>> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." david: good evening. i'm david axelrod, filling in for charlie rose. the eyes of the political world are on new york tonight. both donald trump and hillary clinton currently hold double-digit leads in contests that could give us new clues as to how this long and unexpected primary season may end. here to shed some light on this is a seasoned panel of observers. glenn thrush of politico and host of the "off message" podcast. alex burns of the new york times, and alex wagner. she is an nbc analyst and correspondent on showtime's "the circus." welcome to all of you. what better place to have a circus than the biggest big top of all, new york. you, glenn, have been around this town for a long time. you cut your teeth as a reporter here. why is it so crazy? glenn: on the democratic side, it is a strangely drama-less primary in terms of the action on the ground. sanders is drawing big crowds, but he doesn't seem to the closing the gap. i think the issue is watching the sanders campaign collide with the tabloid press has been the big show. hillary i think really knows how to handle herself. i was around in 2000 and 2001 when she learned to master the

tabloid folks. watching bernie sanders, who has been touting his bona fide-ness as a james madison guy. david: the burlington press isn't quite as active as the new york tabloids. do you get the sense that she feels like, now you are on my court? glenn: i don't think these are great times for the clinton campaign at the moment. it is a weird suspended animation. as you know, having worked with you in 2008 when you would call us and remind us what the delegate counts were, as hillary was winning primary after primary, she has the numbers very much on her side, but he's drawing the big crowds and garnering a lot of excitement. he has this illusion of momentum

even though he's down by 12 to 14 points. i think there is a sense of annoyance, of anxiety, and i think she wants to close it out. david: there is the illusion of momentum and the mass of delegates. how big is new york for bernie sanders? >> huge. i think the illusion of momentum is going to be enormously important for him because the delegate count is so daunting. if he doesn't have this sense that he's a locomotive picking up steam, then why are you in this race anyway? you would need to win delegates by a staggering margin. if he were able to close this thing into the mid-to-low single digits, that would lead a lot of people to say, maybe the voters aren't ready to be done with this yet. this is as true for the republicans as it is for the democrats. in order for a case to be made against the front runner, you need the challenger to do really well.

new york, california, new jersey, those are all states that favor the current leaders. david: alex, you've patrolled the progressive precincts as it were. why is it that bernie sanders has made so few inroads into the minority communities? alex w.: i spent time with bernie sanders in the south and middle of the country. you talk to minority voters who are supporting clinton, they know the clintons, they think clinton is a realist, and hillary clinton served barack obama as secretary of state. she has bear-hugged him throughout the season. that matters to them. i asked sanders, does it matter to you, is it frustrating that the message doesn't seem to be resonating with minority voters? he got really angry. he was not happy about that. his wife said yes. in large part because sanders

sees himself as a steward of economic policies that would help minority americans and they are not hearing it. glenn is right to point out new york as a petri dish for many aspects of this campaign. one of the most, i think the worst pieces of press bernie sanders has gotten in the last month is the interview he did with the "new york daily news." that paper is read by a lot of lower income minority new yorkers. the "new york daily news" endorsed hillary clinton and called bernie sanders a fantasist. glenn: i think a big factor with sanders is, that argument about economic inequality, african-american voters talk about poverty. i think his answers during the debate where he talked about -- hillary was talking about 450 years, the legacy of inequality and prejudice, and talking about issues having to do specifically with race-based prejudice, and he was talking about these more antiseptic issues of income inequality. that is the tone that african-american voters are turned off by.

david: when the message he is selling about things would be better, unions have more power, that nostalgia for new deal liberalism may resonate with voters in the midwest. things were not that great for black americans in the 1950's. this notion that we were all so much better off, not for a lot of people. glenn: there's also a strong identification with this president who is symbolic of progress in a very big way. and bernie sanders has not always been on board with the president. alex w.: central to his messages, things have gotten so bad.

the system is totally rigged. well, the president is a democrat and an african-american democrat. for black voters, that distinction is not lost. david: in the last week, it seems to me that he's tuned up his rhetoric in many ways. a lot of it focuses on the record as it relates to racial progress during the clinton years, so the crime bill, which he voted for, but also the welfare reform bill. is that an effective tactic, to attack the bill clinton record, as it were?

alex w.: i think the crime bill matters with younger voters. bill clinton was pulled into a shouting match with black lives matter protesters last week. that is a fired up group of young folks who think about the 1994 crime bill and see it as a foundational aspect for the mass incarceration state. in that way, if bernie sanders is trying to bring more minority voters in, you made the point that a lot of younger voters are not as engaged, aligning himself with a plank of the black lives matter movement, which is criticism of the 1994 crime bill, was a wise move. david: what about that outburst of president clinton's? my observation has been, i saw him in 2012. he was probably the most effective surrogate that barack obama had in the 2012 election. there's only one candidate for whom he's not a great surrogate. why is that? glenn: my colleague did a good story on this dynamic. he was carrying around little sheets of paper, color

photocopies, showing charts of growth during the clinton administration. i'm thinking, what clinton is running for president here? i think that has accentuated itself. we wrote a story where we quoted charlie wrangle from harlem, saying, why is he talking so much about himself? i think that is your occupational hazard dealing with bill clinton. alex b.: that was an amazing thing to say. i think that in some ways, if you think back to the reaction of bill clinton's outburst, it is almost priced in that this guy is going to wander off the reservation, get into fights with protesters. his confrontation with black lives matter was so much worse than that famous, this whole thing is the biggest fairy tale i've ever seen, episode in 2008.

it was such a shock that this guy was undermining this. alex w.: i think you are right that he is priced in to a certain degree. he has been more disciplined. david: on this issue of sanders reaching into the black community, he reached out for a high level aide to produce an ad for him in the closing days of this new york primary to try and reach the african-american votes. spike lee did a spot for him. i want you guys to look at that. >> people of color have a deeply vested interest in what bernie sanders brings to us in this election. >> michael brown, sandra bland, and my father, eric garner. >> they are not just trending topics. these are mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. >> bernie sanders sees all of

me. he sees all of you. he sees us as a whole people, as a whole country. >> i'm bernie sanders and i approve this message. david: alex, will that have a major impact on this race? alex w.: i think hillary has been going around the country, the so-called mothers of the movement, a lot of mothers whose children have been felled by gun violence. i'm not sure that at this stage it makes a great deal of difference for sanders to get in that pool. my question for this whole season is, does the high-profile, nontraditional endorsement matter? the fact that bernie sanders has spike lee making ads, the fact that hillary clinton has lena dunham and amy schumer on her side. i feel like there's a line in the sand among young voters or people who could be swayed. they have their sort of allegiance at this point. glenn: i was joking about the 2008 campaign. the quality of the opposition really matters. i think sanders folks have been slow on this. the night that he pivoted to new york, giving his "i'm coming to

new york for you, hillary" speech, he did it from wyoming. he's won a majority of most of his biggest victories in white areas. today, he said something that might come back to haunt him, about hillary clinton cleaning up in these southern primaries. sort of in a derogatory way. i've gotten six e-mails from the clinton people on this. alex b.: obviously you need to do something in new york city, but there are big stretches of the state, the suburbs, where they look a lot more like the places that he has typically been winning. you see this on the republican side too.

ted cruz and john kasich have been trying to take the fight to donald trump. it is awfully hard to break through in a city of this size that is this expensive to campaign in. sanders is spending millions on new york city television. david: he has millions of dollars to spend, which has kept him in this race. one thing that hasn't been noted is the advantage he has in spending. you are right. this is a very difficult market. upstate, he is running even. but in the suburbs and the city, he should be running stronger. glenn: if you look at the map in michigan, every precinct that is not a core democratic precinct, every rural area, he was winning massively. david: and you've got areas that have been adversely affected by the changes in the economy over the years. glenn: to alex's point, i think to a certain extent, this is

where the math does matter. he's making a larger argument. he can't do this without superdelegates. he's at a huge disadvantage to hillary on superdelegates. it is more important for bernie sanders to close the gap and improve his numbers with african-americans. part of the reason he's putting his resources downstate is to make the argument that he is not a whites only candidate. david: i think they run a remarkable campaign. nobody would have predicted that bernie sanders would be where he is. but time is getting short. we talk about closing the gap. it seems to me he has to open a gap and start winning places. if he comes out of here with a participation ribbon -- alex w.: they do give those in brooklyn.

david, you know this well. new york state is a closed primary. bernie sanders does much better when independents can vote in the primary. unless you are an organized registered democrat, you are not voting in this primary. bernie sanders had 27,000 people in greenwich village, not the west village, glenn. you know new york. there's a question how many of those folks are going to be able to vote in the primary. there are seven more closed primaries coming up on the calendar. he gets the big crowds, but what are the vote numbers? david: just as hillary clinton is accustomed to the new york tabloid culture and what all entails, you would have to say donald trump has been

part of that for his whole adult life. is he at an advantage in this town? alex b.: interesting you would say he has an adult life. the dude was in "bonfire of the vanities." look, i think it has given him the luxury to not be here to some extent. he has done a lot of his campaigning out of the state. what are the latest numbers on kasich? has he cracked 20%? trump has to hit that 50% threshold. he's done some events here. island.ne out in long i think the one thing that it has done for him is just -- it is ironic that it has given him the ability to not actually be here.

>> i think it has spared him the spectacle of being confronted by protests of a kind that he has not seen previously. can you imagine donald trump holding a rally? david: the one in downtown chicago didn't go well. alex b.: in that vein, i think a lot of us would have expected massive protests outside trump tower this week. he's not even in town. from a media perspective, that is a shame. ♪

♪ david: we've talked about the math on the democratic side and the fact that bernie sanders appears to have momentum and is behind and that is a source of frustration to his supporters. sort of the opposite situation on the republican side, where donald trump is ahead, and he appears poised to have a pretty big victory here and in some of the states coming up the following week in the northeast, and yet all the speculation is that he may not make it. so that has given rise to this whole mantra of his that the system is being rigged. run down the math of this for us. glenn: if trump were to really run the table in new york, suddenly you are within 400 of that magic total. on the last day of voting in new jersey, you have over 400 delegates in the total. you have this lineup of states all throughout may, starting with indiana, running through south dakota, montana. these are ted cruz kind of states. you have a pretty predictable coming and going of the tide in the republican race. what may matter more than exactly how close to 1237 trump gets is whether his general election numbers continue to deteriorate in the way they have. the party is going to need to be able to make some kind of moral case for why they are not just ripping the blue ribbon out of the rightful winner's hand. david: when you were out there, alex, for "the circus," did you get a chance to talk to some of the trump voters? alex w.: i was not in the trump room. living in new york city and being someone with apparent new york values, i agree with glenn. this is sort of a tailor-made place for donald trump.

but the biggest problem we are seeing, alex, is infrastructure. the long game has never been donald trump's strong suit. i don't know that anybody could have predicted that it would look like we would have a contested convention. what you have seen is donald trump scrambling to bring in veterans, scott walker's campaign chair, people that know

how this process works. david: ford's man at the 1976 convention. alex w.: cruz has been very involved in the delegate selection process. if trump gets 1235, there is i think a likelihood that senator cruz will be the nominee. david: it seems to me that either donald trump is going to be the nominee on the first ballot, or ted cruz is likely to be the nominee on some subsequent ballots, but it is almost impossible to see him being the nominee on the first

ballot and it is hard to see trump going beyond that. if trump gets close, there is this group of unbound delegates out there, a few hundred of them. can they get enough of them to get over the line? i assume that is what they are is concentrating on. alex b.: i think they can. that is a moment where the whole republican leadership has to imagine cleveland in flames and ask, how badly do we want to deny him this nomination just so we can nominate ted cruz? if it were between front and a theytween trump and a guy felt really good about, it might be different. under those circumstances, when trump is flying them down to visit golf courses and giving them free hotel rooms -- alex w.: you can actually give cash to delegates. alex b.: air trump is actually a pretty old plane, but plenty of

gold in it. under those circumstances, it gets tough to see the party steeling itself for the massive rift that would come out of that nomination. david: alex raises a really interesting point. it probably isn't a more hated person among establishment republicans than ted cruz. ted cruz has made a point of going after them. until a few weeks ago, he talked about the washington cartel. now they are on his team. so how ironic is that? what do you hear when you talk to republicans privately? i guess they are pretty public -- glenn: this is one of the great speccles. i remember a story about a year ago about ted cruz where some republicans said the only thing less popular on capitol hill than ted cruz is a cash bar. lindsey graham, who had just uncorked on cruz, just holding his nose, what did he say, it was the difference between getting shot and taking poison.

david: he meant that in a nice way. glenn: but the notion that ted cruz, one of the wonderful cosmic ironies, the notion that ted cruz would be the presentable mainstream candidate -- by the way, ted cruz has arguably run the best campaign of anybody this year. david: it isn't just that he has scoped out this delegate process better. he, from the beginning, was the most strategic. he understood that if he could command evangelicals in iowa, he could win the first contest. he had a plan from start to finish. he knew all the rules of every state. alex b.: his top guy is probably, for those that cover the inside game, considered one of the real rising stars in this constellation.

i was talking to a cruz person the other day about the evangelical vote. they said, look at his liberty speech. it is largely remembered as this jerry falwell thing. they said, the entire second half of the speech was about economics, blue-collar economics and trade. they feel now that they are no longer being challenged from the right by any candidate, that they can move toward the economic stuff. the cruz campaign is in a comfortable situation in states like indiana. alex b.: in retrospect, the amazing strategic innovation of the ted cruz campaign is that the most conservative candidate will probably win the republican primary. when you think back on rubio, jeb, it seems obvious looking back that of course you were not

going to outflank ted cruz with this electorate. the only man who might is a guy who totally defies ideological labels and is running as this third world strongman type of candidate. alex w.: i would bring up your questioning as to whether the establishment would opt for cruz. i hear from establishment republicans, moderate republicans, they would much rather see ted cruz lose in november, because the implications for the party would be much clearer than if it was donald trump at the top of the ticket. david: you have heard conservative republicans say for several cycles, if we just nominated a true conservative, not one of these center-right sort of moderates, john mccain, mitt romney, that we would win because we would mobilize all these voters who have been estranged from voting generally. so the notion of cruz gives them

a pure test of that. the theory is that if donald trump is the candidate, it won't be clear, and you will have all the factions blaming each other for the loss. if trump loses, and before we leave, i want to get to what that general election would look like. alex b.: that theory of the case totally makes sense on its own internal logic. i do think it presumes a level of self-awareness and honesty on the part of the cruz coalition that may not entirely exist. you can totally imagine ted cruz gets shellacked in the fall and the narrative from the hard right is, if the bush family hadn't undercut him, if the establishment hadn't betrayed him, and so many republican donors hadn't channeled money to hillary clinton, we could have won back this thing. 4 need to try it again in

years. david: what is this going to look like? hillary clinton absent ted cruz and donald trump would be the least popular nominee of a major party since these polls have been taken. her unfavorables are in the low 50's, but theirs are higher. what does it mean when you have candidates on both sides who have very high negatives? what does it portend for the general election. glenn: you've seen the movie "reservoir dogs." imagine that has a 3-4 month campaign. it will be the most negative. trump's general disapproval is more than 65% regularly. there was a metric i had not before.een is there somebody you would

never ever ever vote for? 63% said no i would never vote for donald trump. these are astronomical numbers. these are before the democrats have run a single ad against him. i think the name of the game on the clinton side is scorched earth. it's going to be ugly. david: there seems to be more coherence to democrats than republicans. alex b.: that is why i think you will see an interesting phenomenon against trump or cruz that is going to be a parallel track, a campaign of reassurance and trying to give republicans and moderates who wouldn't vote for a democrat or hillary clinton, some kind of permission that makes it ok. just this one time it's ok to go against your gut instincts and go for hillary clinton. a lot of those people who said they would never vote for donald trump, they could just stay home or with the right set of validators, reassurance, maybe some percentage of them can be persuaded in the interest of keeping things normal and not too crazy -- [laughter]

alex b.: go with the one that you don't like. david: what about if ted cruz is the candidate? glenn: looking from the clinton side everybody on her campaign would like it to be donald trump. donald trump generates -- he is the biggest garbage truck. the candidate herself -- david: but there was a rational component to this. glenn: the candidate herself and her husband are apprehensive about facing this guy when you have characters like roger stone running around talking about bodies buried in shallow grave

in the 1990's. alex w.: ted cruz does not get the crossover vote that donald trump does. the thing i would say about ted cruz is you will see a lot of attention on the part of paul ryan shoring up the house and senate. withill probably see that trump, too. there is going to be concern about the senate and making sure the house margin doesn't get too tight. david: you've heard donald trump talk about the illegitimacy of the process. how he is being cheated. this nomination is being stolen. how do his supporters not walk away after that, if they have a steady dose of that and what promises to be an acrimonious run-up to the convention?

and perhaps, conventions. alex b.: many most certainly would. a lot of republicans have made their peace with ted cruz because he is a predictable candidate who they can communicate with. there is a scenario where nominating ted cruz is worse because the donald trump vote stays home and the moderate or center-right republicans and suburban voters who would have deserted donald trump also desert ted cruz. his floor may be lower. david: what did everyone miss about this? what did everyone miss about -- thoughti sure did, i he'd be gone by winter. most people felt the same way. what went wrong in terms of the evaluation of donald trump? alex b.: there still is this inside the bubble/outside the bubble dynamic and how he is perceived by supporters and people who do not buy into the premise of trump. thinking back to where we were

when he declared there was an assumption among people in new york and washington that the rest of the country isn't in on the joke. everyone knows his real estate empire isn't as he presents it. "the apprentice" is a game show. going around the country and talking to people who support donald trump, they talk about his business career the way people on wall street might talk about warren buffett, michael bloomberg -- they think he's one of the amazing entrepreneurs of our time. i do think that there was this assumption his campaign was absurd and it persisted so long, nobody decided to point it out. david: some of the things that he got ridiculed for, the wall, the muslim ban, those resonated with a lot of people in this country.

glenn: i've traveled around the country. i have spent a lot of time in baton rouge. people have a sense of loss. people feel, older white folks feel the country they bought into, that they said the pledge of allegiance for, doesn't exist to a certain extent and there are any number of factors that have to do with that. one of the things, the presidency -- every four years we perpetuate this illusion the presidency is the most powerful institution in the world and the president controls everything. there is a sense that the world becomes more difficult to control, as the threat of terrorism grows, people have a sense that external forces are imposing on the country. the appeal of having someone who says not only will i be a strong president but that the presidency itself and the country itself will reclaim their role is enormously powerful. that is what we missed.

that this guy is not just about asserting himself but saying the role of the presidency is going to be one that fits the historical situation. alex w.: you can't underestimate the role of the media landscape. donald trump is a reality television star. reality tv and the way conflict is on center stage is an incredibly pervasive conceit in american culture. the culture has changed. donald trump has been serendipitously situated at the nexus. he understands how to deliver a message with authenticity. how to talk with people without using the mainstream media and how to stoke conflict. and offer a thin resolution to that conflict. mexico is going to pay for the wall, etc. he knows he is not going to be checked on that. david: but he is checked on it and it doesn't seem to matter. i get the sense that they feel the same people who are ridiculing donald trump and being disrespectful to donald trump are disdainful of them. glenn: on a basic obvious level the most amazing accomplishment is to have made himself this extraordinary wealthy man, this spirit animal of the white working class. i think you are right.

when they see him saying that his national security plan, i will find the douglas macarthur generation and put him in charge. his supporters have seen the movie. they remember that as a better

time. why are we laughing at it? david: alex mentions authenticity. you did a podcast with hillary clinton. this word hounds her. it doesn't appear to many people, sometimes, that she is connecting. it is like there is a screen there. what is that? and were you able to penetrate that in your podcast? alex b.: i don't know how good i was at that. i have known her on and off. when i covered her, by the way, in the senate, what a lot of people are missing, in 2008 she was in game shape from the first day. she had just won senate reelection. she was dealing with us. she had a mode of operation that brought her around. when you are giving all the speeches and retire to one of your mansions, she got the bends coming down from the penthouse. the thing with her, what is authenticity? it is hard to define. it's what people think authenticity is.

i said to her, essentially your speeches are terrible. i saw you in iowa, it was like you were reading a list. if you go to a bernie sanders thing you can write it on the back of a napkin. you know exactly what the message was. she said to me -- listen, running for the presidency is a

serious thing and i'm going to be as detailed as i want to be. i'm dead set. david: she knows she is not that good at the performance art. she has said it. bill clinton, barack obama, they have that. i don't have it. policy is not just something she believes in, it is her sword and shield. glenn: the clintons are not necessarily known over the course of their career for telling the truth all the time. interesting, is opened the conversation with i'm a terrible flyer and hillary clinton is an excellent flyer. she told the story about being in arkansas and flying around in a crop duster is in the door coming off of the plane. i got more e-mails from people asking me to check that anecdote out to see if it was true. that is incredibly telling. people would doubt something as innocuous as that. david: let's go around the table as we close this discussion and do what is always scary to do when you are sitting in a taped conversation. what is going to happen?

who is the next president of the united states? alex b.: there would have to be extraordinary confluence of events between now and the contention -- convention to nominate someone strong in the election. i think it is pretty much consensus. david: a he or a she? alex b.: nikki haley can still get in. alex w.: it's true. david: are you going to be bolder? alex w.: most people think hillary clinton is going to be the next president. there's been no time focused on what that administration might look like but that is most likely the outcome. glenn: i think it's going to be closer than people think. there is never an easy election for this woman. the more we talk about how this -- disadvantaged the republicans are, the more i feel like this is going to see pennsylvania get tie in the end regardless of the candidate. to quote someone wiser than me, he said to me he now thinks hillary clinton could beat donald trump from jail.

david: on that cheerful note, glenn thrush, alex wagner, thank you for being here. ♪ charlie: lesley stahl is here.

charlie: the great lesley stahl is here. she has said, "i was born on my 30th birthday. everything before then was prenatal." she was hired by cbs. since then, she has won 11 emmy awards. correspondent on "60 minutes." now she turns her gaze inwards on the experience of being a grandmother. her new book is "becoming grandma -- the joys and science of the new grandparenting." her answers to the practical. this is a fun read about an important subject. as always, i'm glad to have her. lesley: you make me melt. puddle. a so.lie: i certainly hope

i'm going to do this. let's get to the idea. you are experiencing something when your grandchildren are born. you are a hard-driving journalist. this morning, i said to you why are you doing this all the time? your appetite for the story has not diminished one bit. lesley: that's true. charlie: that love is there and has not been diminished. sudden you say, "i'm a grandma and it is really neat." lesley: how the book came about, you will love. the publisher said i want you to the publisher said i want you to write about "60 minutes." you are at "60 minutes." i said are you crazy? going to talk about my colleagues? i will tell the truth and they will fire me -- [laughter] or it will be the most boring book i've ever read. i'm not doing that.

i began to talk about my grandchildren. charlie: to him at the time. lesley: i'm not doing the book. we turn to having our lunch, eating and schmoozing. i kept coming back to my grandchildren. he said that is your book. i thought about it, i would like to write about that. charlie: because what had been going on? lesley: i was so surprised at the depth of the emotion, at the jolting bonding with the babies. i never expected that. it came out of nowhere. charlie: different from having children? lesley: very. charlie: how so? lesley: it's undivided with a grandchild. there is no worrying. there's no saying did i get them to the doctor on time? pick themgotten to up? none of that.

charlie: so what is it? lesley: it is love. unadulterated, pure, deep loving in a way you have never done before. charlie: you are not thinking about lesley, you are thinking about them. lesley: i'm not divided. anything.orried about my attention is completely focused. i am in real time. everything they do is brilliant. everything they do is wonderful. charlie: what do they call you? lesley: lolly. charlie: what is in this book? lesley: this idea you are having a whole new kind of love. granny business aobut nannies. they are taking care of their grandchildren, one day, two days, three days a week. because the parents are working. they need our help. childcare is desperately expensive. it can cost more than college. they need us in a way we do not need our parents.

-- we did not need our parents. charlie: other than filling your heart, what are the changes for you? lesley: it's been huge. my whole outlook on my future. my whole relationship with my daughter. it has gotten much closer. we are in the project together. we always had a great relationship. it has gotten much closer. even though i live across the country, we can talk about more things together. i am happier. i love being a grandmother. when i say that to people who know me at work, they are saying she has changed. charlie: because your reputation is tough, get the story. that is who you are. lesley: you know that is not real. charlie: therefore, when you see this book and you hear you, gushing, people say oh my god. this is really happening. it is genuine. lesley: it is really not who i am obviously. it is a little more revealing.

it is mystical. i thought i was the only one. i wrote the book. i've been interviewing grandmothers and step-grandmothers. we are all in this together. we don't know that. charlie: i asked you this morning, is it different from grandfathers? lesley: grandfathers get just as besotted. just as gaga. i've seen grandfathers just as attentive. it happens a little later. grandmothers are attached to the newborn in a biochemical way.

there is a lot in there about the biochemistry of holding your grandchild. grandfathers seem to need more connection. the kids have to be a little older. once he is hooked, he can be even more attentive. charlie: this is from "becoming grandma." charlie: this is from "becoming grandma." you haven't broken down in tears. i thought i had become the of epitome of self-control. then my first grandchild was born, january 30, 2011. i was blindsided by love, more loving, more intense than anything i could remember or have ever imagined. this was big for you.

lesley: but it is not unusual. charlie: you have discovered from other grandmothers. lesley: from most grandmothers i interviewed. charlie: you found it, yes. lesley: i interviewed a grandmother in the bronx who lives in a fantastic house, that the city built for grandmothers raising their grandchildren. she had already taken care of this little girl's older sister. she said i was not going to take another child, not in a million years. then she is in the room when the baby is born. the doctor put the baby in her arms. she describes what i am telling you. i held that baby and that was it. she said, i was hooked like a fish. charlie: is there an idea that old is cool? lesley: a little bit. charlie: i certainly hope so. [laughter] lesley: i'm doing all i can to promote that. no, i actually think that is

true. the baby boomers. we are such a gigantic bunch. we relate to them. everything they have touched they have changed. we are actually healthier, truly healthier. charlie: and live longer. that is the great thing. we live longer. you will experience the grandbaby growing up. a positive influence that goes beyond. lesley: the other thing i found is that they actually truly need us. charlie: what do they need? lesley: in all of time, from going back to the cave men, grandmothers were raising children. it is in our species. it is the way it was meant to be. it's a natural course of things. then came the industrial revolution and we got the nuclear family. what is supposed to be got separated.

so, when a grandmother has this feeling, i think it is because it is what is meant to be and the children need us because we in history, going back, we nurtured them. we made sure they survived. that is why grandmothers, and most other animals, they die when they can no longer reproduce. why are grandmothers here? to take care of grandchildren. charlie: hillary clinton is the poster mother of grandparents. lesley: she is. charlie: she used to tell me when i would interview her, do you think she would rather have a grandchild than be president? her husband said that is a hard choice for her but sometimes i do. she wants it so badly. now their story is she is doting over her granddaughter. lesley: i saw her do an interview yesterday.

and honestly, she sounded like me. i said, my goodness, she could have written the book. she is going through what i am going through. working women may be going through what i'm going through more intensely because -- charlie: with what impact? this is a wonderful feeling, i've discovered -- but you say it is the full stage of life. theut you say it is now fourth stage of life. you mentioned we are living longer. we are going to live 30 years longer after we retire, if we retire. [laughter] charlie: you and i are exhibit a. lesley: another 30 years. there is a new phase of life. one we haven't had before. i don't mean for me. i mean for everybody. i am suggesting in the book that the best way to spend it is helping your children raise grandchildren. charlie: in addition to telling stories on "60 minutes" you will tell stories to your grandchildren. you are a storyteller wherever you turn. lesley: i think that is

wonderful. charlie: thank you for coming. i want you to come back and talk about your remarkable career in journalism. you were born at 30 at cbs. 1971, 1972. and 25 years at "60 minutes." i know stories about you. lesley: don't tell. please? charlie: i do want to talk about your remarkable career. it's not hard to understand why you love it so much. why you pursue it with such vigor. lesley: you love it. you are at "60 minutes" now. you get it. you get what fun it is to do. it has that serious element, that -- there is an idealism we tell ourselves. charlie: i want to tell that story.

words, goly said four story.tell a the book is called " becoming grandma." her name is way above the title. the subtitle is "the joy and the science of grandparenting." they will be rewarded. lesley: thank you. charlie: thank you for joining us. see you next time. ♪

♪ carol: welcome to "bloomberg businessweek." stars of the annual design conference. how states are paying the price for allowing discrimination, and why central bankers may be running out of ammo. let's go meet the editor. ♪ carol: i am here with the editor, alan pollack. you highlight super thinkers, working on the next big thing. that includes the folks at industrial light and magic. what is interesting is they are looking to build virtual reality for "star wars."