LEHRER: All right. Now we're going to bring in 3 other journalists to ask questions. They are Susan Rook of CNN, Gene Gibbons of Reuters and Helen Thomas of United Press Intl. You thought you'd never get in here, did you?

BUSH: Uh-uh. Uh-uh.

(Applause.)

LEHRER: OK we're going to continue on the subject of leadership and the first question goes to Gov Clinton for a 2-minute answer. It will be asked by Helen Thomas. Helen?

HELEN THOMAS (upi): Governor Clinton, your credibility has come into question because of your different responses on the Vietnam draft. If you had it to do over again, would you put on the nation's uniform, and if elected, could you in good conscience send someone to war?

CLINTON: If I had it to do over again I might answer the questions a little better. You know, I'd been in public life a long time and no one had ever questioned my role and so I was asked a lot of questions about things that happened a long time ago and I don't think I answered them as well as I could have.

Going back 23 years, I don't know, Helen. I was opposed to the war. I couldn't help that. I felt very strongly about it, and I didn't want to go at the time. It's easy to say in retrospect I would have done something differently.

President Lincoln opposed the war and there were people who said maybe he shouldn't be president, but I think he made us a pretty good president in wartime. We've had a lot of other presidents who didn't wear their country's uniform who had to order our young soldiers into battle, including President Wilson and President Roosevelt.

So the answer is I could do that. I wouldn't relish doing it but I wouldn't shrink from it. I think that the president has to be prepared to use the power of the nation when our vital interests are threatened, when our treaty commitments are at stake, when we know that something has to be done that is in the national interest, and that is a part of being president.

Could I do it? Yes, I could.

LEHRER: A reminder now. We're back on the St. Louis rules, which means that the governor had his answer and then each of you will have 1 minute to respond. Mr. President.

BUSH: Well, I've expressed my heartfelt difference with Governor Clinton on organizing demonstrations while in a foreign land against your country, when young ghetto kids have been drafted and are dying.

My argument with him on -- the question was about the draft -- is that there's this same pattern. In New Hampshire Senator Kerrey said you ought to level, you ought to tell the truth about it. On April 17 he said he'd bring out all the records on the draft. They have not been forthcoming. He got a deferment or he didn't. He got a notice or he didn't. And I think it's this pattern that troubles me, more than the draft. A lot of decent, honorable people felt as he did on the draft. But it's this pattern.

And again, you might be able to make amendments all the time, Governor, but you've got to, as president, you can't be on all these different sides, and you can't have this pattern of saying well, I did this or I didn't, then the facts come out and you change it.

That's my big difference with him on the draft. It wasn't failing to serve.

LEHRER: Your minute is up, sir.

BUSH: Yes, sir. Helen?

HELEN THOMAS

LEHRER: Mr. Perot, 1 minute.

PEROT: I've spent my whole adult life very close to the military. I feel very strongly about the people who go into battle for our country. I appreciate their idealism, their sacrifices. Appreciate the sacrifices their families make. That's been displayed again and again in a very tangible way.

I look on this as history. I don't look on it personally as relevant, and I consider it really a waste of time tonight, when you consider the issues that face our country right now.

LEHRER: All right. The next question goes to President Bush and Gene Gibbons will ask it. Gene.

(Applause.)

GENE GIBBONS (Reuters): Mr. President, you keep saying that you made a mistake in agreeing to a tax increase to get the 1990 budget deal with Congress. But if you hadn't gotten that deal, you would have either had to get repeal of the Gramm-Rudman Deficit Control Act or cut defense spending drastically at a time when the country was building up for the gulf war, and decimate domestic discretionary spending, including such things as air traffic control.

If you had it to do all over again, sir, which of those alternatives would you choose?

BUSH: I wouldn't have taken any of the alternatives. I believe that -- I believe I made a mistake. I did it for the very reasons you say. There was one good thing that came out of that budget agreement, and that is we put a cap on discretionary spending. One-third of the president's budget is at the president's discretion, or really the Congress, since they appropriate every time and tell a president how to spend every dime. We've put a cap on the growth of all that spending, and that's good and that's helped.

But I was wrong because I thought the tax compromise, going along with 1 Democratic tax increase, would help the economy. I see no evidence that it has done it.

So what would I have done? What should I have done? I should have held out for a better deal that would have protected the taxpayer and not ended up doing what we had to do, or what I thought at the time would help.

So I made a mistake, and I -- you know, the difference, I think, is that I knew at the time I was going to take a lot of political flak. I knew we'd have somebody out there yelling "read my lips", and I did it because I thought it was right. And I made a mistake. That's quite different than taking a position where you know it's best for you. That wasn't best for me and I knew it in the very beginning. I thought it would be better for the country than it was. So there we are.

(Applause.)

LEHRER: Mr. Perot, 1 minute.

PEROT: 101 in leadership is be accountable for what you do. Let's go back to the tax and budget summit briefly. Nobody ever told the American people that we increased spending $1.83 for every dollar of taxes raised. That's absolutely unconscionable. Both parties carry a huge blame for that on their shoulders.

This was not a way to pay down the deficit. This was a trick on the American people. That's not leadership.

Let's go back in terms of accepting responsibility for your actions. If you create Saddam Hussein, over a 10-year period, using billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money, step up to the plate and say it was a mistake. If you create Noriega, using taxpayer money, step up to the plate and say it was a mistake. If you can't get your act together to pick him up one day when a Panamanian major has kidnapped him and a special forces team is 400 yards away and it's a stroll across the park to get him, and if you can't get your act together, at least pick up the Panamanian major, who they then killed, step up to the plate and admit it was a mistake. That's leadership, folks.

Now, leaders will always make mistakes. We've created, and I'm not aiming at any one person here, I'm aiming at our government -- nobody takes responsibility for anything. We've gotta change that.

LEHRER: I'm taking responsibility for saying your time's up.

PEROT: I'm watching the lights.

LEHRER: All right. Governor Clinton, 1 minute, sir.

CLINTON: The mistake that was made was making the "read my lips" promise in the first place just to get elected, knowing what the size of the deficit was.

(Applause.)

Knowing what the size of the deficit was, knowing there was no plan to control health care costs and knowing that we did not have a strategy to get real economic growth back into this economy. The choices were not good then. I think at the time, the mistake that was made was signing off on the deal late on Saturday night in the middle of the night. That's just what the president did when he vetoed the Family Leave Act.

I think what he should have done is gone before the American people on the front end and said listen, I made a commitment and it was wrong. I made a mistake because I couldn't have foreseen these circumstances and this is the best deal we can work out at the time. He said it was in the public interest at the time and most everybody who was involved in it, I guess, thought it was. The real mistake was the "read my lips" promise in the first place. You just can't promise something like that just to get elected if you know there's a good chance that circumstances may overtake you.

LEHRER: All right, Mr. Perot, the question is for you. You have a 2-minute answer, and it will be asked by Susan Rook.

SUSAN ROOK (CNN): Mr. Perot, you've talked about going to Washington to do what the people who run this country want you to do. But it is the president's duty to lead, and often lead alone. How can you lead if you are forever seeking consensus before you act?

PEROT: You're talking about 2 different subjects. In order to lead, you first have to use the White House as a bully pulpit and lead; then you have to develop consensus or you can't get anything done, and that's where we are now. We can't get anything done.

How do you get anything done when you've got all of these political action committees, all of these thousands of registered lobbyists -- 40,000 registered lobbyists, 23,000 special interest groups -- and the list goes on and on and on. And the average citizen out here is just working hard every day. You've got to go to the people.

I just love the fact that everybody, particularly in the media, goes bonkers over the town hall. I guess it's because you will lose your right to tell them what to think. The point is, they'll get to decide what to think.

(Laughter and applause)

I love the fact that people will listen to a guy with a bad accent and a poor presentation manner talking about flip charts for 30 minutes, because they want the details. See, all the folks up there at the top said the attention span of the American people is no more than 5 minutes, they won't watch it. They're thirsty for it.

You want to have a new program in this country. If you get grassroots America excited about it, and if they tap Congress on the shoulder and say do it, Charlie, it'll happen. And that's a whole lot different from these fellows running up and down the halls whispering in their ears now and promising campaign funds for the next election if they do it.

Now, I think that's going back to where we started. That's having a government from the people. I think that's the essence of leadership, rather than cutting deals in dark rooms in Washington.

(Applause)

LEHRER: Governor Clinton, 1 minute.

CLINTON: Well, I believe in the town hall meetings; they started with my campaign in New Hampshire. And I think Ross Perot has done a good job in having. And I, as you know, pushed for the debate to include the 209 American citizens who were part of it in Richmond a few days ago. I've done a lot of them, and I'll continue to do them as president.

But I'd also like to point out that I haven't been part of what we're criticizing in Washington tonight. Of the 3 of us, I have balanced a government budget 12 times, I have offered and passed campaign finance reform, offered, pushed for and passed in public referendum lobbyist restrictions, done the kinds of things you have to do to get legislators together not only to establish consensus but to challenge them to change.

And in 12 years as governor I guess I've taken on every interest group there was in my state at one time or another to fight for change. It can be done. That's why I tried to be so specific in this campaign to have a mandate, if elected, so that Congress will know what the American people have voted for.

(Applause)

LEHRER: President Bush, 1 minute.

BUSH: I would like the record to show the panelists that Ross Perot took the first shot at the press. My favorite bumper sticker, though, is: Annoy the Media. Re-elect President Bush. And I just had to work that in. Sorry, Helen.

(Laughter and applause)

I'm going to pay for this later on. Look, you have to build a consensus, but in some things -- Ross mentioned Saddam Hussein. Yes, we tried, and, yes, we failed to bring him into the family of nations; he had the 4th largest army. But then when he moved against Kuwait, I said this will not stand. And it's hard to build a consensus. We went to the U.N., we made historic resolutions up there, the whole world was united, our Congress was dragging its feet. Governor Clinton said, well, I might have been with the minority, let sanctions work -- but I guess I would have voted with the majority.

A president can't do that. Sometimes he has to act. And in this case I'm glad we did, because if we had let sanctions work and tried to build a consensus on that, Saddam Hussein today would be in Saudi Arabia controlling the world's oil supply, and he would be there maybe with a nuclear weapon. We busted the 4th largest army, and we did it through leadership.

LEHRER: All right, we're going to go on to another subject now, and the subject is priorities. The first question goes to you, President Bush, and Susan will ask it.

ROOK: President Bush, gentlemen, I acknowledge that all of you have women and ethnic minorities working for you and working with you. But when we look at the circle of the key people closest to you, your inner circle of advisers, we see white men only. Why? And when will that change?

BUSH: You don't see Margaret Tutwiler sitting in there with me today.

ROOK: The key people, President Bush.

BUSH: Huh?

ROOK: The key people, the people beyond the glass ceiling.

(Applause)

BUSH: I happen to think she's a key person. I think our Cabinet members are key people. I think the woman that works with me, Rose Zamaria, is about as tough as a boot out there and makes some discipline and protects the taxpayer.

Look at our Cabinet. You talk about somebody strong. Look at Carla Hills. Look at Lynn Martin, who's fighting against this glass ceiling and doing a first-class job on it. Look at our surgeon general, Dr. Novello. You can look all around and you'll see first-class strong women.

Jim Baker's a man. Yeah, I plead guilty to that.

(Laughter)

But look who's around with him there. I mean, this is a little defensive on your part, Susan, to be honest with you. We've got a very good record appointing women to high positions and positions of trust, and I'm not defensive at all about it. What we got to do is keep working, as the Labor Dept is doing a first-class job on, to break down discrimination, to break down the glass ceiling.

And I am not apologetic at all about our record with women. We've got, I think -- you know, you think about women in government, I think about women in business. Why not try to help them with my small business program to build some incentives into the system? I think we're making progress here.

You got a lot of women running for office. As I said the other night, I hope a lot of them lose because they're liberal Democrats --

(Laughter)

-- and we don't need more of them in the Senate or more of them in the House. But nevertheless, they're out there. And we got some very good Republican women running. So we're making dramatic progress.

LEHRER: Mr. Perot, 1 minute.

PEROT: Well, I come from the computer business, and everybody knows the women are more talented than the men. So we have a long history of having a lot of talented women. One of our first officers was a woman, the chief financial officer. She was a director. And it was so far back, it was considered so odd, and even though we were a tiny, little company at the time, it made all the national magazines.

But in terms of being influenced by women and being a minority, there they are right out there, my wife and my 4 beautiful daughters, and I just have 1 son, so he and I are surrounded by women, giving -- telling us what to do all the time.

(Laughter)

And the rest of my minute, I want to make a very brief comment here in terms of Saddam Hussein. We told him that we wouldn't get involved with his border dispute, and we've never revealed those papers that were given to Ambassador Glaspie on July the 25th. I suggest, in the sense of taking responsibility for your actions, we lay those papers on the table. They're not the secrets to the nuclear bomb.

Secondly, we got upset when he took the whole thing, but to the ordinary American out there who doesn't know where the oil fields are in Kuwait, they're near the border. We told him he could take the northern part of Kuwait, and when he took the whole thing, we went nuts. And if we didn't tell him that, why won't we even let the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee see the written instructions for Ambassador Glaspie?

BUSH: I've got reply on that. That gets to the national honor. We did not say to Saddam Hussein, Ross, you can take the northern part of Kuwait.

PEROT: Well, where are the papers?

BUSH: That is absolutely absurd.

PEROT: Where are the papers?

BUSH: Glaspie has testified --

(Applause)

-- and Glaspie's papers have been presented to the U.S. Senate. Please, let's be factual.

PEROT: If you have time, go through Nexis and Lexis, pull all the old news articles, look at what Ambassador Glaspie said all through the fall and what-have-you, and then look at what she and Kelly and all the others in State said at the end when they were trying to clean it up. And talk to any head of any of those key committees in the Senate. They will not let them see the written instructions given to Ambassador Glaspie. And I suggest that in a free society owned by the people, the American people ought to know what we told Ambassador Glaspie to tell Saddam Hussein, because we spent a lot of money and risked lives and lost lives in that effort, and did not accomplish most of our objectives.

We got Kuwait back to the emir but he's still not his nuclear, his chemical, his bacteriological and he's still over there, right? I'd like to see those written instructions.

(Applause.)

LEHRER: Mr. President, just to make sure that everybody knows what's going on here, when you responded directly to Mr. Perot, you violated the rule, your rules. Now --

BUSH: For which I apologize. When I make a mistake I say I'm sorry.

(Laughter.)

LEHRER: I just want to make sure everybody understands. If you all want to change the rules, we can do it.

BUSH: No, I don't. I apologize for it but that one got right to the national honor and I'm sorry. I just couldn't let it stand.

LEHRER: Governor Clinton, you have a minute.

CLINTON: Susan, I don't agree that there are no women and minorities in important positions in my campaign. There are many. But I think even more relevant is my record at home. For most of my time as governor a woman was my chief of staff. An African American was my chief cabinet officer. An African American was my chief economic development officer.

It was interesting today. There was a story today or yesterday in the Washington Post about my economic programs and my chief budget officer and my chief economic officer were both African Americans, even though the Post didn't mention that, which I think is a sign of progress.

The Natl Women's Political Caucus gave me an award, one of their Good Guy Awards, for my involvement of women in high levels of government, and I've appointed more minorities to positions of high level in government than all the governors in the history of my state combined, before me.

So that's what I'll do as president. I don't think we've got a person to waste and I think I owe the American people a White House staff, a Cabinet and appointments that look like America but that meet high standards of excellence, and that's what I'll do.

(Applause.)