>> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." >> turning out of politics. president obama and hillary clinton were supposed to patch things up at a martha's vineyard dinner partner days after she

seemingly slammed his orton policy in an interview with "atlantic" -- his foreign-policy. joining me as david brooks from "the new york times." i'm pleased to have him here. i know in reading the column that you tend to agree that secretary clinton is more right than president obama on certain points that she has made. give me the political dimension of this and whether she deliberately said what she said in "the atlantic." was it that machiavellian? >> i tend to think not. she is someone who's extremely careful about what she says and it's a natural thing to want to distance herself from president obama and some regards. he has a 36% approval rating.

vice president's have traditionally distanced themselves. you are running after an administration of your own party so you have to do that dance. she is treating some daylight between the two but i tend to think she just started talking. jeffrey goldberg, a close friend of mine, is somewhat hawkish on these issues and i think she was reflecting off of him a little. this was not just a little cold. it was a policy difference. they come from different wings. hillary clinton was hanging around with john mccain and lindsey graham. she was a truman democrat. >> people there with her, david petraeus and bob gates, they have all said how much admiration they have for her. you can use hawkish or another word that you use like "muscular." >> she has the mentality that as

long as history is ongoing that there will be hostilities to our values that need fighting. she goes in with that muscular idea that history is still a concept and she has the direct experience when her husband was president to see the crack up of yugoslavia where american power did an amazing kind of good. she sees greater possibility for american power to do good around the world. >> they could have done it earlier, many argue. >> when you talk the president

obama, he is someone who really feels that america has messed up when we have been overaggressive and we have overreached. he is super sensitive, super hesitant. yes to be dragged kicking and screaming. i have been struck from dinner conversation when the clinton people, some of the people in state department with her talked about president obama, they do so in critical to sometimes quite critical terms. >> i do a lot of this, as you know, and talk to a lot of these people on air, not at dinner parties. >> i bet you do at dinner parties, too. >> i don't get out much. >> you are working too hard. >> there are now people saying in terms of being more muscular, serial was the one. -- syria was the one. the decisions made there, the worries that president obama had, but little concern about what happened if you do nothing.

if you do nothing, some very smart people are saying we saw the rise of isis which is now one of the biggest threats we face of a national security front. >> leon panetta when he was over at cia, david petraeus, internally within the obama administration they were warning back a year ago, if we do nothing in syria, first of all it will spill over and we are creating a vacuum in which these sorts of forces can grow so they were lobbying quite specifically that we have to start arming the moderate opposition and start creating that. they now feel their views were painfully vindicated by events and now it may be too late or we have to do something much bigger.

i think this was true well a lot of the foreign-policy agencies all against the white house and the white house was very firm. >> the president had done a series of interviews. one with the economist and another with todd freeman in which he tried to outline his foreign-policy and he started with the west point speech. >> on syria, he said he thought it was a fantasy. it's a difference of opinion about whether he could have done something in syria. >> he still believes that, david. >> hillary clinton is very modest and it is kind of a winning interview and i really liked her after reading it. we will never know. she is very human and the way she conducted herself. >> sheep is compliment to him. she said to watch him in the room, he is smart.

he's looking for options. it's a very careful conversation. >> i expect that there is genuine affection. he has no clear incentive to be hostile towards her but they do come from different wings of the party and that was evident in the senate and now. >> as she accomplished what might have been her goal or did she do it so clumsily that it acts fired? >> she set out her goal in this is who she is. it is sincere. what interested me is the democratic primary. everyone assumes a she will walk over to the nomination and i suspect it's not true. i do not believe that there is a truman-jfk policy style party. if you look at the pew research poll on the values of different democrats, they are just not where she is anymore. the party has moved left as the republicans have moved right. there is just a huge, yawning gap for someone on the left, someone pretending to be on the left, to challenge and i expect that person will.

if i had to guess the odds of her winning the nomination i would not put it higher than 65%. people are overvaluing the ease of her nomination. >> i agree. but the interesting question is if that person is elizabeth warren. >> other people smarter in these areas says she will not run but it could be anyone running to the left will have support whether it is martin o'malley, schweitzer, anybody. there is just a vacuum.

>> you cannot beat somebody with nobody. if you look at what president obama did, he had a powerful narrative beyond the opposition to the iraq war. the narrative he had going for him and yet a certain aspirational genius reflect it in the 2004 nominating speech. >> i'm humbled by the fact that two years before howard dean rose to prominence and they did not know anything about him. a person can arise when there is a fertile field. the field is really fertile. if you are running against wall street, big money, the connection between politics and big money, hillary clinton is very hard to run that way. >> the one thing that's interesting to me in a conversation i did with her earlier, and i thought his interview was really in, but the notion she said to me, this race has to be about the future, not the past. it has to be about what you want to do am and not what you have done and you have to have a narrative for the future.

she says she understands she has to talk about specifics but she has not done that. she talked about a narrative in peace and prosperity, that is hardly a narrative. >> it is week when her planned strategy was peace and prosperity. that's everybody's narrative. she has to take the risk. between john f. kennedy and barack obama, something like 60 u.s. senators ran for president and they were zero for 60. they think it's because they have to take tough votes but the real reason is because they were not risk takers. they thought the step was a small one and they could just take small ones to get there but it's a big step and you have to take a risk. i think it will be secretary

clinton to take a risk to show us something new so she does not seem like the 1990's were the past eight years so she does seem like something new. taking a risk when you have the whole army behind you takes a lot of guts. maybe she will do it it it takes not only got better quality of come to appreciate more and more, that i find more and more rare, which his imagination. it will take imagination to present herself as something new. we're sick of where we are but here is an experienced person offering something new, a magical combination. >> thank you, david, go write a column. >> david brooks, thank you. we're back in a moment. ♪

>> john lithgow is here. he has won tony's and emmys and twice oscar-nominated. he is now playing one of the most demanding and challenging part ever written for this age. obviously, keenly are. it is in shakespeare in the park at the delacorte in new york's central park to august 17th. i'm very pleased to have john lithgow on the stage to talk about king lear and much more. how does the great john lythgoe and the great play, king lear --

john lithgow and king lear come together? >> i have been nagging oscar eustis to consider me for it. the first i mentioned it to him was probably long before i should have played it, but now i think i have just entered that interesting window of opportunity when you are young enough to play it because you still have the strength but old enough because you can bring authenticity, an old man losing his viability. >> you kept a diary of preparation. how did it start? >> well, sure i have lived a long 68-year-old life so i did age. that was my first preparation. i began working hard on it in march.

i stopped shaving. this is a real beard, charlie. i hired a ucla grad student to sit with me and cue me on words. it went extremely fast. i've seen it so many times and i've played roles in college, but i figured it's going to be such a demanding part. the rehearsal period is going to be so tough, the last thing i want to do was go home and study words in the night so i learned it completely cold by the first day of or her soul. it's the first time i've ever done that. sure enough, it was a process of stamina building. >> you said you had a ucla student come in to cue you so you would know the lines? >> he would just sit and listen, correct me. in my days on "third rock from the sun," i worked out an extremely efficient way of memorizing great gobs of material because it came at you

very fast and it was a very wordy, fast paced show. i trained my assistant to feed me my lines with a three second pause between every word including a, and, and the. and i would drill the line and i can learn a speech like that once through. >> is a reason i'm interested in this. the idea of memorization is a great fascination for me. >> it gets harder as you get older. >> making speeches and not referring to notes. >> with lear, there is a superb internal logic to the writing. somehow or another, i have absorbed it over the years, all of those brilliant and vivid speeches.

>> what is the challenge of playing outside? >> it's less of a challenge than a marvelous opportunity. it's a big playful of gigantic passions and ideas and i am a very tall actor. it is as big as the big outdoors. doing it at the delacorte with this hungry audience of passionate new york's theatergoers who waited all day to get their tickets, they are so hungry for it, they are just completely gripped by a. when the elements come along, we have had two nights of rain and yet we perform the thing anyway, day stay right with us and they think it's even better in the rain. after all, i do get to say, blow winds. [laughter] >> so many great actors have performed this.

did preparation include watching, understanding, looking at those performances to understand the range of interpretation? >> i have seen 10 productions of lear over the years and you certainly remember all sorts of things about individual performances. the most vivid was the very first couple of times i saw it. i saw paul scofield do it in the great 1964. it was like i saw it three nights ago i remember it so vividly. there had been a lot of lears, and i think the last one i saw was derek jacobi. i did not see frank or simon russell beale. at a certain point, i had to make it completely my own with no one sitting on my shoulders. >> was at a production put on by

your father? >> he did put it on, but when he did i was seven. my errands would not last until the end -- my parents knew i would not last. the first year i saw it was 1962 the first shakespeare in the park with frank silvera. it completely throttled me. you remember the impact of a play like this. like the first time i ever saw "death of a salesman." >> are there other things you very much want to play when you look at all of the things you have done, are there missing elements for you in terms of great characters? >> the only one was king lear. i don't have a bucket list of parts anymore. i'm about to do "a delicate balance" and i'm thrilled but it's not something i've been waiting my whole career to do.

king lear is. in my experience, all the most exciting things i've done have been other people's bright ideas, things i never thought of myself for. other people think of you in ways sometimes in ways you don't think of yourself. >> who is lear? >> in our lear, we see him as exuberant, manic, an exciting man, a beloved monarch who is aging to the point where he probably has already had a strain of manic temper. it is dan sullivan's wonderful concept that the first time you

see him he is extremely excited about this plan for dividing his kingdom like it's something he just bought a band has not thought it through yet. his fool is in the scene and you get a sense of him being a very robust man with a huge open heart and a great sense of humor that he has aged more than people realize. >> is he mad from the beginning or does he lose his mind over the process of the play? >> it's an extremely good question and it's the number one challenge, calculating how he goes mad. i think there's the beginnings of a propensity for madness. i think when he explodes completely a rationally at cordelia, it's a shock to her. she has probably seen the temper before but never like this. this is the person in his whole life that he loves the most and

it's almost because of the intensity of that love that his anger at her has such intensity. for everyone, it is a new shock. together they talk about how they have been seeing more and more of this and then in succeeding scenes, you see different versions of madness as he falls into dementia. and then with dan sullivan's exquisite guidance, it is just finding those benchmarks, finding the moments. for example, the moment when his madness, he has these huge, huge number tantrums with all three of his daughters. that propels him a certain distance towards madness. then he is shut out in a wild and crazy storm. then he meets a mad beggar and the sight of poor tom, edgar in the size -- disguise, kicks it

into another degree. suddenly he sees the solution. this is an accommodated man, as thou art. he's going mad, but it's taking him toward -- >> is coming toward some kind of vision? >> madness is vision thomas cauterizing wounds -- vision, cauterizing wounds. >> how big is the challenge to calibrate the madness? >> it is the challenge. it's also a physical challenge. these are big thomas huge, loud things that happen. he goes barking mad. it goes easier as a goes on. the first act has five huge temper tantrums. cordelia, kent, oswald, reagan.

that's five times i have to hit a 10 on the anger scale. then comes intermission and after that, it is a dominion window -- diminuindo. >> peter brooks wants told me that the full is his inner voice. you see it another way? -- the fool is his inner voice? >> he is the most honest person and his world. he is the benefit of three help me's. the fool, stephen moyer. kent, j.o. sanders, the one person ready to speak the truth, and edgar, and man pretending to be mad tom, pretending to be out of his mind but who actually sees lear, sees what he needs. he's the one who helps him go to sleep when that is all that he needs, just to rest.

edgar attending to be a mad man is the only person to get him to sleep. he does have the support system of this very unlikely group. we are like characters in "waiting for godot." the fool is the person who speaks truth to him and couches it in tomfoolery. stephen is very tough on lear, but he sort of knows he needs that. >> someone said at the 19th century there was a happy ending. >> samuel johnson said it was simply too tragic. it almost perversely provides

this very ironic happy ending in this great "let's away" scene. he recognizes cordelia. everything is being sent to prison. that is shakespeare knocking you out for a punch. he does it in a very subtle way. lear is still crazy and cordelia is grief stricken. it's not a happy ending out all. it's the closest thing you get before the unbelievable. >> somebody once said every old man is lear. >> if we age past 60, if we are lucky, we have seen an amazing portrait of an old man losing his mind, his viability. very proud, very strong, very capable man losing it.

i have been through this thing with my parents. i think the audience has it. people are coming up to me and saying i have broken their hearts and they burst into tears. this happened like three times. >> because they saw their parents go through -- and in cases of alzheimer's. >> shakespeare has this scene where he quite not recognize cordelia. methinks i should know you and know this man, yet i am doubtful.

i am mainly ignorant what place this is. it is like an exquisite portrait of dementia. there is this debate about if lear is demented or not and of course he is. shakespeare must have seen and observed it because it is so accurate. >> lear dividing his kingdom from the beginning. >> although the last, not least, to whose young love the vines of france and milk of burgundy thrive to be. what can you say? draw a head more opulent than your sister. >> nothing, my lord. >> nothing? [laughter] >> nothing -- >> nothing will come of nothing. speak again. >> i happy that i am -- i cannot heave my heart into my mouth. i love your majesty according to my bond. no more, no less.

>> cordelia, mend your speech a little unless it mar your fortune. >> you have begot me and i returned those duties back as a right fit. >> that's the very beginning, the very hint you get that he is not being reasonable with her and she's being reasonable with him. that is jessica collins, an excellent actress who plays cordelia. he wants to be told how much he loved. just tell me. it doesn't have to be true. just tell me. the way i see it, he woke up in the middle of the night and said he would just divide it up on the basis of how much loves me. it takes everyone by surprise.

they have the good sense to participate in this insane idea and cordelia is far too honest. i'm not just going to make up a bunch of vacuous lies for you. >> use of the most important line is i have taken too little care of this. >> the beautiful arc of play is this parallel rainbows of the play. lear goes mad and yet he gains more and more perception when he says, i have taken too little care of this, in the middle of the storm he's had this revelation. we are naked wretches to bide the pelting of this pithiless storm.

your loop'd and windowless save you? i've taken too litle care of this. it's the first time he perceives there is another world out there, a world of unprivileged people. >> this is not the first time you played a shakespearean character. when you read, when you recite, when you speak, you just feel what? i am so in touch with the gods of expression? [laughter] >> i feel like it's a musician sightreading margulis chamber music or something. a lot of -- marvelous chamber music. a lot of shakespeare is a familiar to me by now, like a lot of chamber music is to musicians. i read those speeches and --

there is this incredible intersection of poetry and emotion that shakespeare, to me, it is the very best example of that. you can look at it. leon terms of the beauty of the language or you can look at it in terms of the power and shakespeare's extraordinary empathy. he manages to do the same thing with the same phrases, that thing that i just quoted. >> into all of the characters you have played in shakespeare. >> actually not done that much. i've got about 20 plays but most of it was before i was 20 and in small roles. i did play mcbeth in college -- macbeth.

i played malvolio with the royal shakespeare company, but this is the first time one i've taken on one of the big four. i've stupidly turned down hamlet a few times because i had other things to do. >> things like television? >> i think it was other plays. >> there is the sort of things that people who are not of the theater think, like me, that every actor feels that they have to take on hamlet. you did not feel that. >> i did not have a burning desire. i have to tell you -- to be honest -- what i like working on most is new material. i love working with writers and creators that nothing has -- was something no one has seen before. this was very much my father's world. i'm a terrible snob. i only want to be in great reductions with 15 great actors. [laughter]

let's go back to edit this. let's go back to the greeks, charlie. --let's go back to oedipus. i don't think i would be interested in doing a year of repertoire even at the very highest level of the royal shakespeare company. this has been a fantastic experience, king lear, and it has been a kind of coming home. >> you wanted it. you opened yourself up for it. >> i incited it. i think about my father all the time not just as an old man but because i am embracing the thing that he loved the most. >> how much would you give to have him see this? >> don't say things like that. my brothers and sisters, my brother and my two sisters, they have seen it. my older sister will see it

saturday night. >> the last production? >> second the last. for all of us, it is supercharged. my older sister has been bugging me for years to do shakespeare. you are the best shakespearean actor and america. why aren't you doing shakespeare. that's her opinion. >> fair enough. she's not alone in that. i do have expressed, you like creating new characters. part of that is your father but none of it is fear. >> no, no. >> there's no doubt in your mind. >> i was asked to play shylock. i just don't think i'm well cast. i was asked to play prospero and i just don't find -- it's a great, great play, beautiful speeches, but the story of "the tempest" just does not tempt me like king lear. the other roles i just stupidly

allowed myself to get too old. nobody wants to see a 68-year-old hamlet. [laughter] >> ben brantley writing in "the new york times." though he has played his share of villains on-screen, he exudes an innate decency that can never quite be the skies and live performance. there is a sweetness to his lear, even at the beginning. >> i choose to take that as a complement. >> you should. but you see it. >> i have chosen to look for the sweetness in lear, because i think it is -- i just think it's a far more compelling and cathartic story if you see a man who is capable of being loved but needs it too much to look for the sweetness, to look for

the humor in the lear and the great companionship. his knights must have adored him. they must have loved going on a hunt with king lear. the terrible pain of seeing your father grow old when you have loved him so much as a robust young man that, to me, is what is so heartbreaking. as far as me being innately decent, ben brantley is wrong about that. [laughter] >> "the wall street journal" said that john lithgow is at all times playing against type. white is the tragedy seem to hit a resonant chord? could it be because there is some underlying anxiety that is characteristic of our moment, perhaps the sense that the entire system that holds our moral universe in place is subject to the arbitrary decision of old, fallible men and the prospect of genuine chaos -- barbarism -- is closer

to the surface that we can possibly imagine? that is really diving deep into it. >> that's oscar. he's a man of big ideas. i do think the play is about this order brought on by human error. >> aren't we looking at that right now in the world? >> i don't know. it's not my job to speculate on this. i certainly feel that we are in a period where the center is not holding. you cannot help but feeling

that. >> it does not have to be old men. somehow losing control of your senses about everything. and therefore disorder prevails. >> it is a shakespearean paradigm which is why there cost of using shakespearean as an adjective when politicians get into terrible trouble. he allows disorder and then he restores order at the end. his tragedies are cathartic and hopeful. there is always a coda in which you say, we have just witnessed something so terrible and it's time for us to think about these things, knit together, and go on. the greeks did the same thing. shakespeare just sort of follows that pattern almost unconsciously. >> ac bradley, the critic, said lear is too big for the stage. >> it's not too big for the delacorte stage.

[laughter] it does help to be tall. i will tell you that. we have had these two incredible nights in the park where the elements have conspired. >> and it made a better production? >> they've been fantastic including two nights ago when it was raining. it was just sort of sprinkling the whole evening. the audience was cold and wet -- they were riveted. with only 10 minutes to go, it started to really rain and it was simply too late to stop. it's like a great ace ballgame. >> here is king lear raging one more time. >> blow winds and crash your cheeks rage

blow, you cataracts and hurricanes hoses spout till you have drenched our steeples drown you sulfurous fires singe this white head and now thunder, smite the rotundity of the world crack all things still at once that make ungrateful man >> uncle! holy water in a dry house is better than this rainwater out of doors let us go in and ask the doctors blessing >> tremble, thy belly full spit fire spout rain nor rain, wind, funder, fire are my daughters i cast out your elements with an kindness i never gave you kingdom or called you daughters

you owe me no subscription here, i stand. your slave a poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man and yet i call you, servile ministers, then have with pernicious daughters join your high engendered battles such as this. >> i cannot imagine how exhausted you must be after that. >> intermission comes right after that. i can smell the hay in the stable. [laughter] that was an early preview. i'm much better than that now. >> has it been everything you

expected it to be? >> it's been fantastic. one of my great experiences. it ends sunday night and they cannot even bring myself to think about it. it's going to be so sad. it's been a great cast and the audience has been wonderful and responses. it's been a thrilling experience. >> olivier once said after playing hamlet you thought about it every day of his life. >> that's what i missed out on. >> i'm thinking about the impact on you in terms of this as a play that will live in your mind even though you already knew it.

>> i can imagine playing it again. i'm only at the beginning of this window of opportunity. but i would want to keep on doing it and rediscovering it with dan. the great fear when you have a great experience like this is that you can never duplicated.

the first time we did an interview in 1998, i did "m butterfly." it was opened cold on broadway after a brief run in d.c. it was david henry phuong's masterpiece. it was a premise, a subject, a production that took people so by storm, ideas that nobody had ever thought before and certainly in a context of the piece of theater. the first great statement by an asian-american playwright about what it's like to be an asian-american in society in this amazing meditation on sexuality, east west, a french diplomat who conducted a 20-year-long affair with a man thinking it was a woman. so provocative and provoking of a play. when i said how much i love working with writers and

creating something brand-new, that's the best example. we did it once a week on "third rock from the sun" for six years. >> i often ask people this question. we talk to people of all levels. why shakespeare? >> that is an and possibly big question. i have this feeling that shakespeare himself had a kind of bucket list of the great human emotions and that he was going to write the play in which one of those emotions was the engine driving that entire play. you have sexual jealousy and a fellow. -- othello. you have old age and dementia in lear. the oedipus complex in hamlet, bloodthirsty ambition in macbeth.

you have all varieties of love and the comedies. he covers everything. you cannot talk about a human relationship or passion without a shakespearean reference point. >> i wonder if he started with that idea and found the characters to deliver that. >> one of the genius things dan did was to bring in columbia professor dan shapiro to be our drama turgut -- dramatourge. it is virtually a reworking of anxiety done before. he gave us copies of something called king "l-i-e-r." which was a great big success 20 years before he wrote his and

it's awful and shakespeare managed to turn it into a masterpiece. you can say the same thing about everything he wrote. when we talk about why shakespeare is so great, he was a great writer but an even greater adapter. >> here is king lear with the blinded earl. >> thou will reap my fortunes, take my eyes. i know the well enough. my name is gloucester. >> that must be patient. he came crying hither. thou knowest the first time we smell the air we cry. i will preach to thee. we are born we cry and we are brought to this great

stage of fools >> that is the great clark peters who you know as lester from "the wire." he is just profound in our production. >> we invite you here today because you are family. >> you're getting divorced already? >> that's what i thought, too. >> no, we -- we have to sell the apartment and we found a buyer already. so pretty soon we are going to have to move out. it won't be long before i get another job and should not be long before we find another apartment, but in the meantime -- >> is just a transition. probably just a week or two. >> we need a place to stay. >> wait a minute.

>> these last weeks have been tough on us. losing a job, looking for health insurance, we need a breather. >> moving out of the last thing we want to do. it's only temporary. we will find a new place very soon. >> tell me about "love is strange." >> it's a film directed by ira sachs. alfred molina and i play two old gay guys who have been together 40 years. it has unintended consequences. fred's character is immediately let go from the school he teaches at and we are forced to live apart while we have to sell the apartment and he gets a new job.

these guys who are inseparable, beyond that it is just a wonderful examination of the nature of love and this marvelous relationship. i call it a movie with one starring role played by two actors in the starring role as a relationship. the nicest thing about it is it puts a human face on this big hot button, front-page issue that is same-sex marriage. >> and all of these big issues are human beings living at the drama of these decisions made by other people. >> marisa tomei is the wife of my nephew. i move into their household for this certain period and disrupt their lives. in a way, it is not just about the relationship tween ben and

george, fred and me. it's about love and its various generations and stages. it makes us feel so good that we've made a very real and simple film about older people that you just don't see very often. you certainly don't see a film about an older gay relationship. you don't see many about an older strait relationship. it's about these combinations, the long history of a long relationship. what it is that keeps us cemented together and spite of all your occasions, disagreements, discord. >> i guess you find it is all the same thing regardless of it's a gay or heterosexual relationship, young or old.

it's always the same things that both provide inspiration as well as risk. >> fred and i both have long marriages, both over 30 years. for both of us, that's the strongest reference point to creating this relationship. i'm very proud of the film. also we are artists. fred plays a music teacher and i play the painter. a good enough answer but not a great painter--a good enough painter. his head is in the clouds. it's a lovely portrait of an artist. when i was young, i wanted to avoid being an actor. i finally got the chance to act the part of an artist. it's a lovely portrait of an artist as an old man.

>> "love is strange" opens august 22. >> king lear closes sunday and this opens monday. >> john lithgow is in king lear in shakespeare in the park posing sunday night. thanks for joining us. we'll see you next time. ♪ >> live from pier 3 in san

francisco, west to "bloomberg west" where we cover innovation, technology and future of business. i'm emily chang. ahead on "bloomberg west" this hour, commerce giant alibaba is facing new questions about whether it's done enough due diligence on its recent acquisition spree, this after possible accounting turned up at one of its purchases, alibaba pictures. the recent disclosure means the upcoming i.p.o. could face additional scrutiny from u.s. regulators, though not likely to delay the i.p.o. the i.p.o. road show may start september 3. apple's china challenge could get tougher after china mobi