♪ announcer: from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." jeff glor: good evening, i am filling in for charlie rose, who is traveling this evening. legendary singer-songwriter prince died in his home in chanhassen, minnesota. as of press time no cause of , death has been given. prince was a prodigy, a provocateur, who forever changed the pop using landscape. music landscape. he won seven grammy awards, and had five number one songs. these include "little red corvette," and "when doves cry."

he was a virtuoso on keyboard, drums, guitar, and a master of funk, rock, r&b, and pop. his music even blended genres. -- and defied genre. joining us to discuss the artist that shaped his career his way, from billboard magazine gail mitchell, and cultural critic sasha frere-jones. welcome to both of you. let me start with you, gail. you have spoken to prince. he spent time with him, you interviewed him. what did you learn about him? gail mitchell: i learned, this was three years ago, 2013, he was a regular guy. i think he enjoyed hiding a bit behind that mysteriousness. when he got the chance, everyone i would talk to, the first question i would ask is, does he talk? they say, he will talk your ear off. he certainly did. it was just amazing.

he talked about business and things he wanted do down the road. it was just a tremendous opportunity. jeff glor: but he didn't want the interviews recorded. gail mitchell: i remember e-mailing his manager at time -- at the time saying, can i please bring in my tape recorder? i will stay at paisley park. i will transcribe the interview there. he can burn the interview after i do it. no. can i take notes? no. it was very intimidating knowing i am trying to do an interview, and we are getting ready to honor him for the icon award in the billboard music awards, and i'm sitting there trying to think, how in the heck do i do this? try to get as much information out of him as i can and still be , able to relay it without being able to take a note or record him. in the end, someone said you

take your phone in, and snuck in a recording. i figured the phone would go off and i would be in trouble. in the very end, when he was leading me out of his conference room, he said, i need to double check, did you record this? and i was able to say honestly, i did not. jeff glor: was he the same prince that defined everywhere we read about him, or was that a different person? gail mitchell: in the beginning, it was the one you read about. the first thing he said before we started the interview, he said we have to talk for a few minutes to see if we get along before this interview will proceed. there with that element option. -- of him. when sat down, he was very passionate at the time about black ownership in different arenas. he had learned what i was going to write an essay about black radio ownership. i think that is what tipped to the scales in terms of us being able to interview him. he talked at length about ownership, and taking control of your own destiny. gail mitchell: sasha, how to

-- did prince rogers nelson change music? sasha frere-jones: the changed -- he changed in so many ways, i think. there are so many angles you can look at this from. growing up in new york, which seemed like a very free place, and it was in many ways before money really changed the city, we were all worshiping this guy. it occurred to me, he is for -- from minneapolis. yet he is the freakiest of the , freaky. we are following him maybe more than we are following anyone other than michael and hip hop , at the time. which he famously did not get with at the moment, but then eventually embraced it. he was the black rocker. he was the funk guy, who played stuff no one to figure out what to do with. then purple rain kind of destroyed all of these boundaries. it was a massive movie. it was a huge album. he kind of went for the entire

spectrum. and then it got even bigger with things like "sign of the times." i still think it is my favorite records. -- favorite record. there is no way to really gauge -- you have to pull way back. everyone is waiting for his album, he writes a letter to prince. and then in the can you have -- sinead o'connor doing her version of "nothing compares to you," a song he wrote for the family. doing her rendition of that song, and those spirals go on and on through music. there are a lot of spiral machine songs, 1980's kids groups are doing now. they come straight out of "1999." it is sort of very hard to imitate what he did not influence. there are people from the last 30, 40 years what a big moment who have no significance now. prince matters still to everybody. jeff glor: more than ever. sasha frere-jones: i can't imagine anyone i know. i don't know what i did wrong, but he is everything. it is very hard for me to get my

mind around this one. jeff glor: it was the music, the performance, the composition. he did everything, for every album. these days, when there are producers involved, there is everyone involved in every aspect of an outcome. he single-handedly created every -- of an album. he single-handedly created every aspect of nearly every album, correct? sasha frere-jones: that is correct. he was one of the first people to speak out against the structuring of major labels and major-label deals. that really was ahead of its time, the way he dealt with his label, warner bros., in the 1990's, starting maybe in the 1980's. that has really come back around with discussions of streaming, which are really discussions about a company like spotify or whoever does which one, and -- or whoever and their , relationship to the rights owner. it is usually not the artist.

he was telling people, don't sign to a label, do it all yourself. own all of your stuff. that has been right or a long time. he was one of the first people to fight back against it. he was definitely less commercially popular after he left warner, but i did not think that worried him much. gail, what did you learn about his thoughts on those rights holders? gail mitchell: he was very diy before it was fashionable, before the real implosion or explosion of the internet. he told me, at the time, he was in conversation with different companies. but it was all, he said, agreements being put forth to him were the basic kind of agreements he had at warner bros. he just wanted to control everything. he wanted to be the artist, be the businessman, and advocate for himself.

it was still kind of, everyone remembers the symbol. prince had on his face. jeff glor: he was so shy in person, when you watch him in televised interviews. yet he was larger than life on , stage. sasha frere-jones: the amount of energy for prince you have to put into a performance like that, that is something you can -- something you can not parade around every day. you would go crazy. when i saw him in las vegas, i don't know how many years ago, maybe seven years ago? he was still at the peak that i had seen him 10 years before that and 10 years before that. he put everything into the dancing even pulled back and let , his band go. it takes amazing concentration and listening, also. he was always controlling the band in a subtle way, but also directing and playing and singing. i think he was multitasking long before there was computer and

phone and then became a word for something else. i think he was constantly hearing a lot of things at once. it would save the energy for when he needed it. he knew how to do that very well. jeff glor: sasha, he had energy not only in writing the albums, and performing them but in , maintaining that output for a long, long time. 39 studio albums in 39 years? that is like clockwork, and it never tailed off. sasha frere-jones: no, and there are two things that come to mind. in the 1980's, there is a span in their -- in there. i have talked to fans, who is the best, who played the first album -- if you want to look for streak, the warriors breaking lots of records this year, steph curry and the golden state warriors, that brought to mind prince.

i think he even mentioned steph curry recently. there was a part in the 1980's where he was so prolific, he had to write so many groups, invent groups to play his material. he had to invent an alter ego called madhouse, which was mostly him playing jazz fusion. i do not know that anybody has ever gone on a street like that, and had so much of it be so good. he kept performing to the end. some of his best songs, came towards the end of his career. jeff glor: is that why he gives a much music away to others, because he had too much of it? sasha frere-jones: i assume. he did not give away anything that went to the family, a spinoff group, and then she took it. that was an amazing move, like aretha taking back from butch , and taking back

the meaning, and never looking back. and then we also know there is a vault with oodles and oodles of videos, and who knows what is in there. it could go on forever. i hope we get to listen to that. jeff glor: gale, any idea how much is left that we have not heard that we may in the future? gail mitchell: i was going to bring up the vault, when i was there and came back. one of my good friends who used to work with prince, he would take you down to the vault. i would say, what is the vault? i had no idea. i have no idea how much is in there. he used to do jam sessions at paisley park that are tremendous and on tape. he opened his studio to a lot of different acts to record and do different things. i would love to be one of the ones to go in there and see exactly what is in there. probably lose myself. jeff glor: sasha, can i ask you about the famous super bowl show -- halftime show that came in this dreary game, it was raining.

the bears and colts, and i think some had lost interest in the actual game itself, and then prince comes out and lights things up. i think a lot of people thought that changed the super bowl halftime forever, and what it can be and what it can do in this awful weather environment, -- environment. what did you make of that and what impact do you think it made? sasha frere-jones: it made a huge difference, and it was uncanny on his part because as much as anyone in the world would want to see him live up until the end, he was not a big chart presence. he did a bunch of things during all at once during that performance. he did a catchy routine with the fireworks and his guitar and that phallic moment that was sort of goofy and funny. he also kind of went through his

catalog and reminded everybody who he was and what he could do. i think it was sort of a reset for everybody who was maybe dialing it in a little bit, here is a guy who has got 10 or 20 years on him, maybe 30 on you at that point, and he comes out and rips it. he reminds he what he has written, how he can play, how he can sing. and that, i think, made everyone raise their game. it was also an elder at that point in the community saying, in some ways, and member me, but -- remember me but also, come , on. you can do better. and i think people have done better. the beyonce show was fantastic. jeff glor: how frightening was that for other artists when prince throws down the gauntlet? gail mitchell: i think as was just said, it made everybody step up.

everybody likes a challenge, and that is what prince was doing. you know, it is time to stop, as sasha said, dialing in, and the -- and do you. that is what he did. whether or not he was a chart presence. his whole career, you can say that he did him. he knew his lane, and he knew what he wanted to do in terms of exploring and being adventuresome and fearless. he was going to keep doing that. i think another aspect people don't look at a lot, too, he was a mentor to a lot of different artists, up-and-coming artists. there is a new girl on atlantic records now, she talked to me. she was able to do a track with him, and in the girl band. -- in his girl band recently. she said she just wanted to lick the spit off of the microphone so she could imbibe some of his power. and then another talent.

he was a recognizer of that talent. i think he gets pushed. -- just pushed. he wanted everybody, i think -- people have gotten lazy in the music industry. it is very assembly-line, let's find the next this one, that one. individualism is what stands out. that is what stands out with prince with michael, stevie , wonder, frank ocean, drake. do you, and do the best you that you can do. jeff glor: they burst onto the scene in the 1970's. michael jackson imprints. sasha frere-jones: their solo careers were quite close together. jeff glor: did they know each other, learn at all from each other? sasha frere-jones: there is a

clip where, not only prince and michael jackson are on stage, but also james brown is on stage. it is a pretty great clip. they are at their most sort of giving and happy -- they know who they are and what they can do. they were definitely competitive with each other. there is evidence of that. it was a pretty fruitful, as gail said, you know, having to step up your game is a good thing. competition is a really good thing, when you are a creative force and need someone to push up against, there is that band pushing you. and prince definitely made everyone step their game up. of course, nobody did that more than michael. they were definitely think about -- thinking about each other. the music that they made concurrently was pretty amazing. you wish there were two forces going at it like that with that kind of, you know, real competitive but sort of affectionate power. you know they respect each other.

there was no way they did not. jeff glor: there aren't? sasha frere-jones: i could think about it, but there might not be. the fact that i have to think about it really hard -- there are minor rap beefs, but it is not the same thing. jeff glor: maybe sign of the times is a favorite album. you have another favorite song? -- you have a favorite song? sasha frere-jones: there was a moment when my band was making its first record, and we were in the studio and we had just gotten "sign of the times," and it was late and we lay down and listen to the whole record. the ballad with dorothy parker really gripped me. it sounded so unusual, because only half of the board's plug-in, susan rogers, longtime -- plugged in. his longtime engineer, was installing a new board. he got up and said, i have a new idea. she said, i am not fully powered up.

he just started. there is a weird lo-fi quality to it. it has got one of those sounds that only prince could make out. -- make up. he wants to keep his pants on when he takes a bath, and then he breaks into a joni ernst song. it is mostly a drum machine and boom noises. who in the world would put all of these elements together and make what sounds like this. it can stomach a very modest song, but whenever i hear it, i think there is only one person that could've made it. if you asked me in five seconds, "hot thing," and then, how come you don't, anymore is one that , " how come maybe you don't call me anymore?"

gail mitchell: i love "how come you don't call me anymore." but if i often heard at the party, i was running. every time i saw it, he would play a snippet. he would never play that particular song all the way through. and "diamonds and pearls," the ballads, and how he could just go from something like a house quake or "1999" and tie all the -- town it all the way down and -- tone it all the way down and be just as forceful. those of the two i particularly like. jeff glor: it was unpredictability. there was no standing still. gail mitchell: no, yeah. he did not want to be, when i asked him a question about icon, -- the icon award, he said, i don't look back. there is no value in my looking back. i am looking forward. i can't answer that question for you. i think it says that all about prince. jeff glor: helping us look back on the legendary career, sasha frere-jones and gail mitchell, thank you very much.

♪ dearly beloved we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life electric word life it means forever and that's a mighty long time but i'm here to tell you there's something else the afterworld a world of never ending happiness you can always see the sun, day or night ♪

♪ >> good evening, i am ian bremmer. i am filling in for charlie rose, who is off today. president obama was in saudi arabia today, when he met with saudi arabian leaders. his next destination tomorrow is great britain, and what he will address the brexit. here to talk about the broader implications is a talk panel of experts. we have gideon rose of foreign affairs magazine. their new issue is out this week. john micklethwait is the editor in chief of the bloomberg news. bret stephens, foreign affairs columnist and deputy editorial page editor at the wall street journal. and jane harman, former ranking member of the house intelligence committee, and currently president of the woodrow wilson center. welcome all.

so obama in saudi arabia cannot , have been the easiest trip of this administration. not a lot of specifics have come out, but one thing i have seen already, ben rhodes said, this was an opportunity to clear the air. that is not what you usually say about one of your more important allies. bret, i will start with you. how truly damaged is the saudi relationship? is it really an opportunity to do anything to fix the relationship? bret stephens: i think you can start by limiting the damage. the president dug himself a hole, in a number of ways. he did not support -- the saudi's are disappointed and distressed by the iran deal. were judgments by the president you can agree or disagree with. i think, gratuitously, the president also seems to go out of his way to diss the saudis.

he gave it interview with jeff goldblum, where he said that they are just free riders. anre is a quote from exchange he had with the prime minister of australia and you where he says they are and you will not really allies. -- the saudis have pushed back very forcefully, particularly the prince of turkey publishing op-eds deannouncing the president's policies. the president has to ask himself how much damage does he want to do to this relationship? thewhat happens when saudi's decide they no longer want the united states in their corner as an ally and protector? ian bremmer: is this a mystery by obama on the fundamental

importance of saudi arabia, or is it more in politics and we should, given the fact the countries are actually becoming much more distant in national interest? jane harman: a problem with this administration, which i support, is there is no overarching era -- narrative to what they are trying to do in the middle east . there is no obvious answer to that question. i was just going to add to some of the things that bret said, not only just relating to the administration, but this disaster in iraq created a vacuum in which iran has failed. the saudis are paranoid about iran's adventurism. our deal with iran has been reeling. it was not adequately explained why we were not supporting the deal, so there is that. there was also the low oil prices. let's understand that, historically saudi arabia wasn't -- was an ally because they , had all the oil. now there are low oil prices and plentiful oil, that argument for

a close relationship is still there. i think we need strong relationships in the gulf. he also met with the eua offices. that is more important to us at the moment than saudi is. ian bremmer: many travel to the region. every time he goes, people are saying he is happy we are over there, but we still see complaints that the relationship is deteriorating. >> i think the tension in the relationship is being greatly overblown. there are tensions, but there are strong bonds of national interest on both sides keeping the united states and saudi arabia together in a marriage of convenience. it is not a love match, there are great differences on principle and politics in a variety of things. there are great differences on the priorities of different interests, whether it is oppose iran, opposition to isis, try to topple assad, they want things, but they want different ones first. there are tensions the saudis

, don't have other options and -- other options in terms of security. united states does for stabilizing global oil. we don't depend on them for our oil. we want to avoid this emergency in general. obama's big problem is talking openly about negative things, dissing his allies in public, which he should not have done, it was tacky. ian bremmer: so what would you say about the u.s. is real relationship? >> the relationship used to be more of a love match, and is possible that the love may be draining out of that on both sides. as israel itself changes a little bit, there are interests keeping it together. it is becoming more of a regular alliance than a pure love match. , ian bremmer: jane is shaking her head. jane harman: i think it is still a love match. there is not a love match between barack obama and netanyahu, but there are links

between the people of the united states and both parties in israel are rocksolid. that does not mean everything israel does is in its centers or hours, but it is a different level in saudi arabia. ian bremmer: how much is saudi arabia feeling isolated? >> i just came back from a meeting with the deputy crown prince, who is try to reform saudi arabia and a way that is very difficult to grasp this, he was to move saudi arabia from oil economy. he wants to open up vast amounts of the economy. he was to change things, get rid of subsidies. many things are being announced next week. what is interesting to me, is that he is trying to do all of these reforms. in the back of his brain, very obviously saying america is there, and how much they can rely on america. gideon is right. in the you either have it or you don't. and oil, you can get it somewhere else.

the idea that america might not be there in the same way, that really matters. >> it is a little late for the saudis starting this conversation right now. >> we want saudis inside the tent now. doing something out rather than the other way. unlike the israelis, we do not share values with saudi arabia. there are no women's rights, gay rights like there are in israel. but we ask ourselves hard questions about what the saudi kingdom might do if they do not feel that they have a real alliance with the united states. you are starting to see that with their freelancing foreign policy in yemen, which we may not like. this also extends to bahrain and other places in the region. a kingdom that feels afraid like it might go down, it is likely to be a dangerous thing.

we have an interest in making sure saudi arabia does not become the next syria. it is fraction at the top as well as at the bottom for having always princes, various sort of religious currents, do we want to see saudi arabia implode? that is not out of the question. ian bremmer: let me ask another question. one way to judge obama's foreign policy over seven years, one way you can do it, to what extent our relationships but it or worse? it is clearly more difficult with relationships in the middle east. i want to ask you, how much of that can you honestly put on one person, on the obama administration? how much of that do you say is simply structural at this point? jane harman: he went to cairo and give a major speech at the start of his administration. which some did not like. i happened to like it. he talked about a way forward for the middle east. there did not seem to be much follow-through.

i do not think there is an overarching narrative in the middle east. we do this little move here. part of it is retrenching from bush's adventurism, don't do stupid stuff, it is not foreign policy. do something that conveys to people that our values, our interests are wide across the middle east. i was going to say something else, and it relates mostly to saudi arabia. we have not talked about wavism, their invention of an extreme form of islam that is now being exported around and the , intellectual basis to the there is an intellectual basis for many of these terror movements. so saudi arabia made a very bad bet on that. isis and other groups are talking about mecca being the headquarters if they can get the caliphate across the middle east.

that is something that i think was there miscalculation. ian bremmer: obviously going turmoil.n era of deep that the united states should have reacted dramatically differently or if it would have been accessible. you have sclerotic authoritarian tyrannies that were not providing goods for their hadzens, and ultimately you revolutions in a lot of these places. those revolutions have not done particularly well. they had a lot of turmoil. someone talked about the j curve, how things go down before they come back up. and the ones like saudi arabia turmoil, hadthe sclerotic tierney's and so, , nothing in the united states, whether invading iraqi buying, invading but not occupying, giving aid, ignoring the situation, they have all had the same outcome, turmoil and chaos on the ground. the obama administration is

saying, we don't know how to deal with this, and we are going to wash our hands a little bit. >> nothing like the explosion of isis and other jihadist groups, a collapsed of four if not five arab states. this is something really new. we have always had turmoil in the middle east, but we have also had a system of alliances, balancing interests, of being a bonder between different groups, bonding the saudis to us, israelis. it has collapsed in the last four or five years, and the president has to be held accountable historically. ian bremmer: gideon points out, yes, there are problems in terms of how much america wants to do, but you also have the reality that the economics are not what they used to be for these countries and the ability of , populations to make a mess is very significant.

things, how much do you really put on obama, a percentage and what would you , have done differently if you could do one big thing, it would be what? >> in september 2013 or august 2013 when the president had set , a redline, all of us would agree he retreated from the red line with visible consequences for the defense in saudi arabia and elsewhere that the united states was a reliable, the reliable ally, the president would do what he said he would do. i think that failure was pivotal, not only in terms of air perceptions but israeli perceptions about how good united states was. you can point to other things. john micklethwait: he had a harder task than others but you , can book him on the syria thing. as i said before, security is binary. suddenly if you do not have it, so the slightest prospect, and

japan as well you don't have , america, someone that can help you, that makes a difference. in general, if you look at what obama did, you compare it with george bush at the end of the cold war, you have a sense that somebody tried to navigate through it. the reality, whether you can blame so much on obama and so much on reality is all the different players in that region do not detect the kind of america that is guiding these. [speaking simultaneously] >> the timing of the pivot to asia, the announcement of a pivot to asia is problematic throwing that under the bus -- , ian bremmer: is it good money after bad? d brokee iraq, asaa syria. the region is in turmoil from its own internal screw ups, and we cannot fix it from the outside. >obama is trying to cauterize te problem, bank the fires. jane harman: i don't think

cauterize is an adequate strategy. partnering with the region and world to find a new act for a very fragile government and a youth bulge, jobs are harder to get, oil is no longer the gold standard for the region, something we need to invest in. all of this metastasized terror. if we do not watch it, and we have been a target and we are going to be the next target. the pivot to asia was not his word, it was rebalance. it was like moving off the middle east, which is what i think gideon is recommending, and onto the asia. i do think making an investment, and economic investment in asia, which is what tpp is supposed to be about is absolutely the right move. i am worried that the residential campaign will never end in our national lifetimes,

will not really talk about trade. ian bremmer: let me raise the economic populism question. we have seen not only bernie sanders, not only donald trump even hillary clinton come out , against tpp. there is obviously a very strong populist opposition to the suppose it benefits of globalization and u.s.-led trade. i am wondering to what extent you think is a matter of proper messaging on the part of the u.s. president. to what extent it is actually a reality that the americans are not going to be able to cheerlead on free trade agreement going forward. i am going to shock you and say something positive about obama. i didn't expect obama to be such a champion of the tpp. i'm delighted the administration has done it. a little belatedly. i think they are doing, saying

exactly the right thing. it is not a matter of prosperity. it is also strategic interests. we have to telegraph the american people there are going to be rules in terms of global trade. the question is, do we want to be the rule setters or allow the chinese to be the rule setters, because they are waiting in the wings to do this. when you hear someone like donald trump oppose tpp, or very sorry to say, hillary clinton, that is feeding the field for beijing, which is very eager to have a coprosperity sphere of its own. john micklethwait: we spent 100 years trying to force free trade on the world. free trade has always been -- you look at history, it has always been difficult to push through on a popular level. because you can always identify the losers very clearly, and the winners are much more broadly spread. obama has come through more recently than i expected. it is a little bit behind the scenes, which obama is not good at, going around and persuading other people.

just do that little bit here, that little bit there. >> but both in the united states and germany, they support the transatlantic trade partnership, and it has been a lot lower past few years. assuming we get tpp done, is it the last big u.s. the lateral deal that we will see in a long time? john micklethwait: perhaps. it is totally different for contradictory reasons. it is one of those things that is very easy to find a coalition against it for all kinds of multiple reasons, and it is hard to build one for it. ♪

♪ ian bremmer: we get fantastic products from abroad, they cost us very little. that requires political leadership to explain why. >> the argument is that they are turning up for bernie and donald trump, they misunderstand. they have benefited, it does not has been explained properly to them. they are doing much better than they think. ian bremmer: that is partly true. you talk to people who would drive a honda, have a samsung phone. they are beneficiaries, they go to mexico, they go to cancun on vacation, they do not even know mexico has a peso because they are operating through seamless transaction.

all of that is the benefit of a free trading system. 22 years ago, al gore and ross perot had the famous debate on the larry king show, and al gore won the intellectual debate i think in part because americans smooten holly terrorists. he pulled out the picture of smoot-hawley. i'm not sure we do not good job in that post-soviet era of explaining why that works, why that is good for average people. jane harman: we have done a bad job, and we is not just obama. that includes me, i voted for most, if not all of the trade agreements. i do not think i explained it well enough. some people are worse off. forget about the honda and the samsung. some people are seeing their own lives and their kids' lives as worse. that narrative never existed in the united states before and when we, meaning people who understand the values of protecting the global legal

order have to do a better job of , selling it. that includes obama, but not limited to him. >> talking about the middle east -- i'm talking about the limited challenges and doing trade. we have questions about how much the u.s. wants to champion the free market. let's talk about the most important alliances america has had, that was europeans, because obama is on his way to the u.k. britain, the special relationship, we do not hear it described as such by the united states or by the u.k., but why -- but i want to ask you, from the british perspective, to what extent do you think obama can make any difference in the outcome, and also, how tricky is it for an american president to tell the brits which way they should be voting? john micklethwait: many people assume that obama going there was one of cameron's better cards. it was a reminder that on the american point of view, it is basically much better for britain to stay in the european

union. that is where the whole, on the whole, america wants britain to be. boris johnson showing unusual political candidness. jumped ahead quite early, did not wait for obama to come in. the main politician on the exit side. he came in and said, this is fine. obama is massively hypocritical. america has always been a place of individual sovereignty, this is all about sovereignty. and by doing that, he actually managed to fire something into obama before he arrives. and so i suspect the obama affect will be less. i would never have predicted this before but it will be less , than previously thought. this is massively critical, america always makes the most of individual sovereignty. here is brady and's chance to do this -- here is britain's chance to do the same. i don't agree with him, but he has done it well. ian bremmer: how do you think obama is doing on europe, on the transatlantic legendship, and how about this special

relationship? >> i am not super concerned about the special relationship either, because i do not think europe and britain in particular has any place to go. so that doesn't mean you take them for granted. it is not like [indiscernible] exactly. europe itself, however is , obviously the second area of the world in crisis after the middle east. it is ironic to say that, partly in connection to that but not entirely. unfortunately again, it is not entirely clear what the united states can do to help europe solve its own problem. europe, the eu needs to get a new lease on life and a new sense of vision. talk about leaders who have not sold their peoples on the benefits of greater integration and greater ideas beyond the nation. it would be in europe rather than anywhere else. that project is in one of its

rockiest periods. john micklethwait: i agree, it is more easy to absorb obama. things like syria, not intervening, that affected people like the baltics and estonia, like that. [speaking simultaneously] john micklethwait: europe has dug its own grave. jane harman: but the eu has structural problems. it does not have an adequate financing mechanism across the -- across were calling nations into account when they do not meet their obligations. it doesn't have good mechanisms to deal with migration and refugees as we are seeing. the poor thing is falling apart. there is also a leadership crisis. i think angela merkel has been spectacular until there was this huge pushback against her moral position on refugees. she seems to have retreated. her voice is very much missed. ian bremmer: you said in the middle east, obama is absent leadership, should have done

more, gave some examples. in europe, merkel clearly looking for leadership from the united states. she is prepared to take all these refugees. obama said it is not our problem. is that a failure, not to step out and do more with american values? >> the way that the bush administration failed when it did not do anything about the balkans, unfortunately that was a problem solved by people like president clinton and richard holbrook. we should have shown the same leadership in syria. that failure to do so, which is a collective european failure, is now what is so damaging to europe. getting to merkel, if i were a britain voting, i would vote to say -- but to stay. the brexit campaign is not a disreputable campaign because they are asking hard questions about the future of europe. if britain votes to leave, one of the authors of that vote will be angela merkel. because what you call the moral policy and the humanitarian

policy is also a policy that is in many respects changing the nature of europe, changing the politics of europe, allowing very ugly political forces to rise, particularly on the right. and causing brits to ask themselves, maybe we do want that channel after all. we want to be connected to the continent and project that seems so troubled and willing to be going down the left side of the j curve. right ande of the far the rise of general extremes you , can talk with syria and greece, something we are also seeing in the united states. americans are not experiencing the same problems, but we had is all happening. how much of a threat is that to u.s. foreign-policy? jane harman: american has always been able to absorb that. we are a country of immigrants. i don't know if any of you are native americans, but i am not. my parents came from somewhere.

african-american ex slaves, it has been a very hard go, but we are making it. we don't have isolated communities. europe does, and britain does. britain has a huge number of pakistanis, a lot of them well-heeled, but they have overtime before this refugee crisis faced some terror challenges with britain. i would argue, and the far right governments are not related to disaffected minorities. i think there is a latent anti-semitism coming back in europe, and europe is not prepared for it. the eu experiment, which is a great idealistic experiment, was not built on a solid enough foundation of mechanisms to resolve problems of financial problems, control refugee flows. the schengen system of open borders is a beautiful thing except when it isn't. , john micklethwait: to me, i think there is one selection

of things which are pretty much the same on both sides of the atlantic, and that is the general sense of frustration that jane was talking about earlier. people waiting for le pen in france and trump in america, and they typically feel they are being left behind by the world. they are not keen on the new global world which is happening. and you are seeing poll after poll that their children will not have as good a life as they do. they also worry about their jobs and so on. there is a strong element on both sides of the atlantic of fairness. it is identical to obama. first issue is economy, second issue is some version of inequality. the idea that one people has gotten away with it, one group of people have been the winners. it ties into globalization in one way fairly because by definition, if you have a global market, you will end up with people making more money than others.

another way unfairly, it tends to pick on people jews in one , case, bankers, an element of looking for scapegoats, immigrants to some extent. those things are common. that is on both sides. you can see it in polls and everything. and europe has had that thing of being run by the elite. it was always a place that was terrified by the idea of populism. european union was founded by people who deliberately tried to push democracy back because they associated anything like that with populism, which led to all the problems in the 1930's and 1940's. ian bremmer: american parties are seeing that same trouble? john micklethwait: they are not all rapidly intolerant. a lot of people, as bret pointed out, who will vote for britain to leave the european union who i do not agree with, they do it out of a sense of sovereignty so they think europe is going in the wrong direction. they want to take back control of their lives again. >> there is this rise of populism, in some ways it is

frighteningly similar to what happened in the 1920's and 1930's. there is a qa long experience in the united states on a smaller scale, but in europe, when people became sick with the liberal democracy parliamentary , politics. they were looking for more charismatic leaders. more ecstatic visions of politics. that in a way is part of the bernie movement, the donald movement. it is also where you find marine le pen, the new government in poland. we are all happy in their own ways, but it is all happening at the same time. i think that is a historical reference point we need to take into account. ian bremmer: if in these two short months we end up seeing that the brits do vote to leave this, despite all of despite obama's protestation, is

this the most significant hit to u.s. foreign-policy over the course of the obama administration? jane, what do you think? jane harman: i don't think about in terms of obama. i think about it in terms of britain. i think it would be a catastrophic move for britain to do to itself and up and trading contracts and basically isolate itself. if obama -- let's see what he does tomorrow. if he weighs in strongly in favor of no brexit, he will be embarrassed. but i don't see obama as the center of the world in that sense. what i do see, and it relates to all this, is globalization. and the fact that 100 years ago, there wasn't globalization. currency did not move the way it did, does. terrorism does not move the way it does. there was terrorism but not this way. not metasicized global terrorism. there were not the lethal weapons of war that there are. obama, the challenge to

and if this does not get pushed back sound, he will be judged quite harshly. john micklethwait: that is one of the interesting things about the british, when it comes to free trade, we are almost without exception of people who support it most fervently. there are problems on immigration, but anything to do with free trade, the british vote for enormously. they think of london as a cosmopolitan center, it brings people in. you are right. if britain voted to come out, philosophically, it is a blow to that. but i would add that i have been thinking about this the last few days, if britain does go out, it does hit american foreign-policy. so when you can rely on, there he goes. you have all the consequences for the european union in terms of greater french and german problems. you would probably have a much greater chance at the european union coming part. ian bremmer: lot on the table and obama's trip. we will talk about that as he makes his way back to the states .

thank you all for joining our table. bret, john, gideon, jane. ♪

♪ this is a beach in new zealand. this is a shape, and this is geldof. most people come to new zealand to get their middle earth fix, and that makes perfect sense, but