>> rose: welco to the broadcas tonight we take look at afghan strategyith andrew exum. he w in afghanistan for a month helping general stanley mccrystal with his assessmt of the war effortand his recommendation for-tohe erican leadersp. >> if you look at afghanian, there's a lot of reasoto be pessimistic, tbe very sober minded when looki at it,ut on t other hand, i think a properly resourc strategy, especially o that builds capacity within the afghan government has a cnce of succes but this is the 11th hour. at thipoint, we can't do anything in afghanistan that does not build capacity in the afghan... in the afghan government and in its institutions. ment. >>ose: we continue this eving with the "new york times" youngest and newest columnisin, he was ross

douthat. >> the biggest long-term problem for the republican party right now is tt all of the demographics thait's strongest in are shrunking d it's not just it's strongest ang white, the whiteopulations this ringing. it's strongest among white christia. the white christian population is shrinki. it's strongest among white christian married couples. the number americans who are married s been steadily shrinking for several decad. the two-parent family is in decline. across all of tse catego it is republican party in trouble and one of the big questis facing the party is ere do you get the votes in ten years? >> rose: exum and douthat next.

captioningponsored by se communications om our studios in new york city, this is chlie rose. >> rose: we begin tonit with afghanistan and the queson of strategy. at should be our strategy there? or, as some say, should we be there at all if things don wo out? secretary of dense robert gates recently marked nex summer as a possle cuto point r prress. he said "afr theraqi experience, noby's prepad to have a long slog. others ha asked whether afghanistan isvital to our national secity interests. "new york times"olumnist in tom freean visitin the region recently asked ination building in afghanistanis

really a goodse of amerin power. meanwhile, the ongng.s.-led offeive into the helmand province has led to spike in coalition sualties. july will be the deadliesmonth for u.s. and britishroops nce the vasion in twaun. the top commanr on the ground, general staey mccryst has maderotectingfghan civilians a key compone of his emergin strategy. 's expected to comple a 60-day assessment of the war before the e of august. joining from washington i andrew exum of the center for a new american security. he's a form u.s.rmy raer withours in iraqnd afanistan. he's working on a doctorate of militias and insurges in the midd east ande saks arabic. his counterinsurgency blog widely red and respected. he's just returned fm afghanistan where he was helping with generalccrystal's strate review. i'm pleased to ve him back this program. welcome.

thank you. how many asssments are takg place now? because we h one in washington we have general mccstal... secretary gates. what answers a they looking for? >> there have been quite a few just in this past year. actual, the way the assessment process has worked since obama's come to office is actually been pretty coherently... been pretty cohent. one of the things you want to do is set your policy first, then move down to stragy and then start looking at operations and tactics that are going to be mostppropriate for executi th strategy. that's prty muchhat's taking plac so in february d march youaw thpresident lead a policy review in afghanistan at which int he set his policy, outlined some sategic goals and th when genal mccrystal took charge in ahanistan, his review was toook at our ongoing stregy, look at our operations on the ground and then try tmatch the resources to the president's strategi

als and also to answer some the questions that the presint s posed. >> rose:kay, tel me what the presidensaid the policy ought to be? >> sure. this stage, the policy is pretty clear, as are u.s. interests in afghanistan. right now, the u.s. interests ar twofold, basically. one, tt afghanist is not used as a safe havenor transnationaterror groups to plot attacks against the united states. that's most obvious. and then secd, that ghanistan not besed as a safeaven forhe destabilizatio of pakistan. so those a the two vital u.s. interests that aren afghanistan. the president's strategy is aimed at the form interests mainly to ensure those trabl regions stddling afghanistan and pakistan... kp in mind, when the presint does his strategy, hean look at the region when the commander does his stragy, he's limited towards just loong at afghanistan. but the president strategy and the president's policy aims were

toeny al qaeda and other transnational rror groups the e of those tribal areas that straddle the line between afghanistan and pakistan. >> rose: so he or you wld define winning as? >> the dial of enemy his objectes so in that casehat we're trying to do is we're trying to create some sortf lasting situion infghanistan ereby afghanistan is inhospable and isot able to be used by al qaeda to plot attacks agnst the united states. >> rose:ou and others have said there are lots of problems over there in doing this. i think neral petras has said we've been losing the war over the last year or two. the problems arehe talibans growing stronger, there is corruption in the gernment. there is in aense no governmental structure that you n use. kistan is a safe haven and pakistaneems so far to ha no terest in extending its

campai against domestic taliban to those in afghanistan. >> i thi that's a pretty fair reading of the situation. what i want to ress though that when welooked at the prlem set of afghanistan, fit off there were a couple thgs that alarm us. the first thing is how it will well know ter being there for eit years. i ill don't feel that we have a clos enoughunderstanding of afghanistan, its peoples, the die dynamics. we're ve good at focusing on the enemy bute're not too good at mapping social networks, trying t figure outhow different tris interact, how political figures intert. the secondhing that disturbed us... the od news is that the taliban orny of thes enemy groups in afghanistan, although they are getting stronger, we dot see them... they're not going to te over the country any time soo th don't present an immediat existential thre to the govement of afghanistan.

the probleis, at this stage, the legitimacy of the government of afghanistan ialmost asig a threat to mission success in afghanistan and to o interests in afghanistan as is the taliban or the ha canny netrk or any of thes insurgent group >> tel about the group you went wh to be part of this one mont strategy. >> sure, when general petraeus took over iraq in 2007, o of t first things h did is he put together a te of some outside think tan folks, some smart mility officers, some foren service officers, people fromoth inside and outside the government and he basically gave th free rein to look a the mission inraq, identify what we were tryingo do and then identify how we needto get to the goals. or get to those ends. in afghanistan, general mccrtal basically took that same model and brought a group of outside folks-- somefolks from washington and europe-- to

lookt the ongoing operations in afghanistan and really , again,nswer those same questions. first off, what are we tryingo do here? second, in lig of the mission wee been given by the nato secretary general anthe president ofhe united states, can we accomplish our missio second off what we need to do differently? third, do we need any re resours or are we finewith e resources that we have can we use themore intelligently? so imagine this is a way that some of your viewers will be able to relate to. imagine bringing in a teamf management nsultants to look at your siness and lookat the way you're doing busine. ft the group people were a mix of mility officers, civilian goverent officials from u.s. a, from the stat departnt as well as some tside think tank folk likeme who don't have equity,o to speak, in any of the bureaucracies and pefully can say somehings that are a little bit outsid the box or i can eak freely without worry out mywn bureaucra

fluencing them in a way that i give my advice. >> rose: one pson thereas anthony cortisman who sai there's not enough mey, not enough tops, there's not engh arming of the afghans an failure a real possility. >> yea i think that tony's assessment is... i ink tony's assessnt is bleak, but think it's something thateople need to hear. we still tk about the war in afghanistan. talk about bgades in afghanisn the way we talk about divisions in aq. even thougwe talk out afghanistan beg the primary effortf the united states abroad right now, i hasn't goen nearly the amount of attention that, y, for instance, the war iraq has. i think what bothers to and i share his concern is that if we think abt cnterinsurgency, we think abo clear, hold, and build. this three-step eration that we talked a lot about starting in iraq i about 2005. we can cle, but how exactly we ho and build nobody was really able t explain how exactlye

can do tt because, ain, as tony has poted out, we don't have enough afghan national security forcesnd it's very... i still ve yetto... no o has been ae to expla to me exactly how a surge in civilian capacityill work,ither. the situation, i think, is as bleak as tony ps it, but, again, i want to stress that kabul isot going to fall tomorrow. kandahar inot going to fal tomoow to the taliban. buwe have to think really hard over the nt 1onths about how we're going to reverse this momentum. in oldhrase in unterinsurgency operations i if you're not winning, you're losing. inddition, momenm matter so ihink we owe it to the american people d the voting populous ofestern europe and australia and the other ntributing nationsxactly how we'rgoing to turn this ship around. because, again, w do not have an inexhaustle line of reurces and we have to thin ve carefully about how we use those sources when we commit them into a dgerous environment like afghanistan.

>> rose: share usour assessme of the nature of afghanistan period. in terms of the narcotics traffic, in terms of corruion in the government, in termsf e power of tribes, in terms of what makes it unique and therore different and therore challenging. >> yeah. i think afghanist on the one hand we've me this mista over the past few years. we've looked at afghanistan a really four separa battles. so wee divided it upnto different regional comnds and we've kind ofparceled afghanistan up and we've fought in the its mponents and not necessarily as a whol on the oer hand you doave to admit that the war in afghantan, the dynamics of afghistan really differ depending onhere you are. so the insurncy, for example, oks a lot fferent in the northeast of afghanistan than i do in the south. the south whe you're fang the quetta shura taliban, group disaffecte phtun me or le have some sort of centralized authority

structures. the insurgency looks lot different an it does in the northeast ere it tends to be more localized. anit's about local grievances and it's noto much... you can't really ust a lotof the conventional wisdom out the insuency beingerely rected from pistan. the nature of the fight differs really not jt from region to regionbut provie to province distrt to district. and in many case from vley to vaey. th respect to... with respect to the government, oneof the things we found is that the afghan people are-- no surprise to anyone who's rd the nepaper-- are quite disaffected with the government. after eight ars of this war, it's very tough to see vernance at the loc level with very few exceptions. so if you go to a remote area of afghanistan, there's no visibilityrom the gernment of afghanistan. by contrast... to make matters worse, ther, there's a perception that the governme

of afghanistan i credibly corrupt. so what we've seen in the south, for example,s the taliban tak vantage of this perception corruption. so they'llsend only buds men into t south and ey'll ask people, they say "so assess your show governor in the south of afghanistan? what type of job ise doing? we're interested in your feedback and the significant thing tre ishat the taliban is directly challenging the govement of afghanistan ere it knows it's at its weakest and that's a peeption of corruption and a perception that theew are getting wethy at the extense of the many. and there's a real problem in afghanistan with respec to the peeived power of regional wer brokers and their corruption. now,ow that all plays into the drug trade it's significant. but think maybe it's a little overplayed. there's a lot ofriminality in the south, and is not just drugs. 's the expropriation of land by powerful indiduals, it's the monopoly on certain jobs,

use of the government a patronage systems. so we've got real problem with governan in afghanistan at all levels. there's some encouraging signs there's some money indusies in afghanistan that work when w lo at certain institions. there's reason be confident that ware on e right track with the afghan nationalarmy. >> rose: is everying you just said a cle indictment of at th strategy has bn over the last threer four years? >> yeah, ihink so. i meantrategy is o things. first, you need the things, really. you ed a strategy, you need leadership and youeed resources. and you think that afghantan has suffed for all thr of those ings over thepast few years. first f, the war in iq enormously distractedot just ouattention but really our resources away from the war in afghanistan. ghanistan was by public admissionan economy of force mission. w, that's fine long as the enemy don't get a te. but the enemy hasbeen able to ta advantage ofur neglec of afghistan over the past five,

six years. and they've used that to wage... we talk about this fighting season in afghanistan but that's a misnomer. e taliban is also conducting..i mean, they don't have a fiting season. they may have a sean where they shoot a us more often than other asons, but during the winter when there not shoing ats, they're me often than not puuing a silent war, a campaign ofear and intimidation in vulnerable communitie in afghanistan. we've done a terrible job protecting those communities. so we hav't had the resources to do it, we hen't had an effective strategy and until quite cently we haven't d leadersh in afghanistan that' really been able to tak control of this situation. that's not an indictment of general mckiernawho, by all accounts, was a higy compent coander and just personly eaking as a former army officer i think it was disheaening the way he was dismissed, as big a a fan as i am of general mccrystal. but, again, it's strategy, it's reurces and it's leadership

and we haven'tad all three in afghanistan until ite recely and thers hope that we can turn this around but, quite honestly it's quite late in the ga. >> rose: okay. let's talk about leadersp for the a second. th weekend "walstreet journal" h a piece called "class of nerals: the cadets of 1976 gradued fromest point at a lowoment for the army in its storied training ground but that year pduced the geners running the tion's wars in iraq and afghanistan as well as theirey deputi." thefore you talk about in the class of '76 at westoint, odierno, now theop offic in iraq. you talk fnk gupt leading efforts to train u.s. troops. david bar know, retired top commander in afghastan and pecially stanley allen mccrystal top ficer in afghistan and his principal deputy david mitchell rodriguez, all pa of the sam cla at. so tell me about general mccrysl and general rodriques wh in fact, what are the new

leadership about >> rose: the west point class of 1976 as a discimer, i am not a west pointgraduate. that article is writteny one of my classmates at the university of pennsylnia. but the west point class o 1976 i think produced 30 general officersa pretty astounding number. and not just 30 general officers who crashedout at the one-star rank, t general officers who haveone on to some pretty incredible tngs. first encounter with genal mccrystal wa as a young officer in the 75th ranger regiment and in a lot of ways he's alway be kind of a larger-than-life figure. he's somebody that... it's unbeliable how much time he spent as an offic in both the ranger regiment as well as in the specialperations community. hes an oicer who. it's n natural for him to talk about all the things that he's done that are on hisesume.

all the time spent in these elite units and in these elite special operatio tas forces. but when everybodylse is in a room and allhe mility ofcers in the room everyone who's ev worked for mccrystal, everyone who's in afghanisn, they're keen aware of the kinds of thing he's done through his career. he's a remarkae man. i'm... i've bee an admirer of hi since i was a junior officer. think he's got a tough problem set ahead of him. >> rose: and general rodriques? >> general rod kenshin kawaki is a fce of natur. i think a lotof wayse may have aougher mission than genel mccrystal. because the war has bn fought over the past few years as regional mponents. i think is up to general rodrigue tonify the war effort and also take that vision that general mccrystal has. d this is something that general odierno did really ll for general petraeu in 2007. now ke that commander vion

and sak quite bluntly am it down the throats of the surdinate commanders. neral mccrystal has articulated a very challenging vision for what he'd like to do in afghanistan. we are going to assume greater sk with respect to r force protecti. we are going tget out there, we're going touild relationshs with the afghan pele and it's going to fall to genel rodriguez to try to realize thatision of geral mccrystal's. >> rose:kay, but... go ahead. >> go ahead. >> rose: no, you finish i'm soy. >> i have trendous faith in those men but it's going toe a tough job they have ahea of them. >> rose:et's talk abt strategy and tactics. two things have come out of this: yowill not kill your y to victory and body counts are out. d secondly, vilians who... whose suppt you need, you cann gain that sport if you're indiscminate in your use of force so that therefore there are too many civilian casualties.

>> yeah. one ofhe things that we've talked a lot about is at if you look at these conflts, kind of the contemporar era, and this is whether you're talking abt the united states in iraq, nato in afgnistan, israel in sthern lebanon the laws of laarfare are ing to allow you t do a lot of things. u can.. proportionnalty will allow you to do a lot of things. but you may be technically correct and operationally ineffective and operationally stupid. other words, you can do a lot that, while lal and wle permitted by the lawsf land warfe will nonheless make youoperationally ineffective on th batefield. and the use overwlming foe is one of those things. general crystal will be the first people toell you that if droppingombs on compounds t taliban has sght refuge in if that will help win the war, okay let's dot because these thin are permitted under the l of land warfare if these compounds are being used by foreign fighte, by fighters as staging

areas or fightin positions. but if you...f by dropping bombs on compounds you're also killing cilians, in this vironment you're going to reer yourself operational ineffeive pretty quick by dointhat. and what we're talking about is the cultural change not ju thin the u.s. military but within the militaries of all those naons that are fightg in ghanistan and tryi to we ourselves off this reliance onverwhelming firower which, in the post-vietnam era and certainly the way that i was educated as a military ficer that we were taught tt if y receive one round of 5.56 millimeter then you ould send millimete mortars in rurn. th was kind of the arithmetic were taught at the infantry offir basic course before 9/11. but in the operational envinments in iraq and afghanistan, lling civilians actually pushes e goalposts fartr away. >> rose: are our interests alignewith the ierest of the afghan government? >> it's actually auls

assumption tt's present in u.s. counterinsurgcy doctrine. wemericans when we pursu countensurgency campaign wes do so normall as third parties in contrt, to, for example, the british who fought in northern ireland othe french from their perspectivein alria. when we, as america, wag counrinsurgency campaigns, we tend to doit as trd paies. at is onehalf of a host nation. and there's an assumption in our doctri that our interests are going to align with t interests of the ht nation governnt. there are tw things worth stressing here. the first is that the reality of waging counterinsurgey campaigns as a trd party is that youan setthe condions fo political sucssbut it's not the traditional format where you e using for to achieve a politil end and it's prett concrete. in counterinsurgency, y can only set the cditions for suess, butltimately true

litical success depends upon thehost nation either reforming itself aiving at some st of reconciliationrocess. in counterinsurgencies. >> re: that's nation building. >> well, it m beation building or it may be striking ere could be a reconciliatio procs or there could be building up ititutions, but i think a safe assption assumption is thatf a golt finds itself fighting an insurgency you already hav problems of reg sy with the government and that' something we americans are ver reluctant to own up to. so infghanistan, we've got real problem wit interes alignment and tt's something that i think you're going to hear a lot more about in the next... in the coming year about whether or not the legitimacy the afghan gernment or the policies of the afghan government are helping or harmin our ierests in afghantan. >> rose: can we win th thing without...hat's the definitn of winning is creating a stae

govement that can keep the taliban from coming to power and establishing a safe refuge for inrnational terrorist organizatis, is it not? that's what youaid earlier >> you just described the means. i deribe the ends a being that afghanistans an enviroent that's inhospitable towards tnsnational terror groups tha are seeking to either stabilize pakistan or plot attacks against the united states. now, when we went into afghistan, those were our ends. we decided that an approprie mes would be building up a strong ghan government. at some point, we started to confuse the ds with the mea and think whas going to happen or the next year is we're going start thking seriouy about how we can ensure that arthe ends are met regardless of those means. and that's going to be tough lculus that's going to hav to take place in washington and the allied capitalsand it's also going to take a really strong political straty after the afghan elections >> ros give me the issue that

yothink should be used as a asuring stick one year from now in july or august of 20. >> i think we can loo at certain metrs inafghanistan to gauge progress. i think a good time to gauge progre in afghanistan will be about august of 2010. at that point we very much el and think the command group in afanistan very feels that th're going to have to demonstrate some sort of progress othe ground in afghanistan. because justifiably the policymakers in washington and the otherllied capita are going to start wondering w exactly we're i afghastan and questioning e strategy. so i think some metrics that are going to be approprie in afanistan is to look at, for example, to what degree a we precting the afghan civilian population? inhe past, we he lked at eny body count as a metricf success. maybe we've looked at significantctivities against the u.s. and lied troops. but wenow thatviolence is

going to gop, at least in the near term. i think the estions that we need to k are to whategree are we going toe able to protect the people of afghanistan? do we see civilian body cots falling? do w see incidents whery civilians are kille do we see those falling? thosare good short term metrix when you start looking at other useful metrix i think we ed to startooking at the afghan nationalecurity forces. the a.n.s.f. really are kind of our mmit stratyfor ghanistan. both t afghan national army and the afghan national polic and weeed toook at those not just in terms of how many police wee trained or howany army people we' trained but we need to look at the perspecve of how effective they aren the battfield. looka metric does not he to be quantitative assessmen if youook at... when we measure a unit readiness in the united states military, we use quantitative assessments we u things like manni percentage

but we also use qualitative assessments, we a how go they are a certainasks. and we make those same assessmes with the afgha national army. so i think when you loo at gauging ccess a year from now, i'd look at two ings, afghan civilian casualties and how ch succs we've had fielding capable its within thefghan national army d the afgn national pole. >>ose: and the consequences of faile? >> i think t consequences of failure... i wt to sketchut what defeat looks like. >> rose: right. >> defea the fall of kandahar, e fall of kul, it's not going to loolike the taliban rolling down t streets tanks. what it will look le is a steady campaign of fear and intimidaon that renders a city like kandahar completely inhos pit believe the government in afghanistan. it looks like radal mullahs sulanting moderate mullahs in the city of kandah. and it looks like this campaign of fear and intimidatn

basicalldoing to kandahar what we wish to do to kandahar for the enemy. in other wds, making it inhospitable forhe government of afghanistan toperate. and at tha point, then youl start seeing.. you'll start seeing areas of afghanistathat e essentily lawless, that w cat go into evenwith mitary rce and you'll start sing safe havens start to devel. that's a good example thatour strategy isailing. i don't think it'soing to happen anyime in the nr future, again. afghanistan is not about to fall to the tiban. but the problem is that, again, in counterinsurgencyif you're not winning you're losg. i think if you look at afghanistan, tre's a lot o reason to be peimistic, to be ry ser minded when looking at it. but on the other hand, i tnk a properly resourced strategy, especially one tha builds capacityithin the afgha governnt, has a chance of success. but this is the 11thhour. at this point we can't do anythingn afghistan that

does not build capacity in the afghan government anin its institutions. >> rose: can we do it without a change in the poly and tactics of the pakistani army? >> in order to be successful in afghanistan we havto see a destructioor reduction of saf havens acrosthe boarder in kistan. as y pointed outn your introduction, thus farthe pakistani military has shown willingness to go after wha thperceive as existential threats to their state. but we also need to see a reduction in safe havens of ansnational groups that are attackininto afghanistan and by transnational groups, i don't necessary mean alaeda, but the etta shura taliban these groups that c stage in pakistan and canperate in afghanistan,. so, yes we, we needto seeome vement in pistan. i do nothink we can be successful if we do not reduce

at t very least t safe havens in pakistan the degre to which we need to reduce those safe havens, i think is a question that i don't have the answer to. i think that's a question for thentelligence community. rose: and finly thers this,you mesed appomattox courouse where general lee surrendered to geral ulysses s. gnt. you ve suggested tt mccrystal may be lee grant. which is he? it's tempting to call him grant in n tt he is a gener th finally an illinois lawyer turned president has stled upon to win his victory. but on t other hand, struck reading shelby foote's htory of the civil war and he talks about grant marchin north into second invasion of e north.... rose: lee? lee mahing north? >> i'morry. lee marching north into pennsylvaniaith the stars d their courses slidg against him. and it's tempting to see a little bit of bothhen in mccrystal. i think that he is a dedicated

an talented wt point product with alittering mitary repution. sobody that ideeply peonallydmire. but i very much know that, like ther grant at cttanooga or lee in gettysburg, he definity has the odds stacked ainst him. whether hean be successful as grt or whether thestates are conspiring against h like lee remains to be en. i wish i knew the answer to you question because i thin it would save us a lot of ti. >> re: andrew, thank you for joining us, pleasure to haveou on the broadca. >> yes, sir, tnk you, sir. >> rose: we' be right back. wel talk to russ douthat, he's the new 29-year-old columnist in for the "new yk times." back in a moment. >> ros ross douthat is here, he joined the "new york tes" op-ed ge this spng.

coming its youngest lumnist inver at the age of 29years d. he was formerly a senior edir and blogger at the aantic magazine. he's the co-author of the book "the grand new party, h republicancan win theorking class ansave the amerin drm." i am pleased toave him at this stable for the rst time. welcome. >> thank you. >> rose: we'll talk about the ok first then isss i potics. in the rublican party can win the working class like ronald reagan won the workinglass-- so-called reagan democrats-- >> right. >> rose: they can be an ascendant? >> they can, y. >> rose: what they have to do to win the wking class? >> they ve to do basically the same thing that they did in the 1970s andarly 1980s when reagan won the working class. which is to s they nd to ha an agenda and especially domeic policy agenda that focused the particular ises that rlly hit home for middle erica.

you look back to the... i guess we can call it the original republican majority, because whatever republin majority existin the futureit will havto be a newne. at majority was builtn a very ecific set issues that won voters away from t democratic party, voters who ha been democratic voters all the way backo f.d.r.nd through truman and through l.b. and those were issues like crime the soaring crime rates of the late '60s through the '70s and '80s tha it seem like the democraticarty and the leral establhment didn't havan answer for >> rose: they us to argue the democratwere soft on crime >> theargued theemocrats were soft on crime and frankly i think they argued it ptty effectely and accately. so there was the crime issue. it was a big issue. there was the taxation iss. people look back on the '70s and '80s, especially labor rales lookack and say "well, nald reagan came into offic and offered tax cuts f the rich." but if you look at the packages

of tax cuts that reaganffered, they were tax ts for everybody and they were tax cu particular for middle and working class america. the average federal tax burden for a mian incomefamily of four in 1979 and 1980 w 12% and 20 years later it was dow to 6%. that was part of how the republic party won those voters. thenou obviously had t issues that everybody remembers, national security, the soviet threat, the perception th the democrat party was weak i foreign affairs and so on. >> rose: thos seems tome like an argumemade against mcgovern. th was the way they characterized mcgovernemocrats they're so on crime, weak on national security, they're... >> tax-a-spend liberals. >> ros all those old guments exactly at you are saying, in fact, youbelieve aboutarack obama. >> those. i mean, those are arguments that republicansre ing against barac obama. >> rose:will they sck?

>> well,hey'll stick if barack obama proves himself a tax-and-spend liberal. i mean, is is the interesting thing. we wrote this book in 26 and 2007 before rack obama w the presidency, before a new democrat majority aeared. and so the arguments in the book were pegged tohe polical landscape at that moment. and that was theandscape in which replicans had run out of things to say to the working class. becausthe worki class, their taxes had been cut, crime was low, the soviet ion no longer exisd, they wereoncerned out issues like health care and education andhese were plac where the republicans hadn't found a message. so part of the argument in our book is what should the republican msage be onhose issues? but since the book came out,f cose, barack obama has swept back into power and...wept into power and for a lot of people on the right and increasingly for lot of people in the country as a whole, it looks like we'r aually going to have a reay of the debates of the late '70s and early '80s.

in a way this is, though, a problem forepublicans because it means that in a sense they could potentially win elections in 2010 and 2012 simply by rerunning the messages of the early '80s becse they'll ve barack oma as a foil. the trouble is once happens to republicanonce they get back into government? they'll be back in the same posion they were in in 2004 and 2005 wre voters will say "oka we voted for you because barack obama spentoo much money, raisedour taxesnd so on." but the problem that we elected barack oba to deal with still exist. the problem of hlth care accessn america, the probl of heah care affordability. >> rose: so at happens if barack obama passe health care form? what happe if the ecomy turns around? what hpens ifin fact, the spending of the moneyslows down because the stimulus gets the economic growth ra up? >> well, then repubcans will lose. >> rose: (laughs) >> and they'll lose for a long time. >> rose: i want to double back througyour biography to a question about the president, some of the thgs that you

speak abt in terms of america. whe are you born? >> s francisco, actually. >> rose: and made your way... your parents were... >> my mother was from maine, my father was from soutrn california and i grew upn connecticut. >> rose: and then went to harvard? >> then went to harvard. >> rose: and while the wrote a book neathe end of your... >> wrote it after i graduated. so i graduat in 22 and the book came ou in 2005. and it was a book about... it was about, basically, undergraduatexperience in elite academia. >> rose:hat did you argue? >> i argued... well, it's interesting. i argued that basically in... and th was the late 1990 and eay 2000 at harvard, so it was mostly pre-91 and certainly before the bursting of the financial bubble. but irgued that basical you had a situati wher the modern university embodies theorst of the left and the right alike. so it was... on the one hand it

was a universi run by aort of grasping money conscious stat conscious admintration that was spendin... >> rose:administration or fact you will any >> admistration. it's an... i mean a place like harvard intensely coorate when i was there, intensely focused on fund-raising intensel focused onqueezing everyast cent out of donors and building its global branand so on. and at the same te, in sfwernl campus polits-- andspecially the fapl usty-- yohave the wackins and madness of the american far left. so you have is oddsymbiosis tween aar-left faculty and a very corporate sort of... >> rose: establishment? >> establishment rockeller republican admistration. >> rose: like larry summers? >> well, larry summers as president was the embodiment of technically a leral democrat but clearly a sort of centrist

business-fused heavily focud on making harvard ar scncecentric institution, buying up huge tracks of land for future camses ando on. >> rose: and what's wrongith althat? >> well, a couple things. >> rose: making harvard a science-centric institutio what wrong with that? saying look,science is the ture and we want to build a great univsity that makes sure we're a leader in scien. >> i would say there's nothing wrong wi a great uversity focusingn science but i think larry summers came into harrd anhe said "look--" i may misqte this line slightly but he sd something like"somebody woulbe ashamed to he gram waitd fromarvard without ving read the works of william shakespeare, buthey wouldn't be ashamed to gradua without knowing the structu of d.n.a. " i'm pretty sure that that's not true. i think pnty of people graduated from harvard withou readg the works of shakespeare or knowing the structure of d.n.a. >> rose: (laugh speak for yoursel >> well, i mean, i think focus on science ignored the ft that the sort of... both the

coorate side in the admistration and the sort of left wing politiced side and the falty hand left places like harvard incapable o really ofring a humistic liberal arts education which has to be the focus of anndergroj watt institution. now, harvard is a research university, you're gng to have scientific laborators and fanttic research facities but l of that meant tt the university when i wathere was neglecting what shld be its core comtency, as they'd say in larry summer's... you know in the cporate boardroom. and that iproviding libal arts education t other thg... but the you see this in the last few years and actually theast sixonths at the corporatefund raising side o harvard,ike the corporate money-mang side of all kis of american businesse nt way out of contl tn crashed. now haard can barely afford...

they're cutting hot meals at breakfast, cutting shovel service,utting salaries, firing people. >> ros so are you happy you went to harvard? >> absutely. >> rose: what was the value of your edge declation? what did you learn there? >> i think i learned. you know the are a lot of thin that i learned, but i thinkhe most important ing that harvard delivers is an education in the ways and aitudes and values of the erican elite and i think i have a better uerstanding of how america is run and howhe people who run ameca and run our corpotions and run our government.. >> rose: is tt what you got ouof harvard? how the american elite thinks? >> i think that's th most important thina harvard education delivers right now i also rd theworks of shakpeare and learned about the structure d.n.a. >> rose:as thiskind of a god d man at yaleook for you? >> in a sense. i think buckley was "god and man at yale." he reallyad a specific... he had a very specific point to make which was that. and this was inhe ear 1950s and he was argug that yale th still

officily a chrtian university w on theone hand coming anti-chriian and on the other hand was pmoting coectivist if not to say communist values. so buckley's book was aclarion call, a defense of... yale is a chriian institution and a defense of capitalism. my bk wasore.... >> ros in fact he went right to the heart onone particular sue of a universit that he loved in a state what he loved >> absolutely. bui think what i wasrying-- hopefully sem successfully--o doomething a littleit more socialogical andook at the everydayife of sdents and what that meansfor the american elite as a whole. >> re: let's talk about america then. you went on and end up at "atlantic", wantinto a journalist? wanting to ba writer? wanting to be wh? >> wanting to be a writer, y, and a journalist. >> rose: but writer first in a sense. nting to write books and things, not necessarily wantin to rept on the news. >> not. i mean, well, was... i wked at the atlantic. i cameo the atlant in

2002/23 as aesearcher in the washington office. the magazine was then i boston and later moved down. and experience there end up being on the one hand a an editor of ort and eventuay lo magazine features. and on the oth hand a political writ, opinion writ in washingn, d.c. so i did do some reporti, but my fos has always been... at the alt lann tick it was a combination of editingong form work and ing... i ded up as a bgger on theagazine web site and doing pundit tr, i guess you could sa >> rose: (ughs) yes. a lot of peopspire to that. how d the "new yorkçimes" get terestd? : they... well, they got in touch with me... what is it, now? it's july. theyot in touch with me during the winter. >> rose:hey? who calledou on somethi like that? >> well, i met with ay rosenthal and david ship by,

beth etors on the op-ed and editorial page. and then we lked and a month or so later we talked ain. >> rose: is there some sapphire chair tha bill kristol a now you inheritd? ishat the way it goes? the same way... a foreign picy chair that freedman now occupys? >> i'm trying not to think abo that way. and i ink that ey... certainly my editors are very resistt to thinki about it that way, at there's a conservative slot at t "times." you know, ihinkunquestionably iffer a se of political opinns somewhat different from the restf my colleues on the page but i don't think th that's... don't think it's healt certainly for me as a writer to just thi of myself as sort ... i am sitting, though, in at used to be lliam safire's library, thewalls are lined with vocabulary book, dictionaries, the oxfordenglish dictionary from 1827. >> rose: erything you can know about wos and lguages. >> right, so safire's shaw is

hanging over me in that see. >> rose: america today andhe estion of our demographics and the question o our ethnicity. texas, california, at some poin soon-- inotalready-- will ha a minority majity. >> right. although what at means.. what it means to say w have a majority of minorities an interesting... it's an intereing question. ist even meaningful use the term. rose: what doesinority jority mean? >> a minority majoritunder the census bureau's definitio means that by the year... i think it's 20, americanajority of amerans will be clasfied as non-whe, they will be black they wilbe hispanic, east asian, south asian, american inan, so on. >>ose: that's theroblem i think... what do i know? (laughs) >> qui a bit, imagine. >> rose: that's th problem with the republican pty. >>hat's a big b with the republican party. >> rose: you have look at where th political rlity of the country is. >> absolutely. >> rose: in terms of where the trending is and say "how do i

speak the aspiratio of those people? how do i bring them witn my vion? how do i incorporate their vision >> no, d it goes beyond hnicity. the biggest long-term problem for the republan party right now that all of theemographics that it's strongest i are shrinkg and it's not jus it's strongest among whes, what t white population is shrinking it's strongt among white chriians, the white christian population is shrinking. it's rongest among white christian maied couples. the numb of americans who are married has en steadily shrinking for several cades and e two-parent family is in decline. so across all of ose catory it is repuican party is in trouble. d one of the big questions facing thearty is whe do you get the votes in ten years? where dough do youet the votes in0 years. here i thinkeorge bushnd karl rove-- we were talking about thembefore-- were absolutely right. the party has to be able to win. itertainly has to be able to win a lae number of hispanic

votes. it even has to be able t win black votes. and they wereable to do that temparyfully 2004. thtrouble is they were able to do that in ws that i don't think you canranslate in the ng run. i me they were able to win black votes especiallyver the ise of gay marriage and in that issue i think in theong run, whatever happen legally it's not going to be aing issue for republicans. >> rose: they we able tin because they got more their people out than th other pty di >>ut bush also won aarger share of the hispanic vote, for instance, than johnccain did by far. but some of that alsohad to d with the housing vote. >> don: d he win a larger percentage of the hispan vote than john kerry? >> no. he did not. but yodon't have to. i mean, this is... this is where the numbers... iyou're a republican, you don'have to n 51% of the hisnic vote, you just c't win 20%. u have toin 35%, 40%. >> rose: what did the sotomayor confirmationearings say to you when you watched them? >> the hearings themsels

thindidn't say... they didn't say very much. >> rose:laughs) "you're wasting many i tim" >> they id u're wasting my time. there were a lot ofynamics going on. so one dynic is that clearly the confiationhearing has become intsely boring beuse nominees are coached to say absolutely nhing that's controversy. and with each nomination the number of contrersial statements has goneown and down and down. and sotoyor, if you took her comments, she sounded le she uld be a conservative jurist. now, we know that's not what she is. but republics would say do you think judges shou just appl the law, never brg their personal feelings into it and she said "absolutely, justapply e law." that'slearly not the ovell vision of liberal risprudence anit's not the kd of judge she's going to be. >> rose: doou think that most judges don't someh have deep in their d.n.a.heir life experiences? even though they don't acknowledge , it comes toplay how they see th law? >> of course i does. i think qution, though, is to what exten do you then rn

thatnto a theory? oro whatxtent does it remain in the bkground? >> roshe architecture for w which you ok at the decision. >> do y enter a decision saying "i'm aware that my personal backgund biases me in thisway" and so on. "but i have an overarchin thry of the constitution that i'going to a. the to apply." or does your orarching tory take into accou exicitly ur backgrnd, the ide that, you knowbarack obama hassaid we want judges... want judges to ere onhe side of compsion. ere on t side of empathy and so on. and that makes a big difference many the decisions that peopl make. >> rose: d you think that you could look the decions of judge scaliaand say anything that y might imagine abo his religious beliefs and life? >> well, scalia would sayo. rose: but... >> well, and he's been very. for instance, on the issue of the ath penalty ere, you know, th last two popes

especially haveovedatholic teaching on thdeath penalty towarda more pro-abolition anti-dea penalty. scia has exprison it isly.... >> rose: against the dea penalty and agast abortion. >> right. but scalia has specificay said on the dea penalty what the pope says does n bear onmy reading of the law. but also o abortion scalia has sa... scalia's clearly pro-life ande's clearlyn favor of oveurning "roe v. wa." but i don't think scalia wld rule... woul.. heouldn't ruleo ban abortio because hewould say "i'm gog to ve toverturn "roe v. de" because i think it's a clear minterpretation of the constitution. there's no implicit orexplicit ght to an abortion in the constitution. and then leave it to the legislature decide what to do. now, thi doesn't mean... y knowi think if y go tough scalia'secisions,'m sure you' find cases where it seems like his personal biases are puing his theory inone direction or another. but that' always going toe true

>> re: you were not born a catholic. >> i was not. rose: you became a catholic >> i bame aatholic. >> rose: where do you differ with the church? on who dorsch? on abortion? on the death pelty? where where? >> i try t to differ on the church with w a general rule. rose: what the f you do. >> well, there are endss and complicated debes over where catholics are supposed to defer to the church a wherehey're not and you saw this with the pope's encyclical which itust came out and i was focused on the global economy, t environment, labor law and so on catas inveratite. as a convert, i nevelearned e tin. there that churchlatin. romans would have pronoued it differently. so there are various gy areas where ofcially catholics are bound fol he the pop' teaching on tters of faith and morals but youet into questions of what is a matter of faith and morals and the line ts blurry, i think in

political terms, especially on economic isss. and you have sorof this endlesback and forth bween liberal d conservative catholics over the pope wi say something that i interpreted to support a left wing positionnd consertive catholics will say "that's not a tter of faith anmorals." and i don'have... i mean, i guess mynstinct on tho issuesis i don't... i don't have a certain view on exactly where th line is. i ink catholics owe the papacy a certain kind of def ns even when they don' owe it plicit agreement. rose: the papacy? >> t papacy. the pope. yes. the chair of st. per. >> rose: (ughs) >> which i to say i the pope makes a pronounceme and you'r not ear on whether you're bod by it or n, you don't have to me out and say "i'm absotely bound by it" but you ve to take it seriousl you haveo digest i and reckon th it and so on. but that's rt of a me you

mouth answer, i suppose. >> rose: (laughs) ... mealy mouthnswer, i suppose. supreme court confirmation hearing where i'll deny that... i'llay i'll resign from the "new york tis" op-e page. it was kennedy, right? keedy said "i'll resign the presidency if there's ever a conflict between my duties as a catholic and my duties president of the united stat." >> rose: he bically said "i don't tell the church wha to do and they wl not tell me what to do." this is at somebody wrote about you. you are a late 20s blic inllectual with a ssibility a -year-old the range of hitchens andhe pageof a.j. ylor the histori, the cocience of lber and the tellectual hones of andrew sullivan. >> rose: who said that? i don't know. but i got it! (laughs) >> wow, i ed to take them out to lunch. >> rose: (laughs) yes, indeedou do. it was probabl one person. >> pbably. >> rose: you'ddo good taking all of those peopleut to lunch. anyw, congratulations. i hope you'll co back and you're... >> i hope you'll have m back.

i really appreciate it. >> rose: and continued success at the "new york times." >> thankou, charlie. >> rose: this book is"the grand new party david brooks, a favite of mine asverybody knows said "if i cod put one book on the desk of every publican office holder grand n party wod be it. the best single road map o ere the party should and is likely to head. grand new party. ross dthat. ank you for joining us. see you next time. captioning sponsored by rose communicatis caioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.or

ed mapgrew up going to t movies. i think back on childhood and remember how imrtant movies were to me. at that me, it was the only way see the outside world. ed decidedo be a professor - an expert on the impact ofhe media. toy you have television. peop have at least one tv setin. whatever messages comi on that screen is being extended to the ente family. now that's esome. it can be fecting our country and lture for years to come. that's onef the reasons why public televisiois so important, because it does assy ed includehis public television staon in his will. consideroining the community ofeople who want public television to span generations.