>> rose: welcome to our program. a very happy new year from all of us here as we begin a new season. 2012 will be a year of extraordinary ents. there is the presidenti election in the united states, the economic crisis in europe and the evolution of the arab spring with questions about what might follow it. the ongoing change in quill lib rum of the world asmerging nations become stronger that, plus, as always, unpredictable events no one foresees and scientific break throughs that come from years of hard work. as always, extraordinary celebrations of the human spirit, whether from personal courage or achievement in one's chosen field. we will not only cover these events on a day to day basis but we will also have for you a new series on the brain, a series on islam as it reachs for legitimate political power and china as its changes its government and perhaps its ambition. we will obviously be there each night reaching out to the people

who shape our time by the deeds they do or the wisdom they impart. we begin this evening with a look at the political season in 2012 which kicks off tomorrow with the iowa caucus. >> this entire primary process for the last seven months is basically pivoted around mitt romney. it's been about mitt romney and the non-mitt romney. and so everything has been about him and his lack, actually, his lack of ability to coalesce even though as kay said, he's been running for five years, to become the dominant candidate in this. >> rose: also, a look back at history with robert massey's much-acclaimed book on catherine the grt. >> what catherine did was to bring... well, let's say just in the field of power politics she a and potemkin together who was her lover, maybe her husband, but then went off to become viceroy of the south conquer turkey, the crimea, the site of

odessa and that was equivalent to what peter the great did in the north. >> rose: and the incisive writing of adam gopnik as he looks at one of his favorite things-- food. >> i wanted to write about the part of food that doesn't come from the ground up but the head down, so to speak. the way we rich alize our meals, why we ritualize our meals. every human group that'sver been known as food rules and food rituals. they have a way of approaching the table that defines who they are. we don't do that with the oer necessities of our physical life. >> rose: america selects a president. a biography of a great russian leader and the joy of food when we continue.

captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: we begin our first program of 2012 with the presidential campaign. me say this will be one of the most significant and consequential campaigns in a long time. inless than 2024 hours it begins when iowans will vote in the first republican contest. in the final days of the campaign mitt romney and ron paul are neck inhe nk inhe latest polls but rick santorum's sudden surge has made this a three-way race. rick perry, newt gingrich and michele bachmann are banking on their conservative credentials for a strong finish. the candidates crisscrossed the hawkeye state today to make their closing arguments. >> i think president obama wants to make us a european-styl welfare state.

where instead of being a merit society, we're an entitlement society. where government's role is to take from some and give to others. what i know is if they do that, they'll substitute envy for ambitious ambition. >> one administration to the next it's always spending increases. even today when they talk about cuts, you know they're not talking about cuts, they're talking about nibbling away at the prosed increas. well, we're talking about a real cut and the shrinking of the size of the federal government (cheers and applause) >> i'm asking you to not settle for someone who... as your nominee who might be able to win the election but the election would be a victory that where we wouldn't have a candidate who is going to be elected president who will do what's necessary of what america needs. >> if you look around you, there's a tremendous number of young people that are here today. i'm so encouraged to see the number of college and high

schoolers that are here because it's really about them. it's about this next generation. and what i intend to do is turn the economy around. that's my background. that's what i understand best. but i also understand the needs that we have with national security. of all of the candidates in the race, no one has more current national security experice than i have. >> rose: jon huntsman is skipping tomorrow's caucuses and penned his hopes on a strong showing in new hampshire. joining me now in new york matthew dowd, he is with abc news and bloomberg news. from washington, charlie cook of the cook political report. fr des moines, kay henderson of radio iowa, and john harris of politico. i am pleased to have all of them here as we are on the eve of this extraordinary start to the 2012 political season. i begin with kay. tell me what it is... what's the moment, kay, on the ground. how do you size up where we are at this moment? >> well, if i could take a

snapshot, it might be a photo finish. it appears romney, paul and santorum are aiming for one of those here in iowa. you have romney out there sort of claiming the mantle of front-ruer. you have santorum claiming the huckabee mantle from 2008. and you have ron paul's supporters on the phonesrying to turn their people out. >> rose: and who do you think has the best possibility of turning out? >> well, it's hard to tell, it doesn't appear in santorum will be able to coalesce the entire huckabee coalition from last time around which leads y to believe that romney, who's been building a cam campaign here for six years might turn out to be the caucus victor. but it turns out who the persuadeable people are. there was a "des moines register" poll that showed that four out of ten people who say they're going to the caucuses might be persuaded on caucus night to support someone else.

>> rose: that's 40% of the voters saying they may be persuaded to go somewhere else. how do you explain that? >> i think it's large lay factor of the enthusiasm for this particular crop of candidates. you had folks like sarah palin and haley barbour and others sort of hovering on the sidelines. a lot of iowans wanted to see chris christie maybe throw his hat in the ring. so i think it's a function of iowans were sort of waiting for one of those candidates in the wings towoop in laten the ga and run. none of them did and so they have these choices i front of them. >> rose: charlie, what what do the numbers tell us about all of this? >> well, i mean, kay's right. 40% say they can change their mind. 10%-- or 8% or 9% are undecided. so you basically have half up for grabs and it looks like it's an eremely fluid situation. if i had to put a wager down, i'd put a wager on romney coming

in first, maybe santoru second ron paul third. but i wouldn't bet 15 cents one way or the other. it's a heck of a dog fight and part of it is that two-thirds or maybe even 80% of caucus attendees last time called themselves either conservative or extrely conservative. but they would not be able to settle on... each of the candidates over in that space have been sort of woefully inadequate or had shortcomings and they've been disappointed time and time again. it's really split up. santorum's got momentum so maybe he could coalesce that. but it's a... you know, with little resources it's hard for him. >> rose: you don't see anybody necessarily dropping out after iowa. >> oh, well, the question is if your head is bobbing just barely above water and you n't any money it dsn't matter whether you technically drop out or not. so i think you could see some of these people struggle on, stagger on for another event or

two, maybe to south carolina. but the thing is they're not going to have juice. you have to have organization, you have to ha infrastructure, you have to have mtly money and really there's only one candidate in race that has that, which is why i think it's going to be very hard to see a scenario where romney is not ultimately deprived of the nomination. >> rose: john harris, is this ing to be one of those years inhich conservatives will say "we didn't have one candidate like ronald reag to coalesce around and so therefore we have watched mitt romney, who at heart may very well be a moderate get the nomination and therefore we have no choice but to support him"? >> i think it might well be the verdict conservatives make after this nomination process is through. you have an extraordinary fact, i thin the republican party is getting more and more conservative. that's reflected in the polling, it's reflected in the rhetoric, it's reflected in everything. and yet if charlie and kay are right, and i do subscribe to their basic assesent of this,

the overwhelming favorite is mitt romney for two times in a ro john mccain in 2008 and again in 2012 with romney you've got a center right sort of fundamentally non-ideological politician who is best positioned to be carrying the mantle for this increasingly ideological conservative party. it doesn't ite ad up. but the fact is, it is because there's a personality void. there's no conservative who has been able to capture wt is clearly this enormous energy so the establishment plan muddles through is the best way to put hit in the case of both john mccain and romney. they're long-distance runners it's not bn a glamorous, elegant race but it' muddling through. >> rose: so what happens after iowa. first of all, tell me what happens in iowa. pretty much agree with this notion of romney, santorum and paul? >> i agree there will be a three-way tie for first and a three-way tie for fourth.

whatrder i don't have a idea. this entire primary process for thlast seven months has pivoted ound mitt romney. it's been about mitt romney and the non-mitt romney and so everything has been about him and his lack, actually, his lack of ability to coalesce even though as kay said he's been running for five years, to coalesce the field and beme the dominant candidate. i think he still has to prove that. even if he survives and barely wins iowa and goes in and wins new hampshire he has of yet proved that he can get over 30% of the vote i a non-new hampshire event and so i think that is still something we've... still to be known. i don't think he's inevitable in this. i think he'd likely... as i said? a cumn today about using bracket is as an example. he's the numb-one seed and it's likely he'll go to the next round and goo go into new hampshire but i think he still has to prove something because he has not taken a hit in this race yet and shown that he can get morehan 30% of the vote. >> rose: a you think that hit will start taking place after iowa and new hampshire? >> it will be a concertedffort

after iowa but there's not going to be a lot of time because there will only be five days or so before it goes in. there's a debaten saturday and another one sunday morning he'll have to fend off a lot of those hits. the real negatives he'll take on is the ten or 11 days that go between new hampshire and south carolina. >> rose: south colina looks increasingly important? >> i think south carolina and florida will ultimately be his final test. whether he wins the nomination. the other interesting thing to me about mitt romney is mitt romney could easily win this and get less votes than he did four years ago. he will have run for four or five years, feel like the dominant candidate and get less votes than four years ago when he finished second. >> rose: does she to convince the party he's a conservative? >> he's got to convince conservative voters he's conservative. one of the things about mitt romney which makes him a better general election candidate is people think he's a moderate in his soul. >> rose: but does he think he's a moderate in his soul? >> i think they think... they believe... there's a bunch of othe thatbelieve as soon as this primary process is over

he's going to make a turn and leave his conservative credentials behind. >> rose: that's their fear? >> and i think they're probably right about that which makes him harder for barack obama to beat. >> rose: andf does at they'll support him because most of all they want to defeat barack obama. >> yeah. the first order of business of all republicans is to take barack obama out of the white house. that's the first order of business >> rose: kay, who's the best campaigner out there? >> rick santorum has ripped up the traveling in iowa. he's bn to more than 350 town hall meetings, some of which had four or five people. he spent 90 minutes with them explaining his position so he's put the time in on the campaign trail. i think the interesting candidate in this cycle is michele bachmann. she has a 'burb about her, she's appealing to people but she hasn't been able to connect that with getting their vote. so i think that's been a choirs you part of this campaign. newt gingrich has been an odd campaign to watch because he

described that he's doing an experiment on how this kind of campaign canning happen in presidential race. and i don't think it's right now working for mr. gingriche, of cose, famously cried last friday. he did a local television interview in des moines last night and he cried there as well. so the camign trail may be a trail of tears for him. >> rose: charlie? newt gingrich? >> wow, i... you know, speaker gingrich is complaining about all th negative ads that are gog against him. >> rose: he's crying over the negative ads. >> but thehing aut it is negative ads are brutal when they have something to work with. and one of the things when gingrich first got in this rac and a lot of us were watching sway that much baggage typically a campaign has a file folder of good opposition research on their opponent.

this is like multiple file cabinets of material is the devastating... the material is do so good. a lot of people that love gingrich, like him a great deal were saying "don't do this, don't get in this race. this isn'toing to end well." because we knew... people knew what was going to get thrown at him. and it has. and it worked and that's just the way it is. but i thought this was fairly predictable. >> rose: you have said to me repeatedly "don't count gingrich out." why do you say that? >> i think you can't count gingrich out yet, though he's taken on... as charlie was saying,he's tan on a lot of water and we have a conversation about his baggage. here's a guy that even though he's performing badly in iowa is still number one two in the national polls. he's either tied with mitt romney or number two two points or three points behind mitt romney. so if he can survive through this and get to another debate part of the problem he's had is he's done very well in the

course of the debates because he comes across as smart and forceful and goes after president ama. >> rose: goes after the media. >> we haven had a debate in 11 or 12 days and we'll have two in the next five or six days. when we get to them and the voters can see him in a debate and not television ad cycle, you can see whether orot he can survive d get to south carolina. i think he's taken on a lot of water as charlie said. can he finish fourth or fifth or sixth in iowa and survive? it will be hard for h. but i think you can't guy a guy out that's number one or two in the national pls. >> rose: john harris, what is it about electability? >> well, it's ephemeral and the only way you can demonstrate electability is to be elected. but i do think the term might be "plausibility." romney, for all his kind of blandness as a candidate is able to project plausibility, credibility. you can take a leap. it's not a huge mental leap but envision him as a president. all these others is i think they

have a wider gap for various reasons. various defects that they have towards achieving that plausibility threshold. and i think that's what it comes down to. but we don't really know that romney's electable. he could have a real slide in these polls. if they're wrong. it's happened before. >> rose: was it probably a mistake for pawlenty to drop out? i think if you askepawlenty and gave him truth serum he would haveeen the recipient of the anti-romney vote at some point that existed out there and i think of all of the candidates that he gotten it he could have sustained it longest. he had the least amount of baggage. he was tested. he came across as "i like the guy." >> rose: charlie cook, what will be the attack against romney that will take place in new hampshire? gingrich mentioned abortion, gingrich mentioned a couple other things i terms of what he did as governor. where will it come? >> the question is where will the money come from to do that? because unless someone has... i

mean, think of it this way. if romney comes in first place, he's already got a 25-point lead in new hampshire. if he comes in in first place in iowa it's game, set, match as far as i'm concerned. if ron paul comes in first place and romney comes in second place paul's support is so... his issue positions are so exotic that his support is elastic. he can't capitalize on it. to me, the one way romney gets caught is if he has a non-ron paul candidate beating him in iowa. then they could actually take him on new hampshire. but where would they find the money because no of these other guys have any money at this point. so i'm very skepticalbout this ppens unless santorum can somehow mana to get ahead of romney there and the question is could he still pull the money together to capitalize on it, to leverage it before new hampshire and south carolina. >> rose: kay.

is the perry campaign... he's t a lot of moy out there. he's got more money. what does he do? >> well he should have done better in the debates. he entered this race in august and was really seen as the person that couldoalesce all the social conservatives behind his candidacy and then he had that series of stumbles on the debate stage and people just haven't seen... seemed until the last couple days to give him a second look. his self-deprecated humor on the dave letterman show and even on the debate stage on a few instances have made some people think twice about him. but i don't think he's changed enough minds to finish in the top three. >> rose: we haven't talked about the economy as a factor in this overall race. >> well, it crosses ul of the... it cross everything from now

until the general election, this is going to be an economy election. this is going to be an election about where the country goes, our standing in the world economally, who we are. >> rose: but are there much differences in the opinis of these candidates on what to do about the economy? >> i don't think there is much of a difference of opinion. they're all for lower taxes. all for cutting governme. but i think that's not what this is aut. 's people want an economic discussion but they're looking for an authentic candidate on it. that's been the difficulty. they're looking for a competent-- and i agree with john harris-- a commander that can see s commander-in-chief who's authentic. no candidate has all of those attributes. they don't see mitt romney as authentic but capable of being commander-in-chief. >> rose: do you think, charlie cook, the happiest people in the world about the way the republans have been campaigning and wh's happened so far in the debates and now we'll see tomorrow in the caucus is obama and his political strategist? >> i think as long as it looks like mitt romney has the strongest chance of winning the republican nomination they can't

be happy because he's the guy that could take him out. he's the one they're afid of. if mitt romney stumbles, falls flat on his face and anybody else in this field emerges as the front-runner that's the day the obama people would be very, very happy. he's by far and away the most formidable opponent and right now i thk he's a strong favorite for the nomination. so i don't think they are happy. >> rose: john harris, has romney run a good campaign? clearly he better than he was four years ago. >> yeah, i tnk he's run a campaign that's made the most so far of the raw material he has to work with, which is an issue background, that doesn't resonate with a lot of republicans and a personality that doesn't really excite a lot of republican voters everywhere. >> not a single voter has moved to mitt romney in a year, whether it's iowa, new hampshire or nationally. >> rose: maybe he's got all the moderates in the republican party and can't convince the

conservatives. >> but he's not fallen down and cratered as a candidate and let somebody else take over the field. so he's maintain that same place. but most campaigns are judged by whether or not they can grow their support, move voters, persuade voters on their behalf to move towards him. he is not done any of that. that, i don't think, is a campaign problem. that i, think, is a flawed candidate problem. republicans believe, as i said, they want somebody to beat obama but they want an authentic conservative and they don' believe mitt romney is an authentic conservative and that's been his ailles heel. >> rose: some have written this is the most bizarre and unprecedented run for the republican nomination that they have mean? a long time. do you agree with that since you've been part of it? >> i don't know. it's the most convoluted disorganized lack of republican establishment ability to organize this thing than i've seen in my lifetime. >>ose: but it used to be said or it was said when gingrich was moving fast and up that in the end the republican establishment would come down on top of his

head because they did not believe that he would be a winning general election campaign. is that still true? that if anybody other than romney in this field gets the nomination the establishment will rebel? >> i think it is. i don't know about anybody but it's true of gingrich. >> would they rebel if it was perly. >> they probably wouldn't, no. but so far as kay and others have said, he hasn't passed the plausibility threshold. we don't know what the reaction will be to rick santorum if he comes out of here strong. >> rose: so only one candidate passed th plausibility... >> so far. and you're right there's a wild mischievous year. but the interior of the race, the dynamic is familiar. you have an establishment candidate who's probably the favorite and you have people vying to be the social conservative alternative with very familiar dynamic internally

once you get past the wild fluctuations and gyrations in the polls and personalities going up and down. >> rose: thank you, john harris, thank you, kay henderson. pleasure to have you in the broadcast. thank you very much both of you. i'm losing the satellite so i have to say that now. charlie cook, so you're suggesting it's going to be romney, santorum and paul or romney paul and santorum or does it matter? >> no, i think it's all... i think it's all going to be grouped together but the thing is, the key thing is if santorum comes in ahead of romney that's a different ll game. if either romney wins or ron paul wins and romney's in second place, what that means is that nobody else that could actually twin nomination is going to have any juice going, is going to have the resource effort. santorum right now is the one that could have some potentially some elastic support and make this a real dog fight and... but he has to come in, i think,

ahead of romney for that really to happen or maybe if it's romney/santorum and ron paul third, maybe that might happen. but what i'm watching for is does a non-ron paul candidate come in ahead of mitt romney? that's the critical thing. >> rose: thank you, charlie cook pleasure to have you in the broadcast. is romney the inevitable nominee? i would say he's the likely but not inevitable party choice. he has two things to prove in the process. first, not a sustained attack by any of the candidates as hi rivals have. when that day comes it will test his and his campaign's acumen and sustainility. you have always made that point, but you've also always made the point of this notion of he's not authentic. can one overcome authenticity? >> the only way you can... >> rose: challenge? >> it's very difficult to market yourself as authentic when you're not and i think what mitt romney has done successfully is he and his friends and allies

have been able to not rae the authentic issue on other candidates but the competence issue. so people want a competent and someone they can see in oval office and somebody authentic. but the somebody is one or the other they have to figure out what they're doing. mitt romney has been able to say herman cain, rick perry, newt gingrich. not confident, you don't want them in the oval office. therefore, taken a inauthentic confident candidate versus a not confidant candidate. >> rose: if yowere advising him today, what would you advise him? assume he comes in first or second in iowa. >> i he's going to... the only route to his victory is what he's been doing is try to sustain this long enough and have a multicandidate field and long enough r people to say listen, it's over, it's done, even though he hasn't demonstrated a large part of support. but it's very hard with a flawed candidate-- which mitt romney is from the republican voter standpoint-- to recreate yourself a way that makes you

such a... the ronald reagan candidate. i think they have to just keep pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing and then basically the wall comes down and republicans say "enough is enough, mitt romney is ou guy even though we don't like it." >> rose: in a geral election will it be good for him the fact that he is viewed not as an authentic conservative? >> yes. iean... and i think that's the interesting thing about this is that republicans want to beat barack obama and the guy they may end up who they don't like but think is authentic may be the best route to victory. and th's whathe secret they think he is. they think wow, as soon as he gets the nomination he's going to do a big shift the middle. that's what will happen and that will make barack obama and their campaign very nervo. >> rose: you would be nervous if you were advising obama if romney was the nominee? >> i would be nervous if i was barack obama anyway with the numbers in this country, economic confidence, his job approval number is bad, much worse than bush was nuclear non-proliferation when he was in a close election. but i would especially nervous

for him if it's mitt romney running against him in an environment like this. it makes him incredibly vulnerable. >> rose: great to see you. >> rose: robert massie is here. his new book is called "catherine the great, portrait of a woman." it's a story of a young princess whose ambitions transrms russia to a gate power. i am pleased to have robert massie back at this table. welcome. >> thank y, charlie. >> rose: you have had such a great life as you well know. coming out of lexington, kentucky, a great state and a great city then go to yale and study history and oxford as a rhodes scholar and write these long narratives about great russian figures as well as some other stories that you've written.

this is the way to live a life. >> i've been lucky. i've been very lucky both in the choice of books i've been able to write and in the reception of them by the people who are readers. >> "nicholas and alexander ""peter the great ""castles of steel." here's what's interesting. and this is just in the... born into a minoroble family, catherine transformed herself into empress of russia by here is determination possessing a brilliant mind and an insatiably curiosity. as a young woman, she devoured the works of enlightenment philoshers and when she reached the throne attempted to use their principles to guide her rule of the vast and backward russian empire. she knew or correspondent correspondent deaded with voltaire, fred trick great, marie antoinette an surprisingly the american naval hero john paul jones. what a woman.

>> what a woman indeed. absolutely. she was very ambitious even as a very small child and a young woman. a lot of things happen which had sort of fell in her direction. her uncle had been the fiance of the empress elizabeth before elizabeth was empress and elizabeth had been the daughter... was the daughter of peter the great. this uncle died of smallpox in st. petersburg before the marriage could take place. but elizabeth always remembered the family. catherine... then she was sofia. she changed her name when she went to russia. she was brought because elizabeth had this previous attachment to the family and she was looking for a wife for her nephew whom she had made air too the thrown so they could produce a baby who would be the follow onary to secur the dynasty.

and that's how catherine got to russia. >> rose: and when she got there? >> when she got there she was very impressed by the very tall and in a way beautiful empress elizabeth and the opposite, horrified, even, by the figure of the man she was supposed to marry. catherine was then 14, he was 16. and he was physically and psychologicallyimpaired. he was still playing with toy soldie. he was gladto see h because shwas german and he had come from germany so they... they had that in common. but they had nothing else and when they married a year or so later, he was 16, she was... excuse me, he was 17, she was 16 he had no interest in her as a woman whatsoever.

he was unable to have... be intimate, have sex with her. she lay in bed with this husband. she married him, she converted to orthodoxy, she lay in bed with him for nine years, from 16 to 25 and he never touched her. well, there are not many women today or ever-- men either-- who would find that an agreeable relationship or marriage and the empress was waiting forhis baby, got very impatient and so proposed to... by then she was catherine, "look, there are two young men at court who could father the son i need you to have." and catherine chose one of them and produced a baby, paul, who became emperor. the question... the historal question is peter was never able

to consummate the marriage and therefore sergei was the father or was peter able after an operation, just a circumcision had been performed to have sex with his wife and produce a baby. historians have never decided. i don't try to decide, i simply lay out the facts on both sides and it's interesting question. and try and involve the reader in this... >> rose: so what happens to peter? >> peter... they lived together... they lived apart but they were man and wife for 18 more years while the empress elizabeth reigned. he succeeded her when elizabeth ed and he reigned for six months. in that six months he managed

to... to bring down on him four important groups or institutions-- the army, the orthodox church, the nobility, and the citizenry of st. petersburg. catherine was by then recognized as far more competent, able, and interesting a person, administratively competent. and the guards regiments ral lead around her. it didn't hurt that one of the leading guards officers was then her lover. but there was a coup d'etat, it was bloodless but catherine road out at the head of 14,000 soldiers to arrest peter in his suburban estate. he abdicated without a fuss. he was sent to a country house for detention and a week later he was dead. and that raised another one of these unanswered, unanswerable

probably questions. did catherine have anything to do with this. did she organize this or did she approve it? did she know about in the advance? certainly it was convenient for her. >> rose: back to the personal side. she had lots of lovers. >> she had 12. >> rose: 12. 12 stly of what rk? >> mostover them were lesser nobility, guards officers who where on duty at court. now, once she became empress, e had three loversefore she came to the throne with peter's not even approval, disinterest, he didn't care. afterwards nine, the greatest of whom was gregory potemkin whom she may have married. but they were... as she grew older they stayed the same age. so they became... the gap.

and this is one reason she has been criticized for her private life and i try to be... to lay out all the facts, not to excuse but justo explain. >> rose: you have said, i think, that... we talk about our accomplishments now, the only person that is of her equal in terms of accomplishment is elizabeth i. >> i think so. i think so both in personality, is in character, in intelligence inourage, both of them survived difficult, even threatening childhoods and young woman hoods. and an achievement. look what elizabeth did and catherine did the same for russia. >> rose: with what did catherine do? >> what catherine did was to bring... wl, let's say just in the... in the field of power politics. she and potemkin together-- who waher lover, maybe her husband but then went off to be viceroy of the south-- conquered the

whole of the black seacoast from turkey. from the crimea, the site of odessa and that was equivalent to what peter did in the north. peter the great, by taking the baltic territorys from sweden. mo importantly, probably, was that she brought european culture. whereas peter had restructured russia administratively and militarily... >> rose: peter the great. >> peter the great. yes, not her husband. catherine... catherine's overriding purpose, ambition, was to bring europe and european culture, art, medicine, education to russia. >> rose: where did that come from? clearly it was added to by the correspondents with voluntary and everybody else. >> exactly. it came from youth.

as a very young child she was tutored and well tutored by a groupf protestant tutors and a lutheran minuter? rmany where she was born. but shwas alwayscontentious. she challenged the tutors. she said "how can the scripture condemn men of antiquity, the great m prejesus christ when... for not being aware of salvation when they couldn't possibly have?" and the tutor couldn't answer. he said to the governness "we must discipline her, be her a little bit." and she stood up to everybody. she stood up to the empress brilliantly. >> rose: what did she think of the american revolution? >> she wasn't in favor of revolutions. either in russia or in europe.

the american revolution she was interested in because so many of the leaders of the american revolution were in themselves enlightenment figures. jefferson, ben franklin wa in paris at the time and so forth. >> rose: influenced by the same things that influenced her. >> by the same principles. >> rose: "catherine the great: portrait of a woman" by robert massie pulitzer prize winning author of "nicholas and alexander." thank you. >> thank you very much. >> rose: adam gnik is here. he has been a writer for the "new yorker" magazine for 25 years. the "new york times" says he is able to see the world in a grain of sand. his new book considers the te meaning of food in our lives. it is called "the table comes first: family, france, and the meaning of food." i'm pleased to have our friend adam gopnik back at this table. welcome. >> good to be back, charlie. >> rose: where does the title come from? >> there's a wonderful cook,

chef in london called fergus henderson. he has a restaurant called st. john andhis whole thing is the whole beast. that is the only ethical way to eaten a malls is if we eat the whole damn thing. if you're going to eat the fillet or pork chops you have to eat the face and the ears and the liver and the spleen. then you have a right to eaten a animal. and i was talking to him once, i was going to write about it and he said to me with great indignation, in his clipped english accent, he said "i cannot believe when a young couple setting off in life buys a television or a sofa or even a bed. don't they know the table comes first?" >> rose: great point. >> and a light went on in my head and i said if i ever publish a book about food i will call it "the table comes first." because what he meant is it's the raft in which common life, family life, takes place. it's the thing we ride down the river of our existence. >> rose food was a passion i your life, not a subject for... to write about a book about. >> it always has been.

i've been writing about it for the magazine for a long, long time. but my mom was one of the women of the 1960s who was a fabulous cook at that moment when it was mo feminist to become a great cook than not. she loved it. she mastered that french cooking those crazy beef wellington and souffles. interestingly, didn't teach her daughters of whom she had many to cook, she taught her two sons to come. i was 12 years hold in the kitchen with my mom and i today her "i'd le beef strog off in tonit." and she said "great, you're going to cook it." taught me how right there. slicing the onions, choping the pepper,s, sauting the beef, making the sauce, stirring in the sour cream. >> rose: on an average week, how many meals do you cook? >> i guess i cook probably four or five. >> rose: you have two kids and a wonderful wife. >> we eat at home about five nights a week. >> rose: but do you cook? >> yes. >> rose: it's you? >> yeah. my wife had a feminist mother of

the previous generation who wanted to keep her out of the kitchen because she saw the kitchen as the pson cell of women's lives so martha makes a good cream caramel and good salad dressing. you know how everybody has an absence in the things they can cook. >> rose: salad dressing is yours? >> i cannot do a decent one. so she does the salad dressing but my mom taught me to do the rest and i love it. cook is the one thing ifyou're a writer by vacation you spend your life inside your head spinning sentences round and round. that moment whenyou start chopping onions-- because chopping onion is what every recipe i it's that lovely zen thing, charlie, zen can be summed up. buddhism can be summed up in two phrases. "chop wood, carry water." a simple physical tivity is where you find enlightme. that activity of chopping onions is where you release yourself from the inside of your head. i find it hugely wonderful.

>> you have said that food is the rock 'n' roll of the moment? >> i think someone else... >> rose: somebody that? do you think that's true. that somehow food is the... has some exalted place today? >> maybe not so much exalted as obsessive. when i was a kid it's true that all we did was argue about rock 'n' roll. who's better, hendrix or clapton beats or the stones, joni mitchell or bob dylan. now people invest in the same way, i tnk that's true, in food at a kind of superficial level? what's the better restaurant and the best table but at a deeper level how do you cook? the best index... you know this, if you go out to dinner in any american towwith any american family, the first thing they serve you tells you everything you need to know about their politics. they bring out a... you know, a locally grown organic cart then they're left. you know how much money they gave to obama and how much less they'll give next time. you get a ritz crack we are a cream cheese spread, u know what the politics are of those folks, right?

and so we use food symbolically the way we used rock 'n' roll symbolically to say who we are. in that sense it's tr that fo is at the center of the way people present themselves. how they symbolize themselves now. and that's very much what i wanted to write about. we have wonderful books about where food comes from. from the ground, how sustainable it is, how we raise our vegetables and all of those questions and i... w ate locally for a while on that principle but what i wanted to write about was the part of food that doesn't come from the ground up but the part that comes from the head down the way we ritualize our meals. why we ritualize our meals. every human group that's ever been known has food rules and food rituals. they have a way of aprofessoring the table that defines who they are. we don't do that with the other necessities of our physical life. we all have that-to-breathe but there are very few cultures that say you can only breathe through your right nostril between sundown and sun rise.

there's not a tribe or culture or nation that doesn't say there's a good way to eat, a right way to eat, a sacred way to eat. >> rose: what does our culture say about those questions? >> our culture says two different and i think conflicting things. on the one hand we say, piously, and we believe, that the table comes first, that sitting down with the people we care abou for dinner is the central ritual of a... >> rose: to me, that's... it's almost for me like... i'm going to get ousands of pple who are going to scream at me. it's the ft that it's the coming together that matters to me more than the food. >> it's what goes on around the table more than what's on the table. but really the reason that we come together. and we believe that. and it's true that that's the best thing you can do for your kids is to have dinner with them every night. a thousand studies show that it propels them. >> rose: so children that had dinner with their parents,

that's the best kind of way to equip them go into life? >> absolutely. we believe that. and we try and practice. but at the same time our civilization is one in which time is the most valuable commodity we have, people are hugely stressed and overworked and therefore we turn to food not necessarily in that ritual way but quickly. we have fast food, we turn to it for quick hits of sugar and fat and all of those other things ich we are neceary us as well. so we live a very divided food culture. >> rose: calvin trillin, you say set the standard, the great new york writer, the "new yorker" writer writing so wonderfully about food. what's the standard he senate what was it ma that made him the standard bearer. >> trillin was one of the first ones who turn med on to the possility that writing about food couldn't be a narrow, obsessive and then we went to there this three star temple activity but that it was abt family life. that if it was about great food

writing "alice, let's eat". >> rose: his wife. >> about his family. at's what food is about. it's about your daughter carrying a bagel when she goes to chinese restaurants as he wrote about. another way is he's a masterly stylist and i've always loved the way he rights and finally trillin i think humaned food for a generation. he said food is fun. food is a source of pleasure. and food isn't another world where you go to sort of kind of theater of snob erie and sophistication. food is family. food is the table that we share. and all of those ways trillin's food writing made me feel that writing about food wasn't a marginal thing but could be central to what you wanted to do as a writer. >> rose: what's the alchemy of a successful restaurant? >> how can y have a successful restaurant? i had a great friend, a guy named peter hoffman who is a

restaurateur and he said something to me that always stuck in my head. he said "the thing that professionals understand is that amateurs don't is that taste begins at the door. that your experience of what's on your plate begins when you walk into the door and take in the lighting and the woman at the front desk says to you welcome mr. rose, give me a minute." and that taste i a totality. taste is the whole of our lives and that what a great restaurateur knows is that you can't separate out what's on the plate from the whole experience you've had. if you think about the places that you think there are great restaurants, thats the thing that distinguishes them. they have a kind of warmth that's welcoming and also... i always find that the test of any restaurant is that you become... there's a certain moment after an hour and a half, two hours when you're no longer conscious you're eating at restaurant, you're in a condition of inexplicable joy in the presence of your companions and food and

wine and everything else. >> rose: i eat out all the time, as you know, if a restaurant becomes to me a place that i walk in and fl that they're happy i'm there, that they welcome me, that they have a place for me it feels almost like either home or a club. it feels like you're among friends. >> absolutely. that was an invention. in france around 1780 people became aware... the restaurant was invented to play that role. to be a home away from home. a place where if you h the money in your pocket they didn't have to feed you, they had to welcome you and they had to welcome you if you were courting somebody. that's what makes the restaurant a crucial invention of modernity because it gives you that semiprivate... >> and they will say to you we have fresh today knowing what

you love. or get your drink of choice because it suggests a kind of bonding with your presen. >> rose: and even though we know some part of our severals that it's a commercial transaction, it's done with such suavety, with such aplomb that it that has ring of true feeling. and that's what makes restaurants wonderful and what great chefs and restaurateurs understand. >> rose: has the whole molecular cooking business, is that the cutting edge today? >> i got to go to abouli for one meal because i wanted to write about desserts. the thing that doesn't translate r ferran andre and his disciples in spain and the american acolytes is he's a magician in the best sense. he's about fun. he's a willy wonka. he wants to make you levitate. he wants to delight you. and a lot of his imitateors in

america have a kind of quasi-scientific takon it. it's solemn and church like. there's nothing solemn or church like abouthat he does. i was there and he served to me a dessert of wil strawberries in wild hear. wild bunny bullion because he said these rabbits only live on wild strberrys so you get the taste. there's a wild poetry about what he does that is at the hard of that molecular cuisine that has nothing to do with technical apparatus. >> rose: because the thing that impressed me about him and he made this at this table and has been book. he left his restaurant because he wanted to... almost like someone who needed to take it to another level or wanted to investigate. he's teaching briefly at harvard and doing other things having to do with going to another zone in terms of his both understanding as well as his perfection.

>> he has a truly artistic temperament. he wants to go to the next thing. he even has the kind of gotis that gat artists have that kind of expansiv egotism. if you only were me you would be as delighted as n pri press. it's a very engaging quality. he wants to embarrass me. i s doing interview with him and i said "what was your first great food experience? " and i drank a zip of water and hi says "look at the way mr. gopnik is drinking water. that tells us everything we need to know. in a gulp of water, a zip of water, a taste of water, all the possible experiences of taste e implicit in it. he went on about it, too. i haven't been able to drink water unself-consciously. >> rose: you've given up desserts. >> i did for a while. i'm off the wagon now and i've dropped off the wagon and i'm slowly expanding. i did it for the reason we all do it. that you feel... >> rose: did it once and you decided to do it again.

>> and you feel better and you get thinner and all of those things. but exactly what happens... i've never disease blessedly-- been an addict. but i've many friends, as i'm sure you do, who have gone through substance abuse addiction and you're bewildered because you don't understand how somebody willing and intelligent and able could be dependent on something. i gave up sugar and i realized it isn't a choice, it's like the's this magnetic force dring you to this thing you want and it just requires enormous willpower not to go to it. >> rose: people who sell food understand that, too. >> all too well. it's one of the things you notice when you've been abroad for a while and you come back to america is how much incidental sugar there is in all american food, in every condiment. so i got obsessed about sugar. why do we eat desserts? why do we have this course in our daily meal that setss apart. why did it happen? when d it start. >> rose: and tunnel choices of

od define us? >> yeah, i think it's not so much that... >> rose: in other words, in you choose... if you choose to be a vegan, that defines you in terms of your ambition, vanity or something or if you choose to want to eat steaks... >> well, hitler was a vegetarian. that's always a useful reminder that there are moral dimensions that lie outside the table but i do think we use food to say who we are. that it's the simplest and most poetic expression we have of our values. >> rose: the book is called "the table comes first. family, friends, and the meaning of food. adam gopnik." thank you. >> pleasure. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org