The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer (2025)

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, the Bosnia peace talks. Charlayne Hunter-Gault interviews Richard Holbrooke. Race in America as seen by our essayists, Rosenblatt, Rodriguez, Fleming, Fisher, Page, and Theroux. The politiceconomics of balancing the budget, Paul Solman talks to two economists. Was it a great World Series? Elizabeth Farnsworth gets Doris Kearns Goodwin's answer. And what about Halloween? Roger Rosenblatt, never looking stranger, offers an even stranger answer. It all follows our summary of the news this Monday. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: The voters of Quebec went to the polls today to decide whether to secede from the rest of Canada. They turned out in record numbers. Charles Krause reports from Montreal.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Nearly 5 million Quebecers were expected to vote in today's referendum which will decide the political future of what is geographically Canada's largest province. Opinion polls suggested the outcome will be close, with the separatists holding a slight edge going into today's vote. In Montreal this morning, voting appeared to be heavy. There were long lines in the Hampstead section of the city, where English-speaking voters were expected to vote no to separation by overwhelming margins.

JEFF WEINSTEIN, "No" Supporter: I'm a Canadian, and I've always felt that I'm a Canadian. I've grown up in Quebec. I've gone to school here. I've raised my family here, and I feel that there is no future here for me, for an English-speaking Quebecer.

JOYCE TANNER, "No" Supporter: If we do have problems within Quebec and within Canada, if Quebec has problems within Canada, it doesn't make sense that if we separate that they're going to get along after. It's like a divorce. Are you going to get along better after you're divorced, or are you going to try and work out your problems before?

MR. KRAUSE: But 80 percent of Quebec's population is Francophone. And in French-speaking East Montreal this morning, voters were voting yes in favor of separation.

MARIE-CLAUDE HARVEY, "Yes" Supporter: I think the only way that we can ensure that the French culture in Quebec survives is to decide that we have our own country. I think that's the only way to do it. And that's why I voted yes.

LUCIE CHAGNON, "Yes" Supporter: If we say "no" now, we're going to have another referendum like in five years, ten years.

MAN ON STREET: Another Lake Meech, another 15 years of negotiation and nothing is--

LUCIE CHAGNON: Give it a try now. Give it a try now.

MR. KRAUSE: Today's vote comes five years after Canada's English- speaking provinces refused to recognize Quebec as a distinct society within Canada and poses the greatest threat to Canada's unity since confederation 128 years ago.

MR. LEHRER: House and Senate negotiators started work today on the Republican budget bills that passed last week. Final legislation is scheduled to go to the President in mid-November at the latest. President Clinton reminded Republicans today that he offered a balanced budget plan earlier this year. Republicans reminded him his plans had been rejected.

SEN. PETE DOMENICI, [R] New Mexico: He has nothing on the table that anyone in the United States Senate--and I doubt by vote no one in the United States gives any credit or faith to. So that hoax of running around America saying hehad a budget seems to me to have been zeroed out. So it's his turn to bring something real to the table.

MR. LEHRER: In his radio address over the weekend, Mr. Clinton repeated his veto threat. He said he wasn't even interested in negotiating with Republicans until they scale down their positions on Medicare, Medicaid, and education. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed today to review a case involving racial bias in crack cocaine. An appeals court ruled federal prosecutors can be asked to prove they are not targeting blacks in crack cocaine cases. The government claims proving racial fairness in such cases would delay trials and impede prosecutions. And in another decision, the court refused to reinstate a Georgia law letting parents--grandparents visit their grandchildren over the objections of their parents. The Justices rejected arguments the law does not interfere with parents' rights. Assistant Sec. of State Richard Holbrooke said today success could not be assured for the Bosnian peace talks. They begin Wednesday at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton. Holbrooke flew to Ohio today to prepare for the arrival of Balkan leaders. Before leaving, he briefed reporters at the State Department.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE, Assistant Secretary of State: If Dayton and the peace process do not succeed, the country will slip back into war, because the issues that led to war are unresolved. And if it slips back into war, I think the outcome will not only be tragic for all of the people but will certainly be even more disastrous for the Bosnian Serbs than it already has been.

MR. LEHRER: We'll have our own talk with Sec. Holbrooke right after this News Summary. Israel imposed security restrictions on Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza today. It followed the fear of violence from the Islamic Jihad, whose leader was murdered in Malta last week. All students in vehicles were barred from leaving the West Bank and Gaza. The age of workers allowed into Israel was raised from thirty to thirty-five. Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres spoke in Amman, Jordan.

SHIMON PERES, Foreign Minister, Israel: Israel doesn't close those areas out of a whim or caprice. We do it when we have definite information that there is an attempt to send in to Israel a car bomb or a terrorist activity. We cannot take it. We are entitled to have security.

MR. LEHRER: A British man has received history's first permanent electric heart. The device was developed by scientists at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston. It was implanted in Britain, because the U.S. Food & Drug Administration has not approved it for use here. The electric heart is placed in the left ventricle of the patient's heart. It's operated by three pounds of batteries worn outside the body and is supposed to work indefinitely. A Nevada jury today ordered Dow Chemical to pay $2 million in punitive damages in a breast implant case. That was in addition to the $3.9 million in compensatory damages awarded to a woman who claimed medical problems on leaky silicone breast implants. Dow Chemical said it would appeal the verdict. Baseball fans turned out by the thousands today to celebrate their home team's participation in the World Series. In Atlanta, the series-winning Braves road down the city's famed Peachtree Street on fire engines. National League Atlanta won the series Saturday night four games to two. In Cleveland, fans cheered the Indians, who won the American League pennant for the first time in forty-one years. We'll be talking to Doris Kearns Goodwin about the Series later in the program. Also coming up, Richard Holbrooke, race in America, budget economics, and a weird Halloween essay. NEWSMAKER

MR. LEHRER: We do go first tonight to a Newsmaker interview with Assistant Sec. of State Richard Holbrooke. He's the U.S. envoy to the Bosnian peace talks that begin Wednesday at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. Charlayne Hunter-Gault will conduct the interview. Charlayne.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Secretary, welcome.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE, Assistant Secretary of State: [Dayton] Thank you, Charlayne.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: I just heard you say in a news clip that success could not be assured against that backdrop. What's the mood now that you've arrived in Dayton? Is it optimistic, or what?

SEC. HOLBROOKE: Well, the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base people have been terrific in getting ready for these talks. I spent the day touring the facilities. The mood here is expectant, but for our part, we're watching all three sides harden to their positions, getting ready for Dayton. So we're looking forward to a very tough negotiation.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Who has arrived there, besides you?

SEC. HOLBROOKE: Nobody, except me. I just came out today to tour the facilities, to walk through, to see what the Air Force had done, a magnificent job, and I will return right after this program to Washington. President Clinton has asked to meet with the negotiating delegation tomorrow morning, and then we will return to Wright-Patterson tomorrow mid-day, and then the three presidents, Izetbegovic, Tudjman, and Milosevic, will arrive later in the day, along with the British, French, Russian, and German negotiators.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: After Wednesday, when the talks begin, the news media are going to be excluded. So could you just set the stage for us a little bit? Tell us what it's going to be like and what's going to happen after we've been all thrown out.

SEC. HOLBROOKE: Sorry about the media exclusion, Charlayne, but there comes a point at which we just can't progress if every single conditional or hypothetical issue is aired too fully in the press. I'm sure there are going to be leaks. I'm sure a lot of the leaks will be inaccurate, and we may have to do some course direction, but we will do the three things by agreement with the European Union. We will have a united contact group briefing through Nick Burns in the State Department whenever it's appropriate, and we're not promising anything more.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But what is the form of--I know you can't tell me what's going to be said and so forth, but how is this thing going to work? Who is going to be running it? I understand there's a chairperson, just a little bit of that.

SEC. HOLBROOKE: Well, you know, we're calling these proximity peace talks because most of the discussion will be without the presidents face to face, but they'll be separated by only a few hundred feet, and the United States and other negotiators will move back and forth. In that sense--

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: In different rooms?

SEC. HOLBROOKE: Yeah, different rooms, but we will begin with all three presidents together under the chairmanship of the Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, who is on his way back from Amman right now to, to preside over these meetings. And then I can't tell you what's going to happen next. You know, historically, there have been very few negotiations with anything resembling this complexity. Camp David comes close because there you had Sadat and Begin, but there was only two countries, not three, as there are here. And there's only one negotiating intermediary, the United States, whereas here you have the five contact group nations. So this is going to be one without much precedent. I don't know how it's going to proceed. We know, however, what the issues are, and we know that we could not proceed on the issues any further without bringing the parties together. It's something of a gamble, Charlayne. It is something of a gamble to bring them here, but we felt that, as President Clinton has said, this is our last best chance to turn from war to peace.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What's the main goal of these talks?

SEC. HOLBROOKE: The main goal of the talks is to move us towards peace. I'm not going to cite a specific goal because I don't know how far we're going to get, and we're not going to predict success, but we do think that this is the best way to move forward. We already have a cease-fire throughout the country, the strongest of the many cease-fires we've had in the region over the last four years. The presidents have agreed to come here. We're going to put forward American ideas on a comprehensive peace settlement, on constitutional arrangements, on the elections, on the right of refugees to return, on full respect for human rights, on the war crimes tribunal issue, and, of course, on the territorial division between the Serb part of Bosnia and the Croat-Muslim Federation. And then we'll see what happens next.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But already, you've accused the Bosnian Serbs over the weekend of misrepresenting agreements reached in New York on September 26th, and they are asking for the right to secede, the right to conduct their own foreign policy. How serious are these kinds of up-front demands?

SEC. HOLBROOKE: Well, both of the things that you mentioned are things that the Pale Serbs announced they want, but both of those things are not part of the New York agreements and they're not things the United States is going to allow to occur. We are not in the business of dividing Bosnia-Herzegovina into two countries.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So do you--

SEC. HOLBROOKE: That is the exact opposite of what our stated goal is.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, is that--

SEC. HOLBROOKE: We are not--let me be clear on this, Charlayne- -we are not going to preside in Dayton over an agreement which divides Bosnia into two countries.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So how do you--

SEC. HOLBROOKE: Full stop.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What do you make of this kind of--these kinds of pronouncements? I mean, do you think the peace talks are stopped before they get started with this kind of talk?

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ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: And not know that racism is very much extant in large places, in, in powerful places like, for example, the police force in Los Angeles, in a way that is inexcusable, in a way that one wished in the wake of this that the mayor had stood up, the police chief had stood up, even the President had stood up and said, look, this will not be tolerated. What it seems to me that we often have in this country is an "either/orness," either racism is extant everywhere and, and it's oppressing everybody, or it's not a factor anymore, and everybody should just pick themselves up by the bootstraps and go on with their lives. My feeling is, again, it is more complicated. I think we have to say that it is still a major ongoing wound in this country. We have to look at it. We have to keep talking about it.

MR. LEHRER: But, Roger, is it--is it an attitude? Is that what it's all--is that what a--I'm not talking about--I didn't ask about racism. They've moved it into racism--but the problem among races, whether they're black or white or brown or, or Asians or whatever, is it a matter of attitude?

ROGER ROSENBLATT: It probably isn't solely a matter of attitude, Jim, but I was surprised and, and hurt, in fact. I think most whites were, at least white liberals were hurt by the recent events starting with the O.J. Verdict, by the amount of pain that derived from certain attitudes.

MR. LEHRER: On the part of the blacks, or on the part of the whites?

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Well, the attitude on the part of blacks that reflected an attitude on the part of whites. The thing that I was struck with, and this becomes an interior matter--I think all these questions eventually become individual matters which rescue them in a way so that we don't think of one another in terms of categories--was the complacency that I had been experiencing in myself since the mid 60's. When I was in high school and when I was in college, I did civil rights work. I thought when the voting rights laws were passed in '64 and '65, that was roughly it. Everything now would be sort of polish on it, and we don't have to worry really about this subject, it would all settle itself. Then that kind of complacency, combined with a sort of coldness about the, the underclass in inner cities committing crime, and a kind of cheering for the upper third that Clarence mentioned, that they've made it sort of confirmed this--you know, made the complacency seemed justified.

MR. LEHRER: So if Clarence was doing all right then, that means there's no longer a race problem?

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Precisely. That's what I was thinking.

MR. LEHRER: Okay.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: That--or no longer a race problem. At least, we're headed in the right direction, not much of an undercurrent of trouble. And I happened to be out in the, in Nebraska of all places in terms of the number of African-Americans out there, and I was talking to a young woman in her late twenties who--a young black woman who worked in educational television out there--she was the ideal of the American success story, everything that one would want of somebody she was. She was impressive in every possible way, and she was beloved in the community. And I said, "Does this"--this was two days after the O.J. verdict--I said, "Does this make any sense to you, this cheering at the verdict and so forth?" And she said, When I walk down a street in Lincoln, Nebraska, and I walk down a street in this town, I know that the people know me, I know that they admire me, and yet I think to myself, they are thinking, "stupid, inarticulate," and I were black--if I were man, rather, they would be thinking, "stupid, inarticulate, dangerous." And that kind of thing I think brings you to your knees.

MR. LEHRER: Does that make sense to you, Jim Fisher? You just came from--you live in that part of the country.

JIM FISHER: Yeah. I don't know if we're just not talking this thing to death. We go--you know, the O.J. trial is going to take its place with Rosco "Fatty" Arbuckle, who was convicted in the 1920's--and not convicted--he was found innocent--but in Lizzy Borden, who was found innocent, and you think about how we are today, we consider those people guilty, but they were innocent. And I wonder if it's just not we need to talk to each other, and nobody's really talking. But I don't know how we can talk to each other.

MR. LEHRER: But before we get to that, I mean, what is the--what do you see from your--from your perspective as a newspaper columnist in Kansas City, Missouri, as somebody who travels for a living all through the small towns in Kansas and Missouri, Nebraska, that whole area, is there a race problem out there, and if so, where?

JIM FISHER: I see people getting along.

MR. LEHRER: Getting along.

JIM FISHER: I--

MR. LEHRER: Why do they get along?

JIM FISHER: I think it's lack of crowding. It's not that you haven't--you haven't pushed somebody in one part of town and pounded them up next to each other so that there's no place to move. There's a little town named Dalton, Missouri, half and half, black and white. The mayor's black. Everybody gets along. I mean, and I think one of our problems is crowding. It's not crime, and it's not drugs, and it's not pollution, although that's part of it. But we have become a--we've become a society which everybody goes inside at night, and I know this is Pollyannish and we should, you know, it'll never happen again, but everybody goes in at night. And an old farmer told me once in the 40's, he said, "The blue light came on behind the window," television. Then maybe radio a little bit before that. But people watch television; they don't go down to the general store; they don't go to the park. And in, in big cities, and I think they still do more of that in small towns.

CLARENCE PAGE: May I interject something real quick? Malcolm X came from Nebraska. Let's remember that.

JIM FISHER: There were riots in Nebraska.

CLARENCE PAGE: Exactly. A lot of times what seems to be racial peace on the surface--

JIM FISHER: I'm talking about small towns.

CLARENCE PAGE: I came from a small town, Jim. I agree with you, but all I'm saying is that, that we must remember that beneath the surface of racial peace, I think we get along better as individuals than as groups, is what i'm saying. I think a lot of individuals, Americans, they get along much better than ever before as individuals. We're making more contact day to day than ever before, but still outside the work place we're not making as much contact as we should.

MR. LEHRER: Why is that, Phyllis? What's the group problem, as you see?

PHYLLIS THEROUX: I don't think that there's really--we have not yet figured out why we need to talk to each other. I mean, for instance, if you have a tax problem, you're going to find a tax attorney or, you know, somebody from H&R Block. I really think that one needs to have a serious need to talk to black Americans and black Americans need to have a serious need to talk to white Americans. I'm in a small town right now.

MR. LEHRER: Outside of Washington.

PHYLLIS THEROUX: Yeah. Outside of Washington. And the people there, black and white people in this small town, have always prided themselves on getting along very well. But it was a racist society because I think it's just in the water, and I started--

MR. LEHRER: What does that mean, that it's a racist society, and it's in the water? What does it mean to you? How do you see that manifest itself in your small town?

PHYLLIS THEROUX: Well, let me--I want to take a positive track to that answer or to that question. About three years ago, we started a women's dinner club in Ashland.

MR. LEHRER: Ashland, Virginia.

PHYLLIS THEROUX: Ashland, Virginia. Of black and white women from two different churches that had met each other through a project. And it was only about six months ago that the subject of race was finally raised because we finally felt comfortable enough to do it. And at that point, a lot of the--well, not a lot--there are only about six white women and six black women--one of the black women said, If I was not in this group, I would still be calling you Mrs. Theroux or Mrs. Whoever, among the white members, and she began little by little to talk about what it was like to be black in this small town when she was growing up. And it was news to all of the white women there, and they were horrified.

MR. LEHRER: The discussion went on a while, and we'll have a second half of it later this week. Still to come on the program tonight, budget economics, Goodwin on baseball, and Rosenblatt on scary. FOCUS - DELICATE BALANCE

MR. LEHRER: Now, the long view of the current budget debate. Our economics correspondent Paul Solman of WGBH-Boston is in charge.

PAUL SOLMAN: To take a step back from the Washington budget debate, why balance the budget? Economically, what exactly are we trying to accomplish? Well, for these and other questions, we turn to two eminent economists, Murray Weidenbaum, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under Ronald Reagan, he's now head of the Center for the Study of American Business at Washington University in St. Louis, and Robert Heilbroner, who brought several generations of readers back to economic basics with his book The Worldly Philosophers. He's professor emeritus at the New School of Social Research in New York. Gentlemen, welcome to you both. Prof. Weidenbaum, let's start with you. Put simply, what's the economic argument for moving toward a balanced budget?

MURRAY WEIDENBAUM, Economist: [St. Louis] Basically, we need to leave more of our money in the private sector so that we generate enough saving and investment for a more rapidly growing economy, more job creation, and an economy that can do a better job of holding its own in an increasingly competitive world market place.

MR. SOLMAN: So the argument for you is that government shouldn't be taking up this much of a share of the economy?

PROF. WEIDENBAUM: That's right.

MR. LEHRER: And, and Prof. Heilbroner, how do you respond? What's the argument for, for--against what he's saying?

ROBERT HEILBRONER, Economist: [New York] First of all, it's not a very big share. It's a very normal share, but the share that all industries or countries have. And secondly--

MR. SOLMAN: That is government's share of the total?

PROF. HEILBRONER: Government's share of the total. And secondly, I think Murray Weidenbaum overlooks the fact that government makes an indispensable contribution to the well-being of society by doing what it does, partly by carrying out the functions of government and even more important, by carrying out certain kinds of capital investments which the private sector can't do. Of course, there are roads and bridges and tunnels and there's educational support and research. That's absolutely essential. And if government doesn't carry out those functions, the country will slow down this growth. And finally, most of those functions are financed and should be financed by borrowing, just as they are in the private sector. When the private sector carries out its ordinary business of selling goods over the counter, it doesn't have to borrow. When the private sector decides to build a new wing on the shop to set up a whole new plant, they have to borrow the money. It's just too much to take it out of the current budget. And the same should be true of government. Government should borrow for purposes that expand and accelerate our growth and our well-being.

MR. SOLMAN: So Prof. Weidenbaum, how do you respond? Doesn't government need to borrow? If we don't borrow more than other countries, what do we have to worry about here?

PROF. WEIDENBAUM: There are two key points that bob Heilbroner overlooks. First of all, we save much less as a proportion of our economy than most of the other large industrial nations, so after the government borrows, there's very little, certainly an inadequate supply of saving left over for private investment. As for government borrowing for government investment, the fact is, overwhelmingly, the deficits that we have are not for investment but for consumption, for transfer payments, entitlements is the new buzzword for that. The smallest proportion of our budget is devoted to the items that might make for a stronger future economy. Most of the federal budget is dissipated in terms of any serious economic effect, and after all, we are not talking about eliminating government, eliminating the budget. We're talking about slowing down what's been a very rapid increase in deficit spending.

MR. SOLMAN: Prof. Heilbroner, he makes two points here, first about private saving. Is the government eating up the private savings of the American people and, therefore, we don't have any money left over in banks and so forth to invest, the private sector doesn't, how do you respond to that?

PROF. HEILBRONER: Well, the question of savings is a very complicated one. And the funny thing is there's more than one number. I mean, the Department of Commerce does show a fall in savings, and the Federal Reserve Bank shows a rise in savings. And there are other ways to figuring the number, and they're very, very untrustworthy. It seems to me that the numbers, that the momentum of this society does not hinge on a shortage of savings; it hinges on a shortage of investment, and investment is not held back by savings when you have lost a lot of employed factors. Certainly, investment in public capital of various kinds is not hindered because there isn't enough savings of a person some way or other, government borrowing, deficit, is crowding out the private sector. I don't think there's scintilla of evidence.

MR. SOLMAN: But Prof. Weidenbaum thinks that your investing is really consumption or pork. He didn't say pork, but how do you respond to that? I mean, did the government--you say it's investing. He says, hey, I look at the same spending, and I see that as consumption.

PROF. HEILBRONER: Murray Weidenbaum raises a very important point, which if we had an hour we might clarify. It has--it has to do with the fact that there really is no very clear budgeting on the part of onlookers who look at the government figures and divide it into two categories: ordinary maintenance, operational expenses, and capital expenses, investment expenses. You can go through these numbers and find buried investment that is simply not pulled out as such. You look at the government figures; there is not a figure called government investment. But people who have looked, like Bill Nordhous, for example, have come up with much larger numbers for the importance of the government in the total economy than show up. What is needed, of course, is the clarification of the numbers, then people would stop worrying so much. If we knew, for example, which seems, I think, likely, that the government actually invests through education, through infrastructure and the rest, something like $200 billion a year, and there was a deficit, of borrowing, of $200 billion, nobody would get worried, you'd say, well, that's good, I'm glad we have that public investment, and of course, we're borrowing for it, that's the right thing to do, and we're doing what every other country does. There's nothing unusual in our proportions, in our volume of expenditure.

MR. SOLMAN: Prof. Weidenbaum, how do you respond to that?

PROF. WEIDENBAUM: I would worry about it a great deal, because if you look carefully at the whole gamut of federal government spending programs, you find very little that are effective, that are productive, that are worth taking investment and even consumption funds out of the private sector. Compare the productivity of money spent in the private sector with money spent by the federal government. It's a very discouraging comparison.

PROF. HEILBRONER: Murray, I'd love to do that.

PROF. WEIDENBAUM: I've done it.

PROF. HEILBRONER: Murray, what I would like to do is compare the productivity of the roads, the bridges, the tunnels, the education, the GI Bill type of thing, with the productivity of Disneylands and some other wonderful examples of what private enterprise can do. Which do you think is the more productive? Which do you think urges American growth on to higher levels and to reach more people? Which do you think?

PROF. WEIDENBAUM: Bob, if you want to take the most productive federal investment and compare it with the least productive private investment, you can have a lot of fun, but if you look at the great bulk of federal spending, you find--first of all, you do not find investment--you find consumption. And if you look at the investment, so much of the so-called federal investment are items such as federal buildings that do not generate productivity, do not generate a large return to the future.

MR. SOLMAN: Gentlemen, can I jump in for a second? Is this just a case of your assumptions, one set of assumptions against the other? Prof. Weidenbaum, you know, you define it one way; he seems to define it another. Is that a fair way to look at things?

PROF. WEIDENBAUM: I suggest that Bob Heilbroner and others do what I have done repeatedly, sit down and look at the details of the federal budget, not the broad statistical categories; look at the individual appropriations for the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Energy, the Department of Health & Human Services. If you won't wind up shaking your head the way I do when I look at the details, I would be extremely surprised.

MR. SOLMAN: Let me take it a step away. Prof. Heilbroner, the role of government, at least since the Depression, the 1930's, has been to promote growth in the ways you're talking about and also to fiddle with the economy, if you will, stimulate it when it needs stimulating, certainly during the Depression. Have we--are we seeing a revolution here, a change? Is that era over do you think?

PROF. HEILBRONER: I hope not. It seems to me we should be doing what all the industrial countries are trying to do, use the government to fulfill the, the national needs for growth and for well-being. And by pulling back, by frightening ourselves with words like debt and deficit, without even recognizing that deficit just means borrowing, and of course, there's good borrowing and bad borrowing, and that debt just means government bonds and without them, we'd be a very handicapped nation, indeed, but, of course, we frighten ourselves with the words. I fear we may be pulling back in activities that are very important. Murray says there's lots of waste in the government. I don't doubt there's waste in the government. There's lots of waste in the private sector, and I'm sure he doesn't doubt that. You can't--you can't smear the whole effort. Of course there is--of course a matter of redundancy and nonsense--the same way that you could smear the private sector by saying, look--by my using Disneylands as being the example of, of what the private sector does as a whole. But you have to recognize that both sectors are indispensable for a nation like this, a capitalist system, to continue and to grow, and the public contribution is just as important as the private and in some ways more important because it can't be done by the private sector. It doesn't yield profits.

MR. SOLMAN: Prof. Weidenbaum, do you see a revolution here, a sea change, an era ending?

PROF. WEIDENBAUM: I see a sea change. For once, we, as a nation, seem to be embarked seriously on an effort to redress the balance between the public and the private sector. And that is the key term, balance. Neither one of us wants to eliminate the public sector or the private sector. I think the tilt has been excessively in favor of government. The time has arrived to tilt the balance in favor of greater private decision-making, because to take the Disneyland example, no one forces you to go to Disneyland; that's your personal decision to use your money. On the other hand, the boondoggles in the agriculture, commerce, energy departments, et cetera, are nothing that you and I can decide on. The government decides to spend our tax money for those purposes. That's the essential difference.

MR. SOLMAN: One last question. What about fairness here? Prof. Heilbroner, how important is that a factor in what you're saying, arguing for the bridges and the like in terms of who will have to pay if we balance the budget?

PROF. HEILBRONER: I think fairness is of extraordinary importance, and I think unfortunately, the numbers show that we've become a less fair, a dramatically less fair country over the last 20 years. Part of that can be redressed by the government, not all of it, and part of it can be redressed by the government undertaking activities like support for education, which in the long run is the best way to redress things, indeed, like racial tension and certainly the handicaps of being under-educated.

MR. SOLMAN: And Prof. Weidenbaum, fairness, just briefly?

PROF. WEIDENBAUM: I think the basic approach to fairness is to give the individual person, the individual family more opportunity to decide how it wants to spend its--and invest its own money and not let government do it for them.

MR. SOLMAN: Well, thank you both, gentlemen, very much. UPDATE - WORLD SERIES - THE OL' BALL GAME

MR. LEHRER: Now, the World Series. It ended Saturday night with the Atlanta Braves besting the Cleveland Indians four games to two. Here are some highlights from the last game Atlanta won by a score of one to nothing.

SPORTS ANNOUNCER: [Saturday] Back through the middle! Vizquel flags it down. On to first to get the diving bell yard on a gorgeous double play. That pitch on the outside corner rolled and rolled weakly to third or short. Second strike out of the inning and his third in his first two 1-1 pitch. A long drive to right. Ramirez turns, she's gone! [cheering] Dave Justice, all is forgiven in Atlanta. Left center field. Grissom on the run, the team of the 90's has its world championship! [wild cheering]

MR. LEHRER: What kind of World Series was it, and what does it all really mean? Well, Doris Kearns Goodwin, one of our regular historians, is here with some answers. Doris appeared on the recent PBS series on baseball. She's writing a book about growing up a Brooklyn Dodgers' fan. Elizabeth Farnsworth will pose the questions. Elizabeth.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What did you think of the World Series, Doris?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN, Historian: [Boston] Well, I think against all odds, it turned out to be a much better Series than anyone could have predicted in the Spring. You had the Spring delayed by this terrible strike. You had this crazy two-tiered playoff system that might have ended up with wild cards playing in the World Series, taking away the whole point of a long Series where the best teams come together for a World Series. This time, the two best teams played one another. They were tense games. they were played in cities that really cared about it. As a fan, I would have preferred more hitting, like the Yankee Seattle Series, not the purist pitcher lover, but still it turned out to be much better than anyone would have thought starting out this terrible year.

MS. FARNSWORTH: And do you think that the problems that baseball's been facing over the last couple of years, then especially the strike and a much lower attendance that we saw earlier this year, do you think that's been solved, or cured, by this Series?

MS. GOODWIN: No, I don't think so. I think the strike was really the culmination of a series of problems that really have eroded the loyalty of the fan to the team over a long period of time. When I grew up with the Brooklyn Dodgers, the same players were on the team for a whole decade of my childhood. There was no free agentry, so I knew every quirk of Campanella talking to the players behind the field, Carl Forillo's rifle on to first, Jackie Robinson stealing bases. And you could connect to a whole group of people, not just to a team. Once free agentry came and your players just leave you at will, it's hard to feel the same loyalty to them. And on top of that, in the old days you could never make somebody have to pay you to give you an autograph. In fact, you could go to the games and give a postcard to a player, and they'd send it to you back in the mail, because they wanted to have a connection to their fans. And then you had team owners like Walter O'Malley, who we hated in Brooklyn, who took our team away for money reasons to another place. That's happening over and over today. The Cardinals may move; Houston may move. All of these things have made it harder for you to feel that you can really give your loyalty. You're giving love to a team, and if you're going to be hurt back and back, you're going to take that away and feel more distant. The strike was just the culmination of the role that money's played in taking away that relationship over a long period of time.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Doris, you've been a fan for many, many years. What is it about baseball that you love?

MS. GOODWIN: Well, I think it started when I was six years old and my father taught me this mysterious and wonderful art of keeping score so that when he went to work during the day I could record for him play by play, inning by inning, everything that happened that day to the Brooklyn Dodgers, and he came home and sat on the porch, and he told me I was doing okay as an historian. There's nothing like that connection between a family member and a child, and I think baseball has that more than any other sport, because it's so long stretched out in a season, and then when you pass that on to your children, I now have three sons who are almost as addicted as I am staying up all summer long to listen to those games on the West Coast, and I feel sometimes when I'm talking to them or sitting in our seats with them at the Fenway Park, where I've now become a Red Sox fan, as if I can remember the days of sitting with my father at Ebbets Field, and somehow it all gets mixed up in your mind. The game is so slow-paced; there's time to think; there's time to remember other teams that looked like the one you're watching. Other sports are too mixed up in terms of time, too fast-paced, to allow that generational memory to come from father to child.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Do you think your sons have the same loyalty to the Red Sox that you had to the Dodgers?

MS. GOODWIN: I'm afraid I've given that to them, which means they're likely to be as unhappy as I was as a child. I remember after the '86 Series, though, when they were younger, and I was crying, and they said to me, what's the matter, Mom, they'll win next year, and I couldn't help but tell them--I didn't want to tell them--you don't understand, they haven't won since 1918--this may never happen in our lifetime. They are almost as addicted as I am. I'm not sure that they are typical, because kids don't play Little League as much as they used to. There's lots of other sports that compete in interest today, football, basketball, hockey. When we were growing up, baseball was the dominant sport, so you didn't have as many choices. Now there's a lot more choices.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Well, Doris, thank you very much for being with us.

MS. GOODWIN: You're welcome. ESSAY - SCARY TIMES

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight, something entirely different, a Halloween essay by a very different Roger Rosenblatt than the one we saw in the race discussion earlier in the program. Please be forewarned. What you are about to see is very strange.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Halloween again, the night that was invented to drive away the things that scare you by calling them together at a single time, an exercise in optimism, a superstition in itself. Touch wood; pocket a rabbit's foot; keep Halloween, and everything will be okay. Give that witch a cookie. Of course, expelling fears was a lot easier when all that people had to worry about were witches and monsters, ghouls and goblins, gremlins, and ghosts, the ordinary run. But this is 1994. The scares are huge. Everything is big, bigger, biggest. What scares you these days? The mergers? The mergers are big. Disney swallows Cap Cities. Time Warner that used to be Time, Inc., tacks on Ted Turner. Time Turner? Turner Warner? And CBS and Westinghouse, and Viacom and Paramount, and Chemical Bank and Chase Manhattan. Just when you think, well, they can't get any bigger, here they come again, twice their former size.

ACTOR: ["Ghostbusters"] It's the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: The hulking giant companies stalk the nation like the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man in the movie "Ghostbusters," causing the ground to tremble. Do they make you tremble? Will they swallow you too? Hang in there. Maybe you're afraid that someone will come up with one more TV talk show. Talk shows are big, getting bigger. Everybody who is anybody has one. Donahue is ancient history, Oprah modern history. One might wish that Geraldo were history; he will be soon because here's Lisa, here's Ricki, here's Jenny, here's Roger Ailes and George Hamilton. Here's tom Snyder, back from the grave. Here's Dee Dee Myers and Tim Russert and Charles Grodin and Montel Williams, not to mention Charlie Rose, not to mention Jay and David and Conan.

LARRY SANDERS: [HBO] The one and only Roseanne!

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Not to mention the acid parody of the above, the "Larry Sanders Show," which instead of killing off the form seems to have helped it grow. While I've been reciting them, two more talk shows have come into being. Is one of them yours? Are you a talk show host? Is that what you're afraid of? Or are you scared that you'll be a guest on a talk show? Do you wake up screaming from the nightmare that you are sitting in a chair and Larry King is leaning his body toward you, asking how it is that you became so wonderful? Stay calm. Are you afraid of big blockbusters, I mean big? Will a big blockbuster come around tonight and bust your block? There are blockbuster movies like Kevin Costner's "Water World," the biggest, the most expensive. Is it rolling like a tidal wave toward your door? Grab a lifeboat. there's a new blockbuster novel, The Horse Whisperer. Reviewers say that it's no good, but it's big. That's what counts. Three million dollars for the movie rights, over three million for the book. Draw the blinds. There's a new blockbuster political figure, Colin Powell, comes packaged with the big blockbuster story of his life. They don't come any bigger. Is Gen. Powell headed for your house in the middle of the night? Sit tight. Perhaps you're scared of the new big glossy magazine, Hello, "George." Trick or Treat. Or the big new celebrity that comes with the magazine. Hello, John, Jr. Trick or treat. The big new scandal, Calvin Klein. The big new phenomenon: the Worldwide Web. The big new promotion: "Windows 95." Big new. Big new. Maybe Zbigniew Brzezinski is making a comeback. Big news Zbigniew. Is that what frightens you? But this is Halloween. You have to gather all the things that you fear in one place on one night to drive them away. Do you have the nerve? Do you have the stomach for it? There's the doorbell now. All the cookies in the world are not going to placate this crowd--the mergers, the talk shows, the blockbusters, the celebs. They're all too big. Don't do it. Don't answer the door. If you keep very, very still, they may go away. No more big, bigger, biggest. No more noise and hype. The world will shrink back to the size you like best to the size you can handle, back to a quiet, modest, sensible place. Sure it will. Boo. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Monday. Voters in Quebec went to the polls to decide whether to secede from the rest of Canada. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke said on the NewsHour success could not be assured for the Bosnian peace talks. They begin Wednesday at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton. And a British man has received history's first permanent electric heart. We'll see you tomorrow night, Halloween night, with full coverage of the Quebec vote and the first of several looks at how Americans feel about sending U.S. troops to Bosnia. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.