>> charlie: welcome to the program. we begin this evening with the president of harvard, drew faust. >> this is a really interesting time for higher education, and i think probably a time in which it is going to change more than it has changed since at least the end of the 19th century when the research university was invented, and maybe change as dramatically as it was invented in the 1100s. it's, in part, because of the kinds of transformations we see in the world we live in, the digital revolution and what that means for teaching and learning, the globalization of higher education, those are very important factors. but i think there are also very significant sets of expectations that have been articulated about universities, partly in the aftermath to have the financial crisis. >> charlie: we conclude with columnist george will. >> the year i became a cub fan

in 1948, the cub's ownership took out ads in the chicago papers to apologize for how bad the product was. he said, well, we're not very good but we have a terrific ballpark and let's market that. the ivy so lush, the grass so green, the sun so warm and the beer so cold that people won't really care what the scoreboard says. >> charlie: drew faust and george will when we continue.

captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> charlie: drew gilpin faust is here, the 28th president of harvard university, the first female president. she has served in that role since 2007. in her installation address she said, a university is not about results in the next quarter. it is not even about who a student has become by graduation. it is about learning that molds a lifetime, learning that transcends the heritage of

millenia, learning that shapes the future. i'm pleased to have the person who said that back at this table. welcome. >> thank you so much. >> charlie: i want to talk about universities today and the role, and some criticism they're receiving and how they confront the challenges of the future. but today, tell me how is harvard today? you know, you went through some deficits in terms of fundraising difficulties as everybody did, a challenge to you, as you have taken note of. there are questions about the merits of a college education, people not being able to find jobs, raising questions about what kind of education people should be getting, all these questions. so tell me how harvard is doing and what are your answers to that. >> this is a really interesting time for higher education, and i think probably a time in which it is going to change more than it has changed since at least the end of the 19th century when the research university was invented, and maybe changed as

dramatically since it was invented in the 1100s. it's in part because of the kinds of transformations we see in the world we live in, the digital revolution and what that means for teaching and learning, the globalization of higher education, those are very important factors, but i think there are also very significant sets of expectations that have been articulated about universities, partly in the aftermath of the financial crisis. how does this contribute to a life, a future? how does it contribute to a nation, a society? so how do individuals and societies evaluate what universities -- >> charlie: it's best time, when those questions are being raised, to remember what universities were for and how you make sure that -- i think someone said you make sure you have the best of the past but make sure you look forward to the future. >> exactly. and i worry somewhat that we will focus too narrowly on the immediate outcomes that have

become so pressing in the aftermath of the financial crisis -- the question of what is a contribution a university makes to the employability, the life of an individual and to the economic structure of society -- those are absolutely important things for universities to do. but it's also important that we keep the long term in view and ask ourselves about how universities contribute to building citizens for the future, people who will be the pillars of our democracy in the years to come, people who will be able to adapt beyond a first job to a future that we can hardly imagine the shape of, and, so, we'll have the kinds of habits of mind, the kinds of ways of thinking, the kind of breadth of understanding of the world from which they come to be ready ten years after graduation, twenty years after graduation for jobs that haven't even been invented yet. >> charlie: i think i remember this coming from you, a speech

you made or an interview in which you quoted charles elliott basically saying, yes, we want engineers and architects and chemists but we think they will be better at that the if they also learned here something of the humanities and what it means to be a citizen. >> yes, and part of a world not necessarily like the world you came from in your own or origin- origins and your own immediate experience. the globalization of our education and lives is critical. the students who go to harvard will be lawyers, doctors, business people or public servants in a global context. they will have to deal with citizens in societies quite different from their own and that speak languages different from their own. how can they imagine themselves inside those people's heads to do their work most effectively, it comes from humanistic study as much as any other field. >> charlie: another critical

question is access. former secretary of state clinton raised this question -- universities are so expensive today. i know you feel strongly about university support and financial aid for students, but that is an issue for so many and how much it costs to attend a great university. >> absolutely, and you talked a moment ago about crime sisms universities are being subjected to and the kinds of doubts people have about them, but those are coupled with an appetite of what a university can be and part of a desire to be part of one and have one's children be part of them. so how can we make the university affordable to the wide range of people who can benefit from the people being there. >> charlie: it's also good for the university. >> it is and we've greatly expanded financial aid programs in the past decade so that we have increased financial aid

spending by 90% since 2007. we have a program that permits students from families making less than $65,000 a year to come with no parental contribution at all so we're working very hard to make harvard affordable. in fact, the cost of education has gone down at harvard. if you're on financial aid, and 60% of our undergraduate students are, you pay about $12,000 a year for your harvard education. so that, i think, is an important commitment we have made, but making higher education affordable is a much broader challenge than that. we have been very lucky to benefit from the kinds of resources that our alums and friends have given us over the years to support that kind of a financial aid commitment, and that isn't the case everywhere. but let me say something about another aspect of affordability, which is if you look at what states have expended per student on higher education in the public higher education of the united states, that's gone down

26%. >> charlie: how much states have contributed. >> per capita, 26% decline. >> charlie: you talk about the individual states of the 50 states. >> yes, to support the university of california, university of north carolina. so the rising cost of public higher education is closely related to the declining support -- >> charlie: if they can't support, they have to raise the tuition and everything else. >> yes. so par part of what we need to k ourselves is how do we make college more affordable by being more cost conscious. all of us in higher education have to do that. we also need to ask ourselves as a society what are we willing to invest in higher education which i firmly believe is a public good, and duds our society still believe that and will it invest in it. >> charlie: you raise the question that, in fact, the level of support from the federal government to higher education is declining?

well -- >> charlie: compared to where it was as a percentage. >> a significant portion of what we do at harvard is research. >> charlie: right. and about 16% of our operating budget comes from -- >> charlie: 16? 16. comes from federal support for scientific research. so what happens when that declines across the united states? >> charlie: and it is declining? >> and it is declining. we see, in the last decade, the purchasing power of dollars from the national institute of health which is our biggest federal funder has gone down about 25%. so where is the united states going to do its scientific research under those circumstances? i can tell you a little story about a wonderful discovery made at a harvard, announced just this past week, and it's a discovery about a protein that may inhibit the development of alzheimer's, this discovery made by a young faculty member in our medical school. and he applied for n.i.h.

funding, he got the highest possible score, but because of declining support for n.i.h., the highest possible score did not guarantee you would be funded. when the qualifiers were listed, the top three were funded. used to be six or eight of those would have been funded. >> charlie: right. he was number four. the cutoff was three. >> charlie: no funding. so how does he advance -- how could he advance this extraordinary work with the same vehemence if the funds aren't there. >> charlie: so what happens to him? >> he has funding. he's been doing it more slowly. he's not been able to advance as quickly as he should have. i hope he has a great result, his next study will be funded.

here's this extraordinary destructive disease -- >> charlie: and may be slowing down one of the important elements in trying to either reduce its impact. >> yes. >> charlie: yet, at the same time, you just got one of the largest single grants you'd ever received for $150 million. >> that is a philanthropic gift. >> charlie: that's what i'm saying. $150 million is a lot of money to give to a university. you've also lost a $6 billion capital campaign for your endowment. but i'm saying you're not getting federal money but you're getting gifts of a significant size. >> we are and that gift was for financial aid for one of our very highest priorities for access affordability from ken griffin who is an alum who believes deeply in making places like harvard open to students of talent. but if you think of how much federal money we get every year,

$670 million a year, and what substitutes for that? that's annually. so it takes a lot of philanthropy, would take a lot of philanthropy to compensate for what the federal government has done and has been in terms of the scientific profile of our country. >> charlie: are you able to reduce your things on the expense side because -- through wise financial management? >> we are certainly attending to that and, in a variety of ways, administrative ways of consolidating functions and thinking about cost saving, also asking hard questions. again, the downturn in 2008 was a real motivator in this regard. what don't we want to do anymore that we are doing? what can we afford to do less of? what can we afford to figure out ways to do more efficiently. >> charlie: do you believe that members of the academy make

good managers? >> all of them? >> charlie: as a general rule, though, it's a different talent. >> it's a very different talent. >> charlie: after all, you're a historian who writes books. >> i am. people ask me what does history have to do with being a university president and wasn't that a complete disjuncture? >> charlie: i'm asking does being a historian make you a better university president. >> makes me a better president than if i didn't understand history. leadership is about change, envisioning change, managing change, bringing people to embrace change and what is history about? change. what is the civil war about? when i look at the civil war, it's about a very concentrated period in which everything changed. so that equipped me -- understanding that equipped me very well, i think, for the kinds of challenges i face. >> charlie: and it is always true if you don't understand your history, you will be judged to repeat it. >> yes. >> charlie: so when you look

at online education, is that a positive thing for universities? because i love my university experience. i love being on campus. i love everything about it. everything. at the same time, there are people who can't do that, for whatever reason, and now they can access a great university and great teacher teachers onli. >> online education will never replace the extraordinary things that happen when you bring people together from around the country and around the world to learn together, and i'm sure when you think about your university education, when i think about what goes on at harvard every day, the certain serendipitous interactions are incredible. but online can supplement our education. it's extraordinary. we fed edx just about two

years ago and began producing online content to share with people all around the world, and we do our content called harvard x, the content of the edx delivery system, we use the edx platform and, so far, we've had more than a million individuals who benefited from courses from edx. one of my favorite stories related to this is a public health course that was offered in the very first fall that we were involved in this program, and i had just been to india several months before and was made so aware of the public health needs in india and had so many come up to me while i was there saying could we do more programs with your school, get more students and faculty from there to consult and help? and i came back very passionate

wanting to do more with india because the challenges are so enormous. this basic public health course offered that foul fall -- and it was biostatistics and epidemiology, a kind of building block of public health -- it was taken by over 50,000 people worldwide but by 8,000 people in india. so there, in an eye blink, is a kind of an impact for public health knowledge and the dissemination of the knowledge that all the partnerships i was going to dream up would not approach. now, those partnerships are still important, we'll still do all those kind of face-to-face things, that here we've had a level of outreach that would have been unimaginable. one of the things i love about it is how the users figure out how they want to take these courses. we had one instance where someone who was taking the course in mumbai said, hey, i want to see who else is taking the course and created a flash

mob of biostatisticians in mumbai that came together. in another instance the whole hospital staff in india took this course together so that they could share the experience and have a face-to-face dimension of what the online course was. so thinking about that impact and thinking about what can be available in that mode that simply isn't available and can't be made available readily in a face-to-face mode is very striking. >> charlie: you went to gettysburg to make the 150t 150th anniversary of lincoln's speech. >> i did. >> charlie: and because of your sense of history and civil war history and that magical gettysburg address and honoring that, and lincoln talking about making sure that those who died did not die in vain, what did you tell them when you had a chance to be there and remember that speech but also remember

the problems we're having with government today? >> well, as i was thinking about that anniversary and thinking about going to gettysburg, i wrote a piece for "the washington post" that kind of summarized my thoughts, and what i focused on was this notion of how much sacrifice had been made for this extraordinary nation that lincoln described as the last best hope, as democracy was disappearing around the world, and in the mid 19th century lincoln roused the north to take on this remarkable set of commitment to keep the nation whole and sustain that last best hope, and if we don't want people to die -- to have died in vain for that, 700,000 of them, what have we abandoned? and as we were approaching that anniversary, the government was

closed, we were in complete deadlock in washington, we had a congress that was unable to exercise the responsibilities of democracy. >> charlie: and examining the role of government. >> mm-hmm. >> charlie: and you're basically saying to them, remember, how do we ensure we have a government of the people, by the people, for the people and that it shall never perish. >> and remember what we have inherited in the way of responsibilities to those who have built this for us and what we owe to that past and to the future, and our obligation to sustain it. >> charlie: when people talk about great universities, they talk about the united states. i mean, i think of the top twenty great universities on most people's list, 17 or 18 of them in the united states, harvard and cambridge being an exception, what is required for china and india and other places

that they have a lot of resources there to build a great university and how quickly can they build a series of great universities? >> it's a very interesting question, and one that both china and india are thinking hard about. one of the aspects that china has identified as increasing importance is how american students and universities are filled with curious, imaginative, creative people, and part of that, i find from my chinese interlocketters, they come from the liberal address from the breadth of training, from not having someone focused on a particularlyiar particular, but from a perspective that may give you a different angle and make a new discovery that you

wouldn't have thought of if you were stuck in a prescribed path. >> charlie: the interesting thing about china, for example -- i mean there is this myth that they're so into rote learning, and some of that may be true, and rather than a full understanding of the humanities and history, yet they are the first people in the world to talk about the richness of their history and the longevity of their history, which is one of the things they're most proud about, you know. >> it's true. but how is that integrated into an educational system and into how one thinks about a particular set of subjects as part of an educational -- higher educational system? i think that's what they're trying to figure out. >> charlie: okay. so take you, coming out of a small town in virginia, with a good education and wonderful opportunities and a big brain and all the things that you have done, if you were coming out of there today and knowing what you know now, would you make

different choices? >> my life unfolded as a series of surprises because i was entering a world in which things were changing so rapidly for women that, if i had said, i want to be the president of harvard, when i was ten years old, people would have thought i was crazy. >> charlie: yeah. so as i came up to each choice in my life, it was almost miraculous luck that suddenly something would open and i would be able to do something that, a generation ago, would have been imaginable. i remember when i got pregnant -- my daughter is now 32, so you can date that very clearly -- at the university of pennsylvania, there was no maternity leave policy, and no one knew quite what to do with me. it was just bewildering to everyone. but there was a lot of goodle will, so we -- good will, so we sort of invented it. and i ended up as the online

future. i taped my lectures around a month and a half to when i would have the baby, so when i delivered, we could plug in and show the class the lectures online. >> charlie: oh, my gosh. after i delivered this baby, i sat with my other women colleagues and said, we really need a policy here, so we invented a policy and it's taken for granted everywhere. >> charlie: were there things you thought i might do -- i might do -- because my impression the answer is no -- i might have done, but it's not an opportunity for a woman, so, therefor, i won't go down that road? or did you go down the roads you were interested in and it turned out simply by achievement and people looking at options and saying, what's the best choice? they end up with you? i'm not sure i asked that well. did you not go places you might have gone because you didn't think it was good for a woman.

>> i don't think i ever didn't do anything i wanted because it wasn't for a women. >> charlie: i come from a small down from parents who did not go to college and they said to me, you can do anything you want to, and i believed that. and to believe that is so important. >> and that's why we have to make college accessible and make sure that students like you have the opportunities that your parents promised you you would have. that's what our nation's about. that goes back to what you were asking about the gettysburg address. that's part of the last best hope of earth, too, and that's what's the engine of democracy is education. thomas jefferson recognized that early on, and we have to see it as the public good for this nation that we sustain that. >> charlie: everything that i read, every leader that i know who i think has elements of

wisdom looks at education as the key to the future. how do i make education work. it's a checkered history of doing that. the world is full of people who don't want an educated populous because they don't think they would survive, but, on the other hand, those who think about the future and think about change knows there has to be an education. >> and it has to be an education that asks questions because that's how we invent the future. >> charlie: great to see you. great to see you, too. >> charlie: george will, pulitzer prize winning journalist and author and columnist, he has been writing about politics, history and sports for more than 40 years, has a syndicated column in "the washington post" and appears on fox news and a life long chicago cubs plan. his book is called "a nice little place on the north side," tells the story of wrigley

field, one of the most legendary fields in baseball. i am very pleased to have him back at this table. welcome. >> very glad to be here. >> charlie: "the washington post," you're still writing the column. has it changed? you write the column and mail it in at the post. >> no, the post syndicates it to 470 other newspapers. when i first started writing, i wrote from home and chevy chase and my column went to the post by motorcycle. >> charlie: and now you email it in. >> exactly. >> charlie: you switch from abc to fox. why? >> the show i was on this weeks day one -- >> charlie: david brinkley? right, moved to new york because of george ste

stephanopoulos. i got a little weary of nights in new york. >> charlie: i can guarantee you we can give you a better time than saturday night in washington. (laughter) it's debatable, i guess. but washington is interesting to me. if you came to new york, i would take you to a restaurant. if i go to washington, i would probably be entertained in your home, depending on the level of my friendship. >> yes. >> charlie: that's the difference there. illinois is your home, too. >> yes. >> charlie: your father was a professor there. >> university of illinois, professor of philosophy. >> charlie: what was the great divide between being a cardinal fan and a chicago fan? >> good sense (laughter) i grew up in champagne, a university town, at an age too tender, seven, when supposedly the age of reason dawns -- i have proof otherwise -- an age

too tender to make life-shaping decisions, i had to choose between being a cub or cardinal fan. all my friends were cardinal fanand grew up cheeferl, happy and liberal. >> charlie: because they were winning. >> i became a dispeptic conservative. >> charlie: even stan musial didn't do it for you? >> he would have, i just chose the wrong team. and once you plight your trough to one of these teams, it becomes a question of character, loyalty and all that, and the fear that if you ever get off this loyalty, they'll start winning just to knock you. >> charlie: it's always been bails and not football. >> that's right. football i once said combined the two worst features of american life, its violence punctuated by committee meetings. >> charlie: yeah (laughter) >> difference between baseball and football, football is a big spectacle. baseball is a habit. i was on a major-league committee called baseball in the 21st century. we did some research.

we came up with the conclusion that about 98% of self-identified nfl fans had never been to an nfl game. television makes nfl fans. going to the ballpark makes baseball fans. >> charlie: it's still that way? >> i think it is because the three most important things that have happened in baseball since the second world war were jackie robinson, free agency in the '70s and camden yards build in the early 90s. >> charlie: suggesting what a stadium could be. >> we had hideous, multi-purpose stadiums built neither for football nor baseball. a guy would come and couldn't tell where he was, they all looked alike. then camden yards said -- the axiom you can't turn the clock back, yes, you. >> charlie: memorial stadium? yes, a dual-purpose stadium for the then baltimore colts, but the people who build camden yard said, look, baseball is a

uniquely observable game. people spread out on an eye-pleasing, greenfield and tom boswell of the post called most observable of team games. let's turn people back, get them in close proximity to the game and, boom, look what happened. we've had since then about 22 new ball parks, every one of them superb. >> charlie: how do you like the nationals? >> very good. >> charlie: season tickets? six. >> charlie: was that because you were there at the founding of the nationals and they said, george, here's your chance to get six good ticket and -- >> well, i have a handicapped son, down syndrome, who works in the nationals clubhouse. he's at 81 games a year. has a better job than i have, gets up every morning -- >> charlie: he's right there with his passion. >> yep. >> charlie: this book, the wrigley field, the wrigley family, it's a story of a

baseball stadium? >> well, it's a story of a baseball stadium, but no one would care about it if the team didn't play there. and it's also the story of my favorite city, chicago, which is just breath taking. first fact about it is it's very old. wrigley field is the second oldest major league ballpark, fenway park is two years older. the third oldest and the second oldest major league ballpark in the national league is dodgers stadium, believe it or not. you and risitting in midtown manhattan. the i conk structures are the empire state building -- >> charlie: and wrigley is older. >> it is older than the jefferson memorial, lincoln memorial, mt. rushmore, the golden gate bridge, hoover dam. our still young country has a public use structure a century old, it's pretty old.

>> charlie: better than fenway park? >> i think so. but the charm of both is that they are put down in an organic neighborhood. >> charlie: yeah, exactly. fenway park has the eccentric configuration because the city got there first. and what the san francisco giants did with their wonderful park right down in china basin in san francisco is trying to replicate the wrigley experience. they only have a 13-acre footprint which is very small and said we're going to conform it to there and see what happens to the neighborhood. turns out the neighborhood booms. people say, oh, baseball has this pastoral past. nonsense. the new york nir nirk knickerban the first half to have the 18th century played right on murray hill in man hasn't. boston and new york had semi-evolving baseball versions so it's been an urban sport from the start. >> charlie: the cubs.

characterize your relationship to the cubs. >> well, robert frost said he had a lovers quarrel with the world. i have a lovers quarrel with the cubs, who haven't been a world series winner since 1908, which is two years before tolsti died, ronald reagan wasn't born yet. the cubs hadn't been to the world series since 1945, and they only won because a lot of the great athletes were still in uniform at the end of the second world war. the cubs, it's just randomly you'd think that you'd win. now, how did they manage to have this futility? one of the conclusion is came to -- >> charlie: because all of a sudden teams that were ten years old were getting in the world series. >> exactly. 1962, the mets are created out of the crapof -- scraps of othe.

casey, the manager, looked down the dugout and said can't anyone here play this game? seven years later, they win the world series. they beat the terrific baltimore orioles. the cubs nothing. part of the problem, i think, may have been wrigley field in the sense that when william wrigley, one of the early owners of the cubs, after whom the field is named, when he died, the club was inherited by his son p.k. wrigley. nice gentleman but had no business being in baseball and didn't really like being the owner of the cubs. and the cubs were not very good. in fact, the year i became a cub fan, 1948, the cub's ownership took out ads in the chicago papers to apologize for how bad the product was. he said, well, we're not very good but we have a terrific ballpark, and let's market that. the ivy will be so lush, the grass so green, the sun so warm and the beer so cold that people

won't really care what the scoreboard says. >> charlie: i think he said it was like a picnic. >> well, interestingly, he instructed cubs broadcasters in as wrigley field and call it "cubs park" because, he said, people like going to the park. remember george carlin had a great rif about baseball, wanted to go home, said wanted to go to the park, and that's what the cubs did. >> charlie: is it a metaphor for life in a way, that life is cruel? >> no. life involves a lot of losing. baseball is the great sport for democracy because it's the sport of a half loaf, not everyone gets everything they want. you go to spring training, every team knows basically it's going to lose 60 games. every team knows it's going to win 60 games. so the vaccines you play the

whole marathon to sort out the middle 42. the you win 10, you're mediocre, if you win 11, you're apt to play in october. the difference between good, mediocre and no good is small in baseball. >> charlie: you didn't like harry caray. >> i did not. he was the cardinals broadcaster when i became a cub fan and one of the reasons i chose the cubs (laughter) he goes to chicago and becomes a door. there's a statue outside the ballpark. >> charlie: he leads the singing. >> a tradition he started and lasted. >> charlie: what's the difference between a cubs an white sox fan? >> the cubs on the north side, south said the mayor daly family, grew up in chicago and white sox fans. >> charlie: they weren't going

to fool around with their field either. >> no. >> charlie: that will not happen. when you look at baseball today, are there are changes you think that it needs? >> let me first of all give you the really good changes. 22 new ball parks since bud selig became acting commissioner. when he took it over in 1992, i have t --it was a $1.4 billion y now it's $8 billion industry. three of the more common names are rodrigues, martinez and perez. as we've admitted to baseball belatedly, 1947, jackie robinson, we've got this ocean of talent in latin america, particularly in the dominican republic but all over latin america. >> charlie: it's great to go to the dominican republic for vacation. >> you can put together an

all-star team of dominican big leaguers, you'd bet on the dominicans. >> charlie: japan is turning out good players. >> the yankees just paid an arm and a leg -- >> charlie: and may not win. but you asked about what we could do better in baseball. >> charlie: yes. i suppose the pace of the game, not the length. >> charlie: the base of the game. >> in a way i'd like to ban batting gloves because they step out, adjust their batting gloves. babe ruth, henry aaron never wore a batting glove, none wore them. this is a fairly new phenomenon. john miller, the terrific baseball broadcaster now for the giants, watched recently, i guess he called it a k can enoscope, that's how long ago it was, of game 7 in 1953 world series, dodgers-yankees, doesn't get any more tense, he said not once during that game did a batter step out of the batter's box, not once. if we could just change that --

these guys have been playing baseball since they were four years old, playing t-ball. they still take placket swings between pitches? not necessary. >> charlie: if it's yankees versus red sox, who are you for? >> do i have to pick? >> charlie: yes. i want the team to win that will make the most liberals unhappy. how do you pick between new york city and boston? i suppose the yankees. >> charlie: you're for the yankees (laughter) >> yes. >> charlie: so when baseball -- do you play any sports? >> no. >> charlie: don't play tennis? no. >> charlie: don't play golf? no. >> charlie: you read. i read. >> charlie: you must run. i walk, and i walk listening to books on tape (laughter) seriously. i have on my phone at any given time about 34 books on there now. >> charlie: what are you reading now? >> right now i am reading --

gosh, what is it -- biography of sue ward. >seward. >> charlie: lincoln's cabinet. seward's folly, he bought alaska. >> charlie: you seem to argue it's good for at least one house of the congress to be in opposition of the president. >> i do, and the american people sort of intuitively agree. i don't think they vote tactically, but somehow they continue to produce divided government more often than not and i think they're right because, absent that, there's no oversight, and absent oversight, i don't care which party is in power, there's going to be an abuse of power. you and i may disagree on the i.r.s. scandal, but i think it's a scandal and it ought to be investigated. if the republicans didn't have the galveston in the house -- >> charlie: what -- the gavels in the house --

>> charlie: what do you think would come out of the investigation? >> i don't know, because the justice department investigation is not good. i have been in three scandals, water gate, the contra and this. >> charlie: watergate was more powerful. >> no question. in the same ballpark because john dean, the white house counsel up to his neck in watergate, sent a memo to the assistant chief of staff, harold halderman's aid, said we should use the machinery of the government. >> charlie: is there anybody in the white house that said that? >> we don't snow? that is the question. we won't get the answer without an investigation. >> charlie: what's your assessment of the president, though? i mean, what do you look at him

in terms of your experience in washington versus other people who have held that office for bert or worse? -- better or worse? i mean, you would think that you, a man of intellect, would be attracted to him, as a man who reads, as a man who, you know, as a turn of mind, and then people who know him well and not all who find political common ground with him respect his mind. >> he has been wonderful for me and my profession because he has brought us back to arguments about real first principles. >> charlie: right. he is this long pedigree of his ideas. they go back to woodrow wilson, herbert crowley, one of the first editors of the republic. woodrow wilson was the first president to criticize the american founding and he didn't do it peripherally. he said don't read sentences. don't read the first two paragraphs to have the

declaration of independence, all that natural rights philosophy, which he dismissed as fourth of july sentiments. he says the problem is our government was fine for a thinly-populated agrarian republic in the 18th century, then the separation of powers may have made sense, but now we need a more robust, unfettered executive, a more robust, unfettered central government. the idea of enumerated powers is antiquated. he went from there to lyndon johnson, franklin roosevelt, there to lyndon johnson who came to washington during the new deal and now to complete the new deal project and now i think barack obama had in mind to complete the roosevelt project with healthcare and all the rest. >> charlie: the problem to me is we have these huge problems and we have a congress that does not, in a sense, team to have

the capacity to look at things in a way that treasures innovation and creativity and a commitment to science and those kinds of things that are the lifeblood of our economic and competitive engine. >> yes, absolutely. we should be booming right now. >> charlie: exactly. energy surplus. >> charlie: exactly. we have almost all of the world's great research universities. >> charlie: right. national institutes of health. goodness! >> charlie: so what's happened? >> well, we're in one of those periods of intense heat in our politics, and there's a reason for that, we're dealing with fundamentals. won't last forever. we've had these periods before. go back and read the rhetoric and the newspapers which were party newspapers at the time of the 1790s when our party system emerged.

go back and read the rancor of the 1850s, when the country was coming -- >> charlie: here's my speculation that if, in fact, george will could select a viable republic nominee, somebody who has an opportunity to get the nomination, not somebody who may be the c.e.o. of a company or something, paul ryan would be your guy? >> he would be on the short list. >> charlie: who's on the short list with him? >> governors. >> charlie: governors. wisconsin? >> wisconsin -- >> charlie: take a break if you need. let me come back to you. governors. scott barker of wisconsin, governor of indiana. >> charlie: governor of ohio. john kasich, jindal of

louisiana. they've run something and had to deal with legislatures not often controlled by their own party. good training. >> charlie: if, in fact, the republicans end up with control of the senate and the house and, in 2016, a republican is elected, do you think a republican nominated for president, do you think he or she can beat hillary clinton? >> yes, for a number of reasons. i'll tell you why it's doable and then what the problem is. it's doable because the american people do not often give a party a third consecutive term. it's fairly rare. >> charlie: george bush was the last one. >> exactly, and basically the electorate in 1988 wanted a third term and couldn't have it because of the 22nd amendment. i think she may be overrated it politically in the sense that she's the odds-on favorite to win in 2008 and didn't.

her one political effort on her on was healthcare in '93-'94. remember, vote for me, you get two for the price of one. >> charlie: and turned over to her and they had a system and a process that was not very effective and not very seen. >> yeah, it was not transparent. it was baroque -- pick your adjective -- and they produced a healthcare plan so implausible that neither the house nor the senate, both then controlled by the democrats, would bring it to a vote. >> charlie: let me turn to russia and your assessment of where we are as a country and whether putin will be satisfied, in your judgment, with crimea, as long as russia has some influence in ukraine, but ukraine also has some relationship to the west. >> no, he will not be satisfied. he will not be satisfied with crimea as a bit of the ukraine. he'll want more of the ukraine

if not all of it. and he will not be satisfied with that. the baltic republics, members of nato, which makes it complicated, have a large russian population. people get in trouble for citing hitler. hillary clinton got in trouble for citing hitler. >> charlie: she was not comparing putin to hitler, she was comparing the mean tactics and rhetoric -- >> to back and google up the speech he gave in late september 1938 two days before the munich conference began. he said, there are 10 million germans living outside the reich in areas contiguous to the reich. he meant the s se -- putin is at

bringing home to mother russia the russians that are outside. and just as hitler would use the ethnic and linguistic germans to stir up trouble to jest fyhis -- justify his defensive action on their behalf, this is what putin's doing, he is not hitler but he's read hitler's play book. >> charlie: and you think he will not be satisfied until he has brought most of that population back into some relationship with russia? >> i think that's correct. >> charlie: and you think the united states and the the west has to do what to stop him? >> i'm not sure they can stop him. they don't want to incite him by weakness. we are at this moment, when we can -- this is a long-term project because you can't just suddenly lic liquefy natural gad ship it overseas -- but we are now net carbon exporters. this gives us leverage against

his leverage. people say, oh, gosh, europeans are addicted to his energy. yeah, but his economy is addicted to sel selling it to t. russia's been called a third world country with a first world military and he has to sell that stuff. he needs the foreign earnings, and if the price of oil would go from -- what is it now, about $107, $110 a barrel -- knock $20 off that and russia is in horrible shape. >> charlie: so you believe that the president is right, economic sanctions -- >> yes. >> charlie: -- can stop him? economic sanctions are the best chance we have of stopping him. ip not sure they will because economic sanctions seem to pre-suppose these dictators are economic calculators. no, putin has a much different approach to politics. he's not sitting there with an

adding machine and calculator saying how does this affect my bottom line, he has -- >> charlie: but he does have some sense there are restraints on my ambition. >> i think we are right to try sanctions on iran. i do not think it's going to stop iran from getting nuclear weapons. >> charlie: you think they will get nuclear weapons? >> i do. >> charlie: then what? then we will be in the position of trying to deter them, to contain them. >> charlie: and what else will happen? a proliferation throughout the middle east? >> we might. the saudis may say, particularly since the united states seem to be pulling back, the saudis who helped fund the pakistani nuclear weapons program, that we go to pakistan and go shopping. >> charlie: this book is about baseball, "a nice little place on the north side," wrigley field. there's our guest looking he's about 15. (laughter) >> far away, i'm afraid. >> charlie: a year after he discovered the cubs. >> that's right.

>> charlie: on the next charlie rose, mindy kaling is returning for the third vaccines. >> for young women, particularly minority women, that i have the job that i have, it's exciting for them and i try not to think about it too much because i have too many other things to do. being the first indian-american woman with her own show and the show is not particularly about race, is really exciting for people, and i love that and it feels like a nice responsibility. >> charlie: we'll come back to that. >> okay. >> charlie: what is it about? what is the show about? >> charlie: yes. about being a better person, and it's about someone who is selfish and boy crazy, who's terrified of aging, who is very

professionally busy and accomplished but who is fixated on things that are sort of a little bit beneath her intelligence but she's still fixated on them. i know plenty of women who are college-educated doctors, lawyers, professors, even, who are candidly want to get married and they have great lives, they have money, they have great relationships with their friends and they want to get married, and there is an embarrassment you feel if you're a little overeducated for wanting those things, but it exists. that's what this show is about, i think. >> charlie: you know a little bit about me. >> mm-hmm. >> charlie: when i sat down with you, this is true, you just seem like a person i would really like to know. >> that's very kind of you. that's such a nice compliment. the nicest thing i hear, and i hear it a lot, is women, especially saying that they wish i was their best friend, which is -- >> charlie: i wish you were my best friend.

>> i don't hear it from straight men that often, but i will say that's a little more -- that's very nice to hear. i am very proud of the way that i have made my way because i do feel that i -- my mother was a surgeon, my father's an architect, they grew up in india, moved to africa -- they met in africa and came here, and there's no people on tv on the other side of my family, no interntainers, and i was blessed to have parents who loved jerry seinfeld, bill cosby and george carlin, and they encouraged it, though they didn't quite understand it. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

this is "nightly business report" with tyler mathisen and susie gharib. brought to you in part by -- thestreet.com. featuring stephanie link who shares her investment strategies, stock picks and market insights with action alerts plus, the multimillion dollar portfolio she manages with jim cramer. you can learn more at thestreet.com/nbr. breaking down? what's behind the big drop in shares of some of the biggest names in technology? and when will the bleeding stop? master plan. microsoft ceo reveals the company's first big product in years. were investors excited and will there be more to come? and know the risks. why reverse mortgages, designed to keep older adults in their homes, are now closing a financial