>> rose: welcome to the program. tonight, the "new york times" columnist david brooks on politics and society. >> it is like the worst thing to say in 2016, but i've come to be a believer in fixing the establishment. i believe in establishments. we have big problems, you need big institutions to tackle them, they need to be run centrally so we need a good state department. >> rose: so on the agenda ought to be reforming establishments. >> reforming institutions. our institutions are fraying. the congress is a prime example of an institution that has frayed because the norms of behavior, the invisible codes have been ripped away. when i talk about a trump as a revolution in manners. the reason we have manners and we don't talk about each other's

wives or how they look or insult people's looks or call people losers and liars is it enables us to have a conversation, it enables us to be a community and be citizens together. if you rip away the manners, it's dog eat dog. to me, when he rips away the shroud of manners, he's reduced us to scrambling scorpions. so restoring manners and codes of civility and just decency is the prerequisite for restoring institutions and standards of behavior. >> rose: david brooks for the hour, next. >> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by the following: captioning sponsored by rose communications

from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: david brooks is here. he has been a columnist for the "new york times" since 2003. he also teaches courses on leadership at yale university. he is known for tackling big ideas and wide-ranging subjects from politics and the presidency to capitalism and character. more recently he has turned his focus to the 2016 presidential campaign. i am pleased to have him back at this table. welcome. >> good to be back. >> rose: great to have you. it's been a bit too long but i know you have books to write and other things to do. wine to drink, yeah. >> rose: wine to drink, food to eat, museums to see. isn't it great to have a huge appetite? that's what i say about life. >> i know. >> rose: i don't want to see anybody with a small appetite.

>> that's good. feel like a bunch of opera stars. >> rose: you do. somebody was here the other day and talking about a dilemma based on a memoir and somebody said they felt like they'd been stolen from having a big life, and i thought, that's sad, because a big life is not to be a celebrity or make a lot of money, a big life is to be connected to all there is possible. >> i have a friend named casey who asked, somewhat would you do if you weren't afraid? and the woman started crying. so there are people who are just held back by fear, including me. >> rose: and because they get into things like marriage and children and responsibilities and mortgages and career rather than pursuit. >> i always tell my college students two-thirds of you will be more boring at age 30 than you are now. you just get happier. there's a names u-curve where people's happiness is high in 20s and bottoms out at 47

which is called having teenage children and then it rises. >> rose: after they've gone away and are out of the nest. >> right. so people that are older look at the world in a happier way. ey look at happier face as, not the sad faces. i hope this is where i am, but you get to a certain stage where you know who you are and you can take a big risk attend of life because you have resources and you're ready to take the big risk because you have a ground of stability. >> rose: so you're taking risk? >> i hope. so partly this election, you know, i messed up big time with not knowing trump was coming, and, so, then, when something like that happens, you take a look at yourself and you think, wow, what do i miss about america? and i'm too much in the corridor, i've got to get out. >> rose: meaning the corridor from boston to new york to washington rather than being farms and factories?

>> i travel every week, with but i'm at a college here, so i'm always within the bubble, so i've got to get out. but the other thing is i've achieved way more career success than i ever thought i would, so it's time to taken chanceons the spiritual realm and the personal and emotional realm and i've got nothing to lose. >> rose: i'll come to politics and trump in a moment, much to talk about, but you're willing to take chances in the spiritual realm. what does that mean? >> i hope i'm not violating confidence. i went to a summer camp in connecticut for 15 years, and i had a friend named wes and he was exuberance personified. he couldn't get through a sentence without clicking and whistling because he had an inner light, he just radiated it. he died last week, or two weeks ago now, and i went to see him, it happened to be the day he died, but he greeted death with such confidence and almost joy,

that he was a man of deep faith and he said, i am going to the kingdom. and to greet death with such joy and to have the faith that not only animated his approach to death but animated his life. hhe was a man who worked in honduras a lot, helped with domestic violence, a youth counselor, a life of selfless giving. a lot of us who have our name and talk into microphones a lot don't have that, i certainly don't have that. so how do you get that? so you see examples like that, and you think, you know, what do i have to cut loose to get that? because that would be wonderful. >> rose: but you've spoken to that idea in other places. >> yeah, of course. i mean, it's been a life-long passion, but, frankly, writing a book about it or reading a bunch of books about it doesn't get you there. >> rose: talking to someone who lived it. >> yeah, or the joke is buying

books, like my book, that gets you there. (laughter) no, but you've got to get there with the direct contact with the people in need, or you've got to have an emotional connection, and a lot of us in middle age hopefully become emotionally more open and, frankly, more feminine. so you've got to -- the radical leap has to be in the realm of motionaemotional vulnerability s lived out day to day. >> rose: hart of this is knowing you have the skills of life, in a sense, you have a certain level of achievement and comfort. >> karl young said the first half of life the building life and the second should be finding a cause. but also i think a lot of us get more emotionally equipped. certainly i was an emotional idiot for large parts of my life. then you worken on it and try to

widen your repertoire of emotions by having better relationships, listening to music, reading literature, and suddenly you're more emotionally sensitive to people and hopefully braver and willing to be more vulnerable. you're willing to slow down, which is something that's challenging for me. but out of that, i think, comes a rest. there's a guy named joseph piper who said leisure is not playing golf, it's having your mind go slowly enough so that the world can be invited in to you, and getting your brain slowed down enough at the right pace is a challenge. >> it reminds me of a friend who didn't tell me this but he told another friend that, as he was approaching death, he said, within days, you know, he said, if i had longer time, i would do nothing, and the do nothing is when you're bringing all that in, you're exposing yourself to

all that is there. and doing nothing is not having a schedule and ambition, it is -- >> inner formation doesn't always look like outer formation. >> rose: yeah. my last book was based on the resume versus the ewing. the resume is what makes you go to your job, the eulogy is what they say about you after you're dead. we all want to be great at the eulogy, honest, capable of great love. how you get there is sometimes a matter of passivity. another piece is on taking a day off and he said the sabbath is a palace in time. you don't take it off so you can be more efficient at work, you work so you can climax your week in the sabbath and it's done by denying yourself things and saying no to things and that is an invitation for other things to pop up. >> rose: is this part of a

conversation with the students at yale? >> a bit. my class is about commitmentmaking. my last book was too individualistic. i got things wrong about inner life. and the characters in my book that i really admired, dwight eisenhower, dorothy day, francis perkins, were able to make awesome commitments to things outside themselves. so the ability to make long-term commitments strikes me is the key to a good life and the argument to my class is you make four big commitments in life -- to a spouse or family, vocation, to a philosophy and community, and how you make and live out the commitments will determine the quality of your life. so it depends on how you make long-term commitments, whether a partner, faith -- >> rose: and that's an ongoing learning process. >> to me a commitment is falling in love with something and building a structure or behavior around it for those moments when love falters. because you can't think yourself

into who to marry, or a vocation -- i love being a journalist or a sculptor -- it's a process of love, you have to love your way into it because it's such a big time stretch you're trying to imagine your future self, so you have to be vulnerable enough to be a deeply loving creature. but then there are moments where it's just going to suk. suk. you have to have honesty, community, the disciplines of craft. in my craft, a surgeon has tools. in my case, i've got a very bad memory. so what i do is i write everything down, and when i write a column, i've got sometimes 200 pages of research material and notes, and my craft is i lay them out in piles on the floor in my living room, and each pile is a paragraph in my column, so it's only 806 words, but i could have 14 piles laid across the floor. the process of writing is not

typing into the keyboard, it's crawling around on the carpet, laying out my piles. sometimes when the ideas are flowing and i'm organizing it well, i'm writing notes to myself and that's the best part of my job. so the craft of whatever we do after the living are disciplines. >> rose: are you doing it where it starts and ends or doing it in terms of container in shipping, this is a container paragraph, this is a container, and how they will end up and you get in and get out comes after you see it all together? >> i need to do it geographically. i need to see it on the floor or else it's always a jumble in my head. if you get the order right, the words will flow when you type it. but if you get it wrong, it's choppy. if you get it wrong, you can't fix it. you have to start over completely new. judges have a saying "that opinion won't write." they thought it was good but

when they sat down to write it, it wasn't writing. >> rose: when they sat down to confirm the opinion, they couldn't confirm it and they knew the reasoning was wrong or conclusions were wrong. >> yes, and i think this is what non-writers don't get. it's about traffic management, organization and structure, it's not about fancy words and getting the structure right is the foundation, so i do it on my floor. some writers write it on the wall. >> rose: yes you can get the striketure right and the piles right and yes you can have the ideas in there, but in the end the best of you have a command of words. >> yeah, but i'm -- another key, i saw a stephen king thing online and this is a lesson of my two favorite writers george orwell and c.s. lewis is never use a big word when a small word will do. both orwell and lewis, the greatest stylists of our age,

they wrote for radio and it had to be heard so they wrote with great carty. >> rose: so did edward murrow. yes. orwell was a genius at the first sentence. the essay the lion and the unicorn about england, he writes it in the blitz when he was being bombed in world war, two he said high above my head highly civilized people are trying to kill me. why are they bombing me because i'm english and they're german. >> rose: did c.s. lewis have an influence on you? >> yeah, he wrote "the four lovelies" which is a book i highly recommended. there are words you can be christian or not christian. the definition of pride, the definition of sin -- or the definition of soul. the idea there is a core piece of yourself that with every decision you make, you change

that core piece of yourself into something more holy or more degraded. you can take that concept and don't have to believe in god or not but he uses more or less secular language to describe parts of our moral architecture that is just clear and so common sensical of any faith it is supreme. >> rose: but he came to a one to one relationship with jeez. >> he definitely became a christian. took a long time for him to get there. for him, he said christianity was not a warm religion, it was a high longing and was also a lens through which he saw the world. he had a very writer's approach to faith, less ecstatic and more -- >> rose: indeed, indeed. so tell me back to what you referenced. how has your revolution taken place on the question of donald trump? where was it, what were the interim and where are you now? because you have been very strong. >> right. i mean, i didn't take him

seriously for the longest time because i knew there was dislocation, there was this coalition of the dispossessed out in the country, but i didn't think they would turn their dispossession to him, just because i don't think he answers any of their problems. >> rose: but do you know why they think he does? >> yeah, i think -- >> rose: that's almost a more crucial point. >> that's correct. i think there are a couple of things going on here. one, people are into manners -- they're attracted by rev resolutions in manners more than revolutions in policy. and he has revolutionized the manners of how you run for president. >> rose: what does that mean, the manners of how you run for president? >> the first debate, he already insulted carly fiorina's face. >> rose: and john mccain's. and rand paul says i'm not going to insult his looks but i have a lot to work with over there. that's a way of talking that no one had ever run for president

that way. >> rose: it went to george bush in terms of low energy. >> so it's a hyperaggressive, he took the style of professional wrestling and brought it to politics, and what he did, and i think the most egregious thing we've seen in the last week or two, is he's offered us a different and uglier form of masculinity, which a lot of people are apparently tranche by and a -- drawn by and a lot of women are repulsed by. we have a form of masculinity in our culture i think we should be very proud of. in the last generation our ideal man combines traditionally feminine and masculine traits. to be good at work but gentle at bath time, to be honor in whatever you do and to be romantic.

so to be both male and female. but trump is pure masculinity and his treatment is a world that's an arena where everyone exeats and women are there for men and it's descraid masculinity. >> rose: does he mean what he says and say what he means? in both of those cases, becausehaus he built in his mind since i'm the best negotiate, i am the best, i am the best, i am the best, do you believe that? >> no. >> rose: you have written for eight years about the supreme confidence of barack obama, a very different kind of confidence and less bravado and a man less comfortable with the kind of emoding. >> obama is as confident as trump but obama backs it up with

actual knowledge and substance and integrity and humanity. >> rose: rather than seeing the world as win/lose. >> he sees it as a conversation, sometimes to a fat. (laughter) i wrote i miss barack obama, he has a grace and elegance sorely lacking this year and donald trump epitomizes that. so they're confident in a superficial serntion but obama is narcissistic. >> rose: -- trump is narcissis. i get increasingly repulsed by him. i've rainfall been so motivated by a public figure in a negative way. he's taken people who have taken their economic lumps and -- >> rose: he's telling them,

i'm your hero. >> that is authoritarian, they're stupid, i can solve it simply. but also, well, you may not be thriving but you're better than women and muslims and mexicans. h he's turning it into a form of bigotry. >> rose: do you think he can win the nomination? >> looks like he's going to win the nomination. >> rose: the presidency? it's hard for me to imagine for a number of reasons. his favorable/unfavorability rating is 25 to 55 or 60. if you have 60% unfavorable and your unfavorable rating among women is 75%, unless you turn minds, then you are doomed, and those unfavorable ratings among the total population have been very stable for eight months. >> rose: so how did it happen, if he has all these lack of qualities you have been talking about, he's on the precipice of getting the nomination for

president, and that means you are within a heart beat of the presidency. >> right. so i think there are two big things. one, there is a piece in the "new york times" -- >> rose: today. yeah, that the republican party was basically the party of the white working class and they spent 25 years of harvesting their votes and offering them nothing. that's one. the second thing was a slow building, anti-political wave in this culture that's been going on 30 years. we live in a diverse country. there is two ways to govern a diverse country. one is politics which is through negotiations and style and compromise. you do a deal people disagree with, you have to listen to them, acknowledge, so that's politics. the other way is force. you get a strong man to bully his way through. so we've gotten sick of politics, sick of compromise and especially in the republican party, the willingness to compromise has become a sign of weakness, and so the only

alternative is force, so there's been this tolerance of an authoritarian type. >> rose: it's almost like he's become an action hero. >> i think every interview he does, he did an interview with us and "the washington post" editorial board, they will ask him, do you think african-americans are unfairly targeted by police, a concrete, normal question, he knows nothing so he immediately starts talking about immigration. you know, when we go into a talk show or a conversation or a test, if you're a student, you're nervous if you don't have some level of preparation, but he's apparently unnervous by the fact he's unprepared. so most people go in with more preparation. >> rose: my point is does he know that or does he think, in fact, he just simply sees the world in a different way, you know, and all those people who profess to be a little bit of

obama, again, in his dislike as jeffery goldberg suggested as foreign policy establishment, does donald trump somehow think that, look, i mean, all those people who are supposed to be smart, and he even, in fact, says, i learn a lot about foreign policy by what i live on television on the sunday shows. i was in china and signature next to me in china who was a very successful businessman, he said, i just know he's going to be different. i said, do you know anybody supporting donald trump? he said me. i said why? he said, because i know he will just get on the phone and he'll say to putin, i'm coming to see you. and nobody's ever said that, and that's the way he does it. you say, that will never get anything accomplished. he believes, this man does, that that's a different way and that's what's necessary because that's part of the millume he

lives? >> the idea i'm going to get on the phone and putin will see the light -- >> rose: but transactions, in that case -- >> do we think the state department is filled with idiots now? problems are complicated. big problems in the world are not the question of one person coming to another and being at a table. the big problems have to do with technological change, globalization -- >> rose: the president said i'm more concerned about climate change than i.s.i.s. >> they're both important. it's weird to rank them. >> rose: but he said that. yeah, but climate change is a complex, structural problem and you can't just brow beat people into this. >> rose: so you think you were i don'wrong. you think you had not done what? >> i'm out in the country every week. but somehow, i didn't see it coming. i'm not alone. a lot of us didn't see it

coming. >> rose: i don't know anybody that saw it coming. >> i'm sure there are people now claiming they did, but in part because we've seen this kind of candidate rise and fall, and the party that is nominated mitt romney, john mccain, bob dole and george w. bush nominates a certain kind of person and suddenly we've got a black swan. nonetheless, there are a lot of trump voters out there, and i would run into them but i didn't take it seriously enough. maybe just blinded by my own prejudices. i've had trouble trying to think of the people who do vote for him. how does one regard them? and, so, i have some level of sympathy because, obviously, they have been dislocated by the modern economy and technology. on the other hand, i think they're supporting a guy who was polluting the cultural atmosphere in which our kids are raised with his -- you know, with attacking wives and all

that stuff and i think voters have to have some cullability for that. >> rose: what happens if trump crashes and burns? do they believe in what happens to their grievous? >> the grievous stays. out of the darkness of despond, i've constructed a very optimistic narrative story for the republican party which is that the republican party had grown obsolete, imprisoned by reagan quite categories great for the '80s but it's 26 years later and donald trump was the agent of death for that old structure and that old structure is lever coming back. so after the rubble of what i hope will be a trump defeat, there will be what thomas kyung called the revolutionary period. after a scientific paradigm collapses, there is a period where you get all these theories floating all over the place, and

eventually one rises, but who knows what will rise but it will be a time of intense creativity which will focus on two things, one, the segmenting of america and, two, the disunity of the social fabric. the problem with the reaganite orthodoxy is you got these problems and the republicans couldn't respond because they didn't believe in government for anything. the future party will have to believe in government because structure is tired. >> rose: but it's happening partly around the world. in country after country, anxiety is challenging liberal order. these liberal assumptions have been challenged from the top for years by dictators but they're challenged by bottom by populous liberals who support france, u.k. in britain, vladimir putin in russia and somehow donald

trump in the u.s. >> democracies have been in retreat for eight consecutive years and i think it's the stress of globalization, the stress of technological change, the rise of religion fundamentalism, the rise of ethnic nationalism, all these things are making the world an uglier place than it looked in the 1990s. >> rose: who, perhaps you, is articulating the kind of idea or narrative or structure that you believe ought to and may emerge from all that we're going through? >> well, i'm a wig, and, so, if anybody's seen -- there was a guy named alexander hamilton who was a latino hip-hop artist -- >> rose: yeah, that's right. (laughter) >> -- and, so, he created -- you know, my shorthand view of american politics is there two parties but three traditional

historic movements in this country. there is a conservative movement that believes in limiting government to enhanced agreement. there's a liberal movement that believes in using government to enhance equality. but there was a third tradition started by hamilton continued by the wig party which believes in limited by energetic government tone hans social mobility, so it's giving people the tools to rise up and compete in a capitalistic economy. a little less pro government than the democrats, a little more pro government than the -- and i still think human capital agenda, not only give people access to colleges and community colleges, but giving them the emotional, psychological capacities to complete is the big agenda. >> rose: and do you hope that might emerge out of all this? >> yeah, that's what i write about. i hope. i'm not confident because the country has turned into an ethnic nationalist way, and -- this is my view, is there are so many things we can do to surround people with loving relationships that will give them the emotional security to

thrive and succeed, and we're, i think, fortunately, graduating from a very economical view of human nature that we will respond to incentives and tax cuts which was the problem with the jack kemp image to a more relational that we're more loving and not thinking creatures. >> rose: you begin to sound like john kasich. >> i'll be a.d.d., too. >> rose: the point is there is no one articulating that. it almost is a third way, in a sense. it is almost what a third party might have the traditional defin of between some sense of social responsibility and conservative fiscal policy that enables you, you know, to create the skills that enable you to prosper in a modern economy. >> yeah, if you don't have those relationships, it's very hard to exercise self control. it's very hard to sit in a school room and build a

relationship with a teacher. it's very hard to succeed in a modern workplace where computers are doing all the non-personal stuff and relational skills are the key. you know, i came across a study in a book called life reimagined by barbara haggerty, a study of world war ii guys, and all the guys drafted in world war ii. some rose to high rank, some didn't. what explained why some rose and some didn't? you think it might be intelligence, but that wasn't it. you think it might be social class, wasn't it. physical courage, wasn't it. it was relationship with mother, that people who had been given deep love by their mom were capable of giving deep love to the men in their units, so they rose. putting love at the center of who we are is a shift of what we have been thinking about social policy which is homoeconomic, and i think both right and left are making the shift, pope francis is making the

shrift, and that opens up a wide array of avenue. >> rose: you said today's problems relate to binding society. homoeconomic is a myth and conservative needs a world view that is accurate about human nature. was there a key in your experience that unlocked this for you? or is it simply, you know, the progress of a curious mind? >> i hope it's the progress of a curious mind. i rarely have epiphanies, but i realize things in retrospect. >> rose: as we often do. so the story begins to make sense after i've gone through it? what story makes sense? >> the story the emotional opening which i have been talking about. i wrote a book called "the social animal" six years ago. >> rose: and talked about it on this program. >> the role of the cognitive sciences has shown us including

work by antonio dimazio is it's wrong to think reason and emotion are opposite. emotions are the foundation for reason, love is what motivates us toward things. so love is what motivates you to do well on your job. it motivates you to get through med school, through the marine corps. so you have to think of humans in those terms, and who will not always be motivated by incentives all the time. >> rose: coaches that i know who are very successful teach that. they do. love your colleagues, love your teammates, love the game itself. >> and knowing yourself well enough to have the right desires. some of us, we think we want one thing but we actually want another, but we don't know ourself well enough. and then surrounding yourself with something -- i mean, this is the commitment, it's the willingness to fuse yourself with another person, with an

identity. there's a quote i love called captain corelli's mandolin and an old man is talking to his daughter about his marriage to his wife who is now dead and said love is an art form, your mother and i had it. while we were loving each other, roots were growing towards each other underground, and as the years went by and all the pretty blossoms fell from our branches, we discovered we were one tree and not two, and the gradual fusing of the roots underground is what you want when you're becoming a writer or a journalist or entering into a relationship or serving your city, you want that thing where you are so joined with that thing you love that the commitment is rock solid. >> rose: the roots are wound together. >> yeah. >> rose: the democrats, bernie sanders, no one would have predicted that as well. i'm not sure where they would have gone other than, you know,

some sense of -- or how do you see it? what is that about and how is that different from what trump is about? >> well, sanders is a more substantive figure than trump, for sure. it's interesting to me that that race, aside from the obvious, that it's also a product of the segmentation of society, that a lot of people are just ill-served about this economy, we have to figure out what to do about it, and sanders has a very coherent explanation. >> rose: which he's had 30 years. >> and that's what strikes me. the hedge hog knows one thing, that's sanders, the fox knows many things, that's clinton. >> rose: right. so it's interesting to watch the two styles. i have some sympathy for sanders because he's man of integrity and consistenty. >> rose: and a wonderful wife. does he? yeah. >> rose: wonderful wife. so we have to think for all our candidates, execution strategy. how is any of h this going to

happen? how are you going to get 60 votes. >> rose: you would think somebody running for president would have thought about it. that's what you would hope. i thought about it instantly in which they are an empty vessel and a bunch of people pour things into it so what comes out of it is a campaign speech or debating points, but some sense of understanding where the country, is what is in contrast and opposition and how do you fix that. >> right. >> rose: and how do you go from, as mayor cuomo famously said, from poetry to prose, from campaign to the government. what barack obama taught us, it's not enough to be a killed politician. he wanted to transcend, but his policies were orthodox democrat policies. you have to have a set of policies that cuts across lines. >> rose: he thought he could

prevail. he thought his own pursuit of bipartisanship even though it might have been limited as republicans viewed it, would overwhelm the opposition. >> yeah, i think he had a genuine transpartisan aspiration. >> rose: right. but his policies were very predictable, not transpartisan. so on party policy, there is a natural alliance between progressive democrats and evangelical christians, and you can put together a package of policies that would give each something they want on addressing poverty, then you could get 60 votes, but you've got to be willing to step outside the orthodoxy of your party and say i'm going to take a little from them and -- >> rose: why is that. because it's damming for any party to step outside. >> rose: how do you change the politics so it's not destructive? is it the nature of the people

we are electing today. >> part of that, the people who rise in congress are the good donors and fundraisers and those people tend to be partisan, but part is leadership. you've got to have five people at the top of society, you know, the four congressional leaders and the president, and they have to say, okay, this is over. we're going to cling together, i'm going to grab you by the hip and we're just walking through this and we're going to govern in a bipartisan way. >> rose: that has to come from the president. it also has to come from the congress. >> right, and you have to have a level of cooperation. >> rose: do you believe it's possible with paul ryan? >> i do. he's a little trapped in reagan politics but his aspirations are real. one of the things they have to do is be more private. government should have secrecy for the same reason middle age people should wear clothing. you don't necessarily want to

see everything. so doing things in private, working out deals. >> rose: the sausage metaphor. and that is the only way to begin the term but leadership can make the term. >> rose: here's one thing talking about sanders and trump. there's a deep passion embedded in the trump and sanders phenomenon arousing energy, magical thinking and suspension of disbelief. >> neither has a plausible way to pass their agenda, to me. trump has no agenda. sanders has an agenda that couldn't get 40 votes in the senate. >> rose: you also said it would reshape american culture and values if he reached his agenda. >> if sanders did? >> rose: yes. yes. we have always been a society that is deep to our bones, if you ask americans, do you think your personal destiny is shaped by luck or individual effort? for centuries, we have been more on the individual effort than europeans. >> rose: yeah. that may be changing. we may be becoming more like

europeans and maybe our politics will reflect the europeans which is what sanders represents, a more european style, not only in spending -- >> rose: so if i believe it's individual effort, where do i stand. >> you tend to be more on the side of the marketplace that through effort you can rise and succeed. if you think it's fate, there will be a larger role for government. >> rose: where are you? i believe we tend to overestimate our individual effort, but i think having that belief you yourself can create success is a very valuable trait. >> rose: and i believe it's not just about the marketplace, i think it has to do with your ability and your initiate ifer to change lives, you know. >> right. >> rose: and start with the people that are closest to you and changing lives meaning being open to all the things you talk about. that's where i would bring in personally all the stuff that you believe in terms of love and that there is a capacity to make a difference. >> we all know people who had every disadvantage but they had one person in their life with

total rock solid faith and standards and developed confidence. if you look at extremely successful people, they often have one parent that's very problematic conditional love and one rock solid unconditional love and there is a tension between the two. a study i read years ago, if you look at people who are phenomenally ambitious, an amazing percentage of them lost a parent between age 9 and 12, and, so, the security of their life was taken away, and then they became hustlers. i tell my kids i've already failed them because they're over 12, i'm still here, i'm aboutand what

you saw in it and what did it tell you? you talk about how they come to their own sense of self and how much is decision making apart from the group? >> it's funny. i had a strange reaction to goldberg's piece. the first reaction is positive. i like the president more. you can agree or disagreement he looks for every reason not to take action abroad but there's a reckoning with reality. but the disdain for establishment and the disdain for all foreign policy advisors except for themselves does smack of an unearned confidence sometimes, so i do doubt that. it's like the worst thing to say

in 2016, but i've come to be a believer in we need to fix the establishment. you need big institutions to tackle the problems and we need a good state department. >> rose: the agenda, reforming establishments. >> reforming institutions. our institutions are frayed. i talked about trump as a revolution in manners. the reason we have manners and don't talk about each other's wives and how they look and the reason we don't insult people's looks and call people losers and liars is enables us to have a conversation, it enables us to be a community and be citizens together. if you rip away the manners, it's dog eat dog. to me when you rip away the shroud of manners, it reduced us

to scrambling scorpions in a bottle. so restoring manners and codes of civility and decency is the prerequisite for restoring institutions and standards of behavior. i sound like an old fuddy-duddy but i go back to eisenhower more than i used to. just the sense politics is competition in partial truths. you're trying to balance that. >> rose: and social media where there is anonymity on the one hand, and an instant place to privately express your grievance, your anger, your protest, your differences, your criticisms can have no bounds, none. >> i would say deeper than that. you know, depending on the character of the people, but egotism, if you have a basic humility, or if you have ben taught to value humility, you

think, well, there is a good chance i'm wrong about some stuff. but if you're taught you have truth by the short hairs and what do you need the other people for, that's what we've got going on. >> rose: that's a lot of obama. you've said that. i'm just trying to get you to articulate what you're saying. >> it's rush limbaugh, a lot of different people. >> rose: there is a vast difference between the two of them. >> i agree. but i do think you have to -- the thing about democracy, and this is why politics is noble, it forces to recognize other people are in the room, and you can wish them away, you may think they're jerks, but they're in the room. >> rose: but it hasn't worked. that's been the biggest problem we've had in this country for a while, it is the absence of people willing to compromise, willing to say, as ronald reagan said, it's better to have a

piece of the pie than none of the pie, right? >> right. >> rose: and we've lost that. and everybody knows that. >> if we got attacked by canada, we would get it back. we need a hostile force to attack us. but, no, it's a manner of technological and of skill. i knew a guy named richard darmond. budget director under the first president bush, and we would occasionally go to lunch and he would regale me with stories of graftsman-like skill. a guy who was defense secretary under nixon named mel leonard. he would go to the barbershop in the white house. he would go to the white house 3:00 p.m. every wednesday. he didn't need a cut but he would go. so it would say leonard to the white house every wednesday. those are the tricky little

gains. >> rose: darmond's role with you to control the flow of information and he viewed that as power. his view was high-power within institution. >> another story is they were crafting a social security reform in eighty two or '83 and it was going to hurt seniors and the dean of seniors in those days was clawed pepper, lived across the street from the white house. everyone signed on the deal except for him. they beat the hell out of him and he finally agrees and they march him into a press conference at 2:00 in the morning because they know if he has time to sleep on it, he'll back out. and how you do that complicated thing is a skill. execution is a skill. >> rose: are you saying we need more of this? >> it's what jim baker had, he had skill of execution. it's a skill of -- >> rose: and lyndon johnson had it.

>> yeah. passing a complicated piece of legislation with a bipartisan majority is a skill of execution. if you want an example, go see the lincoln movie, he's passing and he's listening to that guy, how do you reach that guy. so it's that political deftness and the nobility of politics. we disdain politicians for being dealmakers -- >> rose: you're saying the word politician. >> yeah, but there is a craft and nobility to it. i think everyone's dumping all over the eretes, but the people i know in government, the civil servants, they're in it for the right reasons. the job is not that glamorous. >> rose: you talked about the modern shame culture in which those accused of incorrect fault face ruin now upconsequences. >> i find on campus after campus it's more narrow-minded than five or ten years ago. what's interesting is this book came out in 1980s something

called the closing of the mind that said students don't believe anything. that's not true. there is a moral system being born. trying to understand what that moral system is an interesting problem i'm trying to figure out what it is, when judgments are made, when they're not. and i was helped by a writer in christianity today who said what's happening is because of social media and the omnipresence of social media that everyone's afraid of being excluded or condemned in social media. so we're moving from a cullture from individual to a group. so it's a shift in moral system so the fear of exclusion is the basis. so the axis is not right, wrong, it's inclusion/exclusion.

if you're not being inclusive then you're doing something very wrong and the whole world falls down upon you. the problem is if you have a set of universal truths you're trying to live up, to you can stick to the truths thick or thin. if you're always afraid of being condemned in social media, you are run by the opinions of other people and that makes you perpetually insecure. >> rose: people who come on television programs today are scared to death they will be misinterpreted or social media will be on top of them. if you ask who it is, it's one click or another. >> and we've seen people whose lives have been ruined by a small mistake, no mistake or just a gesture. on the other hand, you know, if you're in the world, and this is true for everybody, not just people in the media, there is a lot of criticism out there, and if you don't allow it to affect you, it goes away. >> rose: you have to realize it.

if you're in the public eye, if you can't do that, you will be terminally unhappy. >> isolation is a very good strategy. >> rose: you also said middle age is being redefined, whatever middle age is. >> look at the three candidates we talked most about. hillary clinton is 68 years old. donald trump is 69. sanders is 73, 74. they're running for president for the first term. so active life is a lot longer. >> rose: ronald reagan was in his late '60s when he ran. >> so active life is longer. the first change is in the 20s. used to be you got married, bought a house, had kids, in the early 20s. now it happens in early 30s in much of the country. so now you have unstructured world in the early 20s now, you don't have unemployment, you're finding your identity, and that segment is underserved.

we have a structure coming into being to serve them. >> rose: they believe they understand millennials for than anyone. >> so that's one big shift in how we think about a certain age. but then if you're 54, i'm hoping i have 30 years of sort of active life ahead of me. so that means instead of -- >> rose: the actuarial tables suggest th's true. >> i hope so. i try to stay healthy. >> rose: yeah. i can think, i have a moment to have at least 20, 25 years of something substantive and satisfying and maybe something totally new. so if you're in that age group, suddenly you're okay. you have a chance to think of another chapter. so that's just -- >> rose: so let me refer to something weren't talk about in a while. you chronicle these people in terms of -- help me jog my memory -- basically, they were

in thei their 70s and writing yu their perspective at that time. >> i asked my readers to grade themselves on their lives. a minuses for career, b minus for personal life, so they didn't think they did as well. so some things they did, the people who ledbetter lives, they had some common traits. some of them are obvious. they divided their lives into artificial chapters. some said this is the beginning of a seven-year chapter, then had another one. the most unhappy people just let time dribble by day by day. so making those false views -- i had a student who was a 40-year-old colonel and every time he was in a new army base he and his wife said let's have

a personal retreat and evaluate their lives. it's a very useful thing to do. and when you get older, you cause yourself fewer problems. there is clear evidence people get better at living. >> rose: the great brook aster said to me once, she said for a long time i cared about what people thought about me now i only care about what i thought about them. >> that's good. there is a useful bit of advice. this comes from a book, a minister here in new york, keller wrote, it's on marriage, he said, in the mary ellen, regard your own selfishness as the core problem. your tendency is to think their selfishness is the problem, but your selfishness is the only one you can control. that's great advice in any relationship. >> rose: david brooks, "new york times" for the hour. thank you for joining us. see you next time.

for more about this program and earlier episodes, visit us online at pbs.org and charlierose.com. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

>> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by:

this is "nightly business report" with tyler mathisen and sue herera. >> good evening, everyone. welcome to a special memorial day edition of "nightly business report." i'm tyler mathisen. sue herera has the evening off. while it is still only may, not much left of it at that, this weekend did mark the unofficial kickoff to summer and while it is normal to be preoccupied with the weather and vacation, this summer could be a very busy one for you and your money. possible interest rate hike to the political conventions and a stock market keeping a wary weather high on everything. and that's where we will begin tonight, wall street, dominic chu looks at the unknowns facing the