Because this is the week thats realized and internalized the fact that for as long as donald trump is president they will be beseeched. They recognize the russia investigation between whats going on with prosecutors and the multiple committees on the hill that are investigating this, that there is at least months, probably years of investigations. Rose and we conclude with a conversation with ben sasse, junior republican senator from nebraska. Its not good for the kids to be in this protected cacoon but certainly not good for a republican either. We need these kids to ultimately become the leaders of the country, and theyre going to go through Job Disruption when theyre 40 and 45 and 50 in ways never before in Human History, they will have to be resilient. Rose richard haass, mike allen and ben sasse, when we continue. Rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by the following and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose President Trump is wrapping up his first overseas trip. Hes in sicily at the g7 summit. It is final stop of a foreign swing that has taken him to saudi arabia, israel, the vatican, a n. A. T. O. Meeting and the g7 summit. Joining me is richard haass, president of the council on foreign relations. His new book is called a in disarray American Foreign policy and the crisis of the old order. Welcome and thank you. Good to be back. Rose happy memorial day as well. Thank you, sir. Rose how would you assess this president s first foreign trip is this. I think the first half, okay. He would have done more, i think, to talk to the saudis and others more directly about the flaws in their own societies that in many ways have generated so much of the terrorism weve seen. But the first half to have the t because the israelis and saudis were thrilled he wasnt barack obama. Rose and they view themselves with a common enemy, iran. Exactly. First half of the trip. Not bad. The second half could not be more different, much more difficult going. Instead of we canaling him in the way the israelis and saudis did, the europeans were not inclined to welcome him in many ways because they much preferred barack obama, almost the mirror image of the middle east. Lots about this president are not what theyve come to expect of the United States or president s and his whole marion of confronting him. He went to saudi arabia, im not here to lecture you. Then he showed up in europe and lectured them so that didnt go down too well. Rose n. A. T. O. , he lectured a payment of the United Nations and makes a good point that president obama and other president s have made, those countries should contribute more. I guess the question has to be not what he said but how he said id. Both. If one adds up the totality of what they spend on defense, probably 180 billion. Not negligible. They dont have the same Global Responsibility as the United States so it need not be the exact same. Many give higher percentages of g. D. P. To foreign aid and Development Aid of sorts. But basically, youre right, even if you wanted to get them to do more, its not clear to me this is the way. Diplomacy is to persuade people to do what you want them to do. This seems hardly doing that. He showed up, backdrop calling n. A. T. O. Obsolete, those concerns, so had lowhanging fruit and he chose not to pick it. Rose i thought the idea he didnt strongly support article 5 especially when you consider all the nations in the spirit of article 5 came here at 9 11. Absolutely. Article 5, you know, an attack on one is an attack on all. It sends the message were all on equal footing, no distinctions. But America First sends a very different signal. It says well put ourselves before we put others. So he needed to use the trip to reassure and say we see your security intrinsically tied to our own, every bit as important as our own and, again, he missed the opportunity to do it. Ironically enough, standing under the twisted piece of metal from 9 11 which was the only time in its history that n. A. T. O. Has actually put article 5 into play. So, again, it seems to me he just missed a fairly easy opportunity to send the right signal. Rose how about the g7 . Well, its ironic. G7 was created decades ago to forge all sorts of cooperation not just across the atlantic but globally, bringing the japanese in, to deal with global challenges, one of which is trade. This administration has walked back from that many years. And climate change, big question as to whether mr. Trump and colleagues will come out on that. Other things like Nuclear Proliferation and terrorism, which are Old Fashioned sort of guns and bullets National Security questions, its not clear whether there is going to be a meeting of the minds, not just in sicily but more broadly. Rose do the europeans and members of g7 come away with the fact that they dont really trust this president . I think the honest answer to your question is exactly that. First of all, we havent been through a real crisis together. They are very uneasy with his policies toward russia. Very uneasy about some of the misuse and mishandling of intelligence. They look at whats going on across the ocean and just dont recognize it. They dont recognize the role of family. They dont see a lot of names and faces they would have expected to see in republican administrations. Youre hearing things from him theyve never heard from an american president before. So they dont feel comfortable with him. I think some dont trust him. The big irony of all this, donald trump has been against the e. U. , favors brexit, signaled Marine Le Pen he favored her in the election, he may do more than any other american president in decades to forge solidarity in europe. Rose against the United States . To go their own way, to promote their own rose to create true europe. To consolidate more there and promote global arrangements to their liking whether in climate, trade, refugee issues, what have you, so we face the situation where well end up with less influence in europe and less partnering with the europeans. Rose back to saudi arabia. Did he, having said all the things he did during the campaign, in a sense create a better understanding that he and his administration was not antimuslim . Yes, i think he clearly improved the standing there and thats where the trip worked well. Also you invest in relationships. First trip over there, early meetings, so he cut both the irlzies and the saudis criminal slack. He didnt lecture the israelis publicly on settlements, he didnt lecture the saudis about women driving and other issues. He essentially said i want to work with you against what we all see is the principal threat which the iran, and i thought that was all fine up to the point that, with the saudis, i dont think he did enough to address the real internal threat they and others not only face but are generating by the flaws in their own societies and i think, with the israelis, at some point there has to be not necessarily publicly but privately Straight Talk about what it will take to advance the prospect of peace between israelis and palestinians. Rose there is some believe a grand strategy to get the saudis and the iranians i mean the saudis and israel together against the iranians and produce some kind of relationship between the arab countries and israel who, therefore, will work with the palestinians and the israelis and all infused by the idea of doing something no one has ever been able to do by finding peace between israel and the palestinians. There is some of that out there. The problem is this stark opposition with iran, and were seeing it played out in many places including yemen and syria, this could lead to real escalation. The saudi deputy crown prince the other day talked about war between iran and saudi arabia and saying we the saudis are going to take the war to iran, not wait for you to bring the war to us. Weve got to be careful about how much encouragement we give the saudis that no matter what well be there if they take a provocative view or approach toward iran. The peace process, its up to the israelis and palestinians. They have to be willing and able, both, to make the big compromises for peace. So the arabs and saudis can help create the context but they cant solve the split between ma mas and the palestinians on the west bank. An Israeli Government not configured for peace, it would fall apart before that. So this topdown or insideout approach, i believe people are overestimating what it can accomplish. Rose finally, looking at this president s Foreign Policy, has he drawn us closer to china because of what happened in the summit and the feeling that they had in florida dr. The meeting they had in florida and looking at the threat of north korea . The short answer is yes. During the campaign, there was a lot of criticism of china, a lot of suggestion that, you know, we were going to be closing up to russia but had real problems with china. I think the administration got religion in the sense that north korea has emerged as the most significant National Security threat. They know that the best way to influence things in pyongyang is through beijing through working with the chinese, so theres actually been discipline of a north korea first approach with china. Were not picking a trade war with china. Were not criticizing them on human rights or the excesses of anticorruption drive. We have been low key about our differences in the south china sea. Rose we had a Little Exchange in getting too close in terms of planes. Again but, overall, i would say theres been some discipline. Its real north korea first approach, and i think the administrations realize that, absent chinas active participation and really using the leverage with north korea, were left either with a military option or essentially living with a north korea that can put Nuclear Warheads on missiles that can reach us, those options are each in their own way so unattractive i think the administration is prepared to take a run at a diplomatic option with chinas explicit report. Rose thenal . Back to the existential choices, either using military force and using combination of deterrencedefense of a north Korea Nuclear arsenal. Its hard to convince a lot of americans nuclear is the right option. Rose it may with p be the only option. The question is whether the least bad option or necessary option. Rose if diplomacy fails and they get closer to the capacity of delivering a nuclear warhead. Then we have to make an existential decision whether we were prepared to live with a north korea with Nuclear Weapons or we dont trust it and run all the risk of starting a war with all that could mean. You and riboth old enough to know the destruction of the first korean war. So i dont know how we would come out of that. Nobody wants that. We, the south koreans, the chinese dont want it, so the question is will this motivate china not to allow things to drift which has been chinese policy for a couple of decades. This administration deserves credit for signaling the chinese. It cant be business as usual. Rose and my impression is xi jinping had a lot of opportunity to tell the president what he thought and why and the long history of china and how they view the world. Again, deploimsy with china, deploimsy with israelis and saudis the other day. The one place there wasnt near as much as thrsked be was with our democratic allies in europe. Go figure. Rose thank you for coming. I know you have a tight schedule. Good to see you. Rose richard haass, from the council on foreign relations, his book a world in disarray. Back in a moment. Stay with us. Rose President Trump returns to washington saturday night, that gives him a week to prepare for the return of congress and coming battles over healthcare, tax reform and the budget and looming over all that the investigations into russia and the 2016 elections. Joining me now is mike allen, cofounder of axios and the editor of the axios am newsletter. Mike, thank you for coming, happy memorial day weekend. And to you and yours. Its an honor and treat to be here. Rose Jared Kushner, no one closer to the president. He and his wife ivanka trump. He is said to be at the center of the investigation without any question or anybody suggesting or knowing that he is in any way having done something. His lawyers have said he will come forward and explain everything about their meetings hes had with russians, but this is a critical point for someone so close to the president to be so central to an investigation. Perfectly put, charlie. Just to set the scene here, over the months weve called Jared Kushner the Supreme Court because hes the last word. You talk to people both inside the west wing, c. E. O. S that come in there, and we say if you want to sell an idea to the president , if you want to convince the president of something, who do you talk to . Universally they say Jared Kushner, who is very gifted at moving the president in particular ways. We are told if he wants to get the president s attention on something, hell get the right people on the president s calendar to talk to him. He has campaigns he doesnt even know are campaigns and has his hands in everything, such a big portfolio, both foreign and domestic. So now, to have the the f. B. I. Interested in him as part of this russia investigation now, charlie, as you suggested accurately in your top, hes not a subject, hes not a target, whatever words you often hear in conjunction with an investigation. Its much more nuanced and removed than that. During the transition, he had meetings with rungs that they are interested in finding out about, so its natural that he would be talked to. Last week when there was a story in the the Washington Post at the end of the week that said a white house official, someone close to the president was of interest to investigators, people had a pretty good idea. So this news didnt come as a shock. But, charlie, you outlined that calendar that they have ahead, and this investigation is really a pall. Anytime the f. B. I. Is interested in something, to do the interviews, prep the interviews, federal investigations dont tend to stop where they start, so it just makes it harder for this white house, which already was struggling to keep its head above water. Rose but there is also this he did not include in his security clearance information the fact that he had met with the russians. Later it was amended to say hes happy to amend it and fill in all the information, but it was not there at the beginning, nor was it there from Michael Flynn when he offered up the information for his own security clearance. No, thats right, charlie. And fascinatingly enough, a key lawyer for ivanka trump and Jared Kushner is jamie gay relic who your viewers know from the clinton years in private practice and she put out a statement saying, if contacted by investigators, Jared Kushner will be cooperative. So the reason that that wording is so key is that if suggests to you that he has not heard from him, that theres not been any document from them or requests for documents. So thats all a movie thats still to play out. Rose there is also the question of steve bannon, who had lost some, it is said, influence in the white house to, in fact, ivanka trump and her husband Jared Kushner. It is said now hes back because there is beginning to be in the white house a kind of war room mentality, and how do we know and how do we resist what we know are going to be these extended investigations . No, charlie, thats right, and this is a sea change for the sweathouse and a very important moment for your viewers to tune in and soak in and that is a week the white house realized and internalized that as long as donald trump is president they been besieged. They recognize the russia investigation between whats going on with prosecutors and the multiple committees on the hill investigating this this that there is at least months, probably years of investigations. Separately, they recognize, in part, because of their own doing of inflieming the bureaucracy, in part because the permanent government here in washington was never going to be aligned with the president who won running against the president and they loved the fact that he was showing up washington. So now that hes here, though, the price he pays for that is constant leaks and part of the administration that dont want him. So between the media criticism, between the investigations, between the bureaucracy, what the trump people like to call the deep state, both left and right like to use that term because it sounds spooky but it just means the permanent government, among those, they will be fighting these battles for four or eight years, so theyre creating a clintonstyle war room. So scandal machinery, charlie which your viewers will remember, is back, and this white house is trying to learn lessons from both the Reagan White House after the iran contra revelations and the Clinton White house which had plenty of opportunity and experience with scandals. One of the big lessons, charlie, is to try to wall off whats going on, that if you put one person or one office in charge of the response, the strategy, the idea is that you can keep every aide in the west wing from being sucked into it, that other people will be allowed to do their day job, will be allowed to serve the president in other ways, will be allowed to pursue the agenda. So well have a war room within the white house that will take in research, coms, rapid response, legal, and the idea is that will be both the repository and landing pad for all these inquiries and all these messages that are going to have to be launched. Theres a twist here, charlie. There is always a twist with the trump white house, right . That is, if the staff on paper can compartmentalize, and were told there are charts drawn up for the war room, the president will make final decisions about it after he returns from his nineday trip, but, charlie, will the president be able to compartmentalize . Theres been no sign donald trump can do that. Thats partly how some of these issues were touched off is he wanted to vent about some of the things he thought were going on that he didnt like. He didnt like the fact that jim comey, the f. B. I. Director, was out talking about the russian investigation. He chose not to wall it off. So this will be the challenge and thing to watch that, yes, they can build a war room structure to try to preserve the mindshare and band width of other parts of the west wing but will the president go along with that. Rose when the president gets back he will come back to the russian probe which has an independent council that are highly respected, Robert Mueller former f. B. I. Director, who is already there and obviously collecting information. We have investigations a from the justice department, b from the house intelligence committee, c from the Senate Intelligence committee, and james comey will testify. Some say there are questions as to hell clearly want to talk about the diary. He will work with Robert Mueller to figure out what hes prepared to testify about. This is going to make a washington thats going to be focused a lot on investigations. Well, no doubt. And, charlie, and you hinted at it there. This is going to be so juicy. So we know james comey is very fastidious and he tended to document thims and one of the things he documented is when he had interactions with this white house, some of which, according to his friends, felt were inappropriate, felt he was being pushed, felt maybe they were over the line. He took contemporaneous notes about it and had memos about it and clearly those memos have circulated around. Other people have seen them and read them, to reporters. And, charlie, something we know from covering investigations over the years is that a lot of credence is given to contemporaneous records. So here you have amazingly the f. B. I. Director in President Trumps vegas keeping realtime detailed notes about his conversations with the president , presumably with his aides, some of which he felt were inappropriate and, since then, the white house has antagonized him. We had the president in that meeting with the russian officials referring to james comey as a nut job. You have Robert Mueller, special council, who is friends with comey, allied with comey over the years, so a lot of this is going to come out. Jim comey wanted, interestingly enough, to testify in beelike, and thats testify in public and thats partly to protect himself so there wasnt questions about what was said behind closed doors, but in addition to being a headache for the white house, this is going to be unbelievable drama. I think there was a tweet the other day that someone from house of cards said washington had stolen all their ideas for the next season. Rose is the president going to have any kind of legislative agenda when you look at all the issues hes facing . Its very possible its going to be a shutout. You have to start and acknowledge the signature achievement, the collection and confirmation of justice gorsuch, Supreme Court, a 30year change in society and road to tipping the balance of the court with one more selection and a choice that gave this president so much credibility with conservatives. But then after that, there is going to be no big achievement, and theres been none so far. Were now told there is unlikely to be one of these big ticket items checked off before september when they come back, and the twist that twist thats always there, that rally in the rose garden when the house had passed healthcare, but it hadnt yet gone through the senate or gone back through the house, and, so, a lot of people in the country may think this has been done. They may blame republicans for any changes in their premiums that come and, charlie, one Top Republican told me he calls that the bon jovi rally because they were halfway there. Rose happy holiday. Happy memorial day weekend, mike. To you and yours, thank you, charlie. Rose mike allen. Back in a moment. Stay with us. Rose senator ben sasse is here, the junior republican senator from nebraska, was elected in 2014. His voting record in the senate places him among the more conservative members of the Republican Caucus and the most prominent member of the Never Trump Movement in the 2016 president ial campaign, has a new book called the vanishing american adult our comingofage crisis and how to rebuild a culture of selfreliance. It offers advice on how to raise more resilient children in todays uncertain world. I am pleased to have him at the table for the first time. We can. Great to be here. Rose i want to talk about republican politics before the book. Its an important book in terms of whats happening in institutions and family in our society. Whats going to happen to the healthcare debate in the senate . I dont think we know. So one big myth out there is that obamacare or the Affordable Care act was passed by reconciliation. It wasnt. It was passed by 60 votes before ted kennedy died and modified by reconciliation. There is a broad thinking by republicans on the right that it can be replaced by majority. 60 votes for a regular recorder. Regular path 51. Rose used in the confirmation. Of justice gorsuch. So first of all, i dont think that ill put my cards on the table to your point about conservative voting record, i dont think that obamacare solved a whole bunch of problems. I think it helped a bunch of people and exacerbated a bunch of other problems, so i wanto fully repeal and replace obamacare, but republicans are, you know naive isnt exactly the right word, but were regularly talking to the public as if the problems in American Healthcare began with obamacare, and obviously healthcare reform was needed before obamacare. There are a whole bunch of structural problems in American Healthcare. Rose the Clinton Administration tried. Exactly. We are not doing the things you need to do to create a system where there is portability of Health Insurance across job and geographic change. The political continuum from left to right should be about the debate about how much decentralized market mechanism you want in creating that portability or how much state control you want in creating that portability, but we should all agree that we want a system where there is Health Insurance coverage at the goes with you across job and geographic change. Right now were not usually focused on the right thing. One party is trying to defend obamacare and the other is trying to criticize and attack obamacare but were not talking about what were trying to get. Right now republicans in the senate are trying to get 50 to 52 of us and mike pence as a tie breaker to use reconciliation to change obamacare, but its not going to fix the structural problems that are deep than just the obamacare architecture. I wish we were having a conversation about what kind of Healthcare System we want in ten years, and i wish both parties were participating in that. Right now its a oneparty discussion, the democrats for a whole host of reasons dont want to talk to us and some republicans think its not necessary to talk to democrats. Rose whats the essential problem to create healthcare legislation that works. Is this first of all, you have to start with whats the essential problem in American Healthcare, which is we dont have prices. Thats why you dont get any Higher Quality lower cost care over time. In almost every other sector in the economy, we expect you get Higher Quality, cheaper stuff over time. That never happens in healthcare. Rose explain that to me. Higher you think about your computer. You expect next year if you hold off on buying a new computer today and buy it next year, you expect you will get more Computing Power at a hiring speed for a cheaper price. When you buy a car, you expect the car you buy five years ago will be heck of a lot better than five years ago and cheaper. Rose why cheaper . On consumer pricing, almost every good in American Life ends up getting cheaper over time. Technology yields hiring quality lowercost goods and services over time. We dont have that happening in healthcare and one of the most basic reasons why is we dont have any pricing, so American Healthcare is dominated by thirdparty payment, thats primarily governmental thirdparty payment. Rose medicare, medicaid. About 60 cents on every dollar spent in American Healthcare touches the government somehow. We have hospitals that are big general hospitals. You dont have focus factories where you disaggregate the parts of American Healthcare delivery that should become more effective. Hiring quality, lower infection risk rates and cheaper. One of the fundamental problems we have is we dont distinguish between catastrophic events were trying to insure against and the routine delivery of healthcare. How do we explain why American Healthcare doesnt work . Think of any other insured marketplace and how could you mess it up as bad as American Healthcare. Property and casualty, imagine you passed add law that all state and state farm had to buy all your gas and schedule all your jiffy lube appointments. I submit jiff where lube wont be in the right locations, will have poor hours, Poor Services and prices will increase, not really what happens in oil changes. Rose youre saying medicare dictates all that . Medicare pricing. So about 40 of most hospitals Actual Receipts are driven by medicare, but it drives the Accounting Systems for everything. The drgs, the diagnostic groupings and codes that drive how we price dont allow us to disaggregate by different types of procedures so we get hiring quality, lower cost over time. Again, i get a lot of people in our audience tonight may be for much more state intervention in Healthcare Delivery than im for for, but in health finance, we want people not to be uninsured because they change jobs. Thats the largest driver of uninshiewrnsd in america. Numerically by far the largest driver of uninsurance in mark is job change and well talk about how average duration at a firm is getting shorter and shorter. Right now most americans have six months of uninsurance in three and a half years. Thats when you get the Breast Cancer diagnosis, a car accident, and you create a new population with preexisting conditions five or ten years from now. I believe we could solve all those problems. The preexisting about 3. 5 of the public, and there are 320 million americans, about 10 million people. Second solve that problem. Rose how would you solve it . Again, if we picked a more governmentinterventionist plan that was just for ten million people, thats fine. Rose so you would have people who have preexisting conditions paid for and would unlikely be able to get insurance or would have such a high deductible or high premium that it would be unpayable by them. Exactly, but either are uninsurable or insurable in a way thats cost prohibitive. I think we can solve the problem for those folks. I want to solve the problem of ten to 15 years from now how do we create a world of people with preexisting conditions. You want people not to be uninsured for the three to six months theyre changing jobs where they have the car accident and Breast Cancer and cant get insured. Were living off tax accident from the 40s where employersponsored large Group Insurance is where most americans get their insurance through, it has tax subsidy that nebraska farmers and ranchers and Small Business people dont get. Rose the politics, its likely you will use reconciliation. Yes, but whether its likely to pass something and whether or not that thing is passed is good are hard questions. Rose and the house and the senate will negotiate. Yeah, but i would bet against us getting healthcare reform in this cycle. Rose whats the cycle men . This congress . Now to 2018s election. Rose whats the politics of that . Some say that its a loselose. On the one hand, a lot of people will say that the republicans promised they would replace obamacare and did so im going to vote against them. Others say if you passed what the republicans were doing it would so hurt the constituency that elected donald trump that they would be outraged. I think there are two big ways to fail. We can fail by failing to pass a bill. Republicans for seven years have been running on repeal and replace obamacare. Thats one way. Rose paul ryans line. The second way is to pass a bad bill. If you pass a bad bill where the individual market continues to implode which has happened under obamacare in the last four years and premiums rise at unsustainable rates, if you continue to have a restriction of number of choice and plans offered in states, in states like mine you have a lot of counties where theyre only down to one to two insurers in huge parts of the country, if republicans pass a plan that says its going to solve the problems and they arent solved thats a second way to lose. Rose do you think the president understands healthcare . Its hard to figure out how he would talk about healthcare if he had to give you any to have the policy details. Obviously, he wasnt elected on an agenda where the American People were expecting him to be bill clinton or barack obama level wonky but its difficult to know what the president would be on healthcare reform. Rose why did you write this book . I believe we have kids stranded in perpetual adolescents. Adolescents is a gift that if you live in a part of the world that isnt wartorn, youve kind of got this greenhouse phase of life where from 18 months to four years, you hit puberty and youre biologically an adult and we dont push you out of the nest, you have to be a fully independent adult, emotionally, economically, morally in terms of school leaving, household structure, you dont have to be a full adult right away, we transition you, thats great but its a bad thing if its a destination and right now we for a whole bunch of reasons largely because of our place and time in economic history we have a lot of students stranded in neverland. Rose living at home meaning. Meaning its hard to distinguish 10yearolds from 15yearolds from 25yearolds from 35yearolds. Thats new in Human History. This is not an old man screaming get off my lawn. This is a constructive book, not a blame laying book. If i were going to lay blame, im not beating unmillennials, im beating up us parents. Rose because we did not. I think we have not done a good job of celebrating scar tissue with our kids. Rose celebrating the joy of trying. Yes, yeah. Scabs are okay. Rose yeah. Stitches are okay. Rose yeah, exactly. And our kids are living at the riches time and place in all of Human History and somehow rev drifted to this cultural assumption that the way to love your kids is to protect them from those hard experiences, to protect them from work, and i think parents who love their kids and think about it a lot, i think theres a burgeoning movement of parents in the country who are really worried about the way were raising our kids is that because of what its doing to the kids. Yeah, its not good tore the kids to be in this protected cacoon, but its certainly not good for a republic either. We need these kids to ultimately become the leaders of the country and theyre going to go through Job Disruption when theyre 40 and 45 and 50 in ways never happened before in Human History they will have to be resilient. Rose because . We live in a weird time in economic history. I think there are four stages of economic history. Hunter tbat rears, agriculture, industrialization and this thing which we dont know what to call it . Some Call Information age. Sociologists are throwing in the towel. It could be the mobile economy, the i. T. Economy, the digital economy. Sociologists are calling postindustrial which is another way of saying after the last thing. Rose exactly. Like postmodern architecture. We didnt call industrialization deagriculturization. We didnt call it postagriculture. We ultimately figured out the big tool economy was a pull and technological substitution and agriculture was a push and it created a new world. This thing, we dont know what the pull will be to yet but its not true industrial jobs are coming back. Rose the problems youve described and the solution that you recommend, does that have anything to do with politics . No, this book is 100 not about politics. Rose not democrat or republican. Yeah, sure. Rose i mean the idea this has to do with a political solution . No, buttates a tiny bit policy oriented but definitely is not political in the sense you could pass one piece of legislation and you can fix this. Its about cultural issues well upstream from politics but certainly concerned with the american experiment. Rose what are the cultural issues . I think america was founded on the idea, sort of a toke vilian understanding of where happiness comes from. And peoples lives are ultimately rooted in their jobs, theyre rooted in their families. Rose its always love and work isnt it. It is love and work. When i say its not about politics, what i mean is there is no Power Solution to this, its ultimately about our appetites and our affections and our loves and right now were raising a generation of kids that are becoming more and more passive. There really is a belief that somehow going to the top of a mountain on your friends instagram might be an adequate substitute for going to top of a real mountain. Rose with your friend. Yeah. Rose do we have enough toafd know what the impact is . No, i dont think we do. The declining sense of Work Experience in your teen years is brand new, right. Ill give you an anecdote. I became a College President at age 37. When i got there, i didnt think of myself as much older than the students. Im historian by training but named as a College President because im a crisis and turnaround guy by business and work history. Nobody thought they were calling me to this college because i knew student life or student culture is that they had a problem they wanted you to fix. A 130yearold college that went bankrupt, forgot how to student recruit, had tenured faculty in departments with no students, Growth Potential in departments with where they didnt have tenured fac diand couldnt add cost. The thing that kept me awake is seeing the passivity of the student culture. We had a big athletic arena. In thanksgiving of 2009, a bunch of students are supposed to decorate a 20foot Christmas Tree in the lobby entrance to the athletic arena and they decorated the bottom eight feet of the tree and spent all the decorations in the bottom eight feet and were walking away. These were party hardy and vital kids. These are good jobs on campus and the Vice President for development walked by and said what are you guys doing . Why did you only decorate the bottom half of the tree . They said, we didnt know how to get higher. She asked, did maintenance refuse to bring you a ladder . They didnt think about that. They organized the task, spent all the decorations and were going to leave. We had anecdote after anecdote like that and look at the data and turns out for the first time in Human History our teens and twentysomethings have never worked before college. I had only 2k3wr5d waited from the same ag manufacturing farm town 20 years later and when i went away to college not a single kid in my town whether they went to college after high school or went straight into the work world, none of us had ever not worked. The segregation of work from home is pretty new. The direct causal impact on the impassivity of the students, hard to tell. Rose my father would be on your side to a large degree. He had a country store. I literally started working when i was, like, eight. Part of it is it was a family thing. He liked the family being together. My mother worked as well. But i had responsibilities. Lfreliance, that kind ofity, thing. You talk about we lost the culture of selfreliance. Right, and the intergenerational point is critical. If you brought somebody from 300 or 3,000 years ago and dropped them into modern American Teenage life, obviously the first thing that would rose is this less true in small towns, farming communities, that kind of thing . I think its a little bit less true because work is more closely connected to home in the farm towns. Where i live an hour outside of omaha, we still bus a lot of kids out in the summer to the corn fields. But if you live in exushia today where do your kids work . We parents need to plan how to get our kids Work Experiences. It feels artificial but its a challenge. Rose how do you fix this . I think we need to Pay Attention to the habits that should define coming of age. Its more than progression years through school. You need experiences, work exposure, you need to become a literary traveler. Aerica depends on a literate populous and right now our data shows our people are reading less than before. Average american reads 19 minutes a day. T skews with age it skews with age. Rose what are they doing . A lot is passive digital addiction. If you look at porn consumption rates in the last 12 years are spiking off the charts, video game consumption, 18yearold to 24yearold males about 40 of them spend half their waking hours playing video games. Thats not the same thing as actually going out and conquering and hunting. Rose is america going to lose its greatness . If we dont tackle this, we will. I think well succeed at tackling it. The analog rose analog versus digital . The analogy to this promote is industrialization. When you had Mass Immigration across the seas and country size, so urbanization, industrialization, immigration from 1870 to 1920, creating a new kind of economy. Attend of the civil war, 86 of Americans Still lived and worked on the farm. By world war ii, 60 of us lived and worked in cities. When that happened, many people, republican, teddy roosevelt, democrat rood woe wilson said america cant go on. We need a rule of experts because you cant have a toke vilian theory of the city, a culture of virtue in the cities because there is too much anonymity. They were wrong. Turned out the social capital, the dense networks, the neighborliness of the village is recreated in urban, ethic neighborhoods. Were going through a transformation from the industrial economy and the cities to postindustrial economy in the mobile, digital, suburban, exurban suburbs. We havent figured out what neighborliness and Human Capital looks like. We have a crisis of loneliness in the country. Social media says it replaces human relationships. It cant. It can supplement them. Rose a crisis of loneliness. Lets define friendship people who feel pleasure when youre happy, pain when you hurt. I dont choose to be sad when my kids hurt,eth because i love them. The average american had 3. 4 friends in 1990. The average american has 1. 8 friends today. A having of deep relationships in a halving of deep relationships in two and a half decades. 40 of adults have no one to confide in big and important. Rose these are parallel problems. One hand, you talk about the the vanishing american adult. Now youre talking about another big problem we have which is the idea of loneliness. It has nothing to do with this. I think it does. I think the hollowing out of mediating institutions is directly connected to both of these. I think social capital rides on top of work. Work is a core anchor of human identity. Work is not just about how to put bread on the taicialtion obviously its critically important for that. But its about dignity, being needed and having a place in the world. Rose it really is. People who really like not having a job are crazy. It is such an assault on your dignity. Right. The least happy people on earth are lottery winners, according to sociological data. Rose because they have no need to work. A massively expanded denominator of potential consumption and the numerator how much they fill up but earned success and producing something theyre almost irrelevant to being able to meet their own needs and leaves them feeling holeand empty. We have forgotten work and vocation rose are you suggesting in some way this is an answer if we listen to you and change, it therefore becomes an answer to some of our political problems. I think so. I think our political dysfunction is well downstream from this hollowing out of local community and mediating institutions and family structural breakdown. I think most americans are not politically polarized. People who are consume ago lot of media, elite media, we know a world of hyperpolitical partisan polarization, right, but most people arent doing that. Most people are checking out. But there is a sense that, once you hollow out the local, then theres more tribal at the national, and we project grand hopes and dreams and meaning and good and evil. These two litticle parties are too boring to carry anybodys hopes and dreams. The people i work with, we cant solve these problems. Rose how do you think President Trump did on his trip through the middle east . And now on to brussels an italy and now one last stop . I think the dividends of it will take time to analyze, but i want to affirm his attempt to try to bring some of the sunni arab nations into a conversation. I think we lived 28 years since the end of the cold war. We still dont have a National Security strategy for the age of cyber and jihad. We still think peace all the way to 1989 we think of global peace and instability will be the ungoverned places around the globe. These al quedataliban distinctions, taliban didnt attack us but ran such a horrible nation there were all the ungoverned spaces that allowed entities like al quaida to plot and global reach, well have more of that Going Forward and cyber will exacerbate those problems. We need americas allies to know we keep our word and can trust us. Iran is trying to undermine many nations in the middle east and creates more ungoverned space and it would be useful for us to have a pansunniarab alliance. Rose youre in favor of what the president did because of why the president said he did it. He wants to build an alines in the neeldz and isolate iran. I think we should isolate iran. Rose this is the best way to do it . I dont know how it plays out for the president when he hasnt had a coherent Foreign Policy in the transition. Its getting more coherent. The American People should take comfort from the fact general mcmaster is his National Security advisor. He can build a policy process that actually enables real decisionmaking by a lot of the impressive folks in the administration. Jim mattis is one of the most impressive people in the pentagon in half a century and jim mattis wants to build a relationship with state and secretary tillerson which is unlike usually happens in most administrations. Usually you have state and defense at bureaucratic loggerheads. In this case, theres some impressive stuff happening but i think the fruit will be well in the future. Well need to actually sound a consistent note for months on end. Rose you write questions about this president when he was a candidate. In the end, how has he failed and why has he failed if he has failed . Well, i think that everybody in public life has an obligation to see themselves as a civics teacher as darn near the heart of their calling, and we have 41 of americans under age 35 telling pollsters now that they think the First Amendment is dangerous. You might use your free speech to Say Something to hurt somebody elses feelings. Thats america, that we protect each others right to be wrong. The most important thing we think is heart, love, volunteerism, local comiewrnghts and government and politics exist to provide a framework pore ordered liberty, not to solve every problem, and i dont think now the president spends a lot of time thinking about five and ten years from now what will we have done to rebuild public trust and to help young people understand the First Amendment, how can we celebrate the freedum of press, speech, religion, assembly so the First Amendment is the beating heart of america . And right now the tendency for these two parties to act like either of them have ideas that are interesting enough, if you could just vanquish the other party from the field, that then you would be able to advance your great policy agenda and i say this as one of the most conservative guys in the senate by voting record, but i view the things were voting on as a continuum from here to here, and the things we should be voting on are much larger policy and above that there needs to be a shared american narrative rose did that kind of creativity exist in the Political Class we have running the country . Not today. Rose so youre basically saying the leaders we have today are not capable of providing the solutions that are necessary . I dont think anybody would accuse washington, d. C. Of being too focus opened the long term right now. I think we have about twothirds of the folks serving in the congress, their biggest longterm thought is their own encouplesy. We have generational challenges before us, some about the nature of work, some about cyber war fair. A whole bunch about basic civic understanding. Rose with the impact of technology, one to have the basic questions we have to understand is in terms of the people who will be displaced and is it a government solution or a realization that we have to change our sense of what a quality life means. Yeah. Great question. Im not in favor of a universal basic income as a solution but i want that to be debated because thats a big idea that helps Larry Summers talks ability we have 7. 2 billion on the earth, 9 billion by 2050, yet well probably go in needing 4. 5 billion workers to 4 to 3. 5 to 3 to 2. 5 billion workers. A thats fundamentally about dignity and meaning and hope. The Opioid Crisis is at the center of a lot of hopelessness in our economy and those problems will only get bigger and were not debating the big truck strral problems yet. Rose thank you for coming. Ben sasse. The vanishing american adult our comingofage crisis and how to rebuild a culture of selfreliance thank you for joining us. See you next time. Fofor more about this program ad earlier episodes, visit us online at pbs. Org and charlierose. Com. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Youre watching pbs. Special edition of kqed newsroom about bay area innovateers. From Silicon Valley tech giants to World Class Research universities, the bay area is home to big thinkers and Ground Breaking technology. Today we will hear from engineers, entrepreneurs and scientists who are creating new products to help solve products here and around the world. One is helping get interest free loans while building up credit. Two young women are helping girls get excited about engineering through toys that spark the imagination. Another bay area entrepreneur is hoping technology will help get