>> rose: wcome to the broaast. tonight we te a look at afghan stragy with andrew exum. was in afghanistanor a moh helping genal stanley mccrystal with his asssment of the war effort and his recommendation foto-the american learship. >> if you ok at afgnistan, there's a lot of rson to be pessimisti to be very sober minded when lking at it, but the other hand, i think a properly resrced strategy especial one that builds capacity within the afghan government h a chance of suess. but this is the 11th hour. athis point,e can't do anything in afghanista that does not build capacity the afghan... in the afghan government andn its institutions. ment. >> rose: we continue this evening with the "new york times" youngest and newest columnist , he was ross

douthat. >> the biggestong-term problem for the republican party right now is tha all of the demographics that 's strongest in are shrunking an it'sot just it's strongest amo white, the white pulation i this ringing. it'strongest amongwhite christians the white christian population is shrinking it's strgest among white christian married couples. the number of americans who are married habeen steadily shrinking foreveral decades the two-parent family isin decline. across all of tho categoryt republican party is in trouble and one ofhe big questionfacing the party is whe do you get the votes in ten years? >> rose: exum anddouthat next.

captioning snsored by ro communications fr our studios in new york city, this is chare rose. >> rose: we begin tonighwith afghanistan and the questi of rategy. wh should be ourtrategy there? or, as some sa, shoulde be there at all if thingson't work out? secretary defense robert gates recently marked next summer as a possib cutoff point fo progss. he said "afte the iqi experience, nobods prepareto have a longslog. others have askedhether ghanistan is tal to our national secury interests. "new york times" cumnist in tom freedm visitinghe region recently asked if tion building in afghanistan

really a good u of america power. anwhile, the ongoi u.-led offense into the helmand province has led to a spike in coalition caalties. july will be the deadliest nth for u.s. and british tops sie the insion in twaun. the top commandeon the ground, general stanl mccrystalas made ptecting ahan civilians a key component of his emerging strategy. he expected to complet a 60-day assessment ofhe war before the endf augu. joining merom washington is andrew exum of the center for new american security. he's a form u.s. ay rang with trs in iraq a afghistan. he's working on a doctorate of militias and insurgentin the middle east and h spes arabic. his counterinsurgency blog is widely red and respected. he's just returned fro ghanistan where he waselping with general mrystal's strategyeview. i'm pleased to ha him back on is program. welcome. thank you.

how many assesents are takin ace now? because we hadne in washington we have general mccryal... secretary gates. what answers arehey looking for? >> there have been quite a few just in thisast year. actuallythe way the assessment process has worked since obama's come to officeis actually been pretty coherently... been pretty cohere. one of the things you want to do is set your policy first, then move down to strate and then start looking at operations and tactics that are going to be most aropriate for executing that strategy. that's pret much wt's taking place. so in february an march you s the esident lead a policy review in afghanistan at which pot he set his policy, outlined some stregic goals and then when generccrystal took charge in afgnistan, his review was to lk at our ongoing straty, lookt our erations on the ground, and then try to tch theesources to the president's strategic

gos and also toanswer some of e questionsthat the preside haposed. >> rose: oy, telle what the present said the policy ought toe? >> sure. at this stage, the policys pretty clear, as are u.s. interests in afghanist. right now,he u.s. interests are twofold, basically. on that afghastan is n used as a se haven for transnatnal terror groups to plot attks against the united states that's mos obvious. and thenecond, that afghanistan not be used as a sa haven for the destabilizion of pakistan. so tho are the two vit u.s. interests thatre in afghanistan. the preside's strategys aimed athe rmer interests mainly to ense those tra regionsstraddling afghanistan and pakistan. keep in mind, when the psident does his strategyhe can look at theñr region whenhe commander does his rategy, he' limited towards justooking at afghanistan. but the presint's strategy and the preside's policy aims were to deny al qaeda and other

transnatiol terror groups the use of those tribal areas that straddle the line between afghanistan and pakistan. >> rose: so her you wou define winning as? >> the denl of enemy his objectiv so in that case wt we're trying to do ise're trying to create some sort o lasting situatn in ahanistan wheby afghanistan is inhospitle and is n able to be used by al qaeda t plot attackagainst the unid states. >> re: you and others have said there are lots o problems over there in doing this. i thk general praeus has said we've bn losing the war over the last year or two. the problemre the talib is growing stronger, the is corruption in the government. there is i a sense no governmeal structure that you can use. pakistan is a safe hav and pakian seems so far tohave no interest in eendingits

campaigngainst domestic taliban to those in afghanistan. >> i think that's a pretty fair reading of the situation. what i want to stss though is at when we oked at the probm set of afghanistan, firsoff there were a couple thin that alarmed us. the first thing is how it will well know afr being there for eighyears. i stl don't feel that we have a close enough derstanding of afghanistan, its peoples, the dieynamics. we're veryood at focusing on the enemybut wre not too good at mapping social networks, trying to figure out w different tribe interact, how litical figures interac. the second tng that disturbed us... the go news is that the taliban or a of these enemy groups in afghanistan, although they are getting stronger, we don'see them... they're not going to tak over the country any time soon. theyon't present an immediate existential threato the governnt offghanistan.

the problem , at this stage, the legitimacy of the government of afghanistan is most as b a threat to mission success in afghanistan and to ournterests in afghanistanas is the taliban or the ha canny netwo or any of these insurgent groups. >> tell me about the group you went witto be part of this one month strategy. >> sure, when general petraeus took over in iraq in 2007, one of theirst things he did is he put together a teamf some outside think tank folks, some smart militar officers some foreigservicefficers, people from bh inside and outside the government and he basically gave them free rein to look at the mission in iq, identify what we were trying t do and then identify how we need get to thos goals. or get to those ends. in afghanistan, general mccrysl basically took that same modeland brought agroup of outside folks-- some lks from washington and europe-- to

look athe ongoing operations in afghanistan and really to again, awer thosesame questions first off, what are we trying t do here? second, in lightf the mission we'vbeen given by the nato secretary general and e president of t united states, can we accomplish our mission. second off what doe need to do differently? third, do we need any mo resourceor are we fine th th resources that we have, can we use them me intelligently? so imagine this is a way that some your viewers will be able to relate to. imagine bringing in a am of management consultants to loo at yr business and lk at the way you'r doing buness. soft the group of people wer a mix of mitary officers, civilian gernment officials from u.s. aid, from the ate dertment as well as some outside think tank lks like me who don't have equity, so to speak, in anof the bureaucracies d hopefully can say me things that are a little bit ouide the box or i can speak freely without worry about my own burearacy

inuencing them in a way that i give my advice. >> rose: one pern there w anthonycortisman who said there's not enough mon, not enough tros, there's not enou arming of the afghans and failure is real possibity. >> yeah, think thatony's assessments... i thk tony's assessme is bleak, but i think it's something that pple need to hear. we still tal about the war in afghanistan. wealk about brides in afghanistathe way we talk aboutdivisions in ir. even though talk abt afghanistan beinthe primary effort o the united states road right now, it hasn't gott nearly the amount of attention that, sa, for instance, the war in iraq has. i think what bothers tony and i sharehis concerns that if we think abou couerinsurgency, we think about clear, hold, and build. this three-step opation that we talked a lot about starting in iraq inbout 2005. we can clear but how exactly we hold and build nobody was really able to explain how exactly w

can do tha because, aga, as tony has poind out, wedon't have enough afghan national security forces a it's very... i still ha yet ... no one has been ablto explain to me exactly how a surgen civilian capacity wl work, eher. sohe situation, ihink, is as bleak as tony put it, but, again, i want to stress that kabul is n going to fall tomorrow. kandahar is t going to fall tomorr to the taliban. but have to think really hard over the nex 1 mths about how we're going to reverse this mentum. in old pase in coterinsurgency operations is if you're not winning, you're losing. in aition, momentu matters. so i tnk we owe ito the american people anthe voting populous of wtern europe and stralia and the other coributing nations ectly how we're ing to turn this ship around. cause, again, we do not have an inexhaustib line of resoces and we have to think very carefully about how we use the resources when we commit them int a dangerous environment like afghanistan.

>> re: share us your assement of the nature of afghanistan period. in terms of the narcotics traffic, in tms of cruption in the governme, in tms of the power of tribes, in terms of what mak it unique and erefore different and erefore challenging. >> yeah. i think afghastan on thene hand we' made ts mtake over t past few years we've looked at afghanist as really four serate battles sowe've divid it up into different regionalommands and we've kindf parceled afghanistan up and we've foht in thets components andot necessarily as a ole. on the other hand, you do have to admit thathe war afanistan, the dynamics o ghanistan really diffe dependinon where you are. so the iurgency, for example looks a lot different in the northeast of afghanistan than it does in the south in the southhere you'rfacing the quetta shura taliban, gups of disaffted pashtun more or less have some sort of centralized authority

structures. the insurgency loo a lot differt than it does in the northet where it tends to be more localized. and it's about local grievances and it'sot so much... you can't reay trust a l of the conventional wism about the surgency being merely directed fr pakistan. so the nature of the fight differs really not just from region t region but pvince to province dtrict to district. and in many ses from valley to valley. with respect to. with respect to the government, o of the things we found is thathe afghan people a--o surprise to anyone who's read the newspaper-- are quite disaffected withheir government. after eit years of this war, it's very tough to see governance at theocal level with veryew exceptions. so if you go into a remote are of afghanistan there'sno visibity fromhe government of afghanist. by contrast... to make matters worse, rather, there's a perception that the govement

of afghanist is incredibly corrupt. so what we've seen the south for exame, is the talibanake advantage of this perception of corruption. so they'll send only buds me in the south and they'll ask people, the s "so assess your shadow governor in the southf afghanistan? what type of job is he doing? we're interested in you feedck." and e significant thing there is tt the taliban is directly challenging the vernment of afghanisn where it knows it's at its weakest and that's a perception of corruption and a perception tt the few are gettinwealthy at the extense of the many. an there's a rl problemin afghanistan with reect to the perceived power regiona power brokers a their corruption. now, how that all plays int the drug trade, is significa. t i think maybe it's a little overplayed. there's a lot o criminality in the south, and it's not st drugs. it's the expropriation of land by powerfulndividuals, it's the monopolyon certain job,

use of the government as patronage systems. so we've got a real probl with goveance in afghanistan all levels. there's some encouraging signs, there's some money iustries in afghanistan that work wh we look at certain initutions. there's rean to be confident that we e on thight track with the afghan national my. >> rose: is everythg you just said a clear indictment of wh the strategy has bee over the last three o four years? >> yeah, i tnk so. i mean, sategy is tw things. first, you need thre things, really. you ne a strategy, you need leadership and you nd resources. and you think that afghanisn has suffer for all three of those thgs over the st few years. first of the war in ira enormously distracted n just our tention but really our resources away fromhe warn afghanistan. afanistan was by public admission economy of force mission. no that's fine asong as the enemy doest get a vo. but the enemy has en able to takedvantage of o neglect of afghantan over the past five,

six years. and they've used that towage... we talk abouthis fighting season in afghanistan, but that's a misnomer. th taliban is also conducting... mean, they don't have a fighng season. they may have a seaso where they shoot at us more often than other seons, but duringthe winter when they' not shootg at u they're mor often than not pursng a silent war, a campaign of ar and intimidation invulnerable communities in afghanistan. we've done a terrible job protecting those communities. so we haven had the resources to do it, we hav't had an effective strategy and until quite rently we haven't ha leadershipn afghanistan that's really been able to take control of this situation. that's not an indictment of general mckiernan o, by all accounts, was a highl compett commder and just personal spking as a former army officer i think it was dishearting the way he was dismissed,s big as fan as i am of general mccrystal. but, again, it's strategy, it's resoces and it's leadership

and we haven't h all three in afghanistan until que recent and there' hope that we can turn this around but, quite honely, it's qui late in the game. >> rose: okay. let's talk about learship for the secon the weekend all street journa had a piece called "class of generals: the cadets of 1976 gduated from west point at a low moment for the army in it storied training ground but that year proced the generalrunning the naon's wars in iraqnd ghanistan as well as their k deputies therore you talk about in the class of '76 at west pnt, ierno, now the t officer in iraq. you talk fra gupter leading efforts to train u.s. troops. vid bar know, retired top commander afghanian and escially stanley allen mccrystal top ofcer in afghantan and his principal puty david mitchell rodriguez, all partf the same class at. so telle about general mccrysta and generalodriques who,n fact, what are theew

leadership about. >> rose: the west point class of 1976 as a disclaer, i amot a west point aduate. that article is written b one of mclassmates at the university of pennsylvaa. but the west point class of 1976 i think produced 30 general officers, pretty astounding number. and not just 30 general officers who crashed t at the one-star rank, bugeneral officers who have ge on to do someretty incredible this. myirst encounter with gener mccrystal wass aoung officer in the 75thanger regiment and in a lot of ways he's always beenind of alarger-than-life figure. he's somebody that... it's unbelievle how much time he ent as an officer in both the ranger regiment as well as in the special orations community. he ian offer who... it's not natural for him to talkabout all the things that he's done that are on his rume. all the time spent in these

ite units and in these elite special operations task forces. but when everybody ee is in a room and all t militar offirs in the room, everyone who's everorked for mccrystal, eryone who's in afghanista they're keenly aware of the kinds of things he'sone through his career. he's a remarkablman. i'm... i've been an admirer of him since i was a junior officer. i ink he's got a toughproblem t ahead of him. >> rose: andeneral rodriques? >> general rod kenshin kawakam is a for of nature. i think in lot ways hmay have a tgher mission than neral mccrystal. because the war ha been ught over the past f years as regional components. i think it's up to general rodruez to unify the w effort and ao to take that vision that general mccrystal has. and this is something tt general odiernoid reall well for general peteus in 2007. w take that commaer's vision

and speak quite bluntly cram it down the throatsf e subordinate commanders. general mccrystal has articulated a very challenging vision for wt he'd like to do in afghanistan. we are going to assume greater risk with respect to our force prottion. we are goi to get out there we're going to build relatiships with the afghan people and it's going to fallto neral rodriguez to try to realize at vision of general mccrystal's. >> rose: oy, but... go ahead. >> gohead. >> rose: no,ou finish, i'm sorr >> i have tremdous faith in those men bu it's goingo be a tough job they have ahead of them. >> rose: l's talk abou strategy and tactics. two things have comeut of this: you ll not kill your wa victory and body counts are out. ansecondly, cilians who... whose supporyou need, you cannotain that suprt if you're indiscrinate in your use of force so that therefore ere are too many civilian casualties. >> yeah.

one of t things that we've talked a lotbout is th if you look athese conflic, kind of the contemporary era, d this is whether you're talking abouthe united states in iraq, nato in afghastan, israel in souern lebanon, the laws of land wfare are gog allow you to do a lot of things. yo can.roportionnalty will allow you to do alot ofthings. but you may be technically correct and operationally ineffective and operationally stupid. inther words, you can do a lot that, while leg and whi permitted by the laws o land warfarwill nonetless make you erationally ineffective on the battlield. and the use of overwheing forcis one of those things. general mcystal will be the first people to tl you that if dropping bbs on compounds the taliban has sout refuge in, if that will help win the war,okay let's do i because these things e permitted under the law of land warfare if theseompounds are being used by foreign fightersby fighters as staging

areas or as fighting positions. but if you... i by dropping bombs on compounds you're also killing civians, in this enronment you're going to rend yourself operationally ineffecte pretty quick by doing at. and sohat we're talking about is the cultural change not just wiin the u.s.military but within the militaries of all those natis that are fightin in afanistan and trying to wean ourselves off this reliance on orwhelming fireper which, in theost-vietnam era and certainly the way that i was educated as a military ofcer at we were taught tha if you receive one round of 5.56 millimeter then you shld send 60 millimeterortars in retn. thatas kind of the arithmetic weere taught atthe infantry officebasic courseefore 9/11. but in the operational enviroents in iraq and afghanistan, kiing civilians actually pushes th goalposts fartheaway. rose: are our interests aligned th the intest of the afghanovernment? >> it's actually a fs

sumption thas present in u.s. counterinsurgen doctrine. we aricans when we pursue counteriurgency campaign wes do so normallys third parties in contras to, for example, the british who fought in northern ireland or e french from their perspective algea. when we, as americans, wage 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 >> youjust 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 lling? 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 sober minde 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 dre 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 argumentmade 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 willay "okay,e voted for you because barack obama spent o much money, raised r taxes a so on." but thes problems that we elected barack obamao deal with still exist. the problem of health care acss in america, the pblem ofealth care affordability >> rose:o what happens if barack obama pses health care reform? what hpens if theconomy turns around? what happens if, fact, the ending of the money ows down because the stimulus gets the economic growth ratep? >> well, then republins will lose. >> rose: (laughs) >> andhey'll lose for a long time. rose: i want to double back through ur biographyto a question abouthe president, some of the thin that you speak abouin terms of america.

wherare you born? >> sanrancisco, actually. >> rose: and made your way... your parents were... >> my motheras fromaine, my father was from southe california and i grew up i connecticut. rose: and then went to harvard? >> then went to harvard. >> rose: andhile there wrote a book near e end of your... >> irote it after i graduated. so i graduated in 200 and the book came out in 2005. and it was a book about... it was about, basically, undergraduate eerience in elite academia. >> rose: wt did yourgue? >> i argued... well, it's teresting. i argued that basicall in... anthis was the late 90s and early 2000 at harvard, so it was mostly pre-9/1 andertainly before the bursting of the financial bubble. but i aued that basically you had a situation where the modern university embodies the wst of the left and the right alike. so it was... onthe one hand it was a university run by a st

of graspingmoney conscious status conscious adminisation that was spending.. >> rose: ministration or fact you will any >> admintration. it's an... i mean a place like harvard intensely corpate when i was there, intensely focused fund-raising, intensely focused on seezing every lt cent out of donors and building its global brand d so on. and at the same tim,n sfwernl campus politic- and eecially the fapl usty-- you ve the wackinesand madness ofhe american far left. so you have th odd mbiosis beeen a f-leftaculty and a ry corporate sort of.... >> rose: establishment? >> establishment rockefeer republican admintration. >> rose: like larry summers? >> well, larry summers as president was the embodiment of technically a libal democrat but clearly a sort of centrist business-foced heavily focuse

on making harvard ar scieecentric institution, buying up huge tracks ofland for future campus and s on. >> rose: and what's wrong wh all at? >> well, a couple things. >> rose: making harvard a science-centric institution, what'srong with that? saying look, ience is the fure and we want to build a great univerty that makes sure 're a leader in science >> i would say there's nothing wrong with great unirsity focusing oscience but i think larry summers cameinto harva and said "look--" i may misquo this line slightly but he saisomething like omebody would ashamed to hav gram waitd from hvard without hang read the works of william shakespeare, but ty wouldn't be ashamed to graduate without knowing the structure of d.n.a. " i'm pretty sure that that's not true. i think pley of people graduated from harvard without readinthe works of shakespeare or knowing the structure of d.n.a. >> rose: (laughs) speak for yourself! >> well, i mean, think focus on science ignored the fac that the sort of... both the

corpate side in the adminiration and the sort of ft wing politiciz side and the facuy hand left places like harvard incapable of really offeng a humantic liberal arts educationhich has to be the focus of an uergroj watt institution. w, harvard is a research university, you're goi to have ientific laboratorie and fantasc research facilies but alof that meant tha the university when i was ere was neglecting what shou beits core compency, as they'd say in larryummer's... you know, in the corrate board om. and that is oviding a liber ts education the other thin.. but thenyou see this the last fewears and tually the lt six mths th the corporate nd raising side of harvard, le the corporate money-maki side of all kindof american businesses we way out of contro the crashed. now harvd can barely afford...

they're cutting hot meals at breakfast, cutting shovel service, cting salaries, firing people. >> rose:o are you happy you went toharvard? >> absolely. >> rose: what was the value of your edge declarion? what did you learnthere? >> i think i learned.. you know therare a lot of things that i learned, but i think t most important thg that harvard delivers is an education in the ways and attudes and values of the amican elite and i think i have a better undstanding of how america is run and how the people who run ameri and run our corporaons and run our government.. >> rose:s thawhat you got out harvard? how the american elite thinks? >> i think that's the most important ing a harvard education delivers rightow. i also rea the rks of shakesare and learned about the structure of.n.a. >> rose: w this nd of a god anman at yale bk for you? >> in a sense. think buckley was "god and man at yale." he really h a specific... he had a very specific pointo make which was that... and this was in t early 1950s and he was arguin that yale then still

official a chrisan university wasn the e hand beming anti-christn and on the other hand was proting colltivist if not to say communist values. so buckley'sook was a arion call, a defense of... yale is a christn institution and a defense of capitalism. my boowas me.... >> rose:n fact he went right to theeart on e particular ise of a university that he loved in a state whate loved. >> absolutely. but thinkhat i was ting-- hopefully semi successfully-- t do sething a little b more socialogical and lk at the everyday lef stunts and what that means r the american elite as a whole. >> ros let's talk about america then. you went on and end up at "atlantic", wanting a journalist? wanting to be writer? wanting to be what >> wanting to be a writer, yes, and a journalist. >> rose: but writer firstin a sense. waing to write books and things, not necessarily wanting to reporon the news. >> not.. i mean, well, i was... i word at the atlantic. i came t the atlanticn

2002/200as a rearcher in the shington office. e magazine was then in boston and later moved down. and my experience there ended up being on thene hand as an editor of sht and eventuall long magazine features. and on the other hand as a political writer, opinion writer in washingto d.c. so idid doome reporting but my focu has alwayseen... at the alt lann tick it was a combination of editing long form work a doing... i ended up as blogger on the magazine web site and doi punditri, i guess you coulsay. >> ros (laughs) yes. a lot of ople aspire to that. w did the "new yoç times" get interestd? : they... well, they got in touch with m.. what is it, now? it's jy. ey got in touch with me during the winter. >> rose: they? who caed you on somhing like that? >> well, i m with andy rosentl and david ship by, beth editors on the op-ed and

editorial page. and then we talked and a month or so later we talked aga. rose: is there some sapphire chair that bill kristol and now you inheritd? is tt the way it goes? the same way... aoreign poly chair that freedman now occupys? >> i'm trying not to think about ithat way. and i thk that th... certainly my editors are very resistanto thinking about it that way, th there's a conservative slot at the "times." you know, i tnk questionably i oer a set of political opinio somewhat different from the rest o my colleags on the page. but i don't think that that's... i n't think it's healthy certainly for me as a writer to just thinkf myself as sort of. i am sitting,hough, in what used to be william safire's library,he walls are lid with vocabulary oks, dictionaries, the oxford english dictionary fm 1827. >> ros everything you can know abouwords and languages. >> right, so safire'shadow is

hanging over me in thasense. >> rose: ameca today and the question of our demographics and the questi of our ethnicity. texas, california, at some int soon if not already-- will have a minorityajority. >> rig. although wt that mea... what it means to s we have a majority of minoritie is an interesting... it's an inresting question. is it even meaningfu to use the term. >> rose: what does minority majority mean? a minority majity under the census bureau's definion means that by the year... i think it's 2043, a american majority of ericans will be assified as nowhite, they will be black, theyill be hispac, ea asia south asi, americ indian, so . >> rose: that's the problem i think... what do know? (laughs) >>uite a bit, i imagine. >> rose: that'the problem with the republican party. >> that's a big bob with the republan party. >> rose: you he to look at wherthe political reality of the country is. >> absolutely. >> rose: in terms of where th trending is and say "how do i

spk to the aspirions of those people? how i bring themithin my vision? how do i incorporate their vion? >> no, and it goes beyd ethnicity. the bigges long-term problem for the reblican party right now that allof the demographics that it's strongest in are shnking and it's notust it's strongest amonwhites, what t white populaon is shrinng. it's stngest among white ristians, the white christi population is shrinkin it's strongest among white christiamarried couples the mber of americans w are married s been steadily shrinking r several decades d the two-parent family is in decline. so across all of thoseategory it is publican party in trouble. and one of the big questions facing the partyshere do you get the ves in ten years? where dough doou get the votes in 20 years. here i think george bush and rl rove-- we wer talking about them before-- were absolutely right. the party has to be able to win. it certainly has to able to win large number o hispanic votes.

it even has to be ab to win black votes. and they wer able to d that mporaryfully 2004. the trouble is they were abl to do that in ways that i don't think you can translate in t long run. mean they were abl to win black votes especily over the issue of gay marriage and in that issue i thin in the long n, whatever haens legally 's not going to be ng issue for republicans. >> rose: thewere able tin because they got more of their people out thathe other party did. >> but bush also w a larger sharof the hispanic te, for instance, than jn mccain did by far. but some of tha also d to do with the housing vote. >> d: did he win a larger percentage of the hianic vote than john kerry? >> no. he did not. buyou don't haveto... i mean, this is... this is where the numbers. if you're a republican, you n't have to win 51% of theispanic vote, you just can't win 2. you have to win 35% 40%. >> rose:what did the sotomayor confirmation hrings say to you when you watchedhem? >> theearings themselve i

think dn't say... they didn't say very much. >> rose: (ughs) "you're wasting many i time. >> they sa yoreasting my time. there were a lot of damics going on. one dynam is that clearly the confirmion aring has become intenly boring becae nominees are coached to say absolutely notng that's controversy. and with each nomination the number of controvsial statements has gone dn and down and down. and sotomar, if you took her comments, she sounded likshe cod be aconservative jurist. w, we know that's not what she is. but republican would say doyou ink judges should just apply the law, never brin their personal feelings into it and she said "absolutely,ust ply thlaw." that's carly not the overa vision of liberal jusprudence and 's not the kin of judge she's going to be. >> rose: d you think that most judges don't sehow have deep in their d.n.a. their le experiences? even though th don't acknowlee it, it comes play in how they seethe law? >> of cour it does. i thinquestion, though, is to what eent do you tn turn at into a theory?

or to what extent does it remain in the bacround? >> rose: t architecture for w which you lo at the decision. >> do you enter a decision saying "i'm aware that my personal backgrod biases me in this y" and so on. "but i have an overarching theo of the constitution that i'm ing to a. the to apply." or does your overching they take into account explitly yo backgrou, the idea that, you know, rack obama has id we want judges... we want judges to ere on t side of compason. ere on the side of empathy and so on. and that makes big difference many the decisions that people make. >> rose: do you think that you could look at the decisis of judge scalia d say anything that youight imagine about his ligious beliefs and life? >> well, scaliawould say n >>ose: but... >> well, and he's been very... for instance, on the issue of the deh penalty whe, you know, the last two popes

especially have med cholic teaching on the ath penalty towards more pro-abolition anti-deathenalty. scal has exprison it isly.... >> rose: against the death penalty and again abortion. >> right. but scalia has specificallsaid on the deathenalty what the pope says does not bear on reading of the law. but also on abortion scaliahas said. scalia's clearly pro-life and hs clearly i favor of overtning "roe v. wade but i don't think scalia wou rule... would. he wldn't rule t ban abortion. because he uld say "i'm goin to votto orturn "roe v. wa" because i thinkt's a clear misierpretation of the constitution. ere's no implicit or plicit rit to an abortion in the constitution. and then i leave it to the legislature to decide whatto do. now, this doesn't mean... you know, think if you go thrgh scalia's disions, i sure you'llind cases where it seems like his personal biases are pushg his theory in one direction or another. but tt's always going to be ue.

rose: you were not born catholic. >> i was not. >> rose: you became a cathic. >> i became a catholic. >> rose: where doou differ with the church? on who dorsc on abortion? on the deathpenalty? where where >> i try not to difr on the chch with w a general rule. >> rose: what the f you do. >> well, there arendless and complicatedebates over whe catholics are supposed to defer to the chur and where they're not and youaw this withhe pope's encyclical whic it just came out a it was focused on the global economy the environment, labo law and so on caritas inveratite. as a convert, i ver learned the latin. there at's church latin. romans would have prounced it differently. so there are vario gray areas wherofficially catholics a bod to fol he the p's teachingn matters of faith and morals but y get into questions of what is a matter of faith d morals and th line gets blurry, i think in

political terms, especially on economic issue and you have sort this endless ck and forth beten liberal an conservative catholics over the pope will say something that is interpretedo pport a left wing position a conservave catholics will say "that's not a maer of faith and rals." and i don't ve... i mean, i guess my itinct on those issues i don't... i don't have a certain view on exactly where theine is. i thk catholics owe the papacy a certain kind of def re even when they don'twe it exicit agreement. >>ose: the papacy? >> thepapacy. the pope. yes. the chair of st. pet. >> rose: (lahs) >> which is to say if the pope makes a pronouncementnd you're not clr on whether you're bounby it or not you don't have to co out and say "i'm absoluly bound by it" but you ha to take it seriously. you have t digest it and reckon wi it and so on. but that's so of a mal you

mouth answer, iuppose. rose: (laughs) ... mealy mouth awer, i suppose. a preme courtonfirmation hearing where i'll deny that... i'll s i'llesign from the "new york time op-ed page. it was kennedy, right? kenny said "i'll resign the esidency if there'sver a nflict between my duties as a catholic and myuties as esident of the united states rose: he basally said "i don't tell the church what to do and they wilnot tell mehat to do." this is wh somebody wrote about you. you are a late 20s puic inteectual with a senbility of 60ear-old the range of hitchens and t page a.j. taor the historian the consence of lier and the inllectual honesty of andrew sullivan. >> rose: who said that? >> don't know. but i got it! (laughs) >> wow, i ne to take them out to lunch. >> rose: (laughs) yes, indeed y do. it was probablyne person. >> probly. >> rose: you'd good taking all of those people o to lunch. anyway congratulations. i hope you'llcome back and you're... >> i hope you'll have me back.

i really appreciate it. >> rose: and continued success at the "new york times." >> thank y, charlie. >> rose: thisook is he grand new party." david brooks, a favore of mine as erybody knows said " i could put one book o the desk of every republican office holder, grand new partwould be it. the best single road map of where the party should andis likely to head. grand new party. ross douat. thk you for joining us. see you nextime. captioning sponsored by rose communication captned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org