him from our studios in new york city this is charlie rose. charlie rose: david brooks is here. he has been a columnist for the new york times since 2003. he is known for tackling big ideas in modern subjects. capitalism and character. he has turned his focus to the 2016 presidential campaign. i am pleased to have him back at this table.

isn't it great to have a huge appetite? i don't see anybody who is a small appetite. so you see the other day and they said they are talking about a dilemma is based on a memoir they said the felt they've been stolen from having a life. that is sad. a big life is not to be a celebrity or make a lot of money big life is to be connected to all that there is to say. brooks: so he asked me what would you do if you want in the news. they're people who just held back. charlie rose: they get into things like marriage and children. than david brooks:

two thirds of you will be more boring than you are now. there's this famous you curve where people's happiness is high in their 20's and that a bottom 747 which is called having teenage children and that arises. older look at the world in a happier way. they look at the happy faces that all of the bad faces. age and you certain accept to you are. to figure out where it's all heading. we have the resources now you're ready to take the big risks. you got the stability. schaeuble is going to you taking risks? david brooks: i hope so. i messed up big time with not knowing trump was coming. when something like that happens using a look at yourself and you say when i miss about america?

i am too much in the eastern corridor. that is one thing. charlie rose: from boston to new york to washington. rather than farms and factories. they do brooks: i travel every week but i'm always inside the bubble. i have achieved far more career success that i thought. so it's time to take some chances in the personal and emotional realm. i have nothing to lose. rose: taking chances in the spiritual realm. what is that mean? friendrooks: i had a .hat i went to summer camp with he was exuberance personified. he couldn't get through a sentence without whistling

because he had that in her life. he just irradiated it. he died last week or two weeks ago. him the day he died. greeted death with such confidence. he was a man of deep faith. he said i'm going to the kingdom. to greet death with such joy and have the faith that not only animated his approach but animated his life. a man who worked in honduras a lot. youth counselor. a life of selfless giving. have our nameo out there in talking and microphones we do have that. have you get that? you see examples like that and you think what i have to cut loose to get that? that would be wonderful. rose: you spoke about ideas and other places.

david brooks: it's been a lifelong passion. writing a book about it reading a bunch of books about it doesn't get you there. charlie rose: talk to someone who's lived it. brooks: buying books gets you there. you got to get there with the direct contact with the people in need. yet have an emotional connection and a lot of us in middle-age hopefully become emotionally more open. and frankly more feminine. the radical leap has to be in the realm of emotional stability. rose: you know that you and yourskills of life a certain level of achievement comfort. said brooks: carl young the first half of life is building in the second half

should be generating and finding a cause. a lot of us get more emotionally .quipped certainly i was an emotional idiot for large parts of my life. you want your repertoire of emotions. better relationships and listen to music and reading literature. suddenly you are more emotionally sensitive to people. you are hopefully braver and willing to be more vulnerable. willing to slow down. that something is challenging for me. and if that comes arrest. leisure is not doing nothing. it is having your mind go slowly enough that your brain -- the world can be invited in. having your brain go in the right pace is a challenge. rose: i had a friend who

i wouldi had more time do nothing. you are exposing yourself to all that is there. doing nothing is not having a schedule. not having ambition. in a formation doesn't always look like out of formation. about theis difference between the resume and the eulogy. we all want to get the widget version. capable of great love. how you get there is sometimes a matter of capacity. was on piece of writing the sabbath. taking a day off. he said the sabbath is a palace in time. the sabbath city can be more efficient at work

you works you can climax your week at the sabbath. it is done through extensions by denying yourself things. by saying no to things. that is an invitation for the things to pop up. my classic galas about commitment making. yale is about commitment making. dwight eisenhower dorothy day frances perkins were able to make awesome commitments. the ability to make long-term commitments to things is the key to life. you may for the commitments in life to a spouse in the family to a vocation to a phosphate or faith and to a community. how well you make it without those commitments will determine the quality of your life. it is about how you make these long-term commitments to things whether it is a partner or

something else. to me commitment is falling in love with something and then building a structure of behavior around it. for those moments when love falters. you can't think yourself into a commitment including marriage. you can't think yourself into a vocation. a process of love. you have to love your way into it. yesterday vulnerable enough to be a deeply loving creature. otah built the discipline and for and the honesty in the community. the discipline of craft. in a surgeon lays out tools. i have a very bad memory. so i do as i write everything down. whatever the column sometimes 200 pages of research material and notes.

mouse onis i lay the the floor of my living room at each pile is a paragraph in my column. since only 800 words but i can have 14 piles across the floor. the process of writing is crawling around on my carpet organizing the piles. that is the best part of my job. that craft, what we do for a living in disciplines us. charlie rose: you know where it starts and ends? it's also a container shipping. how they will end up. brooks: i need to do a geographically i need to see it on the floor or else it is eligible in my head when you get the order right in the words will flow in you type it. if you get the order wrong that

is all choppy. get it wrong you can't fix it. yet the start of a completely new. opinion thatn opinion won't write. right. they have to start from scratch. that is what nonregistered cap. it is about traffic management. getting the structure right is the foundation for. some writers write on the walls. charlie rose: you can have the ideas in their in the end the best of you the seven command of words. they brooks: yet i write for a newspaper. i so stephen king thing online.

writers areite george orwell and cs lewis. lewis wrote for radio so it had to be heard. the road with great clarity. charlie rose: so the edward romero. david brooks: that's true. but there is still artistry involved. orwell was a genius at the first sentence. he wrote it during the blitz of london. headote high above my highly civilized human beings are trying to kill me. and he is wondering why the germans bombing my city. it is a good first sentence that just takes you right in. cs lewis, he wrote four loves.

about christianity. you can be christian or not christian. the definition of pride. the definition of sin. the definition of soul. a core piece of yourself with every decision you make you change that core piece of yourself to make it even holier or more degraded. you can take that concept and you don't have to believe in god or not. he uses secular language describe it. d parts of our moral architecture. it is just so commonsensical. of any faith it is super useful. he definitely became a christian. it took him a long time to get there. he wrote the christianity was not a warm religion. it was spelled longing and social lens through which he saw the world. charlie rose: how has your

evolution taken place? on the question of donald trump. david brooks: i did not take donald trump seriously for the longest time. knew there were dislocations and that was this coalition of the dispossessed in our country. i didn't think they would turn their disposition to him. i don't think he answers any of their problems. ,eople are into matters attracted more by revolutions in manners than in revolutions of policies. he has revolutionized the manners of how you run for president.

in the first debate here to insulted carly fiorina's face. there andwas over i'm not going to say about a lot to talk about. david brooks: he took the style of professional wrestling and devoted to politics. the most egregious thing he is down is he is offered us a different and uglier form of masculinity. a lot of people are drawn to. a lot of women are repulsed by it. a form of masculinity in her culture that we should be pretty proud of. are the last generation ideal man combines positive feminine and masculine traits. to be successful at work a gentle with children. to honor the woman in your life

but to be romantic at the same time. to be bothed upon male and female. oft is a wonderful way looking at it. truck eliminates that. hiss pure masculinity and treatment of the world is as an arena where males compete. women are objects in the competition. a woman's body is there for the status of a man. you can masculine demand by attacking his woman. a degraded form of masculinity. charlie rose: does he mean when he says and does he say what he means? he says i am the best negotiator. you believe that? you have written for eight years about the supreme confidence of barack obama. much less bravado.

less comfortable with this kind of emoting. brooks: obama backs it up and actual knowledge substance and integrity and humanity. he sees the world is a conversation, sometimes to a fault. ever column where i said i miss barack obama. he has a grace and elegance that is sorely lacking. he's confident in the superficial sense. sometimesis overconfident but not narcissistic. there is a distinction there. ideaslief in a set of whereas for trumpet is a belief in myself. he has a heartless view. post-.ncreasingly

been this motivated by a political figure in a negative way. he's taking the people who've taken their economic lumps and that hising them authoritarian approach can solve everything. he says to men at least two or better than women and better than muslims and better than mexicans. charlie rose: do you think he can win? david brooks: it's hard for me to imagine but have been wrong before. is 25 favorability rating to 60. andou get 60% unfavorable your unfavorable rating among women is 75% that unless you turn minds around you are doomed. amongunfavorable ratings

the total population of been very stable for eight months. charlie rose: how did it happen? if he has all these qualities are lacking qualities. he is on the precipice of getting nominated for president. within a heartbeat of the presidency. there was a nicholas compass or a nicholas comes piece on the front page of times. the parties the party of the white working class. they spent 25 years taking their votes and giving them nothing. a slow building and political wave in this culture's been going on for 30 years. we live in a diverse country. there are two ways to govern it. one is through negotiation and style and compromise. it's unsatisfying. that is politics.

the other ways through force. you just get a strong man to bully his way through. we've gotten sick of politics and second compromise especially in the republican party the willingness to compromise has become a sign of weakness. the only alternative is force tolerance of the authoritarian personality. charlie rose on its offices that he's become an action hero. david brooks: every interview he they will ask him about you think african-americans are oppressed by the police. he knows nothing to service talk about immigration. we go to a talk show or conversation with your students you are nervous if you have some level of preparation. he is not nervous even though he is unprepared. most people and go in and buy a

sofa with more preparation and he's running for president. charlie rose: does he know that. we just see the world in a different way. all those people who profess to be a little bit of obama again as jeffrey goldberg suggested the dislike of the foreign policy establishment. different levels of intellect and preparation. does donald trump somehow think he says ihose people learn a lot about foreign policy from one i hear on television on sunday shows. i was talking to a very successful businessman. he said i just know he's going to be different. he said i support donald trump. get on i know he will the phone and he will say to vladimir on coming to see you. newbies ever said that. that's what he doesn't.

you say that whenever get energy and commerce. he believes in what this man does. part of the mill you that he lives in. the idea that i'm going to get on the phone and vladimir putin will see the light. do we think the state department is filled with idiots right now? problems are complicated. the big problems in the world are not a question of one person calling another and being tough table. the big problems are structural. they have to do with globalization. the president cities more concerned about climate change than isis. think they are both important. it's weird to rank them. you can't browbeat people into changing.

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charlie rose: so you think you are wrong. what did you not do? somehow i didn't see coming. a lot of us didn't see it coming.

i'm sure there are now claiming they did. we've seen this kind of candidate rise and fall. party that is nominating mitt romney and john mccain and george w. bush and bob dole, suddenly got a black swan. there are a lot of voters out there and i didn't take it seriously enough. maybe blinded by my own prejudices. i have had trouble trying to think through the people who do vote for donald trump. how does one regard them. i have some level of sympathy because obviously they've been dislocated by the modern economy. on the other hand i think they are supporting a guy who is polluting the cultural atmosphere in which our kids are raised. ted cruz hiscking wife and all that. voters have to have some cold ability for that.

the charlie rose: what happens if donald trump crashes and burns? brooks: out of the darkness of this bond constructed a optimistic narrative. the republican party had grown obsolete. it'd been imprisoned by reaganite categories that were great for the 1980's but no longer worked. donald trump was the agent of death for that whole structure. that whole structure is never coming back. what i hope will be a trump defeat, it will be what thomas kuehne calls a revolutionary. after scientific paradigm collapses there is an era when we have all these theories floating around. eventually one of them rises. , it willhat will rise

be a time of intense creativity. it will focus on two things. the segmenting of america. the disunity of the social fabric. the problem with the reaganite orthodoxy that imprisoned the republican party you have all these problems like wake stagnation and inequality and they couldn't have any response does they didn't believe in government. they will have to believe in some form of government. structural problems require it. charlie rose: it's also happening around the world. anxiety is challenging the liberal order. challenge from dictators but now they are challenged from the bottom by populist anti-liberals who support the national front in france the ukip and written and in some guises donald trump in the usa. is a global phenomenon. brooks: if you look at

freedom house's rankings democracies of been in retreat for years. it is the stress of technological change. the rise of religious fundamentalism. the rise of ethnic nationalism. all least things are making the world and uglier place. that look like in the 1990's. charlie rose: who is articulating the kind of idea or narrative or structure that you emerge from all this? brooks: i am awake. was this guy named allison hamilton who was a latino hip-hop artist. created my short-handed view of american politics is that there are two parties of three traditional movements. there is the conservative movement that believes in limited government to enhance

freedom. the liberal movement that believes in using the government. this third tradition was started by hamilton and continued by the way to party that believes in using government to enhance social mobility. helping people to compete in a capitalist economy. a little less pro-government than the democrats and more pro-government than the conservatives. that human capital agenda not only to give people access to colleges but giving them the emotional and psychological capacity to compete. that is the big agenda. charlie rose: do you think that might emerge? david brooks: it's what i hope. because theident country has turned in an ethnic nationalist way. there are some things we can do to surround people with loving relationships. they will give them the emotional security to thrive and succeed we are fortunately

graduating from a very economical view of human nature that we all responded to about tax cuts which was the problem with the jack kemp approach to a more relational view of human nature which is about the we areve science primarily loving creatures not thinking creatures we are enmeshed in a web of love. charlie rose: there is no one articulating that. there is a third way. mighthird-party represented. a definition between some sense of social responsibility and conservative fiscal policy that create the skills that help you prosper in a modern economy. david brooks: if you don't have those relationships it's hard to exercise self-control. it's hard to sit in a school room and build relationships with teachers. it's hard to sit in the modern

workplace where computers are doing all the nonrelational stuff and the relational skills are the key. i came across a book called life reimagined. it was a study of world war ii veterans. summer is to high rank and some didn't. what explains why some rose in some didn't? it wasn't intelligence. it was an social class. it wasn't physical courage. it was relationship with the mother. were capableo rose of giving deep love to the men in their units because they had that relationship with their mothers. putting a lot of the center for we are is a shift from the way we've been thinking about social policy which is all home all economic us. left and right are making that shift. pope francis has made that shift. that opens up a wide array of avenues. charlie rose: you said it has to

do with a fragmented society. relating across the diversity of a globalized world. we need a worldview that is accurate about human nature. was there a key in human experience -- your experience that unlocks this for you? or was it just the progress of a curious mind? david brooks: i rarely have epiphanies. but i realize thing in in retrospect. the story begins to make sense to me after i got through it. the story of the emotional opening it up and talking about. ira buckled social animal six years ago. the role of the cognitive sciences has showed us that it is wrong to think that reason and emotion are opposites.

emotion is the foundation for reason. emotions are valuable to us emotions are a motivational device. love is what motivates us towards things. love is what motivates you to do well in your job. it motivates you to get through medical school. through the marine corps. you think of humans in those terms. i will not as be motivated by incentives all the time. charlie rose komen coaches say love your teammates, love the game itself. david brooks: some of us think we want one thing but we want something different. we don't know ourselves well enough. loveunding yourself with is about willingness to fuse yourself with another person. there's a quote i love by louis different day about an old man

talking to his daughter about his marriage. his wife is now dead. he said love is an art form. your mother and i had it. while we were loving each other roots were growing toward each other underground. as the years went by all the pretty blossoms fell from our branches we discovered we were one trillion not to. that gradual fusing of the roots underground is what you want when you are becoming a writer or a journalist or entering into a relationship. serving your city. thing thattter that the commitment is rocksolid. ♪

how is that: different from what trump is about? trip david brooks: bernie sanders is a more substantive figures been donald trump for sure. it is also related to the segmentation of society. a lot of people are just ill-served by this economy. sanders has a very coherent explanation that he is had for 30 years.

isaiah berlin popularized to this famous distinction between the hedgehog in the fox. the hedgehog knows one thing that's sanders the fox knows many things and that's clinton. it is interesting to watch these two styles. i have some symmetry for sanders because he is a man of integrity and see. a wonderful life. we have to think for all our candidates execution strategy. how does any of this going to happen? i'm not sure any candidate really solves it. i'm not sure the primaries allow charlie rose: you would think that someone running for president would thought about it? some sense of understanding where the country is what is in

contrast in opposition and heavy fix that. from us marry up almost famously said from poetry to prose? from the campaign to the governing. david brooks: what barack obama taught us is is not enough to be a skilled politician. wanted to transcend every line you can imagine. create a governing majority. his policies that he came in with were orthodox democratic policies. you have to have a set of policies that cuts across lines. a little from column a little from column b. chile rose: he thought his own pursuit of bipartisanship would overwhelming the opposition. he had a genuine trans-partisan aspiration. but his policies were not trans-partisan. they were very predictable. the way to do it on poverty. there is a natural alliance between progressive democrats and evangelical christians. you could put together a package

of policies that would give each of them something they want. addressing poverty. and then you get 60 votes. you have to be willing to step outside the orthodoxy of your party and say undertake a little from them a little from those. it is very damaging to the people in your own party who go crazy if you step outside it. partly it is the nature of the people we are electing. those people tend to be partisan. harley is just leadership. yet have five people at the top of the society for congressional leaders and the president and i have to say ok this is over. we are going to cling together and were just walking through this. we are going to govern in a bipartisan way. charlie rose: it has to come from the president and has to

come from congress. usually that's possible with paul ryan? brooks: i do. he still trapped in reaganite categories but i think his aspirations are real. if it is president hillary clinton i think they can work together. they have to do a lot more in private. we all allegedly or for transparency. gholstoniend william says government should have some secrecy for the same reason middle-aged people should wear clothing. you don't necessarily want to see everything. privatethings in working out deals saying you're going to win this one i'm going to win the next one. that is i think the only way to begin the term. the leadership can make the turn. rose: here's something you said about sanders in trouble. about energyassion and match of disbelief.

trump has no agenda. sanders has an agenda that couldn't get 40 votes in the senate much less 60. charlie rose: you also said it would reshape american culture and values. we voice in a society that is deep to our bones if you ask americans do you think your personal destiny is shaped by luck or individual effort for centuries we have been more on the individual effort side than europeans. that may be changing. we may be, more like europeans. maybe our politics will begin to reflect the european-style. alsonly of spending but you can to be a little more on the side of the marketplace. fate that isit's going to be a larger role for government. i believe that we tend to overestimate our individual effort but i think having that

belief. it is not just about the marketplace is about the ability to change lives. and start with the people that are closest to you. beingng lives meaning closer. there is a capacity to make a difference. david brooks: will know people who had every disadvantage but they had one person in their life with a rocksolid faith and standards. if you look extremely successful people they often have one parent who is very problematic and emotional level and that area is rocksolid. there is that weird tension between the two. there was a study average years ago that if you look at the people who are phenomenally successful in good or bad ways.

many of them lost a parent between the ages of nine and 12. so the security of their life was taken away and they became hustlers. i told my kids i failed them because they are over 12 and i am still here. have thisse: we remarkable piece by jeffrey goldberg which you and every other writer i know has praised. talk about that piece. what you saw in it. between aifference dog and a cat and barack obama is a cap. david brooks: dogs bounded to situations and cats hang back. joy arose: george w. bush? bush was dog to the extreme and barack obama is a cat to the extreme. charlie rose: what kind of community they reach out to it how much of it as their own decision-making. i had a strange reaction to goldberg's piece. the first reaction was positive. i like the president more. he is thoughtful.

reason not tovery take action abroad. there is a reckoning with reality. but the disdain for the establishment and for all foreign policy advisor thinkers except for himself does smack of an unearned confidence sometimes i do doubt that. this is the worst thing to say in 2016 but i felt to be a believer that we need to fix the establishment. we have big problems. we need big institutions to run them. we need a really good state department. rose: on the agenda should be reforming establishments. david brooks: our institutions are fraying. congress is the prime example of an institution that has frayed because the norms of behavior

the invisible codes have been ripped away. why talk about trump has a revolution in matters, the reason we have manners the reason we don't talk about each other's lives and how they look cool people losers suppliers is it enables us to have a be arsation enables us to community and be citizens together. if you rip away those matters it's just dog eat dog. it is reduced us to scrambling scorpions in a bottle. and decency isrs the prerequisite for restoring institutions and standards of behavior and i go back to eisenhower a lot more than i used to. a sense that politics is a calm petition between impartial truths.

what has contributed to that and has social media where there is an anonymity on the one hand and an instance place to privately express your grievance your anger your approach as differences your criticisms and there are no bounds. david brooks: may be deeper than that. depending on the character of the people. humility forasic human can talk to value humility is a good chance you are wrong about some stuff. if you're told your the truth by the short hairs that what you need other people for? charlie rose: that's obama? david brooks: ok fine. brooks: is not only obama. it's rush limbaugh.

andthing about democracy this is what politics is noble. it forces you to recognize the other people in the room. you may wish the way you may think they are jerks but they are the room. rose: that has been the biggest problem we've had in this country for a while. the absence of people willing to compromise. ronald reagan said it's better to have a piece of the pie than no pie. we lost that. brooks: if we were attacked by canada we would get it all back. we need a hostile force to unify us. it's a matter of scale. i do a guy named richard dharma garmin to work for the

first president bush. please regale me with stories of craftsmen like skill. there was a guy who was defense secretary under next seven melvin layered who go to the white house and it was a barbershop in the white house in those days. he did not have much hair but he would go to the white house at 3:00 every wednesday. he didn't really need a haircut but he would go. so it's a lot on schedule which everyone can see where it went to the white house. understood the tribunal games. charlie rose: he tried to control the flow of information. he viewed that is power. brooks: they were passing social security reform in 1982 or 1983 and is going to heat senior citizens. the dean of senior citizens was claude pepper. everyone signed off on the deal except him.

and they beat the hell out of and and he finally agrees they march him to give a press conference at like two in the morning. because they know if he has time to sleep on it he will back out of it. have you do that. execution is a skill. jim baker had it. charlie rose: lyndon johnson have it. david brooks: passing a complicated piece of legislation with a bipartisan majority is a skill of execution. if you want example see spielberg's movie about lincoln movie it's that political deafness. that's the nobility of politics. we can politicians for being dealmakers but there is a craft and a nobility to it. everyone is jumping all over the

elites with people i know in government the civil servants they are in for the right reasons. is not glamorous. charlie rose: there's a culture that those accused of incorrect thoughts face ruinous consequences. david brooks: have seen people whose lives have been ruined by a small mistake or no mistake. there's a lot of chris's mother. if you don't it affect you goes away. rose: if you can't do that you'll be terminally unhappy. david brooks: isolation is a very good strategy.

charlie rose: you said middle ages being redefined. hillary clinton 68 years old. is 69 years old. bernie sanders's 74. they are running for the first term. charlie rose: we thought ronald reagan was very old when he ran in his late 60's. david brooks: active life is longer. it used to be that in your 20's he got married you bought a house you had kids. now that happens in many colors of the country nearly 30's. we have a unstructured world in your 20's. a very harsh. there's unemployment. finding your identity. that time is underserved by institutions. there's a company called we work that gives all the people doing in starbucks a place to come to work. charlie rose: they believe they understand millennials more than anyone alive.

david brooks: that is one big shift. 54 i'm hoping to have another 30 years of active life ahead of me. charlie rose: the actuarial tables suggest that's true. even brooks: i'm trying to stay healthy. i can think that i have a moment now where i can do 25 years of something such as satisfying and may be significantly new. so maybe you think of another chapter. charlie rose: john my memory. you read about people in their 70's they were writing to you about the perspective they had at that time. i asked 5000 readers to send in essays and great themselves on their lives looking back to give themselves

a minuses for career and be minus for personal life. some things they did have some common traits. for a few people regret risks. they divided their lives into artificial chapters. some people said ok this is the beginning of the seven-year chapter. accomplish in to seven years. here's another chapter. most unhappy people let time driven by day by day. making false bifurcations as useful tool. kernel andain was a every time we went to a new army base in his wife would say let's have a person over treat. what we think of our parenting style? what we think of our marriage? you can cause yourself your problems. there is clear evidence people

get better at living. charlie rose: brooke astor said to me she said i cared what people thought about me now i only care what i think about them. david brooks: there is useful advice on marriage. from tim keller. selfishness as a core problem in the marriage. your partners. your ticket city is to think it's their selfishness. your selfishness is the only one you can control. that's good advice in any relationship. charlie rose: it was great having you here. david brooks: always a pleasure. ♪ ♪

.john: i'm john heilemann. mark: and i'm mark halperin. "with all due respect" to those who thought they could come back late from the holiday weekend and be late for donald trump's press conference -- mr. trump: are you ready? do you have your pen? this sleazy guy. voter cycles? no. jeff sessions. crazy bernie. lebron. that adds up to 6 million -- well, let's say that adds up to $5 million. bob dole is a fan of mine. bob dole endorsed me. don't tell me about bob dole. bill kristol is a loser.