agree that you can't... the strategic oil reserve, or the petroleum reserve, if you tap into that, it's like trying to shoot a mosquito with a .357 magnum. It's not the right thing to do in this situation. Obviously, I think it's very important that we have adequate supplies for the east in times of winter, and I definitely think that has to be addressed.

GWEN IFILL: Phil Flynn, Daniel Yergin, Joe Kennedy, thanks all very much.

JIM LEHRER: And still to come on the NewsHour tonight, the South Carolina primary, the press bus, the Iranian elections, and a Roger Rosenblatt essay.

FOCUS - SOUTH CAROLINA - SHOWDOWN

JIM LEHRER: That Republican presidential campaign. We look at Saturday's showdown in South Carolina now with pollster Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press; and South Carolina co-chairs of the two major campaigns: Lieutenant Governor Bob Peeler for Governor Bush, and State Representative Terry Haskins for Senator McCain. Andy, first, what are the most recent polls showing between McCain and Bush in South Carolina, as we speak?

ANDREW KOHUT: Well, these polls are showing this race to be about even. Most of them all have Bush ahead, but by a little bit. McCain caught up after the New Hampshire primary. In fact, since then, he's fallen back a little bit, as Bush has come back. But I think there's a real question about whether it's as close as these polls say because of a couple of things. One, the performance of the polls in New Hampshire on the Republican side wasn't so good. Primaries aren't like general elections. And, secondly, South Carolina is a bucket of worms when you look at the internals.

JIM LEHRER: Explain the bucket and the worms.

ANDREW KOHUT: Okay. Let's do that. We have a graphic. We basically there are two sets of opinions. There are Republicans in these polls and here are two good polls, the Gallup Poll, the Los Angeles Times Poll; and they show a very comfortable lead, 59 to 34 and Gallup 55 to 34 -- Governor Bush. So that looks very comfortable for Governor Bush. That represents about 60% of those samples, 55% in the case of the LA Times. Now the rest of the sample is made up of independents and democrats. That shows just the reverse: 36% for Bush; 54% for McCain and about the same results in the LA Times poll.

JIM LEHRER: That's important because in this... This is an open primary and Democrats and independents can vote in it.

ANDREW KOHUT: Important and confusing. Confusing because these numbers of 40% or 45% are very much unlike what previous... The previous history has been in South Carolina Republican primaries. Four years ago when Senator Dole defeated Pat Buchanan, only about 30% or less than a third of the participants were independents. And so the question is, are these polls right? Are they overestimating independents? Or are they like the polls in New Hampshire, which underestimated independent participation, and therefore, underestimated Senator McCain's big win up there?

JIM LEHRER: And one of the worms is that it's impossible to predict at this point whether or not the independents and the Democrats are going to vote at the same level as the Republicans on Saturday.

ANDREW KOHUT: Exactly. Let me explain why real quickly. In general elections, we have a frame of reference. When I do the election in the fall, I will have six elections to look back on and say, ah, look at these questions. They show a trend of lower participation or higher participation. These guys are doing good work, but they don't have the models. They're in virgin territory, so to speak. And who knows basically? So I think you have to put quotation marks around this. I think the trend is important. We have to say it's a toss-up.

JIM LEHRER: A toss-up, Governor Peeler?

LT. GOV. ROB PEELER: Well, right now I think the best thing to do is to throw the polls out the window. Most of them show governor Bush with a slight lead but it's really a dead heat. We're nowhere in a dog fight here. We've just got to work hard because it's going to boil down to turnout like it does in most elections. Certainly in this election it will come down to that.

JIM LEHRER: So, in other words, you agree with the polls though that it's too close to call.

LT. GOV. ROB PEELER: There's no question about that. It's close here.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah, yeah. Representative Haskins, do you see it the same way?

TERRY HASKINS: Yes, absolutely. The candidates are neck and neck. It will all depend on who does the best job getting their voters out to the primary on Saturday. I hope whenever that vote is taken that everyone in South Carolina and the republican party will join hands once again and realize we're all on the same side.

JIM LEHRER: But Lieutenant Governor Peeler, are you concerned and the Bush folks concerned that so many Democrats and independents may have a role to play in who is going to be the Republican nominee?

LT. GOV. ROB PEELER: Well, I encourage all Republicans certainly to vote this Saturday on the 19th and those conservative Reagan Democrats who are disenchanted with the system to come out and vote. But now we do have, it looks like, a movement by some hard-core democrats here in South Carolina, as they would say, to mess with the primary. And I hope that everybody will have some honor and dignity and not do that. As a matter of fact, a House member just this past Sunday who is certainly a Democrat and the same Democrat who brought suit against the Republican primary to try to block it encouraged Democrats to come out and vote for John McCain because he thought that was the weaker candidate. And we hope we don't have a whole lot of that.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Haskins, do you think that's why Democrats might vote for John McCain is because they think he could be easily beaten in November by a Democrat?

TERRY HASKINS: If that's the case, then they're not looking at any of the national polls and the information that has been coming out from the polling companies which all show that john McCain beats Vice President Gore by a much greater margin than governor Bush. But the great irony of this campaign is that the Bush campaign has spent more money trying to tell voters that John McCain is moderate and liberal than John McCain has spent in his whole campaign. John McCain's not trying to appeal to moderates or democrats. But the Bush campaign is on TV and radio and direct mail telling people that John McCain's more moderate. I think they may be inadvertently increasing McCain's independent vote.

JIM LEHRER: You don't object to that?

LT. GOV. ROB PEELER: I disagree with my good friend Terry Haskins on that because that's just not true. It's interesting to watch John McCain try to act like the victim of all these negative politics. After he ran negative commercials for 18 days, he pulled his because they started backfiring. Even in the debate this past Wednesday night, he said he didn't have any negative ads running, and Governor Bush showed him this flyer -- which is a negative piece.

JIM LEHRER: On Governor Bush?

LT. GOV. ROB PEELER: He said it was not his piece. Governor Bush showed it to John McCain. John McCain said this isn't our piece. We're not doing this. He pointed out that it says John McCain 2000 on it. He said it wasn't his. After the debate he said it was his. It was made a couple of weeks ago and we're not running it anymore. After that, as late as today he said it my piece and we're going to keep running it. One thing we in South Carolina like is somebody to look us in the eye and say the same thing today that we said yesterday. They have found that McCain is saying one thing and doing another in many cases. Governor Bush has a positive message that's working here in South Carolina.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Haskins, how do you respond to that?

TERRY HASKINS: Well, I think it's funny really. Anybody who lives in South Carolina has been barraged with a constant stream of negative Bush ads against McCain, has been barraged with personal attacks against Senator McCain's character, you cannot watch TV anymore without seeing filthy, dirty campaign ads from the Bush campaign. What's really funny about it is Governor Peeler says that the people of South Carolina want somebody who will tell them the truth. I saw Governor Bush just a few days ago on TV saying that he's not running any negative ads -- he doesn't need to pull anybody down because he's not running negative ads. If you're going to be honest about it, you have to realize that Governor Bush is the one who is running the negative campaign in South Carolina. Sure, John McCain did respond with an ad. But he pulled it down when he realized that it was dragging the campaign down into a level he didn't want to bring it.

JIM LEHRER: Are they making any difference at all?

LT. GOV. ROB PEELER: I can tell you this....

JIM LEHRER: Hold on one second, Governor Peeler, I'll be right back to you. I just want to ask Mr. Haskins, are the negative ads whether they're being run by john McCain or they're being run by George Bush, are they making any difference at all?

TERRY HASKINS: Absolutely.

JIM LEHRER: Are they controlling the outcome, do you think?

TERRY HASKINS: I don't know if they'll control the output, but we know that negative campaigns are effective because people are developing an impression of John McCain that's not true. And John McCain's advisors told him not to drop his ads, to continue to respond and to set the record straight. But he refused because he said he was going to run a positive campaign and he was going to stick to that promise. And I hope that the people of South Carolina will endorse that positive campaign and that positive message and tell these campaigners once and for all that negative campaigns don't work. That's the only way we'll get rid of this kind of campaigning.

JIM LEHRER: Governor Peeler.

LT. GOV. ROB PEELER: Can I respond to that?

JIM LEHRER: Yes, sir.

LT. GOV. ROB PEELER: Briefly. I can tell you I'm not getting into the who started who first, who hit who first. That serves no purpose, but in New Hampshire John McCain started the negative ads and Governor Bush didn't answer them. It hurt him. In South Carolina, he has stood up for himself and called it what it is. And even Senator McCain went so far as to compare George Bush's character with that of Bill Clinton's. That was over the line. Even Lindsey Graham, one of his co-chairmen said that it was. He pulled it because it was backfiring on him and as late as Wednesday had two or three different answers on whether he was doing this negative attack flyer. That's not the way we want politics to be done in South Carolina.

JIM LEHRER: Well, let me ask you both beginning with you, governor peeler, forget the negative ads. We've talked about that enough. What is the defining issue, do you think, from the Bush campaign point of view, the defining issue in South Carolina between the governor and Senator McCain?

LT. GOV. ROB PEELER: I think it comes down to the point that he has produced results. He's done it in the state of Texas on education. He's talked about social security and shoring it up -- on tax relief for all Americans, not just a few -- and rebuilding our military to make it strong and, to me, I think the bottom line to most people in South Carolina that they honestly think they don't go by polls or what all these experts tell them but that they think that governor Bush has the best chance of beating Al Gore in November and finally bringing an end to the Clinton-Gore era in America.

JIM LEHRER: Representative Haskins, what would you say are the defining issues?

TERRY HASKINS: The defining issues in South Carolina this election campaign are character, strength of personality and a commitment to country that goes beyond self-interest. I think people are seeing in John McCain a man who has repeatedly throughout his life put his country above himself. And they see him as a man who would restore dignity and honor and respect and maturity to the office of the presidency. We have lacked that greatly for the last seven-and-a-half years, and Americans are yearning for a president they can look up to in that way.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Andy Kohut, back to you before we go. How does what the... Mr. Haskins and Mr. Peeler just said gibe with the national polls about how people are defining their reasons for being for Bush and McCain and where that matter stands nationally outside South Carolina.

ANDREW KOHUT: Basically it's the same answer. For McCain it's character; for Governor Bush, it's experience and ability to get things done. The supporters of each cite those reasons. It's a different set of evaluations, for sure.

JIM LEHRER: And the level of support, as you went through in the beginning of South Carolina, republicans versus independents and Democrats, that holds nationally too...

ANDREW KOHUT: It holds not to the same degree but Bush still leads nationally among Republicans and independents but there's this big gap. What's different in the national polls is that McCain has attracted the attention of a lot of independents, and he is well ahead of Gore where Bush and Gore are running pretty even in our poll, and in the Gallup poll as well.

JIM LEHRER: What are the national trends? Is there... Where is the movement? Where has the movement been say the last week or so?

ANDREW KOHUT: A number of important groups: Independents who are drawn to McCain like nothing since independents being drawn to Perot years ago. And secondly older voters. Older voters especially draft era men are drawn to Senator McCain. These two correlations stand out in the surveys with big, big margins of support for McCain in the general election tests that we conduct.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Haskins and Mr. Peeler, quickly, it's been predicted that you may have the largest turnout that you've ever in a Republican primary. Do you agree with that, Governor?

LT. GOV. ROB PEELER: We hope so. We had 276,000 vote four years ago. There have been estimates up from 300,000 to 400,000. I hope all of us get out and vote. We're not concerned about, in the Bush campaign, we encourage that.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Haskins, 400,000 or so?

TERRY HASKINS: Absolutely. I believe we'll hit 400,000 voters in this primary. Judging by the absentee ballots that have already been cast, the vote is going to be way, way above any past election in the state.

JIM LEHRER: Gentlemen, all three, thank you very much.

ANDREW KOHUT: Thank you.

LT. GOV. ROB PEELER: Thank you.

FOCUS - BOYS & GIRLS ON THE BUS

JIM LEHRER: Now, another politics story. It's about the life on the road for the traveling political press corps. Media correspondent Terence Smith reports.

MUSIC: Here's to the travelers on the open road...

TERENCE SMITH: In 1972, author Timothy Crouse wrote "The Boys on the Bus," the seminal account of life on the campaign trail. Ever since, reporters' road trips with would-be presidents have been the stuff of legend.

TIMOTHY CROUSE, Author, "The Boys on the Bus:" If your idea of a good time is flying around the country week after week, in the company of journalists and politicians...

(PEOPLE SINGING)

TIMOTHY CROUSE: ...Freed of all the normal strictures of daily life, in an environment where nobody is going to raise an eyebrow if you want to have your first drink at 11:00 in

the morning, this is the job for you.

SPOKESMAN: So we'll arrive Omaha at 6:05.

TERENCE SMITH: A new generation of reporters is logging thousands of miles with the candidates these days. The boys on the bus have become the more politically correct men and women. Equipped with space-age technologies, their numbers have multiplied, and they are trekking a different kind of campaign trail. Syndicated Columnist Jack Germond is covering his tenth presidential campaign. His newly published memoir of life on the road is entitled "Fat Man in a Middle Seat."

JACK GERMOND, Syndicated Columnist: A lot of good reporters cover politics, but a lot of them don't want to do it anymore, though. And get out of it.

TERENCE SMITH: Why?

JACK GERMOND: They don't like it. They don't like the politicians.

TERENCE SMITH: Is that some sort of post- Watergate cynicism?

JACK GERMOND: No, I think it's the sort of dehumanizing of the whole process, the isolation of the candidates, the sound-bite approach.

TERENCE SMITH: Gone are the days of 1972, when a handful of reporters traveled with the candidates and got to know them personally.

BRUCE MORTON: This is, I think, the warmest winter I have spent here.

TERENCE SMITH: Bruce Morton, now a national correspondent for CNN, covered the 1972 race, in which George McGovern waged an uphill battle to unseat President Richard Nixon.

BRUCE MORTON: McGovern, I remember, was flying at some point in two little propeller planes, and we'd all swap around, so you'd spend this leg with him, and another guy would spend the next leg with him. The heat went out in one of them. We agreed the candidate ought to have the heated plane, as I recall. You know, you had that kind of access.

JACK GERMOND: Then they'd have dinner with you, they'd have a couple of drinks with you. They weren't afraid you were going to blow them up for one cheap story. I mean, it was an entirely different attitude.

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Yeah, the creamed spinach was $18.

TERENCE SMITH: The notable exception in the current campaign is John McCain, who entertains reporters at length aboard his campaign bus, and has won sympathetic coverage as a result.

WALTER MONDALE: Thank Irma. Thanks, everybody. Thank you.

TERENCE SMITH: Over the years, the proliferation of news organizations, combined with satellite technology...

SPOKESPERSON: Turn the mikes on!

TERENCE SMITH: ...Have increased the size of the press corps geometrically.

JACK GERMOND: You now have these huge mobs, and what's happened, terry, is that the crowd of reporters, the press, has become so large that it becomes a spectacle in itself.

SPOKESMAN: Please, I'm asking you, please scoot over.

GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH: Seems like the number of cameras has increased mightily. I love the hardy band that stays with me through thick or thin. Guys?

ANNE KORNBLUT: Frankly, I don't think we see much more than the people at home would see watching him on television, except glimpses here and there.

TERENCE SMITH: Anne Kornblut, who was not even born in 1972, is covering George W. Bush for the "Boston Globe."

ANNE KORNBLUT: We don't spend a lot of time interacting with him, but we all have his speech memorized. What we see is what is put before us by the campaign. We see him in front of a podium five times a day, saying the same thing.

TERENCE SMITH: Being part of the pack day after day makes original reporting more difficult than it used to be.

TIMOTHY CROUSE: They are all witnessing exactly the same event, they are all receiving the same handouts from the candidate's staff, they are all interviewing the same people, and there's going to be a kind of sameness. There is this kind of psychology of the crowd.

TERENCE SMITH: Reporters must constantly guard against identifying with their candidates.

EDWIN CHEN, Los Angeles Times: We become captives to whatever particular campaign we are covering. We fly on his plane, and ride in his motorcade, and we are pretty much insulated from the outside world.

TERENCE SMITH: Edwin Chen is covering the campaign of vice president al gore for the "Los Angeles Times."

EDWIN CHEN: The Stockholm Syndrome, it's hard to fight, because you are in a bus, surrounded by the candidate's staff-- press secretaries, issues people, logistics people-- who can make your life so much easier.

SPOKESMAN: C'mon guys, we've got more power bars up here, if anyone is interested.

EDWIN CHEN: And you become part of the entourage, whether you like it or not, by dint of physically being in this bubble.

TERENCE SMITH: There is, as there has always been, a certain suspension of reality on the trail.

MUSIC: Here I am signed, sealed, delivered -- I'm yours...

TIMOTHY CROUSE: There is definitely about the campaign a quality of summer camp, because you enter a world where you don't have to worry about getting your teeth cleaned, where you can put aside paying your bills until the indefinite future, where you are away from all the duties of family life. You know, it's a kind of prolonged adolescence.

ANNE KORNBLUT: The places we go to are blurred. It begins at 7:00 A.M. We have many occasions where we don't know where we are.

SPOKESMAN: Where are we?

SPOKESMAN: Yeah, Indianola.

ANNE KORNBLUT: It's a lot of cold turkey sandwiches in boxes. We've said we are not going to eat anything that doesn't have a lot of mayonnaise in it, if we can...

TERENCE SMITH: The food was no better in 1972, but there was a feeling of being off on your own, of being set free. Timothy Crouse traveled that year with gonzo journalist Hunter Thompson for "Rolling Stone" Magazine.

TIMOTHY CROUSE: There weren't any laptops, you didn't have a cell phone. There was a machine we had at a "Rolling Stone" that Hunter Thompson called the Mojo, because it wasn't even called a fax yet.

JACK GERMOND: When you get on a bus now with a candidate, there's ten reporters talking on their cell phones or something, talking to some pale desk person back in the office.

MAN ON BUS: People keep calling me and telling me they've sent...

TERENCE SMITH: That immediate communication to the office-- and the world-- has had an impact on the news itself.

EDWIN CHEN: The spin cycle has so accelerated. It used to be maybe a 24-hour news cycle. Now you get something that happens early in the morning, you get a response from the opposing camp before lunch.

SPOKESMAN: Certainly need to move the picture by 3:00 this afternoon, central.

BRUCE MORTON: There is an endless cycle, a 24-hour cycle, in which somebody is always sticking a microphone in your face saying, "I need to know right now, I'm live."

SPOKESMAN: Is that right, Kevin?

GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH: I second that.

TERENCE SMITH: But are instant answers by candidates who would be president necessarily a good thing?

BRUCE MORTON: Eric Sevareid, the old CBS commentator, used to have a saying, which was "news every other day." And what he meant was sometimes, you just wanted some time to think about this, you know.

TERENCE SMITH: And does the frenzy, the pressure of the road, reveal something about the character of a candidate?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Come on down. Let's get fired up here.

EDWIN CHEN: When you are President of the United States, sometimes you need to respond on the spot. Whether you are dealing with Boris Yeltsin, or Vladimir Putin, or Saddam Hussein, you can't sit back and take polls and talk to 32 advisors and develop an issues paper. And that is part of the test.

TERENCE SMITH: The new technologies may also be making the bus obsolete. Campaigns, more and more, can communicate directly with the voter.

BRUCE MORTON: Of course, in another four years, it may be a virtual bus, I don't know. Really, you may be able to do a lot of this on the Internet.

SPOKESPERSON: Ken, do I need to tell anybody in transmission?

TERENCE SMITH: ABC News, while covering campaign 2000 for television, is sharing costly newsgathering resources with its internet site.

SPOKESPERSON: You know what Gore said at his thing, right?

TERENCE SMITH: Mark Halperin is political director for ABC News.

MARK HALPERIN, ABC News: How do you take all that content, all that knowledge, a lot of which in the past wouldn't have made it on to ABC News, but now can be used on abcnews.Com on the Internet.

TERENCE SMITH: The network has created a central desk, staffed 24 hours a day, where reporters can share information on their internal campaign site.

SPOKESPERSON: To say that Gore will be making news...

TERENCE SMITH: Information too detailed for television, but nectar for political junkies, can be displayed on abc.Com.

SPOKESPERSON: This is road to the White House...

TERENCE SMITH: With immediate access to news on cable and the internet, there is a question as to whether most journalists need to be with the candidate at all.

JACK GERMOND: You could cover most stories without ever leaving Washington. But it wouldn't be any fun. (Laughter) it would be sort of bloodless, but you'd see all the stuff that everybody sees.

SPOKESPERSON: Editorial, Dana...

TERENCE SMITH: Being on the bus may indeed not be as important as it once was.

SPOKESPERSON: Here is Saturday's schedule, if anybody needs it.

TERENCE SMITH: And here is another reality: Except for close primary races like the current one, news organizations no longer give the campaign the same prominent play they used to.

MARK HALPERIN: The end of the cold war means that covering presidential politics is simply less important. People are less interested in it. The stakes are not the same.

ANNE KORNBLUT: Our newspaper tries to reflect the way the country really works, and therefore, the White House can end up on page a27. (Applause)

TERENCE SMITH: Jack Germond says that in modern campaigns, issues are not always the centerpiece they once were.

JACK GERMOND: Civil rights-- that was the decisive issue for many Americans for a long time. The war in Vietnam. For some people, abortion rights, choice, is a defining issue. But nobody is going to walk through a wall for the capital gains tax, you know. (Applause)

TERENCE SMITH: What matters is the mettle of a man, who is, as Germond puts it, first and foremost good company.

JACK GERMOND: The dirty little secret of Reagan's presidency is that most people did not agree with Reagan on his programs. They liked him, you know. If they form this impression of somebody, it is based on what they think of them as people.

TERENCE SMITH: And in the 2000 campaign, personality, not issues, may matter more than ever.

EDWIN CHEN: Partly because of the whole Clinton scandal, people care more about honesty and character, I think.

TERENCE SMITH: In the end, despite all the turkey sandwiches and sleepless nights, for most of the boys and girls on the bus...

(Playing Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again") -- on the road again...

TERENCE SMITH: ...The romance of the road is still there.

EDWIN CHEN: As messy as it is, it's a way of measuring this person, who would be the most powerful man in the world.

TERENCE SMITH: As Timothy Crouse wrote a quarter century ago, "they were tired, cross, and so overworked that they could not stand another second of the campaign, and yet..."

JACK GERMOND: The only thing worse than covering this campaign would not be covering it.

TERENCE SMITH: "...They wanted it to go on forever."

FOCUS - WINDS OF CHANGE

JIM LEHRER: And one more election story. This one is about tomorrow's parliamentary elections in Iran. Lindsey Hilsum of Independent Television News reports.

LINDSEY HILSUM, ITN: Bicycles-- that's one of the issues for Iranian women in Friday's elections. They're not allowed to cycle in public in case the wind wraps their clothes around them, revealing the contours of their bodies. Then there's the question of initiating divorce: Men can, and women can't. Women expect female candidates to raise women's issues, says this campaigner, because these were ignored before. Fariba Pajooh is an architecture student. She's 20 and has joined the campaign team for one of the reformist parties. The 1979 revolution was spearheaded by young people, and so are today's politics of change.

FARIBA PAJOOH, Reformist Campaigner: (speaking through interpreter) I'm not giving you slogans. I want an Iran without discrimination against any group or person. Everybody should have the freedom to talk without fear of being imprisoned.

LINDSEY HILSUM: On the streets, the slogans have it. While conservative candidates trumpet the values of pure Islamic ideals, reformers-- aware that 70% of Iranians are under 30, and even 16-year-olds have the vote-- are wooing the youth. Live on TV last night, 500 couples marry. In revolutionary Iran, boys and girls aren't allowed to socialize together. Many want to marry young, but they can't afford it. This mass wedding brings down the cost, and they even let the young man and woman sit together. Then comes the politics. President Khatami, the reformer's hero, blesses the wedding, giving traditional gold coins, and a boost to the reformist campaign. But don't think that all young Iranians are alike. These are the Basiij. It means "those who are mobilized" -- boys, yes, and even some girls who say all they want is to martyr themselves for Islam. They're led by the national karate coach. It was the brothers of working class boys like these who lost their lives in the war against Iraq. They're now a street army for conservative clerics trying to hang onto power. One young man organizes a street exhibition commemorating 21 years of the revolution. For him, reform is just a cover for corrupting western values.

MEHDI POORSAYAH, Conservative Campaigner: (speaking through interpreter) We want a free Islamic Iran, solid and firm. We're the ones following the aims of the revolution, and our leader, Ayatollah Kohmenei.

LINDSEY HILSUM: Banners and slogans. 38 million Iranians meet on Friday and they know this election is important. The reformers hope they can tip the balance of Iranian politics, so the previously conservative dominated parliament will stop blocking and start promoting President Khatami's progressive program. The conservatives fear their power will slip away.

DR. HASSAN GHAFOURYFARD, Conservative Candidate: We have a special way of life, a special class of thinking, a very important ideology, which is a religious ideology which we have been sacrificing for, for the last 20 years, and we have done so much to make sure it is implemented in the country.

LINDSEY HILSUM: At a pro-reform rally in Tehran yesterday, teenagers clapped and swayed, not allowed. The conservatives blame western influence, Iran's opening up. Britain recently reopened its embassy, and there are increasing numbers of cultural and educational exchanges with the great Satan-- America-- something the reformers applaud.

AHMAD BOURGHANI, Reformist Candidate: (speaking through interpreter) My idea and the idea of all reformists is that we should completely remove the tension, and correct the distorted relationship Iran has with other countries.

LINDSEY HILSUM: 30 million Iranians have been born since Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution. Those who want change are not fighting for a new, secular revolution, but many want to break the absolute power of the clergy. Friday's parliamentary elections are their chance.

ESSAY- CONFRONTING THE PAST

JIM LEHRER: And finally tonight, essayist Roger Rosenblatt considers a collection of photographs of lynchings in America.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Glimpses of human depravity take on even greater horror when they are attached to a system, when they are civilized. The point of Claude Landsman's film, "Shoah," was that the Nazis ran the extermination camps as an orderly business.

(FILM SEGMENT)

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Records were kept, schedules followed. The apparatus of government abetted the apparatus of justification, with an overlay of pseudoscientific claptrap. Certain people were biologically inferior; they had to be eliminated; it was the duty of respectable society to purify itself through murder. All this comes storming back in an exhibit of photographs at the Roth-Horowitz Gallery in Manhattan, and in an accompanying book called "Without Sanctuary," pictures selected by James Allen and John Littlefield of lynchings that occurred in America between 1883 and 1960. The effect of these terrible images of bodies dismembered, charred and hung is equally repellent and hypnotic; an effect burnished by the fact that many of the images are on postcards. The people who approved of or participated in these crimes sent photos of them via the U.S. mail, to share their subhuman pleasure with others. One of the postcards reads: "This is the barbecue we had last night." The barbecue was a man. As awful as the sight of the victims is, the pictures of the surrounding and avid crowds are more awful still. Richard Wright wrote a short story called "Big Boy Leaves Home," in which a mob treats the burning of a black young man as both a social event and a sexual act. Women draw close to their men as the flames rise. One murmurs, "Sweetheart." In these pictures, one especially notices the hats of the on looking men-- symbols of formality of a time past. The spectators at the lynching of Jesse Washington in Waco, Texas, 1916-- the Stetsons, the straw skimmers; all civilized society gathered around a tortured naked man and a rope. The hats on the people at the lynching of Leo Frank, and at those of Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, Isaac McGhie and Frank Embry. There was both formality and method to these atrocities: Red hot pokers applied to eyes and genitals; bodies roasted over flames; souvenirs of fingers, toes and ears taken by the crowds, so many of whom were dressed to the nines for the occasions. At the burning of John Lee in Durrant, Oklahoma, 1911, the crowd looks as if it had been gathering for an outdoor town meeting. In another picture, a man is cooked like food before smiling men wearing hats. Sometimes we like to think we're all the same animal. Sometimes we don't. And sometimes the evidence of behavior is so appalling, we don't know what to think. Thanks to these pictures, we have a record of these atrocities, but the original purpose for keeping these pictures was self- congratulatory. People were glad these lynchings had occurred. They sought an archive to certify their satisfaction, to establish in pictures that this was the way they wanted America to be. That ordinary people did these things is deeply disturbing; that they manufactured a social rationale for their acts is more disturbing still. Look for a while at the picture of the lynching of Rubin Stacy, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, 1930. Look first at Stacy, then turn to the little girl in the summer dress, looking at Stacy, and then to the man behind her, perhaps her father, in the spotless white shirt and slacks and the clean white skimmer. They will stand there forever, admiring the proof of their civilization. I'm Roger Rosenblatt.

JIM LEHRER: The lynching exhibit moves to the New York Historical Society on March 15.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Thursday. Federal reserve chairman Greenspan warned the fed may raise interest rates again to combat inflation. Senator McCain said he'd be unstoppable in the Republican presidential race if he wins Saturday's South Carolina primary. And Texas Governor Bush accused McCain of running a low road campaign. We'll see you on-line and again here tomorrow evening with shields and gigot and more on the South Carolina primary, among other things. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.