"Bleak U.S. Economic Outlook Stirs Recession Fears, Candidate Proposals"
Excerpt from transcript.
JIM LEHRER: And to the analysis of Shields and Brooks, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, "New York Times" columnist David Brooks.
David, picking up on professor Charles' point, what are your own thoughts about the American legacies of Martin Luther King?
DAVID BROOKS: Well, this might be a little broader.
I was at the Lorraine hotel this week. I went up to the room with Reverend Billy Kyles, who we saw at the very of beginning of the program, who was there at the assassination, was describing it day by day. And there happened to be -- we were all standing around, just listening to him talk.
And there was a German high school teacher with his class sitting there listening to them all. After they were rapt. And after Kyles left, he shook all our hands and went off to something else.
And the teacher was saying: "I'm shaking. I'm shaking. I can't believe what I have just seen."
And to see this whole German high school class, including the teenagers, who are teenagers, after all, so incredibly moved, it was a pretty dramatic moment for a lot of us. But one thing Corey Booker said which I think is dead right which is that the Santa Clausification of the guy, I think we do get carried away.
When you read the biographies of the man, the complexity of the man rivals Churchill or Lincoln. Very few people have the great soul, great flaws, great gifts. And you have to remember, in the final days, he was in despair. He was being attacked from all sides. He was depressed. He couldn't sleep.
The great feeling that he had, which then came out in the mountaintop speech, it's the richness of the speech which transcends the one issue. It's the great soulfulness of the man which I think is why he has risen to this level.
JIM LEHRER: You could see it in the speech. There was a sadness there, I mean, almost anger, not...
DAVID BROOKS: When you read about Memphis in those days, everyone knew something was going to happen. There was a -- the day he was killed, there was a quote from one the city managers saying, we're really afraid he is going to be killed today. And that was in the paper that day.
The feeling of menace -- and then that underlines his courage. But it was also his relentless assertiveness, always asserting, always going forward, always doing the next march, never backing forward, which was part of him.
Mark Shields (Syndicated columnist: Martin Luther King is remembered as a great orator and an inspiring speaker, which he was. But both by his life and his actions, he was a master strategist, which is forgotten.
- King's legacy: 'moral courage'
JIM LEHRER: Mark?
MARK SHIELDS: I guess moral courage is the legacy of Martin Luther King.
Martin Luther King is remembered as a great orator and an inspiring speaker, which he was. But both by his life and his actions, he was a master strategist, which is forgotten. I mean, he was the one who chose Selma. Selma, Alabama, was the heart and soul of evil racism in America.
And he confronted it with his own moral courage and physical courage. I mean, he put himself on the line in the face of those police dogs and Sheriff Jim Clark and the worst of America at that point. And he -- by doing that, and by his own actions and his words, he touched the conscience of white America. He moved the conscience of white America.
I just think of four white American politicians. I was at Martin Luther King's funeral in 1968 at the Ebenezer Baptist Church. As we marched the 4.3 miles from that church to where he was laid, a crowd of hundreds of thousands of people, we went by city hall, the Atlanta City Hall, the city too busy to hate.
Ivan Allen, a great mayor, a white Democrat, the city hall is draped in black bunting, in black crepe. And across the street, there's less dramatics. The white segregationist governor, he's got 160 state troopers there. He himself threatened to personally pull the flags up to full-mast.
Martin Luther King touched both of those men and made them react to him, and exposed them, their strengths, and their weaknesses. I mean, Ivan Allen was a great man and an even greater man because of the way he handled that.
But Lyndon Johnson, in his -- as a consequence of King's leadership at Selma, gave the greatest speech of his life, the speech for the -- in favor of Voting Rights Act, and the guarantee that every American would have that access to the ballot box.
JIM LEHRER: And, of course, Martin Luther King negotiated a lot of this with Lyndon Johnson.
MARK SHIELDS: He sure did.
And when he gave that speech, he ended it with the lyric of the civil rights anthem. "We shall overcome."
And, finally, I would say, Robert Kennedy, who, four days after Lyndon Johnson withdrew from the presidency, Martin Luther King was assassinated, in Indianapolis, gave one of the great speeches any American leader has ever given, announcing his assassination. And...
JIM LEHRER: And there was a great book written about that last -- came out last year, Nick Kotz, Nick Kotz's book.
MARK SHIELDS: Nick Kotz did a marvelous book on it.
But -- so, I just think -- I mean, his -- obviously, his influence on black America is profound, but his influence on white America is just -- is more -- even more significant.
AMEN
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