. >> rose: welcome to the program. we begin this evening talking about president-elect donald trump's meeting at the "new york times" with "new york times" editors, reporters and others. we talk to frank bruni of the times who was at the meeting. >> if he is earnest about being a good or even great president, i think he has, even after this horribly vicious campaign, i think he has a really interesting window of opportunity here. and i just really hope he seizes it. >> we continue with david remnick who had two long interviews with president obama and we talk about the obama legacy. >> some american politicians and leaders, read a leffly talk about american exceptionalism. they talk about it in re-- religious terms, that show america is blessed, that we're mortal ented, and handsome and beautiful and blessed by god for

this special history in the history of the world. >> rose: separated by oceans. >> obama doesn't believe that. he believes that our exceptionalism resides in two things. first, the unbelievable gift of becoming the essentially the brain child of a group of enlightenment era philosophers who developed a constitution. number one. and number two, that we are a country that has advanced largely due to social movements of great importance. >> rose: and we continue with sebastian mallaby who has written about alan greenspan in a much praised book called the man who knew, the life and times of alan greenspan. >> green span was extremely persuasive and comfortable in one-on-one situations. but he was also shy and difficult i dent in group, he didn't like confrontation, he was frightened going directly to people with disagreement. we go around their backs.

we leak to the press, be passive aggressive am but to prik a bubble, you had to be able to take on the entire public opinion am you had to say your 401(k) is worth more than it should be and i'm going to bring down the value of your saveks. and i think he just didn't want to do that. his reputation imprisoned him. he was the maestro and didn't want to spoil that. >> rose: we conclude with kira pollack, editor of time magazine looking at the collection of the 100 most influential photos of all time. >> it is a virtual museum, there are a lot of layers, a lot of context, deep dives and there are 20 short documentaries about the pictures. >> david remnick, sebastian mallaby and the time collection 100 most influential photos when we continue. >> funding for charlie rose is provided by the

rose" has been provided by the following: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: we begin this evening with a look at president-elect donald trump's meetings at the "new york times." trump sat down yesterday with 23 of the newspaper's reporters, editors and columnists for a wide-ranging on the record interview. the meeting had previously been cancelled by trump after a disagreement over ground rules. and then there were subsequently reinstated. trump has not held a news conference since his stunning win over hillary clinton two weeks ago. throughout his campaign trump often directed criticism to the news media for what it perceived as its unfair coverage of him. yet while he denounced the times earlier yesterday morning as a failing institution, he described the paper as a world

jewel after his meeting. during the interview trump backed down from previousious vows to pull out of the paris climate accord and investigate hillary clinton. he also claimed he had no legal obligation to step away from his business empire and said he did not want to energize white supremacists. it was announced earlier today trump has chosen south carolina governor nikki hailey to become u.s. ambassador to the united nations, and also offered the post of secretary of housing and urban development to former republican presidential nominee ben carson. and bet see devos was named to lead the u.s. education department 6789 joining me is frank bruni, a columnist for "the new york times." he attended yesterday's meeting. and i am pleased to have him here. welcome. >> thanks. >> rose: so you wrote about this today. and essentially, just you talked about his demand for love. i mean here you as a reporter, set the scene, give us a sense of what it was like. >> for starters, i think people

if they had a video tape of it would be shocked at how cordial and respectful it was. he does have many-- i think or coverage of him has been correctly tough. but he came into the room and it was all very dignified. it was all very, you know, high minded. he said hello to everyone. he sat down, he did in his first sentences say that he thought the times had been as tough on him as any news organization and he thought some of our coverage was so tough it was unfair. but once he got that out of his system, the rest of the meeting there were none of those recriminations. one of the things i found fascinating, why i talk about his demand for love is before we began asking him questions, when i think he went on for about eight minutes where the floor was his to do with what he pleased. and he went through yet again the size of his crowds, the states he won that no one thought he could win, how much more enthusiasm his rallies had than hillary clinton's did. how well he had done with african-american voters, which wasn't even supported by the numbers. he misportrayed the numbers.

and there was something about-- he's president of the united states now. or he is president-elect, excuse me. and this need to still convince us or impress us with the magnitude of his support. there was something very unusual about that. and it speaks to this insatiable quality in im. nothing is ever enough. i think that is part of the story of whether elic which datesk divests whatever you want to call it, some of his businesses. i don't think he wants to because nothing is ever enough for donald trump. >> rose: and the fact that he was open to changing his position on several important things. >> several, yeah. >> rose: what does that say to you? >> well, first of all, we know that he said during this hour that he was open to changing his positions on those things. we have to see in time. because one of the things i have noticed about donald trump, one of the things that i think creates an ongoing question about him is he wants to favor of the room he's in.

so his tune adjusts ever so slightly and sometimes more than slightly depending on who his audience is. he wanted to walk out of that room with all of us saying hey, donald trump, maybe we underestimated him. so to us, he said his mind was open on climate change. to us he said-- . >> rose: and the connectivity, the word that he used, i think, of human cause. >> right. to us, he said that he was rethinking water boarding and maybe it was unnecessary. and this is after many, many rallies where he practically promised to water board the world. >> rose: and suggested the reason it changed was one sentence from a man he had come to admire a lot and a man he may make his secretary of dense, general mattist without said you will get more done with a cigarette and a beer. >> that's right. >> rose: than you will water boarding, or at least that is what reporting. >> and the reporting is accurate, that is exactly what he said. and i think was a fascinating moment that a lot of us at the times fused on and a lot of other people focused on because

when donald trump said that general matis said i am not sure water boarding works, he said it as if its with a revelation. donald trufer was campaigning for 18 months for president, was presumably or maybe not getting policy briefings, studying up on the issues. >> rose: and general flynn among others. >> he presented as if he had never considered the possibility that water boarding wasn't effective. there is this quality about him that is sort of an unformed piece of clay. and that may be is a source of great hope for his presidency. but it's also a source of concern. >> rose: yeah, i mean i think some people who are smart in the ways of state craft have said the fact that he does not have that, maybe an advantage for him. >> uh-huh. >> rose: maybe. >> it may be the question is, who has got his ear. and even more so, who is the last person who whispered in his ear. >> rose: indeed it is that, but also it does show that he is capable of listening. >> yes. >> rose: you know.

>> listen, we see these people say the same thing, these people i mean candidates running for president. we see them say the same thing over and over again. sometimes we see them take positions that seem utterly nonsensable and unwarranted to us. most of these people are very, very bright people. donald trump is a bright man. and that is a tool that he is going to have at his disposals as he begins to govern. what i think we don't know, really, and what we are still learning is what are his core principles, are there core principles. and when he actually gets into office and when is he throwing his weight behind legislation, whether he is signing legislation, what is that really going to look like, when the rubber hits the road, when it's not just words, when it's not just firing up a crowd and trying to get their applause, what is donald trump ultimately about. >> rose: yeah, two things too from my standpoint, having, you know, seen him, it is the notion of-- does he mean what he says and does he say what he means.

it is affected by this notion, or it's impacted by this notion, some of the people close toast him saying that everything is a transaction for him. >> uh-huh. >> rose: everything is an opening negotiation. and so i'm intrigued by what are all those people who listen to him and thought he was going to do this, this and this are now beginning to realize he's not. is it in the end overcome because they didn't take everything he said literally and they believed that he was an agent of change. >> that's right. >> rose: and that was what was important to them. >> that i think you put your finger on something huge there. which is everyone is waiting to see. will the people further to the right hering that he no longer wants to prosecute hillary clinton, hearing that maybe he believes in climate change or he is willing to-- hearing about water boarding, hearing all of that stuff, are they going to freak out or as you say, were they looking for a change agent? did they all realize there was a

bit of theatricality to donald trump and he was saying things that maybe warrant core convictions he was following through on. how mucheeway does he have with that part of his constituency. and we want know that for some time to come. because this stuff is still sinking in. because he hasn't tully taken actions. if he has a lot of leeway from them, he may be able to, an maybe quite interested in moving to the center. and those of us who would like to sea him gov nern that more centrist reasonable way, i think, we need to be careful and make sure to praise those moves when they happen. because this is a man without above all else, it's really clear, wants add allation. and so maybe the way to mold him into the president you want him to be is to clap really loud when he moves in the direction you like. >> rose: but when you think of history there are lots of people who felt that way about adulation. >> i don't think anybody goes through what you have to go through to run for president if you are not a little bit of an

adulation addict. but i think with donald trump we are looking at it to an exponential degree, it is adulation addiction on steroids. >> rose: the other interesting thing to me is you know, he said often that he was a winner, and that he wanted to win. >> uh-huh. >> rose: so how does he define winning? does he define winning as a subbing certificating-- successful presidency? and then how does he define, it if that is the route to winning a successful presidency, if that is his definition, how does he defeen the route to a successful presidency. is it being, finding the center? is it being able to compromise? is it being able to listen? and change your mind? >> you know, we're going to find out. >> rose: those are the questions, those are the big questions. we know one thing and it's not a good thing. he defines winning in terms of polls. >> have we ever met a political candidate let alone a presidential candidate who has mentioned and dwelled on polls with the frequent see. >> polls and ratings. >> right. >> so that is going to be a big part of it. is he going to be watching his

approval rating. and maybe we can all use that to the country's advantage. >> rose: and so will the people who, there is a quote often used now, you know, that the people who voted for him did not take him literally but they took him seriously and the people who were alarmed by his possibilities took him seriously, took him literally but not certificate yusesly. >> i think that's a fair analysis, yeah. i think that's right. you know, he's our president nowment and he's our president-elect. it is hard to keep building in that. and it's interesting. i mean americans right now really, really would like to move beyond poip. they would really like to move beyond pat sanship. one of the polls showed something like 59% of americans think things might get better under a trump presidency. >> 59%. >> he had well above 50% in terms of people who were looking forward to a successful presidency, in terms of people who were-- who thought things might get better.

i don't know that that-- he will look at that and think it's about him because that's his nature. i think it says something about how hungry americans are right now, to rediscover some optimism and to make substantive improvements on things like infrastructure, et cetera. if he is earnest about being a good or even great president, i think he has, even after this horribly vicious campaign, i think he has a really interesting window of opportunity here. and i just really hope he seizes it. >> rose: there are extraordinary things. he is considering mitt romney as secretary of state. >> from what i seriously consider, in the beginning when those reports came out, i was hearing that is just window-dressing. but i'm hearing from reliable sources that it is a serious thing. >> by both people. >> rose: yeah, by romney and by trump. >> and i think that the seriousness of it, i think that was bolstered by the pick of nikki halle-- haley for u.n. ambassador. there is a lot of overlap between nikki halle and a roll nee. they are in the same box which

are people who were very, very explicitly crit-- critical and frequently critical of donald trump during the campaign. and this telegraphed in trump a generosity of spirit we didn't see. >> rose: and telegraphed the notion that he is aware that he can't just be-- he can't just be bringing too government talented white men. >> well, more pornly, he can't just be bringing into government lap dogs. people who just are going to tell him how wonderful he is. he is now brought someone in shall-- . >> rose: which mitt romney clearly represents if he is chosen. >> i think it's possible. we don't know but i think right now, it is within the realm of possibility. >> rose: did he talk about infrastructure-- infrastructure to the times. >> he did. >> rose: that is an interesting idea that seems to have-- it seems to have found its right and appropriate time. >> he did talk about it. and as he has at other times. and i think there's some hope there. i mean he may be able to get some stuff there that barack

obama couldn't because barack obama was constantly butting heads with the opposing party in congress. and now you have republican house, republican senate, republican administration. so he may be able to make some progress on something that i think barack obama would have loved to make progress on but couldn't because of political infighting. >> rose: he clearly is a guy that, you know, he's not a reader. >> no, no, yeah. >> rose: he is a talker. >> although he did-- there was a surprising amount of flattery in this et mooing am and he did make clear that he reads the times. he made a little swroak about if he didn't read the times he might have another 20 years of life left, but he, but i think it's very limited. and you see that shall-- . >> rose: but those conversations mean something. >> it's not just that he is not a reader. when he delves into issues, you realize he is not massively well informed. erudition are not his thing. there are echoes. i remember george w. bush would not always dive deep into issues or seldom dive. >> rose: how about ronald

reagan. >> they were men of gut, men of instinct. reagan too, he was an ultimate del gator. >> reagan is a little before my time, i don't want to-- but i mean i covered george w. bush. >> rose: i didn't realize you were only 35. >> no, i'm 25. >> but i think donald trump is more in that vein. he trusts his gut, he trusts his deal-making ability, whatever t he gets caught time and again not really knowing the nitty gritty of issues. >> rose: yeah. what else came out that struck you other than the need to be loved and the capacity to suggest he may change his mind on things? and the civility of it all? >> i would like to go back to the civility. that struck me. because this meeting, of course, came a day after a bunch of you met with him. i know you can't talk about that. but there were many reports of him berating some of you, at least for a portion of the meeting. and having a very acrimonious tone at least for awhile. there was none of that in this meeting. and what i realized is donald

trump does-- he may have railed about the elites in the course of getting elected. he may have come up with this very antielitist message that played very well in the heartland among certain voters. but at the end of the day, the truth of the matter, donald trump wants the respect of those very elites. he moves some what in the circles. >> and the man sitting in that chair at the "new york times," he wasn't con tempious of us. he wasn't pledging to defy us. he wasn't saying that he had a direct line to the american people that we never would. he was saying give me a chance. i think i can impress you all. even when he wasn't saying that explicitly, that was the body language, the emotional tenor. and you realize he's not quite the rebel that he played on the campaign trail. >> people said to me who were close to him, friends, that the idea of beings a dises rupter was crucial to his campaign strategy. >> uh-huh. >> rose: that means just the whole style of the thing, that

he believed that what he had due seemed like a destructive because the constituency that he was trying to appeal to. >> right. >> rose: wanted somebody to disrupt. >> right. >> rose: and they wanted ssh to disrupt with no holds barred. >> right. >> rose: go out there, and show us that you will stand up, that you are different and that you are not in anyway bound by traditional rules. >> right. but the flip side of that coin, you are right. and it turned out to be the right campaign strategy because he is now the president-elect. the flip side of that coin is when steve bannon came up in the meeting. and one or two people asked, you know, shouldn't there be concerned, aren't you concerned about some of his connections to and champion of alt-right. what did donald trump, i condition remember whether he or kellyanne conaway said, i think they mentioned harvard in steve bannon's resume, they mentioned goldman sachs. these were-- harvard and goldman chs were not the proper nouns that donald trump was using on

the campaign trail. so his disruption, his antielitism, a lot of that was theater. >> rose: is there something in the air now that may be we'll find out? we don't know for sure but maybe this is a kind of nixon going to china possibility. >> if we were just judging from the last couple of days, yeah, maybe. but if we were judging from the first couple of days when we had mike flynn and steve bannon, we would say no. so i think we all have to wait and see. i mean i think there are many appointments to come. there is-- you know, there is much more ahead than behind. i think what we have to admit is we just don't know. people without were ready to say this is a disaster, i can't even look at it any more after the first couple of days. they need to take a fresh look. people without are saying wow, this will be okay. they need to pause. >> rose: people are getting ready to go home for thanksgiving and lots of them are saying we can't talk politics, because the family-- every family. >> pie family is one of those, you know. >> rose: they have some people voted for trump, some people did not. >> right.

>> rose: some people horrified, some people encouraged. and it's raw in some places, still raw. >> i wrote a whole cul up during the primaries called trumping on egg shells. trump was the candidate you couldn't talk about at a family gathering because when people were on opposite sides, they just weren't on opposite sides, they were firing at each other. >> rose: it also in many ways, you know, paul ryan gave him his credit and i think the president even suggested this too, president obama. that he did see something. and he, what he did is he acted on it beyond lip service, so to speak. everybody knew there was discontent. some how in some way he got through. >> uh-huh. >> to the discontented. >> uh-huh. >> and that's why he is president-elect. >> he picked up on it and figured out a language. >> exactly. >> and the second part self ree bit as important. >> people gave lip service to picking up on it. he may have picked up on it in a deeper way but he found the language. >> there is something really interesting about that that i think has been underobserved.

which is for awhile in politics recently, every politician would come out and tell his or her hard scrabble story. if he or she didn't come up from nothing, they went to the parents. if the parents didn't come up from nothing, they went to the grandparents, show they got back it a kohlhepp mine or something like that. donald trump couldn't do that because he was at such an economic altitude. but what he showed is you don't need to have humble origins or be able to kind of like wear a cloak of poverty to speak to struggling americans. >> but you need to-- you need to speak about their concerns in a cadence and language that they understand. so he was able in a very impressive way, if you take-- if you leave out whether you like him or not, he was able in a very impressive way to collapse the distance between the billionaire and an out of work steel worker. and that wasn't about telling a story of his family coming up from hard scrabble origins. that was about thinking very carefully what is that person's life like, what is that person need to hear me say what is what language.

>> rose: in a different way, bobby kennedy got that from literally being on the ground. >> uh-huh. >> rose: in places. and it was an experience he did not have. and it changed him. >> right, right. >> in trump's case, because i don't think trump got it from mingling with-- . >> rose: kennedy got it from being there in west virginia and in mississippi. >> rose: i think trump just intuitively plugged into it. it is that sort of, he does have good antenna. >> rose: and also sort of the less attractive part in terms of the birther stuff. >> right. >> rose: and some the other stuff in terms of the quickness, the lack of quickness in responding to clear glee on the part of white supremacists and others. >> yeah, i mean one of saddest and most disturbing parts of the campaign is the question, when i said the language that this voting bloc wanted to hear. was that language partly racist language, was that language

zeno-- it's hard to know what thing in trump they were most responding to and what thing in trump they were overlooking to respond to the restment but there are open questions about how much this was fueled by. >> and understood there was a part of a constituency out there and he is trying to build constituencies in a sense that. >> now to the times, he said very clearly, i disavow. >> absolutely. >> he said that in the-- he said that with respect to demonstration toos. >> that's right. >> rose: in the "60 minutes" interview. >> i want to see, will he continue to say that when he is in front of a different audience. >> right. >> will he say it loudly and will he say it repeatedly because it is such an important thing to say given the way, given the very ugly way he won this presidential election. >> rose: thank you for coming. >> thanks for having me. >> rose: happy thanksgiving. >> you too. >> rose: obama, what of his legacy does he worry post about? is. >> where to begin. where to begin, charlie. i mean a lot of socially progressive things gotten aked

over the last eight years despite a lot of congressional opposition. >> rose: dread lock in washington. >> especially after the first two years in office. and in foreign affairs, work that what that happened. take the iran nuclear deal. now trump has gone through the campaign saying this is a horrendous deal, we're going to make great deals, so if you break the deal, suddenly iran is able to make nuclear weapons, a better state of affairs, even israeli intelligence, a country whose prime minister was ferociously against the iran nuclear deal will be the first to tell you that iran no longer has what is called breakout capacity. >> rose: did he give you an indication what he wants to do. >> he is pretty reticent about it. >> rose: and all bets are off because he might have done something din than what he will do now? >> he is not going to run for public office. >> rose: but his causes are, you know, have shown a great sense of-- brother brother's

keeper. >> rhetorically and in fact i think what his interested in doing is creating the next barack and michelle obama. >> rose: you mean-- someone who can inherit his politics. >> i think he is a community organizer in many ways still. in i with you get people involved in public life, in doing good, in the public realm. >> rose: there is also going to be a huge split in the democratic party, probably, of some kind. >> this is another subject. >> rose: does he want to play a role in that. >> who is the lead are of the democratic party now? who is the-- i asked barack, i asked the president, i said so what do you got? what is the bench? you got another election in four years. he said well, kamal harris has been a senator for a second in california. the mayor of south bend, indiana. >> rose: attorney general, african-american. >> yeah. and pretty quickly ran out of

names. remember, elizabeth warren is around 70. i don't want to age her premature her, i think around that. >> rose: close to 65, i this i. >> okay, i'm sorry. and bernie sanders is closer to 75. >> rose: right. >> you know, they're not in power in the house, the senate, the white house, the supreme court is sure to have appointments now. >> rose: that is remarkable, isn't it? think about that, there are three-- four maybe. >> first of all three right away. >> one right away rrs garland. >> merrick gar land goes back to the court of appeals, right. >> rose: and, that is the-- the antonin scalia seat is open. and donald trump will fill that seat. you've got two liberal members of the courted-- court. steven breyer and ruth bader ginsburg are both in their '80s. >> and ruth bader ginsburg's health is what it is. >> rose: so that is three

right there. >> you bet. and by the way, clarence thm as is-- . >> rose: they've got four now. >> that means seven. >> if those three are appointed in the next three years. >> and by the way w clear-- . >> rose: with clear sailing in congress. >> rose: because the majority is in congress. what kind of book does he want it write? >> it's always been a lock that the first way he is going to mack a living and that family is going to make a very serious living is the two will sign book contracts. i talked to one very prominent literary agent in new york that says minimum $15 million each. well, he 15, and she close to it. and you know, suddenly they've gone from being people, well,. >> rose: they have already made millions in books. >> from some means to a hell of a lot more means. that is number one. but i asked him about the memoir thing. i said is it going to be as open and honest and free as your first book. and i was implying the second book, which was kind of a-- much less tho, pretty good but-- .

>> rose: you saw the word audacity you knew it was a campaign book. >> yeah, ironically that is reverend wright's phrase. and he said no, it's not-- it can't be as free as my first book. because there are confidences have i to ep coo, meetings that were held in secret that i can't betray. meetings, i can't blow out foreign policy because of my desire to write a sexy memoir. >> rose: what is his own sense of his greatest accomplishment? >> well, he could list-- . >> rose: nuclear, health care, is he taking them you have with the regularity. >> health care, fair pay, some things that he want the enactor of. he is not on the supreme court but he is creating an environment in which a certain amount of liberal social progress goes on. you know, a lot has happened in the pop culture that is an exfedgesz-- extension of obamaism.

you can't quite quantity fie it. but you know, look at the diversity, the explosion of healthy diversity in all corners of american life. are we anywhere near where we should be, no. but a lot of, without getting gooey about it, a lot of good comes from the bully pulpit and the example of the presidency. and a part of my concern about this presidency is what are we telling our children. what will be the example set by this temperment, by this sense of ethics, by this biography. >> rose: this is what is going to happen on january 20th, on inauguration day, the first african-american president will-- sworn into the presidency, a man who succeeds him and who began his national campaign some say by denying the legitimacy. >> by bitterrism.

>> by denying the legitimacy of the man he is succeeding by saying to be president, by saying he wasn't american, and continued in that for a number of years before he acknowledged that it was not true. >> and yet, that is what you say say hundred percent truement and more than apparent to barack obama. and yet when ask you that question. >> rose: to him. >> to him, he knows that you know. but he keeps it so much that he keeps inside. you know, i had heard from a source that somebody came to michelle obama at an occasion and said how does he do this, so much hatred comes his way on z line, during the state of the union address, state of the union address, liar. there is no element of racism in that. i think one is naive to think that. and so a lot of corners. and obama told me, you know, in some ways i think i was 20 years

early. if you look at the demographic trends, i came along 20 years before you might have predicted. so of course there was going to be reaction to that. and maybe in demographic terms it might have been more logical that this first nonwhite president would be named gonzalez rather than obama. but of course he resents the. >> of course he does. he had to go and have his press secretary go into the press room and present his birth certificate, to legitimize himself as an american and as a president of the united states. >> rose: and the man who is succeeding him took credit for forcing him to do that. >> yeah. >> rose: the political scene, it happened here, president confronts an election that changes everything and imperils his legacy online now, go to the new yorker.com, i assume.

>> yeah. >> rose: sebastian mallaby is here. he is a sen yor fellow of international economics on the council of foreign relations. his latest book the man who knew chronicles life and times of federal reserve chairman alan greenspan. he argues that green span understood more about the risk in financial markets than is commonly understood. for many the question remains what more could green span have done to prevent the worst economic crisis since the great depression. i am pleased to have sebastian mallaby back at this table. welcome. >> very good to be with you. >> rose: now so after the last book, did you always want to write about him or did the idea come to you cuz you were looking for something else to explore. >> i wanted to write a big sweep history of modern finance. and i realized that alan greenspan was the individual who was close to the center of the creation of the system. he had joined the nixon campaign in the late '60s at a time when the dollar didn't flunk yait because it was tied to gold. interest rates didn't move much

because they were capped by regulation there were no financial deriff tiffs. and then over the next four decades, we created the modern system and the single person who was closest to being at the center of it was alan greenspan. >> rose: why did he join nixon? >> he joined nixon because he was brought in by an ayn rand friend, a libertarian who said come and help me think about abolishing the draft. we want to persuade nixon to abolish the draft. that is his first political document. not economics at all. then he got into the campaign and i found all the documents all the memos he wrote to nixon in 67ee, 68y. they were in pat buchanan's basement. >> rose: really, pat buchanan kept, although they were written to richard nixon. >> because beu can on was the speech writer. there were two things in his basement, one is a fantastic collection of anteing fire arms. and the second is all the memos from the 67y, 68 campaign including the green span memos. >> rose: so he gaifer you the key to his basement and said go and see what you can find. >> pretty much. he gave me this stack of memos

that green span had written. when i read them, you see the man going from the libertarian economist advisor in the 67y, green span saying you know, giving advice about economic policy. by the end he is talking about messaging, spin, polling analysis. he was the guy who aggregated all the local polls. put them through his computer at work and came back with advice on how you tweak the nixon message. >> rose: he always was a guy who was an economist but had an eye for the political. >> exactly, right, yeah. and that became clear when he was with nixon, he became more and more political through that period. then he joined later the ford white house. and he would have these bureaucratic fights with henry kissinger. and kissinger was this master of bureaucratic intrigue but he lost when he was up against green span. green span, well, green span, for example. he would leak stuff to the press to discredit his adversaries. we sneak in at the weekend to rewrite the president's speech because some adversary had written it. it wasn't just green span but

there were faction fights going on which alan greenspan was part of. but he learned all the dark arts of politics pretty early on. >> and that served him. >> i absolutely. fed independence in the united states was created by alan greenspan because he showed george h-w bush that if the white house came after the fed and punched him in the nose, green span would punch back twice. >> rose: but you also make this point, correct me if i'm wrong, that alan greenspan was not risk oriented. was he? i will ask the question. was he or was he reasonably careful about what he was prepared to do. >> yeah, i think he didn't want to risk his political capitol. but he was prepared to fight very hard to build up that political capitol. and you know, so that is what he did. >> rose: was he bold in terms of the way he looked at economics? >> he was bold, for example, in 1996 when he called that productivity was rising faster than anybody else believed. and he made an interest rate determination on that issue,

when he kept rates lower there was more employment as a result from '96 to the end of the decade. so that was bold. he could be bold. >> rose: was he conservative in his fear of inflation? >> i think he was conservative just in one period, at the beginning. in the first bush administration, george h-w bush always says that green span cost him the election by having tight money and that's kind of true. but green span was so focused on pushing inflation down at that moment. >> rose: he was preoccupied with inflation. >> he was. where he was tim i had was with bubbles. he should have been more willing to take a risk and try and puncture bubbles. >> rose: like in 2001? >> i think the two times are 1999 was the tech bubble. >> rose: right. >> and then 2004/2005 with the real estate bubble. he should have done more on that. >> rose: and did, so why do people blame him for the crisis in 2007 and 8 from deriff tiffs

and subchapter and all that. >> because he had retired from the fed in the beginning of 2006, just a year before the crieses began. so i mean the crisis was baked in by the time he left. and i think it's true that he presided in his last two years from 2004 to 2006 over interest rates that should have been both higher and less predictdable. a key thing was he kept on communicating to the market how quickly he would tighten. so if you were in the markets, you could take a lot of risk and not feel that you were going to get caught out. >> rose: who, how did ayn rand influence him? because i have asked 4eu78 that on this program. >> and what did he tell you. >> rose: well, i have forgotten now but basically that he knew her and he was i think impressed by her. there was a personal relationship. >> there was a personal relationship. i mean when green span was swrorn in to the white house as ford's economic advisor, he invited three people. green span's mother. ayn rand and ayn rand's husband, so they had a very close

relationship. and this is not something, this is not a youthful infatuation. a lot of people read ayn rand book when they are 19 and 20, green span did this in his 30st o 40st and he was her chief economist. i found these in the base am of an ayn rand fanatic living in the base am of virginia, in the basement he had the 300 page transkript of green span's speeches under ayn rand's name. and in those speeches it says the creation of the federal reserve was an historic disaster. you couldn't make up that the irony. the man who embodied the fed, personified the fed. >> rose: called it. >> said there shouldn't have been a fed. >> rose: there is also bern bernanke says how much creedence should we give to mallaby's argue that green span's personality, the product of an absent pay old father in the presence of a vivid mother was the basis of his monetary policy choices. it seems awfully implausible to me. this is a successor, chairman of

the federal reserve. >> right, charlie, you spend your time interviewing individuals. >> rose: right. >> and presumably you believe that individuals and their personalities matter. and they do. there is a connection between the policies and the people who push the policies. so i think the notion that green span's psychological makeup had no relationship to his policy decision is not very-- . >> rose: and what is the argument you make about the psychological makeup. >> that he. >> rose: and how it influenced policy choices. >> there was a par a docks that green span was extremely pervasive and comfortable in one-on-one situations. but he was also shy and difficult i dent in groups. he didn't like confrontations. he was a frightennist kind of going directly with people with a disagreement. we go around their backs. we leak to the press, he would be passive aggressive. but to prik a bubble, you had to be able to take on its entire public opinion. you had to say your 401(k) is worth more than it should be. and i'm going to bring down the value of your savings. and i

think he just didn't want to do that. his reputation imprisoned him. he was the maestro, and he didn't want to spoil that. >> rose: how does he compare with paul volcker. >> that say great question, paul volcker, his immediate predecessor is this return eled egg-headed-- prophet. >> rose: 6 foot 11 whatever. >> exactly. nobody would mess with him, right? and green span is sort of thought to be this more political, maneuvering. i think that say bit unfair. volcker was a hero on inflation. but he messed up regulation. he allowed the latin american lending by the banks in the late '70s 6789 he allowed the first too big to fail bailout with konl illinois in 1984. so he also made mistakes. and neither of them was perfect. i think green span deserves credit, especially because you know charlie he with live in a time of the revolt against experts. green span was the ultimate empowered expert who par layed

his economic expertise in political respect. and he essentially established central bank status, and independence by fighting back against politicians who came after him. >> did he like his place and his role as a sort of significant figure on the washington stage? did he relish that? >> i think he did relish it, although sometimes he disguised that by virtue of the fact that he was shy. you would go to a party. he would seem il at tease, shuffling around, not really engaging with people, people would look and say why did he come to this party because he disunt seem to be enjoying it. >> he fell in love with a high profile television reporter. >> more than once. there was barbara walter as well. >> rose: he didn't marry her. >> that's true. so he clearly did like the glamor. people would tell me from the '70s, they would go to earnest economic conferences and discuss productivity and at the end of it, all the economist was go to the bar except for one economist because there would be a limousine outside with barbara

walters inside waiting for him to go to dinner. >> rose: yes. >> and they would say how did one economist get to live that other life too. >> rose: when you-- if you would poll a range of the smartest people who know everything about central banks, including the-- dn and the u.s. economy, how would they assess his tenure? >> the standard line would be that his inflation policy, his interest rates was great. because inflation was very stable. and where he met-- . >> rose: that was his obsession. >> exactly. but where he messed up was on financial regulation. and that is why we had the subprime crisis. and so they would fault him on the regulatory side. because i have looked intothe politics of that regulation, i actually think regulation in washington d.c. is almost impossible to get ride. so i am less critical of green span on the regulatory side but mi therefore more critical on the monetary side because i think if the regulation isn't going to stop the bubble, then you need to use interest rates too. >> rose: here is you what said. the tragedy of green spn's

tenure is he did not pursue his finance far enough. he decided targeting inflation was is he duckively easy whereas targeting asset prices was hard, he did not like to confront the climate of opinion which was willing to grant that central banks had a duty to fight inflation, but not that they should vaporize citizen saves by forszing down asset prizes, it was a tragedy that grew out of mix of qualities that had defined green span throughout his public life. intellectual honesty on the one hand, a reluctance to act forcefully on the other. >> he was the man who knew-- . >> rose: that is the point i was referring to. was not the man who acted.but he understood finance incredibly well. but he didn't pursue that knowledge. >> rose: so why didn't he act? what was it about his personality, was that back to his mother's influence on him. >> i think there were two thingsk politically it was very difficult to act. because it would be unpopular. but then his personality comes in. because he didn't want to quote that courted that unpopularity.

>> rose: has he read the book. >> he has. >> rose: what does he say. >> he called me up and he said it is not always positive but it is accurate. >> rose: not always positive but accurate. >> that say double compliment. >> that is very, very generous. >> rose: even though they they are things i don't want to read, they're accurate. >> i had another experience, two books ago with head of the world bank, james wilsonson. his response was rather different. >> what his response. >> that he was so furious, he banned the world bank book store which had bought tons of copies from displaying the book and they had to hide it behind the countedder and he was sort of inconsolable and so that his staff had to get a person of stature in washington to call him up and calm him down, that was green span. >> rose: he called him up and said get over it. >> it is just a book. >> rose: the man who knew the life and times, the title comes from what? >> the man who knew means that he knew about the fragility of finance. it was just a resonant phrase which i picked up. >> rose: that is exactly

what-- in interviewing certain tim geithner and hank paulson t was the fragility of the system that they discovered in 2008. how the system was so fragile and almost could lanced. >> but the point of my tight knell some sense is that some people think we had a crisis because the people in charge like green span believed in the self-policing efficiency of markets. and i'm saying no. they knew better than that. if you want an explanation for the crisis, you have to go beyonds this analytical failure. because he did understand that finance was fragile. going back to the '50s. wrote his ph.d thesis about how markets overshot. he bought himself a seat on the commodity exchange in new york because he thought markets were so inefficient that you could trade against them profitably. he constantly lived through financial crisis after crisis. and so he knew that finance was unstable. and yet he didn't act. >> rose: on your news stand

this weekend is time magazine's collection of what it calls a 100 most influential photos of all time stvment aye multimedia protected-- project built around the 100 photographs that time editors feel shape the way we think or change the way we live. with me now is kira pollack times director of photography. welcome. >> thank you. >> rose: so tell me how did you go about there? >> well, we looked at the hundred most influential photos of all time. and the way that we started was he nominated some ourselves and then we reached out to curators, historians, photographers, photo editors all ever o the world to nominate and fight for different pictures. and then we ultimately reported them out with time reporters and we quantityified the influence. so it's really about the pictures that influence change. it's not about just the most psychotic or important but influential. >> rose: in fact you say the project does not look at the influence of photographers within the history of the medium but rather at how history has

been influenced by specific photographs. sometimes these two points overlap but mostly the project is about the unique power that still emangs have to influence clang. >> absolutely. >> let me just begin with the one, the picture of domestic violence. what is the history 6 what? >> so that picture was made by donan. and the influence of that picture is that the picture was made of the act of domestic violence it was actually as it was happening. and we've never seen that before. it was actually behind closed doors. she captured something as evidence, really, that this was happening. >> rose: how did they do that? >> she was documenting this family and she was there for another story. and she was almost embedded with the family on another story. and she happened to be there when that happened. and from there, she made it her goal and her life, the photographer, to capture domestic violence for 34 years going forward. >> rose: next is the famous

pillow fight. >> right. how did that happen. >> the great photographer harry benson. he was in the hot e8 of the beatles. and it is the happiest picture on our list by far. and it's a picture that we fell was influential because it was made a few months after kennedy was shot. and it was a moment where the country needed something to look up to. and this picture was on the front pages everywhere. and it really was a time when the country was in mourning and it was able to shift the needle. >> the next is the first cell phone picture taken in 97y this is one of my favorite pictures on the list. something that i learned from the project. and this picture was paid by philip kuan when his daughter was born and he took his flip top phone, hooked it up to his computer, wrote a couple lines of code and sent it to 2,000 people. and that is the beginning of -9d cell phone. >> wow. >> never seen that picture before. >> a tragic picture of our

recent times. what can we say about this. >> yeah. well, that is, it is a terribly sad picture of ellen kitery, the syrian boy without drowned last year. we at time look at refugee pictures all the time. we see so many of them. this picture had an unbelievable significants. and i think it's because the boy could be anyone's boy. and the other thing that is interesting about that picture is that the audience made it influential. it was about how it was the dissemination of that picture was through social media. it was retweeting, it was on facebook, it was that did t got out there, before even us at time made the decision to publish it. so that is one of the things we looked at really on this project is how these pictures were influential. how they got out into the world. >> rose: now this is a picture i have never seen before from north korea. >> yes. so that picture is made by the great photographr david guten felledder who was in north korea for the associatedded press.

and he made that picture on his cell phone, and uploadedloaded t directly to instagram. he is the first professional photographer to make a picture in realtime that went out to the world. >> rose: salvador dali. >> we love this picture-- picture. when you think about this picture it was made in 1948, decades before photo shop. that picture was made by you know the buckets being thrown, the cats being thrown, he made that picture in the camera. there is no photo shop involved. >> rose: wow. >> his wife was holding the chair. his daughters were throwing the cats. so it's kind of a great image. >> rose: there is one i mentioned earlier. cor o net. >> this is the milk drop coronet made by the great technician, harold edgarton at mit. he actually froaz the moment in time. >> rose: this is the hindenberg, along the collection of photographs. >> the hindenberg is phenomenal. also another example of the way in which it was published. of course it was published on front pages above the fold, all

over the country when it actually happened. but what really made it influential was when led zeplin published it on their album cover. when you think about the album cover and how influential that was as a medium for a long period of time, now we have songs, not 58 bums, but that was a really interesting thing. because everyone lived with that album cover on their shag carpet for so many years. >> this is about aids. >> that is an incredible picture. the last moments of a man's life, man named david kirby who was dying of aids. made by terrist, published in life magazine. but what made it influential is that benaton used it in an ad all over the world it really was a very big ethical debate about whether they should have used that ad or not. but it really did put aids on the map. it made people aware this is a family that is grieving for their son. >> rose: this is obviously the moon.

>> yes. >> the first time we saw ourselves, great photographer who is also an astronaut, bill ander. >> rose: and this is yosemite. >> yes. that picture was paid by carlton watkins. it was one of 30 pictures that were presented to lincoln in a portfolio. and upon seeing them, lincoln deemed yosemite a national park. >> rose: so this is also a multimedia project at the magazine. it is a book, an exhibition. >> a virtual museum, a lot of layers, a lot of context. deep dives. there are 20 short documentaries about the pictures that are phenomenal. >> rose: there are so many. i see just leafing through this, this is one of the great most famous war photographs ever taken. >> absolutely. and it was published sz sigh gone. >> and published on the front page of the newspaper. so the decision to publish that was also influential. it actually is interesting. we were talking about this. that vietnam was the hardest topic to whittle down because

there were so many powerful pictures that came out of that. >> rose: richard drew took this picture said i never regretted taking that photograph. this is someone who is jumping off the world trade center. >> and unbelievable picture. a very quiet moment. and really what that picture does is show the evidence that somebody died that day. >> rose: there are pictures of war, and pictures of pain, pictures of celebration, pictures of art, pictures of-- as you said, pictures that had influence within yup. >> rose: here say famous jacqueline kennedy on fifth avenue. >> that is, as he says t is his mondaya lisa. >> rose: yeah. >> but what ron was always going for was beauty as a paparazzi photographer. >> rose: we mention babe ruth s it babe ruth, number three. >> that is phenomenal, from behind, to see the number and nat fine won the pull itser prize for that picture. >> rose: this is also it seems to me a sense of you call it 100

photographs, most influential images of all time it is the power of an image. >> exactly. >> rose: you can look at any one of these. >> exactly. >> rose: and are you flooded with ideas and feelings and and photographe has the power to do that. >> rose: one picture can tell a thousand stories. and here is, in this one is on the front page. this is from the depression. >> yes. dorothea lang. >> rose: yeah. thank you, well done. >> thank you so much. >> rose: pleasure to you have on the program. >> thank you, it's great to be here. >> rose: for more about this program and earlier episodes visit us online at pbs.org and charlie rose.com. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

>> rose: funding for charlie rose is provided by the following: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide.

♪ this is "nightly business report" with tyler mathisen and sue herera. holiday records. the dow and the s&p 500 close at new highs for the third straight day as americans head into a long weekend, thankful for the markets and so much more. big hit. the federal reserve just gave investors its clearest signal yet that a rate hike could come soon. very soon. major hultrdles. the one thing that could possibly stand in the way of the president-elect's proposed spending ask tax cut plan. that and more on "nightly business report," on thanksgiving eve, wednesday, november 23rd. good evening, everyone. and happy thanksgiving eve. and on this day, investors were gobbling up stocks. the dow climbing further above