JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I`m Jim Lehrer.
On the NewsHour tonight: the news of this Friday; then, part of what Defense Secretary Gates had to say today about the Walter Reed story; two views on a passengers` bill of rights, after thousands of air travelers were stranded by last week`s ice storms; an inside look at the sounds and proceedings of the U.S. Supreme Court; the weekly analysis of Mark Shields and David Brooks; and a Paul Solman economics report on the connection between what we earn and how long we live.
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JIM LEHRER: The battle on Iraq strategy moved today toward revisiting the president`s authority to conduct the war. There was word Senate Democratic leaders will pursue that option when Congress returns next week.
The Washington Post reported the idea is to repeal the 2002 resolution that authorized the war. A new resolution would restrict U.S. troops to training Iraqis and helping with border security and counter terror. At the White House today, Deputy Press Secretary Tony Fratto said the president opposes that move, but he voiced hope of avoiding an outright confrontation.
TONY FRATTO, Deputy White House Press Secretary: We`re not looking for any kind of standoff. What we`re looking for is ensuring that the president has the flexibility and resources to carry out this mission.
We`re confident that he has the authority; he does have the authority. We`re confident in -- that we`re going to be able to make sure that he continues to have the necessary funding and the flexibility to carry out these operations on the ground.
JIM LEHRER: It was also widely reported House Democrats may back away from plans to tie war funding to troop readiness.
Still, Vice President Cheney again criticized House Speaker Pelosi for her antiwar stance. While visiting Australia, he told ABC News, "If we adopt the Pelosi policy, we will validate the strategy of al-Qaida. I said it, and I meant it." Pelosi demanded this week that President Bush repudiate the vice president`s criticism.
In Iraq today, U.S. troops detained the son of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the country`s top Shiite politician. He was taken into custody at a checkpoint near the Iranian border. He was held for 12 hours, then released.
Later, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad apologized for the incident.
ZALMAY KHALILZAD, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq: I`m sorry about the arrest. We don`t know the circ*mstances for the arrest, and we are investigating. And we do not mean any disrespect to Sayyid Abdul al-Hakim or to his family.
JIM LEHRER: U.S. officials have complained that some Shiite factions in Iraq are getting weapons and money from Iran.
Also today, the U.S. military announced three more American soldiers were killed in western Iraq on Thursday; 70 U.S. troops have died so far this month, mostly in combat; more than 3,150 have been killed since the war began four years ago.
A second U.S. soldier is going to prison for a rape-murder in Iraq. Sergeant Paul Cortez was sentenced late Thursday to 100 years behind bars. He`s eligible for parole in 10 years under a plea bargain.
In all, five soldiers were charged in the attack last March. An Iraqi girl was raped; then, she and her family were killed.
Defense Secretary Gates ordered a review today of problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. He formed a panel of former high- ranking civilian and military officials. It will examine rehabilitation and red tape at Walter Reed and at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda. A report is due in 45 days.
Gates promised there will be action.
ROBERT GATES, Secretary of Defense: With responsibility comes accountability. It is my strong belief that an organization with the enormous responsibilities of the Department of Defense must live by this principle of accountability at all levels. Accordingly, after the facts are established, those responsible for having allowed this unacceptable situation to develop will, indeed, be held accountable.
JIM LEHRER: We`ll have more on this story right after the news summary.
The jury in the Lewis "Scooter" Libby case deliberated again today with no verdict. The vice president`s former chief of staff is charged with perjury and obstruction. It stems from the leak of Valerie Plame`s identity, when she worked at the CIA. The jury got the case last Wednesday; it resumes its deliberations on Monday.
The Supreme Court of Canada today banned holding foreign terror suspects for unlimited periods. The ruling was unanimous. The court rejected the Canadian government`s right to jail terror suspects indefinitely as they wait for deportation hearings. The decision will not take effect for a year, giving parliament time to revise the law.
North Korea has invited the head of the U.N. nuclear agency to visit, in a new sign of cooperation. Mohamed ElBaradei announced that today, but he gave few details.
Four years ago, North Korea pulled out of a treaty against the spread of nuclear weapons. But this month, it agreed to dismantle nuclear sites in exchange for fuel oil and security guarantees.
Former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack ended his campaign for president today. Last November, he was the first Democrat to formally enter the race. But today, in Des Moines, Vilsack acknowledged he struggled for money and attention against better-known rivals.
FMR. GOV. TOM VILSACK (D), Iowa: The reality, however, is that this process has become, to a great extent, about money, a lot of money. And it is clear to me that we would not be able to continue to raise money in the amounts necessary to sustain not just a campaign in Iowa, in New Hampshire, but a campaign across this country. So it is money and only money that is the reason that we are leaving today.
JIM LEHRER: Vilsack declined to endorse another Democratic candidate. At least eight are still running.
On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 38 points to close at 12,647. The Nasdaq fell nearly 10 points to close at 2,515. For the week, the Dow lost almost 1 percent; the Nasdaq rose 0.8 percent.
And that`s it for the news summary tonight. Now: promises about Walter Reed; an airline passenger`s bill of rights; inside the U.S. Supreme Court; Shields and Brooks; and the connections between income and life.
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JIM LEHRER: Our update on the Walter Reed story. Ray Suarez reports.
RAY SUAREZ: Today, it was the turn of the secretary of defense and the number-two on the Joint Chiefs of Staff to visit Walter Reed Army Medical Center, five days after a Washington Post report highlighted poor outpatient care and deteriorating buildings there.
Secretary Robert Gates toured the medical center in Washington, D.C., and spoke to reporters.
ROBERT GATES, Secretary of Defense: Like many Americans, I was dismayed to learn this past week that some of our injured troops were not getting the best possible treatment at all stages of their recovery, in particular, the outpatient care. This is unacceptable, and it will not continue.
I just met with the president this morning before coming out here to brief him on the situation and on the actions that are under way. He is understandably concerned and emphatic in wanting the best possible care for our wounded soldiers and for their families.
I`m grateful to reporters for bringing this problem to our attention, but very disappointed we did not identify it ourselves.
RAY SUAREZ: Most of Walter Reed`s 700 outpatients are veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Secretary Gates also announced today he`ll form a group to investigate the failures that let down these members of the military family.
ROBERT GATES: This group, which consists of eight military, medical and political leaders, will take a broad look at all our rehabilitative care and administrative processes here at Walter Reed and at the National Naval Medical Center.
This group will inspect the current situation at Walter Reed here in Washington, the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, and any other centers they choose to examine.
I have no information to suggest there are problems at Bethesda or elsewhere such as we have learned about here at Walter Reed, but we need to know the scope of this problem. The group will report back their findings and recommendations within 45 days to the secretary of the Army, the secretary of the Navy, and the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. Their report will be made available to the Congress and to the public.
RAY SUAREZ: The co-chairs of the group of eight are Togo West, former secretary of the Army under President Clinton, and Jack Marsh, former secretary of the Army under President Reagan.
Gates went on to say the group`s findings will hold people accountable for the failures at Walter Reed, but, he warned, some of the fixes won`t be as quick as this week`s renovations.
ROBERT GATES: There`s just too much work for the number of people that are available, so that`s one thing that can be addressed pretty quickly. In terms of whether there are deeper and more difficult problems, those are the kinds of things, I think, that the review group will take a look at.
RAY SUAREZ: Absent from the Gates entourage today was a top official with direct responsibility for medical care there, the assistant secretary of defense for health issues, Dr. William Winkenwerder. The White House named his replacement yesterday, but said his departure had long been planned.
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JIM LEHRER: Protecting the rights of airline passengers. Judy Woodruff has that story.
JUDY WOODRUFF: A string of recent weather-related flight delays and cancellations have lifted efforts to create a passengers` bill of rights that could provide new protections for stranded air travelers.
A Valentine`s Day ice storm last week forced hundreds of passengers on JetBlue airways to wait on the tarmac for up to 11 hours at New York`s JFK Airport. The low-cost airline ultimately canceled 1,100 flights, including all of those in and out of 11 airports last Saturday.
While rare in scale, JetBlue`s experience was not isolated. Last December, an American Airlines jet was stranded on the tarmac for eight hours in Austin, Texas. Another high-profile mishap came in January 1999, when passengers were stuck on a Northwest Airlines jet for seven hours after landing in Detroit.
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, planes carrying the nation`s 658 million air passengers in 2006 arrived late almost 23 percent of the time; that was up from 20 percent in 2005.
The bulk of last year`s delays were related to the volume of air traffic and related issues, late-arriving aircraft, or airline-specific issues, such as maintenance and baggage. Only about 1 percent of all arrivals in 2006 were delayed because of weather or security issues.
For its part, JetBlue has initiated compensation efforts for thousands of customers affected last week, but three members of Congress are promoting similar versions of a passenger`s bill of rights.
Among the major provisions, the different proposals would: allow passengers to de-plane after three hours` delay; and require airlines to provide food, water, and clean bathrooms for delayed passengers.
But the industry`s trade group, the Air Transport Association of America, has already come out against such proposals, advocating closer voluntary self-scrutiny. In a statement yesterday, its president said, "A rigid, national regulation would be counterproductive and could easily result in greater passenger inconvenience."
That is a familiar message from the airlines, who have helped efforts to defeat other passenger rights measures in the past.
Now, two perspectives on the proposals for a passenger bill of rights. We`re joined by David Rowell, publisher of the weekly newsletter and Web site Travel Insider. He compiled his own bill of rights based on customer feedback he has received.
And Janet Libert, editor of Executive Travel Magazine, a publication for frequent business travelers.
Thank you both for being with us. David Rowell, to you first, should there be a federally mandated passenger bill of rights?
DAVID ROWELL, Travel Insider: Judy, the figures that were quoted just now tell part of the story, and any frequent flyer knows they`re very true. Air travel these days is horrible, and it`s getting worse.
The second part of the story is where we disagree. Plainly, something needs to be done about this. And, equally plainly, the airlines are not doing anything about it themselves.
They say, "Trust us, we`ll do it ourselves." They say competitive pressures will force us to be better. But none of this has happened. So, yes, we do need a federally mandated, consistent airline passenger bill of rights.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Janet Libert, the argument is, if the airlines aren`t doing it themselves, so the federal government needs to step in?
JANET LIBERT, Executive Travel Magazine: You know, we all agree the government, the passengers, the airlines themselves, that the number-one priority is the flying public.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Our apologies to Janet Libert, our apologies. We`re having some audio difficulties with Ms. Libert, and we`re going to try to get those straightened out.
But while we wait, I`m going to come back to you, Mr. Rowell. Let me ask you to be a little more specific. When you say the airlines haven`t been doing this on their own, I believe they would argue that they`ve gone years -- in fact, we mentioned between 1999 and last December, now February -- when they have flown billions of passengers without these kind of major problems, so they`re saying this is an anomaly, this is unusual.
DAVID ROWELL: Well, if we look back to 1999, at that time, the airlines said, "Trust us, we can self-regulate." And they created this customer charter of rights, and they even put up a special Web site that gave vague promises of what they would do if things went wrong.
That Web site, incidentally, is no longer up there. It`s just disappeared with the passing of time.
Since 1999, we all know that air travel decreased greatly from 2001. And for a while, there just wasn`t any need for this because there were no problems. The system wasn`t being overstressed.
Now we have more people traveling than ever before. We have fewer airline staff than ever before. We`ve had airline service cutbacks. We now have a terrible traveling experience more of the time. We need something to restore value and fairness.
JUDY WOODRUFF: All right, I believe we have Janet Libert`s audio worked out. Sorry about that, Ms. Libert. The point Mr. Rowell was just making is that the airlines have not held up their end of the bargain.
JANET LIBERT: You know, I think that we all agree that the number-one priority, better customer service, is something that airlines, passengers and the government all want. The question actually becomes is, who can actually do it the best? Is it a government agency, or is it the individual airline itself?
Airline travel is comprised of so many moving parts that interact and so many variables, weather, air-traffic control, security. So looking at who can do it the best, in reality, it`s the airline, in the sense that they have professionals, they have pilots, and flight crews, and airline operations that really can look at it individually as opposed to looking at a one rule that really doesn`t fit every situation.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Just quickly, you mentioned weather, but I believe in the statistics we cited from the federal transportation agency, they were that less than 1 percent of all arrivals that are delayed are due to weather.
JANET LIBERT: You know, actually, overall, if you look at the statistics, 75 percent of an airline`s delays on outgoing is due to weather, and 25 percent is to the other reasons.
And so weather actually is what an airline operations center is very most concerned about, and that`s knowing the weather will allow an airline to cancel its flights in advance, and actually determine whether an aircraft can actually get to the jet way to take off, if there`s a break in the weather.
JUDY WOODRUFF: All right, well, that`s not something we`re going to be able to clarify right now, but we do want to try to straighten that out eventually.
But to get back to you, Mr. Rowell, you hear what Ms. Libert is saying, that some of this is just inevitable, it`s going to happen. You`ve got more people flying; you do have severe weather problems every once in a while.
DAVID ROWELL: Yes, I`m not suggesting that we should micromanage the airlines. All my proposed customer bill of rights would do is create consequences when the airlines themselves, doing whatever they know best, mess up.
At present, the airlines have no consequence when they do something wrong. They have no incentive to lift their act. The passenger bill of rights would require them to do better.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And what -- can you give us a specific?
DAVID ROWELL: Yes, and we`re not just talking about flight delays. We`re talking about other things, like luggage delays, luggage loss, as well.
But to look at the flight thing, because it`s easily understood, currently an airline can cancel a flight for whatever reason it chooses. And we would say that, well, if you`re going to cancel that flight, depending on what you do to protect the people on other flights, you need to pay them some sort of compensation. And at present, they`re not obliged to do that.
JUDY WOODRUFF: I`m sorry. Ms. Libert, shouldn`t airlines be held accountable, as Mr. Rowell is saying?
JANET LIBERT: You know, absolutely. And the airline itself, its number-one goal is to get its customers from Point A to Point B. There are 25 airlines in the U.S. today. And truly we have a choice. As the flying public, we have a choice on whether to fly this airline or that airline. And if an airline is really not serving its customers in the best possible way, you have a choice.
JUDY WOODRUFF: What about that, Mr. Rowell? I mean, it is the case, if people don`t like the way they`re being treated by Airline X, they can stop flying that airline.
DAVID ROWELL: Well, many of us live in fortress hubs where one airline dominates. I certainly know I don`t have a choice of 25 airlines when I choose to travel somewhere myself. I think very few others of us do, as well.
But also, we`ve seen that competition isn`t working. So what if there`s two or 25 different airlines? They`re just not doing it well enough; they need some additional incentives.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Ms. Libert, go ahead.
JANET LIBERT: Well, I think what we`re going to see now, in terms of that competition, is that airlines are really going to be right up front and center, doing their own customer service commitments.
The customer service experience is very important to the passengers. We all agree on that. And the airline that can do it best really then beats out his competitor. And it`s a very, very competitive industry, the airline industry.
I think another interesting point is to look at the European Commission. They themselves, in 2005, created a passenger bill of rights. And what ended up happening, after lots of time and effort on it, is that the bill of rights really have so many exclusions, it`s not a viable document that really does help the passenger.
JUDY WOODRUFF: I want to ask you about safety considerations, Mr. Rowell. Some have pointed out that, if you try to impose too many regulations, rules and regulations on the airlines, that they might be incented, if you will, feel there is some incentive to cut corners when it comes to safety.
DAVID ROWELL: Yes, this is sort of the third rail of airlines, isn`t it, talking about safety? Let`s understand a couple of things here.
The first one is that flying on a plane is extraordinarily safe right now. Fewer people died on planes in the last, shall we say, 10 years than died in their sleep last night. Flying on planes is very, very safe.
Secondly, if you`ve ever seen the manuals of regulations that airlines are forced to comply with at present, we`re talking about feet and feet and feet of manuals. The airlines are already snowed under by regulations, and they don`t compromise safety because of these.
No prudent airline ever chooses to compromise on safety. I think that this is just an excuse; it`s not a valid reason.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And you say they`re snowed under by regulations, but you think that there should be additional regulations?
DAVID ROWELL: Well, no, these would not be regulations. We`re not looking at requiring new government bureaucracy, oversight bodies, anything like that. We would just simply state: These are our rights as passengers.
If an airline loses our bags, this our right. If an airline cancels our flight, if the flight is delayed, this is what we stand to expect from the airline. And then, if the airline doesn`t comply, we give another right. At present, you can only sue an airline in federal court.
I`m sorry.
JUDY WOODRUFF: I was going to say, Ms. Libert, brief last word here?
JANET LIBERT: You know, really, truly the question is: Who can serve the customer the best? Who knows the individual experiences and the individual, you know, flights? And it`s the airlines.
So I think the big picture is: Who can serve the customer the best? And it`s really the airline who`s got the frontline position on it.
JUDY WOODRUFF: All right, we are going to leave it there. Janet Libert, thank you very much. David Rowell, thank you.
JANET LIBERT: Thank you.
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JIM LEHRER: Still coming tonight: Shields and Brooks; income and life; and recording the U.S. Supreme Court.
NewsHour correspondent Kwame Holman has our court story.
KWAME HOLMAN: No camera ever has been allowed to record the proceedings inside the Supreme Court. For most of its 217-year history, only sketch artists and note-taking journalists have been permitted to document the court`s oral arguments.
But in 2000, intense public interest surrounding the Bush v. Gore case prompted the court to release an audio recording of that argument. And since then, similar recordings of high-profile cases also have been released.
ATTORNEY: Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the court...
KWAME HOLMAN: We chose, as an example, the arguments in a December civil rights case, which pitted a group of white parents against the Seattle, Washington, school board. The parents claimed their children were kept from attending schools of their choice because of their race.
Attorney Harry Korrell can be heard stating their position.
HENRY KORRELL, ATTORNEY: The central question in this case is whether diversity, defined as the school district does, as a white, nonwhite racial balance, can be a compelling interest that justifies the use of race discrimination in high school admissions.
KWAME HOLMAN: With the exception of Justice Clarence Thomas, who rarely speaks during arguments, this court is especially active, according to Marcia Coyle of the National Law Journal. A NewsHour regular, she`s covered the court for 19 years.
MARCIA COYLE, National Law Journal: These justices just have a lot of questions, and they don`t like dramatics, either. They don`t want you to get -- a lawyer to get up there and give a speech. They want the lawyer to go right to the heart of the case. And usually the lawyer has about 30 seconds before the questions begin.
JUSTICE ANTHONY KENNEDY, U.S. Supreme Court: Isn`t it odd to say that you can`t use race as a means?
JUSTICE ANTHONY SCALIA, U.S. Supreme Court: Is there anything unconstitutional about that objective?
JUSTICE STEPHEN BREYER, U.S. Supreme Court: Now, what is your response to that?
MARCIA COYLE: Washington lawyer Mark Levy has argued before the court on 15 occasions.
MARK LEVY, Attorney: I think the average these days in the court is to have about 90 questions or even more in a 60-minute argument. So that`s about a question-and-a-half every minute.
The nature of that really puts a premium on a facility at oral argument and intense preparation. You need to be able to answer a question quickly and get the best part of your answer out in the first sentence or two, because that may be all the answer that you get a chance to get out.
HENRY KORRELL: Justice Ginsburg, our preposition is that that is prohibited by the Constitution, absent past discrimination by the school district.
JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA: You would object, then, to magnet schools?
KWAME HOLMAN: Going into oral arguments, the nine justices typically are very well-versed on a particular case. Their law clerks have provided exhaustive background research, and lawyers from the opposing sides have submitted detailed briefs laying out their arguments.
Each justice is prepared with his or her own questions and queries. One common approach is to pose a hypothetical as a way of figuring out the boundaries of a certain argument.
In this exchange, the newest justice, Samuel Alito, explored how the Seattle school district classifies its students.
JUSTICE SAMUEL ALITO, U.S. Supreme Court: Suppose you have a school in which 60 percent of the students are either of Asian ancestry or Latino ancestry, and 40 percent are white, as you classify people, and there are no African-American students at all. You would consider that to be a racially balanced school, would you not?
MARK LEVY: In this case, for example, he was focusing on Asians and Hispanics and others who generally are not part of the affirmative action in the black and the white sense.
So I think he was trying to show that these are more complicated decisions than what the government decision-makers usually have given thought to, leading to the conclusion that he probably will not be in favor of them.
KWAME HOLMAN: Also in the course of arguments, justices commonly will ask what`s known as the impact question.
MARCIA COYLE: Some justice will ask, if we rule this way, or if we rule that way, what`s going to happen? You know, what`s the impact here?
KWAME HOLMAN: Justice Stephen Breyer.
JUSTICE STEPHEN BREYER: When you have thousands of school districts relying on this to get a degree of integration in the United States of America, what are you telling this court is going to happen when we start suddenly making, departing from the case? You want us to overrule it? Why? Why?
PAUL CLEMENT, U.S. Solicitor General: I think anybody that relied on that language -- it said achieving a racial balance for its own sake is not constitutional. I think those school districts would have been misguided in relying on that language.
KWAME HOLMAN: Mark Levy said the answers lawyers give to the impact questions help the justices choose which issues to focus on when writing their opinions.
MARK LEVY: On the issues they decide, do they decide them broadly, to try and anticipate more cases for the future? Do they decide it narrowly, more limited to the particular circ*mstances of this case? Do they relate this case to other areas of the law that are relevant but not directly implicated?
All of that is completely in the control and discretion of the justices, and that`s really the place where I think the oral argument has the most effect. It does very much influence the kind of an opinion the court ends up writing in the case.
KWAME HOLMAN: Justice Antonin Scalia made clear during the Seattle school argument that, in his mind, it was an affirmative action case, where qualified white students were being left at a disadvantage. After 22 years on the court, Scalia typically does not hide his point of view.
JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA: Why do you agree that this is not an affirmative action case? Is it not -- wherein does it differ?
MARCIA COYLE: Unlike some of the justices, he doesn`t play devil`s advocate very often on the bench, posing hypotheticals for one side and then for another side. He pretty much says what he thinks.
MARK LEVY: He`s not hiding the ball when he asks you a question.
JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA: I thought that the school district was selecting some people because they wanted a certain racial mix in the schools and were taking the affirmative action of giving a preference to students of a certain race. Why doesn`t that qualify as affirmative action?
HENRY KORRELL: If that`s what affirmative action is, your honor, then...
JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA: Well, I don`t know what else it is.
KWAME HOLMAN: Hearing Scalia`s take, Justices David Souter and Breyer weighed in, in disagreement.
JUSTICE DAVID SOUTER, U.S. Supreme Court: One of the characteristics of the affirmative action cases was the displacement of some other otherwise generally acknowledged relevant criterion, such as ability is shown in test scores, grade point averages, and things like that, and that was a characteristic of those cases. It is not a characteristic of this case, as I understand it.
JUSTICE STEPHEN BREYER: I think that the point that Justice Souter is trying to make, as I understand...
MARK LEVY: By tradition, the justices don`t talk about cases before the oral argument. So when the nine justices get on the bench, they don`t know what the others are thinking.
So this is the first exposure that any of the justices has to the views of the other nine. And so that makes it an important part of their decisional process, to see what issues or what arguments are attracting the other justices, what are causing problems.
What of the several issues that might be in a case do they think a court might want to decide? Is there an issue that five votes can coalesce around?
KWAME HOLMAN: So far this term, the Supreme Court has released the audio from four cases, making those arguments accessible to the vast majority of Americans who might never get access to a seat in the court.
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JIM LEHRER: And to the analysis of Shields and Brooks, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, New York Times columnist David Brooks.
Mark, on Iraq, how important is the Tony Blair decision to withdraw troops?
MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: Well, it`s symbolically, I think, important, Jim. I mean, the reality behind the move is that, as Tony Cordesman from Strategic and International Studies said, Basra was lost a year ago, and Brits have had to withdraw to the airport.
It`s now just a Shia stronghold. There is no tension. There`s no civil war there, because there`s no Sunnis. And it`s a little bit like saying that there wasn`t any racial tension in Fargo or Moorehead, North Dakota, during the civil rights struggle. There weren`t any racial minorities.
And that`s really what the reality is. The vice president, to his everlasting credit, always sees the glass as 5 percent full. And it`s a lot easier in Great Britain now to sell the idea of troops in Afghanistan than it is in Iraq.
JIM LEHRER: David, the idea that withdrawing -- a lot of the attention on this has been drawn to the fact, hey, wait a minute, the Brits are withdrawing troops, and we`re sending more in. How do you see this?
DAVID BROOKS, Columnist, New York Times: Well, I would point to the same distinction Mark made, that Basra is not Baghdad. Basra is a Shia community, mostly Shia. It doesn`t have the sectarian violence.
And, to me, what Basra is, it`s a window on -- suppose there wasn`t the sectarian violence in Baghdad or in Iraq. Well, where would we be? We would have our expectations not met. We would not have sort of democracy that we hoped for when going in.
Nonetheless, we would not have the sort of civil war we see in Baghdad, and we would be withdrawing, too. But Baghdad has this sectarian violence; Basra doesn`t.
JIM LEHRER: You buy the idea that, all of that aside, this is not -- this is psychologically not good for the American cause during a time of surge?
DAVID BROOKS: I guess so, yes. I mean, I think the Brits once had 40,000 troops. Then they went down to 7,100. And this is a drawback to 5,400, so it`s not as if Tony Blair is running away.
I mean, Tony Blair has been steadfast in believing in the mission and keeping troops there, despite incredible political pressure. So, you know, I don`t think he`s totally answering to the pressure. I think it`s a response to the reality.
MARK SHIELDS: But the reality is also domestic political reality.
JIM LEHRER: In Britain.
MARK SHIELDS: In Britain, regional elections this spring. And the Labour Party is trailing, and Tony Blair has to turn it over or will turn it over to Gordon Brown, his antiwar successor.
JIM LEHRER: Sometime this summer.
MARK SHIELDS: So the political reality is at least influencing it.
JIM LEHRER: Speaking of domestic realities in the United States of America, David, what do you make of the Senate plans? They`ve been talking about probably going to start next week to try to reauthorize or change the legislation that originally authorized the military action against Iraq.
DAVID BROOKS: This is like "Back to the Future." They`re going to go in a DeLorean back to 2002 and un-vote the vote they made.
You know, the big difference to me is, you know, George Bush -- you can say what you like about his operation of the war, but he took a look at what should happen in Iraq, and it was the surge. He knew it was going to be unpopular, but he was going to be for it, even though it was unpopular.
Is there any Democrat willing to stand up and be for something unpopular or even take a position? I really don`t know what the Democratic positions are.
There are individual positions, but when it comes to resolutions, there`s this Murtha business, which is sort of funny, reallocate the relocation of the troops, the intervals which they go in and out. Then there`s the Levin-Biden plan, which is to go back to 2002 and somehow reauthorize that bill.
Why don`t they take a position and say, "I`m for this. This is what we think should happen in Iraq. We think the war is lost. We think we should get out"? Or, "We don`t think the war is lost. We should do this"?
But it`s all poll-driven, and that`s my problem with the Democratic plans that are all evolving. They`re all poll-driven. It`s the party right now with the soul of a campaign manager.
MARK SHIELDS: I don`t agree. We do have elections in this country, other than polls. We had an election last fall in which the Republicans, largely on the issue of Iraq, and largely on the issue of the stewardship of the president and vice president of that war, and the conditions and circ*mstances under which we got into that war, and the way it had been maintained, lost control of the Congress.
That was the reason. The Republicans say that; Democrats say that. So that`s not a poll. That`s not a focus group. That`s the American people having expressed it, their feelings for it.
The president is apparently indifferent, immune. He has a four-year term, so he`s indifferent to the plight of members of his own party, as their position becomes increasingly unpopular.
As far as the Democrats are concerned, I think they made a mistake. I think Jack Murtha made a mistake in revealing his plan on MoveOn.org, the activist, leftist group...
JIM LEHRER: Leftist group, yes.
MARK SHIELDS: ... who are against the war and take great credit for the victory. And they`re not at all bashful about accepting full credit for the Democratic victory last fall. But that is the energy in the Democratic Party, is in the activist, antiwar left.
But I think that there`s a bail-out or recouping of position by saying that we won`t send troops in, if they aren`t trained, aren`t up-armored, don`t have the body armor themselves. And the only exception would be if the president certifies that it`s necessary to send troops in who have not had an interval of training, have not had an interval of civilian time, stateside time between assignments.
So I think David`s right: You can`t do a do-over. They`re trying to get a second vote on the 2002.
JIM LEHRER: What do you think of that idea?
MARK SHIELDS: I think it`s OK. The president says, "This is not the war we went into. This is the war we`re fighting." So it is different. I think you can lay down different terms for where we are now and what we`re about. But I don`t think you can come back and sort of repeal what happened in 2002.
DAVID BROOKS: The difference is, Bush takes a look at Baghdad. He says, "We`ve got to pacify Baghdad to give the Maliki government the space to do what it needs to do," so he says we`re going to send in 20,000 more troops. That is a clearly understandable policy, whether you think it will work or not.
The Democrats do not have a clearly understandable policy. They`ve got this subterfuge about changing the schedules, which as Murtha said is just an excuse to starve the surge. Then they`ve got this, "Go back to 2002."
If they want to get out, and if they think it`s lost, do what Governor Vilsack said, "We think we should get out. Here`s our timetable. We think we should get out.`
Instead, you`ve got Hillary Clinton at first saying, "We`re going to cap," and then changing her position a week later, and saying a 90-day withdrawal. You`ve got slow withdrawal with Obama. You`ve got subterfuge. You`ve got nothing. You`ve just a series of dodges.
MARK SHIELDS: You don`t have a party speak with a single voice, David, when you`re out of power.
(CROSSTALK)
DAVID BROOKS: They`ve had resolutions coming up in the House. Put forward a resolution.
MARK SHIELDS: They put forward a resolution. It carried in the House last week. They`d like to put up a resolution in the Senate, as well.
But, I mean, the only policy the Republicans have is the president`s policy. And it`s increasingly winning less and less support, both in the country and in his own Republican caucus.
DAVID BROOKS: Well...
JIM LEHRER: Well?
DAVID BROOKS: ... you know, I think they -- it`s popular now to be against the war. It`s not popular to seem to be cutting the rug from under the troops, so the Democrats are trying to answer both those poll results, but you`ve just got to get away from the polls.
JIM LEHRER: Speaking of the troops, what do think of the Walter Reed story that the Washington Post broke and has been covering?
MARK SHIELDS: Well, first of all, I`d like to say it`s a great tribute to the positive power of a free press. That Dana Priest and Anne Hull and the editors of the Washington Post put it on the front page on a Sunday and a Monday, and it got a result.
Families all over this country have been complaining about the treatment out there. It got nowhere. It didn`t get a hearing in the Congress. It didn`t get the kind of coverage it should have gotten.
And there`s a terrible political reality here. These people, these young Americans who`ve gone over there, and they`re wounded, are not -- their parents do not summer in Nantucket or Santa Fe. Their mothers don`t wear designer originals. Their fathers are not friends of Bill, and they aren`t Pioneers or Rangers for George W. Bush.
These people come from modest backgrounds, and they don`t have any clout. They don`t have any lobbyists on their side. They don`t have any political action committee. They have absolutely no advocates and no voice, and, in this case, the free press was their voice.
Shame on all of us for not being there first. I mean, I haven`t been out to Walter Reed myself, and I haven`t been aware. But it`s more than Building 18. It isn`t a mold story or a mice story.
It`s a story about bureaucratic indifference, about making these -- putting them in an adversarial relationship, instead of recognizing the enormous cost that you pay for going into combat, and the psychological trauma and damage and wounds that these people carry for the rest of their life.
DAVID BROOKS: First, on the first point, the power of the press, we actually have some big newspapers here in Washington. There are cities all around the country where there won`t be that kind of investigative reporters in City Hall stories like this one, parallel, will just not be uncovered. It`s a good reminder about that.
Second, about the bureaucracy...
JIM LEHRER: Because it does take...
(CROSSTALK)
JIM LEHRER: ... they worked on that story four months. Two of the top reporters worked on that story for four months.
MARK SHIELDS: That`s right.
JIM LEHRER: And they followed up on just people calling them and whatever, and they hung in there. Yes, but go ahead.
DAVID BROOKS: And so that is not going to happen because of what`s happening to the newspaper business. But then on the bureaucracy, I was struck -- I mean, when you read the story, there`s one thing after another. You`re sort of struck by -- I was struck by, to get in and out of the system, somebody had to file 22 documents, to eight different commands, with 16 different information systems.
The Army`s three personnel databases don`t communicate with each other. You know, what`s going on?
And so and then there are stories of people who have had brain injuries who are wandering off because they can`t be reminded of their appointments. It`s just one thing after another. It is the worst bureaucratic malfeasance.
JIM LEHRER: Well, Judy Woodruff interviewed a guy here last night who had a serious brain injury and was asked, "Do you want to do inpatient or do you want to do outpatient?" He was asked. You know, it was up to him. And he had to take a taxi to go back and forth, you know, to find out where to go.
Do you have a feeling that -- Gates spoke out today; we ran what he said -- do you have the feeling that this thing is going to be fixed?
MARK SHIELDS: I think that -- I was grateful that Secretary Gates is there and not Secretary Rumsfeld, because, you know, it`s been -- the administration has been in power for six years. This war is going on its fifth year.
I mean, this didn`t happen this week. They`ve been working on this story. This has happened before. I got a sense from Secretary Gates today there was a sense of outrage.
He did something that General Kiley didn`t do. General Kiley tried to shoot the messenger, said it was a one-sided story, and kind of blamed the Post for reporting this. I mean, Secretary Gates, to his credit, just stood up there and said, "No, I`ve looked at this. This is not one-sided. This is an outrage, and it has to be remedied."
DAVID BROOKS: To be fair, this is the one thing I would not blame on Donald Rumsfeld. I mean, I thought he was a terrible secretary of defense, but there`s one thing he`s good at it. It is kicking the rear end of the bureaucracy and streamlining bureaucratic procedures.
And he obviously didn`t get to this, but I think this is one thing he`s good at. The Pentagon bureaucracy, this huge behemoth, this is kind of what you get, 22 documents you`ve got to fill out.
MARK SHIELDS: He streamlined the United States Army to the point where it`s 40 percent the size it was in Vietnam, and we`re calling up National Guard units in four different states.
DAVID BROOKS: Well, the personnel is also part of the problem, understand.
JIM LEHRER: One quick question. We mentioned -- somebody mentioned Tom Vilsack earlier. Today, he withdrew and he said it was all about money. Do you agree?
DAVID BROOKS: Yes. I mean, you`ve got to raise really $70 million to $100 million, to be a first-year candidate, at least $25 million, and that`s hard for somebody like that.
MARK SHIELDS: It`s easier to raise money as a governor than it is as an ex-governor.
JIM LEHRER: Meaning what?
MARK SHIELDS: Meaning that, when you`re governor, there`s a lot of people who want to show up at your parties and write checks in hopes of maybe even getting an asphalt contract at some point or just being on good terms with the state agencies. And once you`re out of office, they`ll send you a Christmas card instead of a check.
JIM LEHRER: Speaking of a Christmas card, we have seven other things to talk about tonight, and we just ran out of time. Thank you so much. I`m sorry. Goodbye.
(BREAK)
JIM LEHRER: And, finally tonight, ahead of Sunday`s Academy Awards ceremony, economics correspondent Paul Solman looks at the links between winning, wealth, and long life.
PAUL SOLMAN, NewsHour Economics Correspondent: Peter O`Toole, nominated for a ninth Academy Award this year. Finally winning best actor, it turns out, could be a matter of life and death.
For nominee Meryl Streep, however, who`s won twice already, there may be little to fear.
MERYL STREEP, Actress: You have no style or a sense of fashion.
ANNE HATHAWAY, Actress: I think that depends on what your...
MERYL STREEP No, no, that wasn`t a question.
PAUL SOLMAN: You see, a recent Canadian study suggests that, when you win an acting Oscar, you live longer, like Bette Davis, who made it to 81, or Jimmy Stewart, who died at 89. John Gielgud and Katharine Hepburn both lived to 96.
KATHARINE HEPBURN, Actress: The loon, the loons, they`re welcoming us back.
JOHN GIELGUD, Actor: I don`t hear a thing.
PAUL SOLMAN: Sure, there were Academy Award winners who died younger, even Henry Fonda, who won for "On Golden Pond" in 1981, died the next year at age 77. But on average, actors who take Oscar home seem to live four years longer, 79.7 years, when compared with those who remain statue-less, 75.8.
Now, one might be skeptical of the Oscar effect. The sample is modest, and though the results also hold for directors, they don`t for writers.
But consider this: The same pattern is true of Nobel laureates. They outlive their peers on average by two years.
To Michael Marmot, who`s done groundbreaking research on social hierarchies and health, the Oscar and Nobel findings suggest a troubling truth. In a world of growing inequality, status determines longevity, from the very bottom of the pecking order to the tippy-top.
MICHAEL MARMOT, Author, "The Status Syndrome": I wouldn`t shed too many tears for the actor who was nominated and didn`t win. She or he is still doing very well and much better than the person waiting tables.
But the fact that you see this huge gap means that that sense of loss and disappointment and lack of self-esteem, lack of esteem from others, is just as important if you`re right up there and miss out on the big prize than if you`re down at the other end of the scale and are missing out on the prize that`s relevant to you.
PAUL SOLMAN: For most people, the relevant prize is not a fake gold statuette, but real money. And while losing the Oscar race may take four years off your life, losing the economic race may take even more.
Thus the news of this piece: The growing economic inequality in the U.S. and elsewhere is not only painful, it can be fatal, a finding summarized in Marmot`s book, "The Status Syndrome," based on 30 years of now widely replicated research.
MICHAEL MARMOT: What my research shows and research all over the world confirms is that where you are in the social hierarchy is intimately related to your risk of health and disease. And by that, I mean, people second from the top have worse health than people at the top. People third from the top have worse health than people second from the top. And it runs all the way from top to bottom.
PAUL SOLMAN: Dr. Marmot first noticed the phenomenon in the United Kingdom.
MICHAEL MARMOT: In England and Wales, for example, in the early 1970s, the gap in life expectancy for men between people at the top and people on the bottom occupational groups was five-and-a-half years.
PAUL SOLMAN: Doctors, janitors.
MICHAEL MARMOT: Doctors, janitors or unskilled manual workers, exactly. And 20 years later, in the early 1990s, that five-and-a-half-year gap had increased to nine-and-a-half years. So in only 20 years, we went from five-and-a-half years to a nine-and-a-half-year gap between top and bottom.
PAUL SOLMAN: And what else happened while the life expectancy gap between doctors and janitors doubled? The pay gap doubled, too.
In a major study of the British Civil Service, Marmot found a similar widening in the longevity gap as inequality grew, a four-and-a-half-year difference in longevity between those in the top tier and those in the bottom.
MICHAEL MARMOT: No one is poor in the British Civil Service, all doing office-based jobs. Where you are in the employment hierarchy is intimately related to your chance of dropping dead.
PAUL SOLMAN: Now, there could be an alternative explanation. The lower your earnings, the worse your medical care. Not so in Great Britain, however.
MICHAEL MARMOT: Everybody has access to the National Health Service.
PAUL SOLMAN: Well, then, what about bad habits? Don`t those lower on the ladder smoke more, eat more, exercise less, and thus die sooner?
MICHAEL MARMOT: We can explain about a quarter of that gap in life expectancy on the basis of smoking, cholesterol, overweight, lack of physical activity, the usual culprits. Three quarters is unexplained by the usual risk factors.
PAUL SOLMAN: Meaning most of the difference in longevity is due to a risk factor we don`t usually think of, says Marmot: your socioeconomic status.
MICHAEL MARMOT: Health and disease are the good and bad effects of where you are in the hierarchy, mediated by the effects of chronic stress. And we can then see it for a whole range of diseases, of specific diseases. We see it for heart disease; we see it for some cancers; we see it for gastrointestinal disease; we see it for violent deaths.
PAUL SOLMAN: What exactly is going on? And why are you as a doctor convinced that it`s stress that`s doing it?
MICHAEL MARMOT: Lack of control over your own life activates chronic stress pathways which increase risk of disease. So that`s one influence: autonomy, control.
But a second is full social engagement. The society works for me, and I am part of the society. Whether it`s being able to send my children to reasonable schools, to live in a reasonable neighborhood with fear of crime removed, all the things that we think of as being a full social participant.
And both of these, autonomy and control, are intimately related to where you are in the social hierarchy. The lower you are, the less control, the less opportunity for full social engagement.
PAUL SOLMAN: Now, in countries like Sweden, where economic inequality is less pronounced, so is the gap in life expectancy.
MICHAEL MARMOT: Considerably smaller in Sweden than it is, for example, in neighboring Finland, or England and Wales, or France.
PAUL SOLMAN: Meanwhile in the U.S., inequality has been accelerating for decades. Since 1979, inflation-adjusted income at the bottom has barely budged. By contrast, the income of the top 1 percent since the `70s has at least doubled. The top tenth of a percent, tripled. The highest paid 100th of a percent, multiplied six-fold.
And in a recent study comparing the health of Americans and Britons, Marmot identified an ominous trend.
MICHAEL MARMOT: Every social level, the Americans are sicker than the English, and this is despite the fact that you spend two-and-a-half times as much on health care per person as we do. So then the question is, why?
And the answer is, we don`t know, because we didn`t study it, but we`re now in the realm of speculation. And I would speculate that the social conditions that are related to the social gradient in health, in fact, affect everybody.
PAUL SOLMAN: But wait a second. Doesn`t inequality have a good side? Doesn`t it spur competition, which in turn spurs economic growth? "Avis, we try harder." Number two is recognized in this country as a goad to being number one and achieving more. Meanwhile, we`re pulling the whole train up, we`re moving the whole society up in the process.
MICHAEL MARMOT: Well, the degree to which you`re moving the whole society up in the process needs to be examined quite closely. I think you could argue the reason that inequality and increasing inequality is tolerated in the society is the system, in principle, allows me to be higher up.
I think the problem is, is that turns out to be an illusion that actually isn`t very good for people`s well-being, and it`s not very good for their health. So they tolerate this system that they think gives them opportunities, but, in fact, what we see is the opportunities in practice are not huge.
PAUL SOLMAN: This is, of course, Dr. Marmot`s point of view. It`s not shared by everyone.
But the character played by one of this year`s Oscar nominees, Will Smith, is a pretty clear case of how hard it is for many folks to make it in modern America, and how obvious it is when they don`t.
WILL SMITH, Actor: Man, I got two questions for you: What do you do? And how do you do it?
PAUL SOLMAN: If 38-year-old Will Smith wins an Oscar, people may be asking him how he does it for a very long time to come.
(BREAK)
JIM LEHRER: And, again, the major developments of this day.
There was word Senate Democrats may try to repeal the resolution that authorized the Iraq war when Congress returns next week.
Defense Secretary Gates ordered a review of problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
And former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack dropped out of the Democratic presidential race.
"Washington Week" can be seen later this evening on most PBS stations. We`ll see you online and again here Monday evening. Have a nice weekend. I`m Jim Lehrer. Thank you, and good night.
