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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Bush Adds Michigan to Last Minute Stops Before Election; Health of Yasser Arafat in Question

Aired October 27, 2004 - 22:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again everyone.
One of the great shames of American politics is in what the politicians do the attack ads of the obscene insolence of money but what we don't do. We don't vote.

The best guess right now is that about 120 million people will vote next week, which represents only 60 percent of those who can, six out of ten. Only one state in the country allows voters to register on Election Day. Why is that?

It isn't about fraud. You need to prove your eligibility in either case. Why not just allow people to show up, show their proper ID and get on with it?

What we've ended with is different sets of rules for different states. Provisional ballots in Minnesota are treated differently from those ballots in Ohio. Registration rules are different in Arizona than they are in New York.

Back when the democracy was born you could only vote if you were white, male and owned property. We didn't want everyone to vote then. Maybe we still don't now. We certainly make it harder than it ought to be, which is one of the things we'll take a look at tonight.

But the whip begins with the central issue of the campaign for now. In the last three days the missing explosives in Iraq, today the president weighing in. John King, our Senior White House Correspondent, right behind him tonight in Pontiac, Michigan so, John, start us with a headline.

JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, Senator Kerry says the president owes the American people an explanation of how those explosives went missing. The president today forcefully said that the Pentagon is trying to find out why and that it is irresponsible for the Senator to ask those questions in the context of the campaign.

BROWN: John, thank you. We'll get to you at the top tonight, the Pentagon next Jamie McIntyre and a headline.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, today a Pentagon official said, "We don't have a case to make. We're just providing information," and then they said about making the case for why the Pentagon believes the U.S. military is not responsible for the loss of 380 tons of high explosives in Iraq.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you.

Next, how the story is being reported, spun, and otherwise handled, our Senior Analyst Jeff Greenfield with that so, Jeff, a headline.

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST: Aaron, as soon as the story broke people on different sides of the political divide put their own special interpretations on the facts. Where you saw this coming depends on where you were standing or sitting -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jeff, thank you.

And finally, to the Middle East and a story with implications for the present and the future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yasser Arafat is ill. John Vause is reporting, John, a headline.

JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, Yasser Arafat is seriously ill by all accounts, apparently losing consciousness for a time. He's now reported to be in a stable condition but a team of doctors seems unable to find out just what is making the Palestinian leader a very sick man -- Aaron.

BROWN: John, thank you. We'll get back to you and the rest coming up tonight.

Also on the program, unaccounted for absentee ballots in Florida, almost 60,000 of them and the scramble is on not to repeat the last presidential election.

Also, the man who made the famous personal and the ordinary memorable, images of the late Richard Avedon.

And, a lunar eclipse and a rooster and morning papers as well, all that and more in the hour ahead.

We begin with tonight with three words made famous by a Hollywood screenwriter. He was asked why the business had such a tough time sorting the box office winners from the dogs. "Simple" he said, "nobody knows nothing'."

In other words, there is no reliable recipe for success, sound familiar? Six days from the election with the candidates essentially tied in the polls nobody, if we're being honest here, really knows what will shape the outcome. Tomorrow it might be something new.

Today, the battle again was over missing explosives, the president joining the fray, two reports tonight starting with CNN's John King.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KING (voice-over): Wheels down in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Air Force One right on schedule, its passenger forced to divert his attention to the campaign dust-up over missing explosives in Iraq. GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This investigation is important and it's ongoing and a political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander-in-chief.

KING: Three hundred eighty tons are missing and Senator Kerry says President Bush is to blame. The president says hundreds of thousands of tons have been destroyed but would be in a tyrant's hands if his opponent lived in the White House.

BUSH: We would still be taking our global test. Saddam Hussein would still be in power.

KING: The plan was for Mr. Bush to use stops in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan to make an appeal for Democrats to cross over and support the Republican ticket.

BUSH: If you are a Democrat who wants America to lead with strength and idealism, I would be honored to have your support.

KING: But Senator Kerry is hitting hard calling the missing explosives more proof Mr. Bush can't or won't own up to glaring mistakes in Iraq. In Florida, Vice President Cheney said the Democrat is twisting or ignoring facts to hide a record of weakness on national security.

DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: But he can't do it. It won't work. As we like to say in Wyoming, you can put all the lipstick you want on a pig but at the end of the day it's still a pig.

KING: Michigan is a late ad to the Bush target list. This visit and nearly $2 million in late TV ad spending here because of tightening polls but not all of the numbers are encouraging for the president.

ED SARPOLUS, MICHIGAN POLLSTER: He's doing better in some other parts of the state but he still hasn't energized that evangelical base in West Michigan.

KING: And Democrats promise an unprecedented get-out-the-vote operation in Detroit and across the state.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is the Michigan Democratic (UNINTELLIGIBLE) campaign calling.

KING: Working the phones...

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING: Now, senior Bush aides insist that anytime there is a debate over Iraq, terrorism, national security that that debate is on the president's turf, yet first thing this morning the campaign said the president would not talk about the missing explosives today. The fact that he did and did so, so forcefully, a reflection of the fact that with the campaign so close so late the Bush team knows it can leave no charge unanswered -- Aaron.

BROWN: This is I suppose a technical question. We'll see if we have time for a follow-up. How could it be that a president, this president given his position on the issues that matter to evangelicals could not have sowed up that vote in that part of the state?

KING: It's an interesting question and the campaign is analyzing. One reason is they had all but ceded this state to Senator Kerry until the past few weeks. They had not come to Michigan all that much, as much as Pennsylvania, as much as Ohio, certainly as much as Florida, so part of it just by coming to visit but the campaign also says it just simply has to do a better job.

BROWN: And do you detect in the campaign since Monday I guess a nervousness about how this story is playing out or is there still swagger in the step?

KING: There's swagger in the step as they give you a state-by- state analysis of what is happening but they know the signature issue, the threshold issue and they have made it so is this president's credentials as commander-in-chief.

If Senator Kerry can crack through with the case that the war in Iraq, even if you disagree with the war in Iraq, the president's trying to say that "I made all these decisions in the post-9/11 world. I made the best call even if you disagree with it."

A lot of people can vote for him if they accept that explanation. If Senator Kerry can crack through and say this is a blind ideologue who went to war without a plan then Senator Kerry will crack through. The Bush campaign knows that.

BROWN: On to where tomorrow, John?

KING: On to Pennsylvania, on to Ohio, another rally here in Michigan and then on to Florida.

BROWN: John, thank you much. We'll talk tomorrow.

KING: Sure.

BROWN: Now to the Kerry campaign and a paradox of sorts. Polls show that Americans trust the president more on national security and dealing with Iraq but when the Senator brings Iraq up he does seem to get a bump in the polls.

So, out on the stump and certainly on television he's hitting the issue hard, covering the Kerry campaign, CNN's Candy Crowley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CANDY CROWLEY, CNN SR. POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): John Kerry thinks he's got hold of something and he will not let go, day three on the story of the missing explosives in Iraq.

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Vice President Cheney, who is becoming the chief minister of disinformation, he echoed that it's not the administration's fault and he even criticized those who raised the subject.

CROWLEY: Kerry strategists admit the ammo could have been taken by forces loyal to Saddam before his regime was toppled but they insist the site was not checked early on, so the story they say crystallizes the argument that the president's war leadership has been incompetent.

So, they are driving the story with a new ad, conference calls and scads of paperwork and from battleground to battleground the candidate keeps the issue alive.

KERRY: I say this to the president. Mr. President, for the sake of our brave men and women in uniform, for the sake of those troops who are in danger, because of your wrong decisions you owe America real answers about what happened not just political attacks.

CROWLEY: The way his campaign sees it, pounding the ammo story keeps Kerry in the national headlines but other issues put him on the front pages of battleground hometowns.

KERRY: You know, President Bush says he's got a plan to fix the economy. Carole King wrote a song that sums up my feelings about that. It's too late, baby.

CROWLEY: It is a moment that sums up the general feel of the Kerry campaign, confidence with a bit of swagger.

(on camera): But the itinerary speaks to a campaign that is less competent. Kerry spent Wednesday in Iowa and Minnesota, two states Al Gore won in 2000. In campaign lingo they call that defense.

Candy Crowley CNN, Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Back now to the explosives for a few moments. There is, we think, a risk here of what ought to be a very simple story getting gummed up in miles of political and PR silly string.

The fact remains tonight we still have only fragmentary information and none of it conclusively answering how much was at the ammo dump, when it was there, who was watching it before and after the war began. The Defense Department says it is scrambling for evidence but today, at least, they could only offer theory.

Here's CNN's Jamie McIntyre.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE (voice-over): In response to the political firestorm over the missing high explosives, the Pentagon launched a PR offensive issuing two pages of talking points, noting among other things the lost stockpile amounted to less than one-tenth of one percent of the 400,000 tons of total munitions the U.S. has found in Iraq. And providing access to the former commander of soldiers from the Army's 3rd Infantry now identified by the Pentagon as the first to get to the al Qa Qaa facility on April 3, 2003, neither the commander nor his troops knew about the tons of high explosives the IAEA said were stored at the facility, much less have any orders to look for them.

But Colonel David Perkins told reporters at the Pentagon: "It would be almost impossible" that the material could have been stolen after his troops arrived. "There was one main road," he said "packed for weeks, bumper-to-bumper with U.S. convoys pushing toward Baghdad." Perkins concluded it would be "very highly improbable" that a convoy of trucks could have sneaked in and out in the dead of night." But some former arms inspectors find the argument unconvincing.

DAVID KAY, FMR. HEAD OF IRAQ SURVEY GROUP: I also don't find it hard to believe that looters could carry it off in the dead of night or during the day and not use the road network. I saw many Iraqi facilities in which they came by pickup truck and constantly. It's amazing to see whole buildings disappear at the hands of looters who are not organized, who do not have heavy equipment.

MCINTYRE (on camera): Experts like David Kay also question the Pentagon's pet theory that the stash of high explosives was dispersed by Saddam's army before the U.S. got there. Kay argues the massive movement would have been easy to spot on the main road. The Pentagon is looking for overhead imagery it hopes might support its version of events.

(voice-over): The Pentagon says the inspection team that arrived at the facility on May 8th did know about the explosives and would have looked for them but their priority was searching for WMD and it's not clear how hard they looked for the conventional explosives or whether they reported them missing to anyone higher up.

Jamie McIntyre, CNN, the Pentagon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: On now to another corner of the Middle East and a fixture of it for good or ill and otherwise since the '60s. Tonight, Yasser Arafat is in very poor health. How bad it is and precisely what ails him we do not know.

Chairman Arafat, now President Arafat, has practically made a career out of secrecy and intrigue but the signs point to something serious, if not life threatening and the implications for the region are no less so, so again tonight from Jerusalem, CNN's John Vause.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

VAUSE (voice-over): This was one of the last times Yasser Arafat was seen in public. Meeting with his cabinet on Monday, the Palestinian Authority president was smiling but looked gaunt and unwell.

For almost two weeks, doctors say, he's been suffering from stomach flu but his health appears to have worsened according to Palestinian sources. He collapsed Wednesday night. His condition has since stabilized.

NABIL ABU RUDEINEH, ARAFAT ADVISER: He is conscious and he is well but he's in need of some rest. His situation, as I said, is stable and we are in need of some days to recover back.

VAUSE: Palestinian officials say there are no plans to move Arafat to seek medical treatment. He's being cared for, they say, by doctors in his Ramallah compound. To many Palestinians he's a hero, the embodiment of their hopes for statehood.

But he is an old man turning 75 last August and, even before this medical crisis, there were already concerns about his failing health made worse, Palestinians say, because Israel has placed him under virtual house arrest at his compound for more than two years.

RA'ANAN GISSIN, SENIOR SHARON ADVISER: If later on there's a request and the need to transfer him to any medical installation or any medical facility abroad that too has been approved by the prime minister.

VAUSE: But there was no guarantee from Israel that if Arafat left the West Bank he'd ever be allowed to return. His wife, Suha (ph) has left her home in Tunis to be by his side and a close associate says the man they call the great survivor is now up and about smiling and joking.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VAUSE: It's just not known how serious this health scare really is but once again it raises the question who could ever replace Yasser Arafat? He's never groomed a successor fearing that could weaken his hold on power prompting fears that his death, whenever that may be, will leave the Palestinian Authority in turmoil and will cause chaos across the West Bank and Gaza -- Aaron.

BROWN: John, thank you.

Let's pick up on the question that John just raised sort of the what next? Shibley Telhami is a professor at the University of Maryland, Senior Fellow at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution. He joins us from Washington tonight. Professor, is there, even if not a handpicked, is there a logical successor or will this end up in a real scrum?

SHIBLEY TELHAMI, PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND: Well, it's neither of these. I mean I think there obviously is not natural successor, in part because Arafat was wearing too many hats.

His most important hat is really as the founder, as a symbol of the movement and, in that sense, you know, he's a historical figure. No one is there to replace him. He has brought the Palestine national movement from obscurity in the '60s of being a tool of Arab governments into something independent on the verge of a state. In that sense no one can replace him in the historical legacy in the Palestinian community but I think as the hats that he wears functionally as the president of the Palestinian Authority, as the chairman of the PLO, as the head of the main Palestinian factor Fatah, all these have processes.

As president of the Palestinian Authority in theory and law the head of the legislative council would become president of the authority for 60 days until you have an election. The executive committee of the PLO has a mechanism to select a successor and probably his deputy would take over. The real question is whether it will be one man or will be more.

BROWN: Is there anyone in Palestinian life right now who can coalesce the support of Palestinians to deal with the Israelis in some sort of negotiation?

TELHAMI: Not so obvious. If you look at the polls, there's clearly when you ask people about the candidates of people who really clearly want to be Arafat's successor and there are many of these, they're not particularly popular.

The most popular man that comes somewhat close but still far behind Arafat is Marwan Barghouti, who happens to be in Israeli prison in part because he's one of the people who has managed to keep in touch with grassroots politics and have credibility that way with them.

But there are a lot of people who would run and I think the fact that no one really is close to Arafat right now is usually a function of regimes where you have one person being the dominant person. But once they go, things change.

BROWN: Yes.

TELHAMI: We've seen that in the past and I think somebody could emerge. That's not a problem in and of itself.

BROWN: About a half a minute. What do you make of what's going on right now?

TELHAMI: I am not so sure. Obviously, something is up. Clearly his wife would not have been summoned. His aides would not have called for other Palestinian leaders to come. Something is up.

I also know though that in the past week there has been a lot of tension between Arafat and many of the people around him. It was coming to a head. I do know that Mr. Qorei was probably going to submit his resignation once again.

It was again over having to force Mr. Arafat to accept what he had agreed to in principle in terms of reform. There has been a coalition building and I don't know whether all of that added to the stress, whether all of that is now going to be pushed aside.

BROWN: Professor, good to see you. Thanks for your time tonight.

TELHAMI: Good to be here.

BROWN: Thank you, sir.

More to say on these major and worldly issues as we go but one for the skies tonight before we head to break, at this moment the moon is almost in a total eclipse, covered by the earth's shadow just a sliver there as we shoot this from New York. The moon looks red and orange, well not to our eye but it should because the only light hitting it is from sunrises and sunsets. That's the way it looks right now 19 minutes after 10:00 Eastern time. That's pretty cool too.

Ahead on the program, the campaigns and the race to register voters but are those voters legally registered and will the election end up in massive lawsuits?

And later still, images from the late Richard Avedon, his legacy of imagination, we break first.

From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Last night the oldest person was 22. Today the youngest was 30.

A couple of weeks ago, President Bush said the violence in Iraq would keep escalating the closer we got to the Iraqi election. If today is any measure, he got that part right.

One U.S. soldier was killed north of Baghdad today and two politicians, a diplomat and a member of the Iraqi National Congress gunned down in two separate drive-by shootings.

The government, Tony Blair's government, is expected to order 850 British troops to move from Basra to somewhere near Baghdad, Basra in the far south. Once they get in position, U.S. troops can then begin to move on toward Fallujah and expect an assault there sometime after the American election. Mr. Blair says his troops will be back in the south in relative safety by Christmas.

A second videotape of Margaret Hassan aired on Al-Jazeera television today. On it she once again begs for her life and asks the British prime minister to withdraw British troops from Iraq. Ms. Hassan works for CARE International and was kidnapped last week.

And a group of insurgents, reportedly led by the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, took a Japanese man hostage. They say they will behead him unless Japan withdraws its troops from Iraq within 48 hours.

Back now to where we began the program, the missing explosives in Iraq now the center stage on the campaign. Both candidates spinning very different versions of the story even as many of the facts continue to emerge. While the story isn't quite the October surprise that some had been predicting, it was a surprise all the same when it broke on Monday.

Here's our Senior Analyst Jeff Greenfield.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GREENFIELD (voice-over): It was exactly the kind of story the Bush campaign did not want to see in the closing days, a front page headline from the most influential newspaper in America that seemed to say 380 tons of high explosives had gone missing under the nose of the U.S. military. Within hours the story had been folded into a Kerry speech.

KERRY: Today we learned that these explosives are missing, unaccounted for and potentially in the hands of terrorists.

GREENFIELD: And, an ad.

KERRY: His Iraq misjudgments put our soldiers at risk and make our country less secure.

GREENFIELD: But Monday night, NBC News seemed to be saying not so fast. U.S. troops had entered the compound where international inspectors had found those explosives and had seen no sign of them, suggesting they'd been spirited away by Saddam Hussein before he fell from power.

By Monday's end, the Bush campaign was using the NBC report to attack John Kerry's assertions. By Tuesday, a different story was emerging from other sources. The Drudge Report, which often features ideas that swiftly become conservative talking points, suggested "The Times" and "CBS News" had intentionally launched a late hit on the Bush campaign, an idea that was embraced by Rush Limbaugh on his popular radio show.

Tuesday evening, Fox News' "Special Report" was raising sharp doubts about "The Times" story.

BRIT HUME, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Appears increasingly implausible tonight.

GREENFIELD: And "The O'Reilly Factor" focused on whether the whole thing was a dirty trick.

O'REILLY: Is the missing weapons story in Iraq designed to hurt the Bush campaign?

GREENFIELD: But on Tuesday evening, NBC News reported that American troops had never searched the compound and anchor Tom Brokaw took the unusual step of pointedly challenging the Bush campaign.

TOM BROKAW, NBC ANCHOR: For its part, the Bush campaign immediately pointed to our report as conclusive proof that the weapons had been removed before the Americans arrived. That is possible but that is not what we reported. GREENFIELD: All of which left both campaigns finding new talking points. Kerry supporters now said that it was all part of a broader pattern.

JAMES RUBIN, KERRY CAMPAIGN ADVISER: He was warned that securing and stabilizing Iraq, securing and stabilizing sites like these, preventing looting, preventing chaos was going to be very difficult and the Army chief of staff said he needed more troops and this president ignored that advice.

GREENFIELD: And the president said Kerry had rushed to judgment on the case proving his unfitness to be commander-in-chief.

BUSH: Now the Senator is making wild charges about missing explosives when his top foreign policy adviser admits, "We do not know the facts."

GREENFIELD: Among many conservatives, the charge of liberal media bias was supplemented by a new assertion that members of the international community were looking to defeat Bush at the polls.

RUSH LIMBAUGH, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: The truth of the matter is the U.N. botched this and old Mohamed ElBaradei is in league with somebody here to try to save his job. This is going to boil down to being a giant U.N. screw-up.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GREENFIELD: Now there's a broader point to this point/counterpoint. It is another piece of evidence that this is a campaign where the combatants and their supporters are working from a sense of reality almost totally dependent on their rooting interests.

It also suggests that barring a conclusive victory next Tuesday, each side is fully prepared to deny the legitimacy of the outcome, pointing to either voter fraud or voter intimidation.

"We're all entitled to our own opinions," the late Senator Moynihan used to say. "We're not entitled to our own facts." In this campaign, it appears maybe we are -- Aaron.

BROWN: Does any of this surprise you that conservative radio is turning this into a media story and the Kerry side is turning it into precisely the issue they've been trying to drive for a long time?

GREENFIELD: I think -- it keeps reminding me of a conversation we had, oh, I don't know weeks ago about who's the referee? Are we in a world where the source of a story and its presumed motive is the only thing that matters?

And I, being old-fashioned, keep thinking somewhere, somehow there's got to be an agreement on a certain set of facts. That's a fairly old-fashioned notion. Apparently, that's not where we are anymore. You figure out does this hurt my guy? If so, it can't be true or it's being released for bad motives. Welcome to the 21st Century -- Aaron. BROWN: My luck and I got this work, huh? Thank you.

GREENFIELD: OK.

BROWN: Thank you.

Coming up on the program still, counting the ballots in Florida the scramble to find almost 60,000 absentee ballots.

And, morning papers will wrap it up tonight as always because this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Back now to the election.

Tomorrow, the Justice Department will announce its plan to protect the voting rights of minorities in potential trouble spots; 1,000 federal election observers and monitors are expected to be dispatched. That's three times as many as the year 2000. There's nothing new about allegations of voter intimidation and election fraud. The first Mayor Daley of Chicago could deliver dead voters to the polls. The current chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court was once accused of being part of a voter intimidation effort in Arizona.

That said, this year, passions being what they are, the country being where it is, the charges do seem greater.

Here's CNN's Dan Lothian.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAN LOTHIAN, CNN BOSTON BUREAU CHIEF (voice-over): In the race to register voters, all sides seem to be crying foul. This former employee of Republican Party contractor Sproul & Associates claims the script she was given to get potential voters to register prohibited her from signing up Democrats in West Virginia.

LISA BRAGG, FORMER SPROUL EMPLOYEE: I just thought it was deceptive and strange.

LOTHIAN: This ex-employee of ACORN, a citizens activist group widely seen as leaning Democrat, has charged that ACORN improperly registered voters in Florida.

JOE JOHNSON, FORMER ACORN EMPLOYEE: I saw some things I was very uncomfortable with.

LOTHIAN: ACORN fired back.

STEVEN KEST, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ACORN: There's no fraud going on here, at least on our side.

LOTHIAN: In a statement, Sproul & Associates charged, Democrats were -- quote -- "alleging fraud where none exists." (on camera): But they are dogged by complaints, allegations of fraud or voter suppressions in some battleground states like Ohio, Florida and Nevada, ACORN workers accused of forging signatures, groups tied to Sproul accused of destroying registration forms. Both are being investigated in various states.

(voice-over): Nathan Sproul, who owns Sproul and Associates, once led Arizona's Republican Party. The Republican National Committee has paid his firm $2.8 million to register voters, using this company staffed with temp workers. ACORN, which stands for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, claims to be nonpartisan. The group is involved in helping low-income working families, relies on fund-raisers and says it has registered 1.1 million new voters this year.

MIT political science professor Charles Stewart says allegations of fraud and suppression can have unintended consequences.

CHARLES STEWART, POLITICAL SCIENCE PROFESSOR, MIT: It turns off voters, new voters, or people who have always wanted to vote and have wondered whether it's worth their while.

LOTHIAN: And whether true or false, some voters say the process is ugly.

TORY HAYNE, VOTER: It's very appalling to think that any organization, Republican or Democrat, would take away our God-given right to vote.

LOTHIAN: Dan Lothian, CNN, Boston.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Four years ago, Broward County in Florida became a household name because of the 2000 election mess. Like other counties in Florida, it spent days recounting hundreds of disputed ballots and for a time, even set the standard on how to count a dimple.

In the end, its canvassing board found 567 more votes for Vice President Al Gore than for then Texas Governor George W. Bush. That was 2000. Broward County is back in the news tonight.

Here's CNN's Susan Candiotti.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Poor Diane Willis. About two weeks ago the young mother applied for an absentee ballot to avoid this. And during her two-hour wait at the polls with her toddler in tow. But when her absentee ballot failed to show, Willis drove to the polls any way.

DIANE WILLIS, EARLY VOTER: It is not perfect. But if that's what it takes in order for me to get my vote counted, then that's what I have to do. CANDIOTTI: In Broward County, Florida, officials say about 60,000 absentee ballots were mailed out three weeks ago. And that now hundreds could be missing in action.

GISELA SALAS, DEP. SUPERVISOR OF ELECTIONS: This is a real concern to us as election officials.

CANDIOTTI: State and federal investigators are trying to figure out where the elusive ballots are. The largest batch was delivered to the main post office for distribution. Election officials tried to get answers from the postal service.

SALAS: They really provided no real explanation. They assured us that those ballots had actually left their facility. So where the ballots were really in question.

CANDIOTTI: Early voter Arthur Balau (ph) got wind of the trouble and got himself to the polls.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm not going gamble on it. After I read in the paper today that 60,000 ballots -- absentee ballots missing I'm not going to be waiting around.

CANDIOTTI: The U.S. Postal Service issued a statement insisting local delivery normally takes one day -- quote -- "All absentee ballots are processed and delivered immediately. There is no backlog of absentee ballots in postal facilities."

This would be absentee voter not willing to wait another day.

(on camera): You're here today because you don't want to take any chance.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I want my vote counted. I want to make sure I get it done. I don't want it to get lost in the mail.

CANDIOTTI (voice-over): So far, there is no evidence of any crime and no firm number of missing ballots. It does highlight one more chink in Florida's election process that already has a lot of voters on edge.

Susan Candiotti, CNN, Miami.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Democrats say they'll have 10,000 lawyers ready to go to work a week from tonight. Republicans say they'll have 30,000 poll watchers out there. And lots of people believe that the election will end up in the courts. Jeffrey Toobin, joins us to talk more about that after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: More on now what might happen in a week.

CNN's Jeffrey Toobin, our legal analyst, is here. Jeffrey traces the twists and turns of the 2000 election dispute in his book "Too Close To Call." And from Washington, Doug Chapin, the director of electionline.org, who formed after the 2000 election to track election reforms, among other thing .

Welcome to you both. Not much time.

Doug, let me start with you.

You said earlier to us, if you think about the election problem like forest fires, the woods aren't any drier. Now there are just more people with matches. What did you mean?

DOUG CHAPIN, DIRECTOR, ELECTIONLINE.ORG: What I mean is that this is likely to be the most scrutinized federal election in recent memory, if not in American history. There are so many people across the country who are watching the process, looking for problems, eager to make sure that what happened in 2000 doesn't happen again, that we may be tripping over ourselves to prevent some of the problems that may or may not occur on Election Day.

BROWN: Jeffrey, the lawyers are pretty busy already. In Cincinnati, a federal judge today threw out or ended some hearings of Republican challenges to thousands, actually, many thousands of new registrants.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SR. LEGAL ANALYST: A victory for Democrats.

I think Doug is an optimist, because I think the kindling has changed.

BROWN: We're trying to book one a week.

(LAUGHTER)

TOOBIN: That's right.

Because what's happened is, the law has changed and gotten more complicated.

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: Provisional ballots.

TOOBIN: Provisional ballots are now universal in every state. We don't know how they're going to be counted.

BROWN: Right. There must be provisional ballots in every state.

TOOBIN: Correct.

BROWN: The standards of those provisional ballots is hardly universal.

TOOBIN: We don't even know how the states are going to count them. And states are going to count them differently from one another. And that was one of Congress' ideas to solve the problem in 2002. It's just going to generate an incredible amount of controversy come election night.

BROWN: This is what I want to talk about, but briefly. Let's explain a provisional ballot.

You go to the polls. Your name is not on the log or the rolls. You now are entitled to a paper ballot until they sort it out.

TOOBIN: Right.

BROWN: OK.

Doug, it's the sorting out that's the problem, right?

CHAPIN: Exactly.

And what we're finding that, as Jeffrey says, the federal requirement that you have a provisional requirement is not matched by a uniform standard between states as to how they'll be counted. And that's been a source of a lot of the litigation and indeed most of the excitement in the last couple of weeks.

BROWN: The -- not to make this more confusing than it needs to be.

But, Jeffrey, it seems to me that at the core of Bush v. Gore is this notion that every ballot has to be counted the same. How can that be if there are different standards in different states?

TOOBIN: How can that be when there are five different electoral systems, different kinds of machines in Pennsylvania alone?

This is why even conservative, even people who supported the result in Bush v. Gore had a lot of problems with the reasoning of the court, because the idea that ballots need to be treated the same way, that all voters are somehow entitled to the same process, is something that our legal system has never before guaranteed. And only now are we going to see how that translates in the real world.

BROWN: Doug, just, you've thought about elections probably more than most of us.

What do you think the end result is the system if we are back in court for days, weeks, months again?

CHAPIN: You know, I'm not as troubled by some about the prospect of litigation. Right now, election reform is very much incomplete in this country. States have not yet received all the federal funding they were going to get. They have not yet received all the guidance they were expecting.

And so, while it may be frustrating to see some of these things end up in court, it will provide some badly-needed certainty in many states and will help fill in some of the gaps on the election reform that was begun in 2000.

BROWN: And, in fact, you told us earlier, you think Florida is in a lot better shape than it was four years ago?

CHAPIN: I think so. Florida was really a poster child for election reform, both in identifying the problem in 2000, but also in responding to the problem.

BROWN: Yes.

CHAPIN: To be sure, they've had some hiccups in implementing it, but I think they're in better shape now than they were four years ago.

BROWN: Jeffrey, if you were going to pick one state to watch for -- not for the outcome, but for problems, Ohio?

TOOBIN: Ohio, absolutely.

And Kenneth Blackwell, who is the Republican secretary of state, the Democrats are going to try to make him the Katherine Harris of 2004, the Republican election official that Democrats love to hate.

BROWN: We'll know in a week, huh?

TOOBIN: We sure will.

BROWN: Then you get lots of work.

TOOBIN: That's the bright side.

BROWN: Maybe it will be a landslide.

TOOBIN: Could be.

BROWN: Maybe not.

BROWN: Still ahead on the program -- thank you, both.

Still ahead on the program, images from the late Richard Avedon with a political theme, a memorable picture he painted with his lens.

And, of course, morning papers still to come in black and white. Well, it used to be in black and white. It's not anymore.

This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Richard Avedon once said that photography was his language, that he spoke through his photographs more intricately than through his words.

His setting was always simple, letting the subjects fill each frame. "Democracy 2004," Mr. Avedon's final essay, appears in this week's "New Yorker" magazine. Mortality prevented Avedon from completing his look at our country. But the 50 images that do appear strive to show us what next Tuesday is all about.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) DAVID REMNICK, EDITOR, "THE NEW YORKER": More than half a year ago, Richard Avedon set out to do a piece of essentially political photojournalism.

The portfolio was called "Democracy." And it's intended, I think, to give a sense of the inclusiveness or potential inclusiveness of the political process. He went to Fort Hood in Texas. He was in California. He was all over the place.

Avedon set up a kind of mini-studio at the conventions, both in Boston and New York. And he had people that would literally pluck delegates off the floor and drag them into this very strange little setup. I think, if you look at that spread, you will see people who represent the enormity of causes that we're confronting or dealing with an American life today, whether it's Greenpeace or people who are involved with the Dean campaign, the MoveOn organization or documentary filmmakers like Michael Moore and Jehane Noujaim.

We include a couple of television personalities, because those personalities clearly have an impact on the political process. However absurd it may be that Bill O'Reilly and Jon Stewart have enormous political power, they do.

Avedon had a very strong sense of narrative in these portfolios. And the choices that he makes are intuitive choices that he has that have to do with visual placement, as well as storytelling, as well as point of view.

You have Sean Penn, who was identified as an anti-war activist and a flamboyant one, next to what he would certainly say is the result of a misbegotten war, somebody who has been gravely wounded in that war.

If there is a central political issue that Avedon wanted to get at in some way, as much as a photographer can, it was Iraq. And so, he wanted to go see both cadets who were on their way into the Army, soldiers who were on their way to Iraq or have been back from Iraq.

Avedon's technique of portrait was to allow his subjects to present the face to the world that they wanted to present. He didn't tell them what to do. They did it. And that self-presentation was a big deal and at the center of his work.

The portfolio ends with two almost ethereal, even angelic-looking portraits, Jimmy Carter on the left side and soon-to-be-Senator Obama. And he's on the right. I think what Avedon was after there -- I can only guess -- is that somebody could easily say that, on the left, you had a vision of the past and a certain ambition for goodness in politics and a politician of, for American history, unusual background, of enormous potential and somebody who certainly impressed Avedon.

He worked on this for four, five, six months. And it's left incomplete. Avedon has this talent of capturing people like no other.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Boy, is that the truth.

Morning papers after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: OK, time to check morning papers around the country, around the world. Going to go pretty fast tonight, because I guess I feel like it.

"The Moscow Times." We haven't done this English-language paper in Russia. "Hunger Strike at Channel 5," the staff at the only television channel in Ukraine that gives airtime to the opposition on a hunger strike because of government blackmail. It's a fine democracy we have going on over there in the former Soviet Union, isn't it? I'm just unbelievably cynical these days.

"Christian Science Monitor." "Candidates Vie to be the Safe Choice." It would be kind of crazy to go the other way, wouldn't it? "In a Scramble For Late-Breaking Votes, Bush and Kerry Each Enumerate" -- who uses enumerate? -- that's good -- "Enumerate Risk of Putting the Other at the Nation's Helm." That's the lead there.

"The Washington Times." Haven't seen this angle on the story. "Russia Tied to Iraq's Missing Arms. Pentagon: Weaponry Relocated Before the War." Well, that's a theory. They don't assert that that's what happened, exactly. But it is a headline. Not supposed to be all the facts.

"The Philadelphia Inquirer" leads with a big story to them, a very big story in Atlanta, but Delta is a hub. That hub system still in effect. "Pilot Deal Gets Delta Off the Brink. Contract Concessions Stave Off Bankruptcy Filing For Now." Why is it that all these airlines -- ATA went into bankruptcy yesterday. I don't know.

"Oregonian" leads politics. "What About the Environment?" Boy, is that a great question. The candidates really didn't talk about that at all, either of them. It's a good issue. It's an important issue. They don't talk about it.

Forget that.

"The Examiner" out in San Francisco -- why don't we get "The Chronicle" anymore? Anyway, "The Examiner" -- you can't, by the way, get a better value. This paper is free. "Bonds Home Run Ball Fetches $840,000 at Auction." You must be kidding.

"The Detroit News." "Volunteers Hit Streets in Mad Dash for Votes." "Kerry Jumps to Lead in Michigan." Michigan has been going back and forth. John King talked about that at the beginning of the program.

"Philadelphia Inquirer" leads politics. Of course. It's yet another battleground state. I have tried to avoid saying that so far, battleground. "Bush Attacks Kerry Charge."

Chicago weather tomorrow.

(CHIMES)

BROWN: Little slow on that, you guys. "Fall classic."

Speaking of the fall classic, we are the official team -- no, you know what I meant.

We'll wrap it up in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: First of all, it was $804,000 for the baseball, right? Secondly, the Red Sox are the official team of NEWSNIGHT.

And, thirdly, we're all back tomorrow, 10:00 Eastern time.

Good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com


Aired October 27, 2004 - 22:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again everyone.
One of the great shames of American politics is in what the politicians do the attack ads of the obscene insolence of money but what we don't do. We don't vote.

The best guess right now is that about 120 million people will vote next week, which represents only 60 percent of those who can, six out of ten. Only one state in the country allows voters to register on Election Day. Why is that?

It isn't about fraud. You need to prove your eligibility in either case. Why not just allow people to show up, show their proper ID and get on with it?

What we've ended with is different sets of rules for different states. Provisional ballots in Minnesota are treated differently from those ballots in Ohio. Registration rules are different in Arizona than they are in New York.

Back when the democracy was born you could only vote if you were white, male and owned property. We didn't want everyone to vote then. Maybe we still don't now. We certainly make it harder than it ought to be, which is one of the things we'll take a look at tonight.

But the whip begins with the central issue of the campaign for now. In the last three days the missing explosives in Iraq, today the president weighing in. John King, our Senior White House Correspondent, right behind him tonight in Pontiac, Michigan so, John, start us with a headline.

JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, Senator Kerry says the president owes the American people an explanation of how those explosives went missing. The president today forcefully said that the Pentagon is trying to find out why and that it is irresponsible for the Senator to ask those questions in the context of the campaign.

BROWN: John, thank you. We'll get to you at the top tonight, the Pentagon next Jamie McIntyre and a headline.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, today a Pentagon official said, "We don't have a case to make. We're just providing information," and then they said about making the case for why the Pentagon believes the U.S. military is not responsible for the loss of 380 tons of high explosives in Iraq.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you.

Next, how the story is being reported, spun, and otherwise handled, our Senior Analyst Jeff Greenfield with that so, Jeff, a headline.

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST: Aaron, as soon as the story broke people on different sides of the political divide put their own special interpretations on the facts. Where you saw this coming depends on where you were standing or sitting -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jeff, thank you.

And finally, to the Middle East and a story with implications for the present and the future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yasser Arafat is ill. John Vause is reporting, John, a headline.

JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, Yasser Arafat is seriously ill by all accounts, apparently losing consciousness for a time. He's now reported to be in a stable condition but a team of doctors seems unable to find out just what is making the Palestinian leader a very sick man -- Aaron.

BROWN: John, thank you. We'll get back to you and the rest coming up tonight.

Also on the program, unaccounted for absentee ballots in Florida, almost 60,000 of them and the scramble is on not to repeat the last presidential election.

Also, the man who made the famous personal and the ordinary memorable, images of the late Richard Avedon.

And, a lunar eclipse and a rooster and morning papers as well, all that and more in the hour ahead.

We begin with tonight with three words made famous by a Hollywood screenwriter. He was asked why the business had such a tough time sorting the box office winners from the dogs. "Simple" he said, "nobody knows nothing'."

In other words, there is no reliable recipe for success, sound familiar? Six days from the election with the candidates essentially tied in the polls nobody, if we're being honest here, really knows what will shape the outcome. Tomorrow it might be something new.

Today, the battle again was over missing explosives, the president joining the fray, two reports tonight starting with CNN's John King.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KING (voice-over): Wheels down in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Air Force One right on schedule, its passenger forced to divert his attention to the campaign dust-up over missing explosives in Iraq. GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This investigation is important and it's ongoing and a political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander-in-chief.

KING: Three hundred eighty tons are missing and Senator Kerry says President Bush is to blame. The president says hundreds of thousands of tons have been destroyed but would be in a tyrant's hands if his opponent lived in the White House.

BUSH: We would still be taking our global test. Saddam Hussein would still be in power.

KING: The plan was for Mr. Bush to use stops in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan to make an appeal for Democrats to cross over and support the Republican ticket.

BUSH: If you are a Democrat who wants America to lead with strength and idealism, I would be honored to have your support.

KING: But Senator Kerry is hitting hard calling the missing explosives more proof Mr. Bush can't or won't own up to glaring mistakes in Iraq. In Florida, Vice President Cheney said the Democrat is twisting or ignoring facts to hide a record of weakness on national security.

DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: But he can't do it. It won't work. As we like to say in Wyoming, you can put all the lipstick you want on a pig but at the end of the day it's still a pig.

KING: Michigan is a late ad to the Bush target list. This visit and nearly $2 million in late TV ad spending here because of tightening polls but not all of the numbers are encouraging for the president.

ED SARPOLUS, MICHIGAN POLLSTER: He's doing better in some other parts of the state but he still hasn't energized that evangelical base in West Michigan.

KING: And Democrats promise an unprecedented get-out-the-vote operation in Detroit and across the state.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is the Michigan Democratic (UNINTELLIGIBLE) campaign calling.

KING: Working the phones...

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING: Now, senior Bush aides insist that anytime there is a debate over Iraq, terrorism, national security that that debate is on the president's turf, yet first thing this morning the campaign said the president would not talk about the missing explosives today. The fact that he did and did so, so forcefully, a reflection of the fact that with the campaign so close so late the Bush team knows it can leave no charge unanswered -- Aaron.

BROWN: This is I suppose a technical question. We'll see if we have time for a follow-up. How could it be that a president, this president given his position on the issues that matter to evangelicals could not have sowed up that vote in that part of the state?

KING: It's an interesting question and the campaign is analyzing. One reason is they had all but ceded this state to Senator Kerry until the past few weeks. They had not come to Michigan all that much, as much as Pennsylvania, as much as Ohio, certainly as much as Florida, so part of it just by coming to visit but the campaign also says it just simply has to do a better job.

BROWN: And do you detect in the campaign since Monday I guess a nervousness about how this story is playing out or is there still swagger in the step?

KING: There's swagger in the step as they give you a state-by- state analysis of what is happening but they know the signature issue, the threshold issue and they have made it so is this president's credentials as commander-in-chief.

If Senator Kerry can crack through with the case that the war in Iraq, even if you disagree with the war in Iraq, the president's trying to say that "I made all these decisions in the post-9/11 world. I made the best call even if you disagree with it."

A lot of people can vote for him if they accept that explanation. If Senator Kerry can crack through and say this is a blind ideologue who went to war without a plan then Senator Kerry will crack through. The Bush campaign knows that.

BROWN: On to where tomorrow, John?

KING: On to Pennsylvania, on to Ohio, another rally here in Michigan and then on to Florida.

BROWN: John, thank you much. We'll talk tomorrow.

KING: Sure.

BROWN: Now to the Kerry campaign and a paradox of sorts. Polls show that Americans trust the president more on national security and dealing with Iraq but when the Senator brings Iraq up he does seem to get a bump in the polls.

So, out on the stump and certainly on television he's hitting the issue hard, covering the Kerry campaign, CNN's Candy Crowley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CANDY CROWLEY, CNN SR. POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): John Kerry thinks he's got hold of something and he will not let go, day three on the story of the missing explosives in Iraq.

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Vice President Cheney, who is becoming the chief minister of disinformation, he echoed that it's not the administration's fault and he even criticized those who raised the subject.

CROWLEY: Kerry strategists admit the ammo could have been taken by forces loyal to Saddam before his regime was toppled but they insist the site was not checked early on, so the story they say crystallizes the argument that the president's war leadership has been incompetent.

So, they are driving the story with a new ad, conference calls and scads of paperwork and from battleground to battleground the candidate keeps the issue alive.

KERRY: I say this to the president. Mr. President, for the sake of our brave men and women in uniform, for the sake of those troops who are in danger, because of your wrong decisions you owe America real answers about what happened not just political attacks.

CROWLEY: The way his campaign sees it, pounding the ammo story keeps Kerry in the national headlines but other issues put him on the front pages of battleground hometowns.

KERRY: You know, President Bush says he's got a plan to fix the economy. Carole King wrote a song that sums up my feelings about that. It's too late, baby.

CROWLEY: It is a moment that sums up the general feel of the Kerry campaign, confidence with a bit of swagger.

(on camera): But the itinerary speaks to a campaign that is less competent. Kerry spent Wednesday in Iowa and Minnesota, two states Al Gore won in 2000. In campaign lingo they call that defense.

Candy Crowley CNN, Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Back now to the explosives for a few moments. There is, we think, a risk here of what ought to be a very simple story getting gummed up in miles of political and PR silly string.

The fact remains tonight we still have only fragmentary information and none of it conclusively answering how much was at the ammo dump, when it was there, who was watching it before and after the war began. The Defense Department says it is scrambling for evidence but today, at least, they could only offer theory.

Here's CNN's Jamie McIntyre.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE (voice-over): In response to the political firestorm over the missing high explosives, the Pentagon launched a PR offensive issuing two pages of talking points, noting among other things the lost stockpile amounted to less than one-tenth of one percent of the 400,000 tons of total munitions the U.S. has found in Iraq. And providing access to the former commander of soldiers from the Army's 3rd Infantry now identified by the Pentagon as the first to get to the al Qa Qaa facility on April 3, 2003, neither the commander nor his troops knew about the tons of high explosives the IAEA said were stored at the facility, much less have any orders to look for them.

But Colonel David Perkins told reporters at the Pentagon: "It would be almost impossible" that the material could have been stolen after his troops arrived. "There was one main road," he said "packed for weeks, bumper-to-bumper with U.S. convoys pushing toward Baghdad." Perkins concluded it would be "very highly improbable" that a convoy of trucks could have sneaked in and out in the dead of night." But some former arms inspectors find the argument unconvincing.

DAVID KAY, FMR. HEAD OF IRAQ SURVEY GROUP: I also don't find it hard to believe that looters could carry it off in the dead of night or during the day and not use the road network. I saw many Iraqi facilities in which they came by pickup truck and constantly. It's amazing to see whole buildings disappear at the hands of looters who are not organized, who do not have heavy equipment.

MCINTYRE (on camera): Experts like David Kay also question the Pentagon's pet theory that the stash of high explosives was dispersed by Saddam's army before the U.S. got there. Kay argues the massive movement would have been easy to spot on the main road. The Pentagon is looking for overhead imagery it hopes might support its version of events.

(voice-over): The Pentagon says the inspection team that arrived at the facility on May 8th did know about the explosives and would have looked for them but their priority was searching for WMD and it's not clear how hard they looked for the conventional explosives or whether they reported them missing to anyone higher up.

Jamie McIntyre, CNN, the Pentagon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: On now to another corner of the Middle East and a fixture of it for good or ill and otherwise since the '60s. Tonight, Yasser Arafat is in very poor health. How bad it is and precisely what ails him we do not know.

Chairman Arafat, now President Arafat, has practically made a career out of secrecy and intrigue but the signs point to something serious, if not life threatening and the implications for the region are no less so, so again tonight from Jerusalem, CNN's John Vause.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

VAUSE (voice-over): This was one of the last times Yasser Arafat was seen in public. Meeting with his cabinet on Monday, the Palestinian Authority president was smiling but looked gaunt and unwell.

For almost two weeks, doctors say, he's been suffering from stomach flu but his health appears to have worsened according to Palestinian sources. He collapsed Wednesday night. His condition has since stabilized.

NABIL ABU RUDEINEH, ARAFAT ADVISER: He is conscious and he is well but he's in need of some rest. His situation, as I said, is stable and we are in need of some days to recover back.

VAUSE: Palestinian officials say there are no plans to move Arafat to seek medical treatment. He's being cared for, they say, by doctors in his Ramallah compound. To many Palestinians he's a hero, the embodiment of their hopes for statehood.

But he is an old man turning 75 last August and, even before this medical crisis, there were already concerns about his failing health made worse, Palestinians say, because Israel has placed him under virtual house arrest at his compound for more than two years.

RA'ANAN GISSIN, SENIOR SHARON ADVISER: If later on there's a request and the need to transfer him to any medical installation or any medical facility abroad that too has been approved by the prime minister.

VAUSE: But there was no guarantee from Israel that if Arafat left the West Bank he'd ever be allowed to return. His wife, Suha (ph) has left her home in Tunis to be by his side and a close associate says the man they call the great survivor is now up and about smiling and joking.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VAUSE: It's just not known how serious this health scare really is but once again it raises the question who could ever replace Yasser Arafat? He's never groomed a successor fearing that could weaken his hold on power prompting fears that his death, whenever that may be, will leave the Palestinian Authority in turmoil and will cause chaos across the West Bank and Gaza -- Aaron.

BROWN: John, thank you.

Let's pick up on the question that John just raised sort of the what next? Shibley Telhami is a professor at the University of Maryland, Senior Fellow at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution. He joins us from Washington tonight. Professor, is there, even if not a handpicked, is there a logical successor or will this end up in a real scrum?

SHIBLEY TELHAMI, PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND: Well, it's neither of these. I mean I think there obviously is not natural successor, in part because Arafat was wearing too many hats.

His most important hat is really as the founder, as a symbol of the movement and, in that sense, you know, he's a historical figure. No one is there to replace him. He has brought the Palestine national movement from obscurity in the '60s of being a tool of Arab governments into something independent on the verge of a state. In that sense no one can replace him in the historical legacy in the Palestinian community but I think as the hats that he wears functionally as the president of the Palestinian Authority, as the chairman of the PLO, as the head of the main Palestinian factor Fatah, all these have processes.

As president of the Palestinian Authority in theory and law the head of the legislative council would become president of the authority for 60 days until you have an election. The executive committee of the PLO has a mechanism to select a successor and probably his deputy would take over. The real question is whether it will be one man or will be more.

BROWN: Is there anyone in Palestinian life right now who can coalesce the support of Palestinians to deal with the Israelis in some sort of negotiation?

TELHAMI: Not so obvious. If you look at the polls, there's clearly when you ask people about the candidates of people who really clearly want to be Arafat's successor and there are many of these, they're not particularly popular.

The most popular man that comes somewhat close but still far behind Arafat is Marwan Barghouti, who happens to be in Israeli prison in part because he's one of the people who has managed to keep in touch with grassroots politics and have credibility that way with them.

But there are a lot of people who would run and I think the fact that no one really is close to Arafat right now is usually a function of regimes where you have one person being the dominant person. But once they go, things change.

BROWN: Yes.

TELHAMI: We've seen that in the past and I think somebody could emerge. That's not a problem in and of itself.

BROWN: About a half a minute. What do you make of what's going on right now?

TELHAMI: I am not so sure. Obviously, something is up. Clearly his wife would not have been summoned. His aides would not have called for other Palestinian leaders to come. Something is up.

I also know though that in the past week there has been a lot of tension between Arafat and many of the people around him. It was coming to a head. I do know that Mr. Qorei was probably going to submit his resignation once again.

It was again over having to force Mr. Arafat to accept what he had agreed to in principle in terms of reform. There has been a coalition building and I don't know whether all of that added to the stress, whether all of that is now going to be pushed aside.

BROWN: Professor, good to see you. Thanks for your time tonight.

TELHAMI: Good to be here.

BROWN: Thank you, sir.

More to say on these major and worldly issues as we go but one for the skies tonight before we head to break, at this moment the moon is almost in a total eclipse, covered by the earth's shadow just a sliver there as we shoot this from New York. The moon looks red and orange, well not to our eye but it should because the only light hitting it is from sunrises and sunsets. That's the way it looks right now 19 minutes after 10:00 Eastern time. That's pretty cool too.

Ahead on the program, the campaigns and the race to register voters but are those voters legally registered and will the election end up in massive lawsuits?

And later still, images from the late Richard Avedon, his legacy of imagination, we break first.

From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Last night the oldest person was 22. Today the youngest was 30.

A couple of weeks ago, President Bush said the violence in Iraq would keep escalating the closer we got to the Iraqi election. If today is any measure, he got that part right.

One U.S. soldier was killed north of Baghdad today and two politicians, a diplomat and a member of the Iraqi National Congress gunned down in two separate drive-by shootings.

The government, Tony Blair's government, is expected to order 850 British troops to move from Basra to somewhere near Baghdad, Basra in the far south. Once they get in position, U.S. troops can then begin to move on toward Fallujah and expect an assault there sometime after the American election. Mr. Blair says his troops will be back in the south in relative safety by Christmas.

A second videotape of Margaret Hassan aired on Al-Jazeera television today. On it she once again begs for her life and asks the British prime minister to withdraw British troops from Iraq. Ms. Hassan works for CARE International and was kidnapped last week.

And a group of insurgents, reportedly led by the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, took a Japanese man hostage. They say they will behead him unless Japan withdraws its troops from Iraq within 48 hours.

Back now to where we began the program, the missing explosives in Iraq now the center stage on the campaign. Both candidates spinning very different versions of the story even as many of the facts continue to emerge. While the story isn't quite the October surprise that some had been predicting, it was a surprise all the same when it broke on Monday.

Here's our Senior Analyst Jeff Greenfield.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GREENFIELD (voice-over): It was exactly the kind of story the Bush campaign did not want to see in the closing days, a front page headline from the most influential newspaper in America that seemed to say 380 tons of high explosives had gone missing under the nose of the U.S. military. Within hours the story had been folded into a Kerry speech.

KERRY: Today we learned that these explosives are missing, unaccounted for and potentially in the hands of terrorists.

GREENFIELD: And, an ad.

KERRY: His Iraq misjudgments put our soldiers at risk and make our country less secure.

GREENFIELD: But Monday night, NBC News seemed to be saying not so fast. U.S. troops had entered the compound where international inspectors had found those explosives and had seen no sign of them, suggesting they'd been spirited away by Saddam Hussein before he fell from power.

By Monday's end, the Bush campaign was using the NBC report to attack John Kerry's assertions. By Tuesday, a different story was emerging from other sources. The Drudge Report, which often features ideas that swiftly become conservative talking points, suggested "The Times" and "CBS News" had intentionally launched a late hit on the Bush campaign, an idea that was embraced by Rush Limbaugh on his popular radio show.

Tuesday evening, Fox News' "Special Report" was raising sharp doubts about "The Times" story.

BRIT HUME, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Appears increasingly implausible tonight.

GREENFIELD: And "The O'Reilly Factor" focused on whether the whole thing was a dirty trick.

O'REILLY: Is the missing weapons story in Iraq designed to hurt the Bush campaign?

GREENFIELD: But on Tuesday evening, NBC News reported that American troops had never searched the compound and anchor Tom Brokaw took the unusual step of pointedly challenging the Bush campaign.

TOM BROKAW, NBC ANCHOR: For its part, the Bush campaign immediately pointed to our report as conclusive proof that the weapons had been removed before the Americans arrived. That is possible but that is not what we reported. GREENFIELD: All of which left both campaigns finding new talking points. Kerry supporters now said that it was all part of a broader pattern.

JAMES RUBIN, KERRY CAMPAIGN ADVISER: He was warned that securing and stabilizing Iraq, securing and stabilizing sites like these, preventing looting, preventing chaos was going to be very difficult and the Army chief of staff said he needed more troops and this president ignored that advice.

GREENFIELD: And the president said Kerry had rushed to judgment on the case proving his unfitness to be commander-in-chief.

BUSH: Now the Senator is making wild charges about missing explosives when his top foreign policy adviser admits, "We do not know the facts."

GREENFIELD: Among many conservatives, the charge of liberal media bias was supplemented by a new assertion that members of the international community were looking to defeat Bush at the polls.

RUSH LIMBAUGH, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: The truth of the matter is the U.N. botched this and old Mohamed ElBaradei is in league with somebody here to try to save his job. This is going to boil down to being a giant U.N. screw-up.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GREENFIELD: Now there's a broader point to this point/counterpoint. It is another piece of evidence that this is a campaign where the combatants and their supporters are working from a sense of reality almost totally dependent on their rooting interests.

It also suggests that barring a conclusive victory next Tuesday, each side is fully prepared to deny the legitimacy of the outcome, pointing to either voter fraud or voter intimidation.

"We're all entitled to our own opinions," the late Senator Moynihan used to say. "We're not entitled to our own facts." In this campaign, it appears maybe we are -- Aaron.

BROWN: Does any of this surprise you that conservative radio is turning this into a media story and the Kerry side is turning it into precisely the issue they've been trying to drive for a long time?

GREENFIELD: I think -- it keeps reminding me of a conversation we had, oh, I don't know weeks ago about who's the referee? Are we in a world where the source of a story and its presumed motive is the only thing that matters?

And I, being old-fashioned, keep thinking somewhere, somehow there's got to be an agreement on a certain set of facts. That's a fairly old-fashioned notion. Apparently, that's not where we are anymore. You figure out does this hurt my guy? If so, it can't be true or it's being released for bad motives. Welcome to the 21st Century -- Aaron. BROWN: My luck and I got this work, huh? Thank you.

GREENFIELD: OK.

BROWN: Thank you.

Coming up on the program still, counting the ballots in Florida the scramble to find almost 60,000 absentee ballots.

And, morning papers will wrap it up tonight as always because this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Back now to the election.

Tomorrow, the Justice Department will announce its plan to protect the voting rights of minorities in potential trouble spots; 1,000 federal election observers and monitors are expected to be dispatched. That's three times as many as the year 2000. There's nothing new about allegations of voter intimidation and election fraud. The first Mayor Daley of Chicago could deliver dead voters to the polls. The current chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court was once accused of being part of a voter intimidation effort in Arizona.

That said, this year, passions being what they are, the country being where it is, the charges do seem greater.

Here's CNN's Dan Lothian.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAN LOTHIAN, CNN BOSTON BUREAU CHIEF (voice-over): In the race to register voters, all sides seem to be crying foul. This former employee of Republican Party contractor Sproul & Associates claims the script she was given to get potential voters to register prohibited her from signing up Democrats in West Virginia.

LISA BRAGG, FORMER SPROUL EMPLOYEE: I just thought it was deceptive and strange.

LOTHIAN: This ex-employee of ACORN, a citizens activist group widely seen as leaning Democrat, has charged that ACORN improperly registered voters in Florida.

JOE JOHNSON, FORMER ACORN EMPLOYEE: I saw some things I was very uncomfortable with.

LOTHIAN: ACORN fired back.

STEVEN KEST, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ACORN: There's no fraud going on here, at least on our side.

LOTHIAN: In a statement, Sproul & Associates charged, Democrats were -- quote -- "alleging fraud where none exists." (on camera): But they are dogged by complaints, allegations of fraud or voter suppressions in some battleground states like Ohio, Florida and Nevada, ACORN workers accused of forging signatures, groups tied to Sproul accused of destroying registration forms. Both are being investigated in various states.

(voice-over): Nathan Sproul, who owns Sproul and Associates, once led Arizona's Republican Party. The Republican National Committee has paid his firm $2.8 million to register voters, using this company staffed with temp workers. ACORN, which stands for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, claims to be nonpartisan. The group is involved in helping low-income working families, relies on fund-raisers and says it has registered 1.1 million new voters this year.

MIT political science professor Charles Stewart says allegations of fraud and suppression can have unintended consequences.

CHARLES STEWART, POLITICAL SCIENCE PROFESSOR, MIT: It turns off voters, new voters, or people who have always wanted to vote and have wondered whether it's worth their while.

LOTHIAN: And whether true or false, some voters say the process is ugly.

TORY HAYNE, VOTER: It's very appalling to think that any organization, Republican or Democrat, would take away our God-given right to vote.

LOTHIAN: Dan Lothian, CNN, Boston.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Four years ago, Broward County in Florida became a household name because of the 2000 election mess. Like other counties in Florida, it spent days recounting hundreds of disputed ballots and for a time, even set the standard on how to count a dimple.

In the end, its canvassing board found 567 more votes for Vice President Al Gore than for then Texas Governor George W. Bush. That was 2000. Broward County is back in the news tonight.

Here's CNN's Susan Candiotti.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Poor Diane Willis. About two weeks ago the young mother applied for an absentee ballot to avoid this. And during her two-hour wait at the polls with her toddler in tow. But when her absentee ballot failed to show, Willis drove to the polls any way.

DIANE WILLIS, EARLY VOTER: It is not perfect. But if that's what it takes in order for me to get my vote counted, then that's what I have to do. CANDIOTTI: In Broward County, Florida, officials say about 60,000 absentee ballots were mailed out three weeks ago. And that now hundreds could be missing in action.

GISELA SALAS, DEP. SUPERVISOR OF ELECTIONS: This is a real concern to us as election officials.

CANDIOTTI: State and federal investigators are trying to figure out where the elusive ballots are. The largest batch was delivered to the main post office for distribution. Election officials tried to get answers from the postal service.

SALAS: They really provided no real explanation. They assured us that those ballots had actually left their facility. So where the ballots were really in question.

CANDIOTTI: Early voter Arthur Balau (ph) got wind of the trouble and got himself to the polls.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm not going gamble on it. After I read in the paper today that 60,000 ballots -- absentee ballots missing I'm not going to be waiting around.

CANDIOTTI: The U.S. Postal Service issued a statement insisting local delivery normally takes one day -- quote -- "All absentee ballots are processed and delivered immediately. There is no backlog of absentee ballots in postal facilities."

This would be absentee voter not willing to wait another day.

(on camera): You're here today because you don't want to take any chance.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I want my vote counted. I want to make sure I get it done. I don't want it to get lost in the mail.

CANDIOTTI (voice-over): So far, there is no evidence of any crime and no firm number of missing ballots. It does highlight one more chink in Florida's election process that already has a lot of voters on edge.

Susan Candiotti, CNN, Miami.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Democrats say they'll have 10,000 lawyers ready to go to work a week from tonight. Republicans say they'll have 30,000 poll watchers out there. And lots of people believe that the election will end up in the courts. Jeffrey Toobin, joins us to talk more about that after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: More on now what might happen in a week.

CNN's Jeffrey Toobin, our legal analyst, is here. Jeffrey traces the twists and turns of the 2000 election dispute in his book "Too Close To Call." And from Washington, Doug Chapin, the director of electionline.org, who formed after the 2000 election to track election reforms, among other thing .

Welcome to you both. Not much time.

Doug, let me start with you.

You said earlier to us, if you think about the election problem like forest fires, the woods aren't any drier. Now there are just more people with matches. What did you mean?

DOUG CHAPIN, DIRECTOR, ELECTIONLINE.ORG: What I mean is that this is likely to be the most scrutinized federal election in recent memory, if not in American history. There are so many people across the country who are watching the process, looking for problems, eager to make sure that what happened in 2000 doesn't happen again, that we may be tripping over ourselves to prevent some of the problems that may or may not occur on Election Day.

BROWN: Jeffrey, the lawyers are pretty busy already. In Cincinnati, a federal judge today threw out or ended some hearings of Republican challenges to thousands, actually, many thousands of new registrants.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SR. LEGAL ANALYST: A victory for Democrats.

I think Doug is an optimist, because I think the kindling has changed.

BROWN: We're trying to book one a week.

(LAUGHTER)

TOOBIN: That's right.

Because what's happened is, the law has changed and gotten more complicated.

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: Provisional ballots.

TOOBIN: Provisional ballots are now universal in every state. We don't know how they're going to be counted.

BROWN: Right. There must be provisional ballots in every state.

TOOBIN: Correct.

BROWN: The standards of those provisional ballots is hardly universal.

TOOBIN: We don't even know how the states are going to count them. And states are going to count them differently from one another. And that was one of Congress' ideas to solve the problem in 2002. It's just going to generate an incredible amount of controversy come election night.

BROWN: This is what I want to talk about, but briefly. Let's explain a provisional ballot.

You go to the polls. Your name is not on the log or the rolls. You now are entitled to a paper ballot until they sort it out.

TOOBIN: Right.

BROWN: OK.

Doug, it's the sorting out that's the problem, right?

CHAPIN: Exactly.

And what we're finding that, as Jeffrey says, the federal requirement that you have a provisional requirement is not matched by a uniform standard between states as to how they'll be counted. And that's been a source of a lot of the litigation and indeed most of the excitement in the last couple of weeks.

BROWN: The -- not to make this more confusing than it needs to be.

But, Jeffrey, it seems to me that at the core of Bush v. Gore is this notion that every ballot has to be counted the same. How can that be if there are different standards in different states?

TOOBIN: How can that be when there are five different electoral systems, different kinds of machines in Pennsylvania alone?

This is why even conservative, even people who supported the result in Bush v. Gore had a lot of problems with the reasoning of the court, because the idea that ballots need to be treated the same way, that all voters are somehow entitled to the same process, is something that our legal system has never before guaranteed. And only now are we going to see how that translates in the real world.

BROWN: Doug, just, you've thought about elections probably more than most of us.

What do you think the end result is the system if we are back in court for days, weeks, months again?

CHAPIN: You know, I'm not as troubled by some about the prospect of litigation. Right now, election reform is very much incomplete in this country. States have not yet received all the federal funding they were going to get. They have not yet received all the guidance they were expecting.

And so, while it may be frustrating to see some of these things end up in court, it will provide some badly-needed certainty in many states and will help fill in some of the gaps on the election reform that was begun in 2000.

BROWN: And, in fact, you told us earlier, you think Florida is in a lot better shape than it was four years ago?

CHAPIN: I think so. Florida was really a poster child for election reform, both in identifying the problem in 2000, but also in responding to the problem.

BROWN: Yes.

CHAPIN: To be sure, they've had some hiccups in implementing it, but I think they're in better shape now than they were four years ago.

BROWN: Jeffrey, if you were going to pick one state to watch for -- not for the outcome, but for problems, Ohio?

TOOBIN: Ohio, absolutely.

And Kenneth Blackwell, who is the Republican secretary of state, the Democrats are going to try to make him the Katherine Harris of 2004, the Republican election official that Democrats love to hate.

BROWN: We'll know in a week, huh?

TOOBIN: We sure will.

BROWN: Then you get lots of work.

TOOBIN: That's the bright side.

BROWN: Maybe it will be a landslide.

TOOBIN: Could be.

BROWN: Maybe not.

BROWN: Still ahead on the program -- thank you, both.

Still ahead on the program, images from the late Richard Avedon with a political theme, a memorable picture he painted with his lens.

And, of course, morning papers still to come in black and white. Well, it used to be in black and white. It's not anymore.

This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Richard Avedon once said that photography was his language, that he spoke through his photographs more intricately than through his words.

His setting was always simple, letting the subjects fill each frame. "Democracy 2004," Mr. Avedon's final essay, appears in this week's "New Yorker" magazine. Mortality prevented Avedon from completing his look at our country. But the 50 images that do appear strive to show us what next Tuesday is all about.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) DAVID REMNICK, EDITOR, "THE NEW YORKER": More than half a year ago, Richard Avedon set out to do a piece of essentially political photojournalism.

The portfolio was called "Democracy." And it's intended, I think, to give a sense of the inclusiveness or potential inclusiveness of the political process. He went to Fort Hood in Texas. He was in California. He was all over the place.

Avedon set up a kind of mini-studio at the conventions, both in Boston and New York. And he had people that would literally pluck delegates off the floor and drag them into this very strange little setup. I think, if you look at that spread, you will see people who represent the enormity of causes that we're confronting or dealing with an American life today, whether it's Greenpeace or people who are involved with the Dean campaign, the MoveOn organization or documentary filmmakers like Michael Moore and Jehane Noujaim.

We include a couple of television personalities, because those personalities clearly have an impact on the political process. However absurd it may be that Bill O'Reilly and Jon Stewart have enormous political power, they do.

Avedon had a very strong sense of narrative in these portfolios. And the choices that he makes are intuitive choices that he has that have to do with visual placement, as well as storytelling, as well as point of view.

You have Sean Penn, who was identified as an anti-war activist and a flamboyant one, next to what he would certainly say is the result of a misbegotten war, somebody who has been gravely wounded in that war.

If there is a central political issue that Avedon wanted to get at in some way, as much as a photographer can, it was Iraq. And so, he wanted to go see both cadets who were on their way into the Army, soldiers who were on their way to Iraq or have been back from Iraq.

Avedon's technique of portrait was to allow his subjects to present the face to the world that they wanted to present. He didn't tell them what to do. They did it. And that self-presentation was a big deal and at the center of his work.

The portfolio ends with two almost ethereal, even angelic-looking portraits, Jimmy Carter on the left side and soon-to-be-Senator Obama. And he's on the right. I think what Avedon was after there -- I can only guess -- is that somebody could easily say that, on the left, you had a vision of the past and a certain ambition for goodness in politics and a politician of, for American history, unusual background, of enormous potential and somebody who certainly impressed Avedon.

He worked on this for four, five, six months. And it's left incomplete. Avedon has this talent of capturing people like no other.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Boy, is that the truth.

Morning papers after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: OK, time to check morning papers around the country, around the world. Going to go pretty fast tonight, because I guess I feel like it.

"The Moscow Times." We haven't done this English-language paper in Russia. "Hunger Strike at Channel 5," the staff at the only television channel in Ukraine that gives airtime to the opposition on a hunger strike because of government blackmail. It's a fine democracy we have going on over there in the former Soviet Union, isn't it? I'm just unbelievably cynical these days.

"Christian Science Monitor." "Candidates Vie to be the Safe Choice." It would be kind of crazy to go the other way, wouldn't it? "In a Scramble For Late-Breaking Votes, Bush and Kerry Each Enumerate" -- who uses enumerate? -- that's good -- "Enumerate Risk of Putting the Other at the Nation's Helm." That's the lead there.

"The Washington Times." Haven't seen this angle on the story. "Russia Tied to Iraq's Missing Arms. Pentagon: Weaponry Relocated Before the War." Well, that's a theory. They don't assert that that's what happened, exactly. But it is a headline. Not supposed to be all the facts.

"The Philadelphia Inquirer" leads with a big story to them, a very big story in Atlanta, but Delta is a hub. That hub system still in effect. "Pilot Deal Gets Delta Off the Brink. Contract Concessions Stave Off Bankruptcy Filing For Now." Why is it that all these airlines -- ATA went into bankruptcy yesterday. I don't know.

"Oregonian" leads politics. "What About the Environment?" Boy, is that a great question. The candidates really didn't talk about that at all, either of them. It's a good issue. It's an important issue. They don't talk about it.

Forget that.

"The Examiner" out in San Francisco -- why don't we get "The Chronicle" anymore? Anyway, "The Examiner" -- you can't, by the way, get a better value. This paper is free. "Bonds Home Run Ball Fetches $840,000 at Auction." You must be kidding.

"The Detroit News." "Volunteers Hit Streets in Mad Dash for Votes." "Kerry Jumps to Lead in Michigan." Michigan has been going back and forth. John King talked about that at the beginning of the program.

"Philadelphia Inquirer" leads politics. Of course. It's yet another battleground state. I have tried to avoid saying that so far, battleground. "Bush Attacks Kerry Charge."

Chicago weather tomorrow.

(CHIMES)

BROWN: Little slow on that, you guys. "Fall classic."

Speaking of the fall classic, we are the official team -- no, you know what I meant.

We'll wrap it up in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: First of all, it was $804,000 for the baseball, right? Secondly, the Red Sox are the official team of NEWSNIGHT.

And, thirdly, we're all back tomorrow, 10:00 Eastern time.

Good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.

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