captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. up today to a hung parliament, the first time since 1974. with nearly all the votes counteded, the conservative party led by david cameron made sweeping gains winning 306 seats, a gain of 97. but it fell short of 326 needed to secure a majority. the labour party lead by prime minister gordon brown lost its majority winning 258 seats, a loss of 91. the liberal democrats led by nick clegg faired worse than expected losing seats and winning only 57 although it won 23% of the vote. with no party having a majority, clegg@ emerges with an opportunity to make a deal. earlier today he set the tone for the wrangling to come when he said that the come when he said that the have the fiást shot at forming a gov%rnment. >> it seems this morning at it'the conservative party that has more votes party that has more votes an absolute@ majority. and that is whi thinkt is now for the consernate party to prove that it is capable of@ seeking to govern in the national interests. at the same time this election campaign has me it a bund antley clear that our electoral system is broken. it simply doesn't reflect the hopes and aspirations of the british people. >> rose: the challenges both political and mathematical, what coalition condition-- coalitions can form a majority, what kind of deal will cameron be willing to make. is it possible that liberal democrats might in the end make a deal with labour. that process began today as the leaders of the major parties returned from london from their districts. speaking outside of ten downing street, prime minister brown appeared open to the economic and electoral reforms demanded by the liberal democrat its. >> mr. cameron and mr. clegg should clearly be entitled to take as much time as they feel necessary. my part, i should make clear that i would be willing to see any of the party leaders. clearly should the discussions between mr. cameron and mr. clegg come to nothing, then i will, of course, be prepared to discuss with mr. clegg the areas where there may be some measure of agreement between our two parties. there are two areas in particular where such discussion would be likely to focus. the first is the plan to ensure continuing economic stability where there is substantial common ground. and the plan to carry through far-reaching political reforms including changes to the voting system. >> rose: afterward david cameron made his offer. >> i want to make a big open and comprehensive offer to the liberal democrats. i want us to work together in tackling our country's big and urgent problems, the debt crisis, our deep social problems, and our broken political system. let me explain my thinking. first it is right and reasonable to acknowledge that of course there are policy disagreements between us. many of which were highlighted in those television debates. to fellow conservatives who fought and campaigned and worked so hard to achieve the massive advance we've made in this campaign, i want to make it clear that i do not believe any government should give more powers to the european union. i do not believe that any government can be weak or soft on the issue of immigration which needs to be controlled properly. and the country's defences must be kept strong. i also believe that on the basis of the election results we achieved, it is reasonable to expect that the bulk of the policies in our manifesto should be implemented. but across our two manifestos there are many areas of common ground. >> rose: an alliance between conservatives and liberal democrat was create a majority but would have to overcome significant political differences, including immigration, europe and defense. in a reminder of the economic consequences of a political stalemate the pound on friday amidst investor fears about the british debt. juning me now from london john burns of the "new york times", historian simon schama of columbia university, matt fryi of bbc world news america, timothy garton ash, martin wolf of the financial times. i am pleased to have all of them here on this broadcast looking at this rather remarkable election that we have just seen. i go first to john burns. john, tell me where it stands as we speak with respect to any negotiations between mr. cameron and mr. clegg and his colleues.@ >> wl, mr. #ameron and mr. egha a cveatn th teoon of out 1 mites duriowhh ficials fr both pti id had been conructive. therar furthe talks toght betweensmall gros ae, four o eithesi between e o part d thk at they are aingt to gethis thing apd up ith can er the weendoth theyavaovnmt or a-- a gornnt that isea to keffe by mony rng. though that may be a little bit ambitious. >> and so there is no chance of another election. i mean it's pretty certain that we will have some agreement between the liberal democrats and the conservatives? >> you know, i don't think anythi is certain. this iserror in#og nitto. the are l ginds that@ uld wng.@ anif had tobe iou sathere w%ll @be another electi withia yea possibly by th autumn beusallhe various permutations h that you make look to me like they are likely toe quite unstable. >> rose: timothy, put this at the historical moment, where we are with respect to this kind of hung parliament. >> well, you know, for many countries around the world and across europe, this would be normal politics. the day after the election you would start these long coalition talks. what's been normal for the british with one exception 35 years ago is that the day after the removal van has already taken the old prime minister and his belongings out of number ten and the new prime minister is in there. so for us this really is completely new territory but it's amazing and fascinating for me how quickly british politicians are adapting to the politics of negotiation and coalitions and partnerships. which by the way we had for much of the first half of the 20th century. it's actually only since 1945 that we've gone used to this ding dong, this punch and judy of just the two parties going to and fro. >> rose: matt what does mr. clegg want in order to get into an alliance or >÷heost im!ortantthg, cathe was isctoáal reform. whh (hat in th if hi pty2b of tuloteey uld haore@ses in parliament tthav but be des ve$y kelyhatr. ceron certaiy extt@th heteeca+ (hat would mth mr. #ameáon tho$ies %eed e bo har .ld dave@ fe un a ni cggin kally s ho rt ogotiatn with (es .t least ofo$ rorm. hdid th, .ou havey@ solt@ t ra a fe iso.n@de@ party. >> rose: so what, simon, do you think david cameron can offer nick clegg? >> well, david cameron made a really astonishingly prime ministerial speech. very powerful. and what it was full of was friendly rhetoric. the word "big" is big was david cameron. during the campaign he talked about big society. nobody had a clue what that was. now he's talking about an offer which is big, open and comprehensive. we still don't know what that really means. however, the biggie part was that he talked about a broken political system in urgent need of reform. and that was the straw to liberal democrats who's got misgiving about nick clegg selling his soul for a dodgy kind of potage. wasn't quite as vague. there was one little detail which was about redistricting, we say in the united states. reconstructing the boundaries of constituency. and that actually is significant although detailed issue. it was a really straw thrown to the liberal democrats. david cameron knows nick clegg has nowhere else to shall really to go. the only choice for nick clegg is really does he join the government as a former member of the coalition which will be foolish of him. or does he do something called in its kensian way confidence and supply. namely, making judgements, piece after piece of legislation. if nick clegg is smart, will let the tories do governing in a very bad times as john has suggested, with another election probably coming up soon. and so his conscience is clear. the skin will not be upon the head of him or his party. he can't be accused of sabotaging government, but he won't necessarily be implicated in its failure. >> rose: look at who voted where and what it means for the parties in great britain. >> one thing that is clearly emerged is the countries interestingly and fascinatingly divided. the conservatives are overwhelmingly dominant in the south and indeed in the more prosperous parts of england. they are in fact the dominant party in england itself. the labor party-- labour partly and largely as i can see the liberal democrats are the party of the west, southwest, the scotland, northeast, poorer parts of the country and wales. so we are in that sense very divided. one of the interesting things to me all along is why the conservativists are still a unionist party. because that is, indeed, their solution to the problem, gets them out of this horrendous mess that they otherwise can see coming given the fact that they really aren't likely given the arithmetic we're seeing now to get really big majorities again. >> let me throw this open to all of you now with this question. what was this election about? was it about 13 years of labour. was it about economic issues. was it about the particular candidates and the likes and dislikes of them, john burns? >> well, i would say that 13 years of labour was probably the predomina issue and wrapped up with that was the very frightening economic situation and of course the argument is-- lies between whether you blame the labour party for that or you blame america for that or as mr. brown says, you know, a global recession. but the fact is that there are nearly $2 million unemployed in this country. there are real worries about falling back into a double dip recession. the search growth there is and it's from a very low starting point of an economy that shrunk by about 6 percent over the last 18 months to two years is very anemic. and people look westwards across the atlantic and see an economy which is really beginning to gather some steam, 3% growth rate in the united states in the first quarter. and they wonder where this is all going to go. is it going to go, you know, in the direction of greece. i think the labour party has paid a heavy, heavy penalty for all of that. and of course, on a related issue was the personality of gordon brown who has never really managed to master mass politics. >> rose: so for all -- >> in -- in britain than in the united states by some good measure. >> i think also there were other issues. like a smorgasbord of different big themes that britain should confront. i think the problem is that they never really came to the fore as much as they could have done in the united states, for instance, because this campaign is a month long. it's like a double espresso politics served very quickly and rather sharply to the i(ish public, accentued by (heea of the dete soou never got@to (heig discu'sis outri le in thworld] abouat kind ofountry itain ou b this hecomeyefa+lt tif irant its a was never real operlyxpressed. t u d u! think is rher confused ecto,ncrebly up t about the toxicity of the incumbent. we should mention here the scandal last year, the expensive scandal in parliament which had an enormous affect on this country. and at the same time these candidates, none of whom managed to really seal the deal. i mean david cameron was never really convincing enough to people outside the kind of bedrock of his party. nick clegg sort of fizzled. and gordon brown, well not exactly cap tarn charisma had that dreadful moment that turned his campaign around. the and final final one is class. the issue of clas-- class that rather dirty, unspoken word. a bit like sort of race in america. something that people don't really address properly. it is always addressed in code that also came to the fore. >> each of the leaders weren't saying with about how they are going to plow the 187 billion hole. all of the contending possibilities, waste, fraud, do we add some more to national insurance? would only take care of a minute portion of the debt. so this total thing is so left unsaid. and the people are not stupid. time and time again the audience often said tell us once you treat us like adults. tell us the truth about what, how bad it's going to be. and they never did. >> rose: tim? >> yeah, well, i agree with everything that has been said that it was a spor gas board and for example, immigration was a very big issue on the doorstep, as we say here. but i think there was actually a big fish, a carp, if you like, in the middle. a whole carp in the middle of the smorgasbord. and that was actually the political system. i mean simon mentioned that the leader of the british conservative party today says we have a broken political system. that isn't is an extraordinary thing for a conservative leader to say. and the fact is, the whole issue of our politics, indeed of our constitution blew up a year ago with the mp's expenses scandal. and then it sort of went away until the middle of this campaign when it suddenly came back like a tornado. and it is now in my view the central issue going forward. because the issue of a lateral reform, i mean the parties are now outbidding each other to say how important it is to repair our political system. to change our politics. some of that is rhetoric but i think the system will change. in addition, the very important point martin wolf made which is the conservatives, without used to be the party of the union, of the united kingdom, are now an english party. the english party. and what are the scotts going to say when-- are being imposed on them by this purely english party. i foresee much english-scottish conflict ahead. and that too will change britain. >> i think there's another point here that tim touched on. which is this desire to change the political system. it's really interesting. i mean you could say that the kind of fizzling out of the liberal democratic party after the extraordinary excitement about the audacity of nick clegg really shows that three-party rule, you know, is dead in this country. but at the same time the opinion polls indicate that actually the british public quite likes some greater degree of consensus and electoral reform. and if you look back at the last 20 years, the kind of romantic attachment, the those tall did -- nostalgia for majority party rule in the house of commons is actually more often than not got the ruling party into trouble. remember the poll taxes, margaret thatcher, that spelled the end of tlacher. the iraq war and tony blair, that spelled the end of tony blair. he was ushered out through the back door and gordon brown came in. 9 public sort of understands it is wonderful to have majority rule if it is clear and it doesn't overstep the line. but more often than not it does lead you to certain dangers. and i think that is what they are trying to mitigate against. >> and in this case, it is the central conundrum of the results is that clegg was showing in the polls that he was running ahead of labour. right up to voting day. and he ends up in the results with 23% of the vote which is only .9 of a percentage point more than the liberal democrats got last time. and indeed they won five fewer seats. how to elain this when there is no @doubt to anybody who traveled in the came paper trail that @people really did want #hange, deed that was whatwas emblazoned on cameron's bust, timeor change. egg himselfxplain is today by saying that people wh they came to the blot box decided to stick with what they knew best. and i'm sure that there is a cultural instinct in this country to stick with the old and the known and not to forge ahead to the new in the way that the united states did wh obama i 2008. but i think thate ove$bearing uenc all thi anxiety that voting for a third party a puing the@liberal democrats forward, tnk when peoe came to #ast their ballots theyught is not@e time for this. there surious prob, econic problems to be assed probly better to ick, as . clegg said wha we know. >> over the weekend the terrible grasping of nettles between clegg and cameron is which must come first. what kind of horrible store, what kind of ice lanic volcanic eruption in the market is waiting for us on monday. david cameron will face a nick clegg. you heard me. i'm interested in breaking a political system but we can't do that now. there's nothing about reform which will necessary sedate the horror that might be going on next week. nick clegg will say you can't actually be a strong government that is capable of dealing with these economic trouble unless you make a prior commitment to do something serious. in the form of a referendum. >> my guess is that cameron will not concede a fundamental electoral reform. will feel that he doesn't have to. that he will try to govern with lib-dem support. on a case-by-case basis. will then have to have the fundamental decision which simon has just been talking about which is does he introduce the sort of budget that he's actually credible. because he really have to do that. as soon as he does -- >> which he campaigned on. >> he campaigned on the aspiration, not the delivery. >> rose: all right. >> now he will then-- it will all become concrete. and the concrete will consist of the sorts of measures we've just seen in greece which is not necessarily quite-- essentially there will be pay freeze in the public sector, pay cuts in the public sector, reductions effectively in the pensions through pension contributions. there will be cuts in welfare benefits. and then politics suddenly becomes really, reel. and really real. and then of course the liberals will start say doing we really want to support this. now so we are sort of thinking that the discussion here is as though there is going to be some grand debate about electoral reform. there isn't going to be this grand debate of electoral reform there is going to be a stupendous mess very, very soon and it's going to be very, very interesting to me to see how that works. my guess is that the likelihood is we will see another election in the not too distant future because the sort of thing that is going to emerge here won't be able to deliver the sorts of policies that will, in fact, be required. >> rose: and there will be another election. and that's also the history of majority governments, isn't it, the 190. >> the government that will now emerge simply won't be cut strong enough to resist the pressure that will emerge when it starts making concrete the sort of the plans that the treasure ree already has and is going to deliver to the new chancellor in the about three days. >> rose: matt? >> by the end of next week we may well have two countries in the world. we both have prime ministers that went to eaton, have revered monarchs, economic problems and the possibility of another election in six months time. one is called the u.k. and the other is called thailand. >> rose: john burns, let me talk about david cameron. beyond electoral reform and beyond this austere budget that he has said is necessary, what kind of britain will we see in its relationship to the united states and in its relationship to europe and you, you know, as a pt of you, you know, as a pt of >> well, to addresshe th the utestates i ked him about that down in rnwat the weekend. and hesa, i tugi( was que frank. re tord the special specia relationip because its that thatllo.s us (o punch abe our weig i inrnationa affairs. so i tnkat the oba administrat%onill not be unhappy with seeing did cameroin office. it might have been uneasy if mr. clegg had done a lot beer becau . egg@ who is accused . browof being anti-american during e the debates, wle he may t be anti-american, i inis very much morro eupe than eier mr. brown and mr.ameron. whe at's n nessari kindf a biny choice ther i thin that washington too isore@ likely to beappy with a mr. clg t , athe know besthich is tde labour and coertive paie asor othermatters, cameron had some ratr grand ideas, used the word big, the big society as simon sa it wasever simon sa it wasever he was tng about. it ne$autn. it diedon the stump mo$e or less .ithin t.o o three days. because there is now a good deal of unhappiness in the conservative party about the way that the cameron campaign was run. i think mainly from the right wing othe conservative party feel%ng that this airyairy siness got them absolutely nowhere. that the people didn't really understand what it was. that the conservative party and mr. cameron were offering them. and that they paid a price for that in the polls. afr all, this has been the most unpopular government in this country in at least, what, 30 years. areful ces'ion. e@con'ertipar(y ha e@con'ertipar(y ha beut of oic1 years. this shaeen th absolutely ialction absolutely ialction thump magazine jority an they didn't get it. and i thin the trus and i thin the trus nse$vaves, dn su wt thepar(ytood't exactly for. >> rose: so here is david cameron who made a brilliant speech at his own party convention and did well, certainly in the third debate, but did not convince the voters that-- who he was and what he stood for and where he wanted to take the government? >> do you know, if i could st add one cme o th. th. obm s at (he (ory par(y ateinrid in 05 wasy one his closest asciateorrchrm asciateorrchrm a' the nastyar. heashea lo of that bage e rtis lge an-ga3. i@think i('s gotmuch bette$ ror sia a-i to@mo reasab aleable reasab aleable t@the way, it a sortf amohous.@ is .asort@oflair rux. and ithkthattdereally tough times that britain is now facing demanded something a little bit more something a little bit more >> th%ha ag@ i me ioot david men,eri to be, imagine britain as a sort of patient on the operating slab. what britain needs is a surgeon. and what it got in david cameron was an airy fairy psychiatrist with some great ideas. >>d bde wasgrr. he was kinder, he with us caudill leer, very lechable. he looks great, he is articulate. all those things but i think in this moment of crisis actually britain was sort of quite comfortable with grumpy gordon. remember that phrase, all gordon, no flash. and that kind of worked quite well. and oddly enough i think gordon's brown best moments in this campaign was also his worst moments. you know, the incident with mrs. duffy it was so awful that it forced gordon brown against the wall, big gun pointed at his head saying act up, and get better what are you doing. and oddly enough he did. it was just a bit too late. >> still lost a hundred seats though. >> of course. >> of course. >÷he tth is- meropreparedself for a very, very well for an election that wasn't the election. because he assumed this was blair redux. the economy was going to be fine. all the problems were going to be social problems, how green were you, whatever it might be. that was what he positioned himself for. then he got as completely blindsided by this massive recession and the huge problems it created by the public finances as labour. and neither party, interestingly, also applies to the liberal democrats, ever worked out really how to respond to this crisis. and i think that's one of the reasons we have had such a completely empty election. we haven't actually discussed the most important issue which is the economic future of the country. does the country have an economic future and if so, what does it look like. nobody had convincing answers and every time they said anything tough about public spending, the popularity went down. the british public may have said we want to know the truth but they didn't really want to know. >> rose: david cameron have to do? >> what he now has to do i presume if he going to be prime minister, is actually govern. and the only way he can do that i think is from the front which is actually to take very big risks. i.e. has to deliver something that looks like a credible program of government which includes an emergency budget. we expect that. and he's going to have to put that forward. it's going to be very, very unpopular and he's going have to get support from that. very, very quickly as i said before, politics are going to get very, very real. and all this ludicrous n my view, absolutely laughable election campaign. and everything that went round it will look just as it was, the phoney war and we were in a real one and see what happens. >> okay, john you have a thing over there called opposition party in waiting. and you know who the ministers are going to be for the most part who should we expect to be interesting in a new david cameron gornmentf tdat's the way it goes. >> well, one of the peculiarities of this campaign was it was, in fact, presidential. we @hardly saw any of the people who are close to mr. brow his ministers. and we saw @very little of the ople that mr. cameron proposes to ta into government with him. it was a sort of stealth campaign in that respect tas was in others. william haig probably familiar to americans as a former leader of the conservative party. many people think might have done better as leader of the party this time. very smart, whity, and gerally-- character who whols #ek (o@d@ whols #ek (o@d@ >>maybe tdeib call c$ats, course. i mean if it's-- if it is a more formal pact he is going to have to give some jobs to the liberal democrats. and who knows there is ama ince cle w derib%d ask@cleggos poliwi a one stage because he basically is about 20 years older. he has been sort of best selling author on the economic crisis. and a very comfortabling sort of avuncular voice on the problems and maybe will have to be brought in. to be honest, there are no, as john said, there are no stars in the shadow cabinet which is odd because it has been around for a long time. and the one person who was thought of as a star, certainly by david cameron and by much of the rank and file of the tory party, a man called george osborn was virtually kind of air brushed out of the campaign because he was a member of the bullington club which for your viewers, charlie, is basically skull & bones with tail coats. and so it was seen that he was too close to david cameron both physically and also in terms of his social class and they to get rid of him in the campaign. >> george osborn went to st. paul's, he didn'o (o ( pblem for george was thaheas g e jobof actuay ganizing the campaign. they thought they were making less embarrassing about his questions of his capacity as chancellor of the exchequer. well now the campaign did not go fabulously well for the conservatives either. so if didn't look, you know t rebounded a bit on george. the one thing though i get you whatentlen fa' i@did thera' somethine$ exaoinary abt vi cameron's performances, as though he had finally grown into the prime minister in crisis role today so i think he may be the star in his own government and that's what the country needs. >> one of the problems, of course, and directly relevant s george osborn is potentially, presumably, going to be the chancellor. he has played this role now for many years. and the simple truth is he has been completely unconvincing. he's been unconvincing even in the city, as it were, even among his own natural supporters. nobody really believes he's on top of this. and he's going to have to deliver this huge swinging spending cut sort of budget and while matt put it, a little too far, he's to the going to look like the sort of person who will convince the great british public that he's going to be part of the suffering. he's going to experience part of the suffering, and people like him so that's again part of the noxious politics of the situation they're in. he is a fundamentally unconvincing chancellor to deal with this massive fiscal crisis. personally, i think the sensible thing for them to do is make kenneth clarke the shadow chancellor. we slash and cut with a gay abandon. he has no political career after this. for two or three years he would do the right thing. he has done the right thing before. put george somewhere else, save him for something else. because george osborn will not be able to deliver politically what is needed in this crisis as chancellor. >> you know, your reference to kenneth clarke brings up an interesting point. unlike an american president who can bring into his cabinet more or less anydy he wants, british prime minister is constrained. he has to appoint somebody who is either elected to the hoe of commons or somebody that he appoints to the house of lords. most usually the gat officeof sta do to the goo memberk of@ the house of lords. that's one of his problems. the second problem is that the tory party have been out of power for 13 years. and kenneth clarke is really the only political heavyweight as they say, big beast, that cameron das in his entourage. thothers are generally speaki, young and untested. and this in a time which is about asesti as you can imagine. >> rose: all right, simon what is the labour party do now? >> it finds a new leader. >> very quickly. and you know, british political parties make renaissance florence look like mary poppins nursery by comparison. when they need to draw blood they will draw blood. we were saying earlier the one person who is beaming with happiness tonight is david milliban who many people think is the leader in waiting. interesting issue, because his brother ed milliban is also a possible contender. the labour party has to find itself a young new leader pretty quickly. and then they will sit back and watch the unfolding calamitys that will fall upon the great united kingdom and its economy. and the hope to scoop up the apples of the next election. maybe they will. maybe they won't. >> rose: okay, matt, this question and then to martin. so assuming a cameron government, what will british-- how will it look different in terms of what it can do than what gordon brown would have done? >> well, i think we have all pointed to the fact that there is going to be swinging cuts in the public sector. it going to be absolutely brutal. the last year might have been bad but what is going it to happen now is going to be a lot worse. the question for cameron is how quickly does he do this if he feels that he needs to go back to the country in perhaps six months time. i mean he's to the going to get a chance of being re-elected if it is going to be that awful in the next int-- next six months am but if he waits too long, who knows what is going to happen to the economy. i think he is really, to the victor, a pile of ruins, 's ra ,eryctor i.l ky sti. thio ge(ack kind of gger ptuis electiona' prod+ced three losers and three varying degrees. you know, you could say that the biggest loser was nick clegg because of the expectations, then comes gordon brown. then comes david cameron. but i mean the thing is that it doesn't have to be a lot of really, really tough stuff. without a proper mandate, with a population that is really quite frightened by all this, you saw them today milling at the gates of downing street and with some very tough medicine that going to have to be administered by a doctor who may be losing his bedside manner very fast indeed. >> rose: we have to end it there. my thanks to martin wolf, john burns, simon schama, matt frei and timothy garton ash who we lost halfway through in broadcast because of technical difficulties from oxford. back in a moment. stay with us. anna quindlen was here, she was one of the first women of the "new york times" history to write a regular column for its op ed page. in 1992 she won a pulitzer prize for her work. she's also written five best selling novels. her latest is called "reeve last one" her paper at the "new york times" calls it a spellbinding tale. i am pleased to have anna quindlen back at this table. congratulations. >> thank you, charlie. >> rose: it is so great to see you, by the way. >> i know. i'm always glad to be here. my problem is i always forget that we're on television and think it's just you and me talking and who knows what i might say. >> rose: i just hope everything. now let's just go around the family. everyone is getting older. we've watched your kids grow up. >> my daughter says the people have said i remember the day you were born more to her than anyone on earth because my last life in the 30s column began with the sentence, her name is mar yap. she's now 21. and next month she graduates from kenyan college. >> rose: destined to do what, to write? >> she hopes to be an actress. >> rose: did she take this photograph. >> she took the author's photographs and she has been getting photo credits all over the country we have ree review and piece. >> rose: oh, wow. >> yeah. >> rose: and the other kids are. >> 26 and 24. quinn and christopher. they are both writers. and they share an apartment in washington. >> rose: so you got two writers and an actress. >> you know my husband says, he is a gainfully employed lawyer. he says not a 2-2-- w-2 income in the house. >> rose: he's ready for them to take care of him. he is still a very active engaged defense attorney. >> exactly. >> rose: just going to trial every day over new jersey trying to defend somebody. >> yes, he is. he is. you know, it's a system where everybody is entitled to a defense and he does his part. >> rose: now has this life that you have carved out for yourself been about exactly the way you have liked it to turn out. >> oh, it's been nothing like i imagined. i thought i was going to be a reporter all my life. never dreamed i would be a columnist. never thought i would be lucky enough to get the novels published. wasn't sure i wanted to have kids, which just shows how much i know. >> rose: because they have been -- >> i mean they taught me about 90% of what i know. >> rose: they have taught you 90%. >> yup. >> rose: what have they taught you? >> i think that when you have children you relive everything about life. but you are old enough, experienced enough to appreciate it. so the first time around it just sort of goes past you. everything from sunsets to whatever. the second time around you see it all over again, and for a writer, and especially for a novelist, that's invaluable. seeing life anew through my kids' eyes gave me so much material to work with in these books. >> rose: you made the commencement speech at wesleyen where your son, i think graduate, is that right. >> yes. >> rose: and this is what you said. we need you to make this a fairer place, a more unified nation. a country that wipes out the bright lines of class and race that has created an appear advertise, an appear advertise too long denied. i know you hate to hear your parents say it, even when are you driving to great adventure. but we're lost. we're counting on you to be the gps. we are. >> it's true. >> rose: we want them to tell us -- >> because. >> rose: to show us. >> they seem to have a sense of balance. i think all these years of watching us, look, we're in a classic die lech particular. we started with our parent's generation where all the women stayed home and all the guys went out to work. and worked these kind of very masculine 9 to 5 jobs. then we came up with this antithesis where men and women were all about work 24/7. where we turned the word stress into a ver beed. and these kids watched us and said oh, there has got to be something in the middle here. and i think that's why. the ones who are in their 20s are taking their time about figuring out who they want to be, what they want to do, who they want to yoke themselves to for life in a way that i think is incredibly healthy. >> rose: this book is dedicated for my children, who saved my life. and i think saving my life is what we have been talking about. >> right, exactly. i mean i just would be a much less nice, much less evolved human being if i hadn't had them. >> rose: what's the toughest moment for you, though with them. >> i think it's being afraid the bad things are going to happen to them it i mean the reason i wrote this book is because i think most parents lay in bed at night f are you in the city, are you waiting to hear the sound of the door close. if you are out in the suburbs you are waiting to hear the car pull into the driveway. i said to maria the other day, every time one of you gets on a plane, my heart stops until it lands. and she said oh mom, get over it but i mean the truth is, it is just the worrying that something bad is going to happen. >> rose: you chose philip larkin here, with this poem, there's an evening coming in across the fields, one has never seen before. that's lights, no lamps. it seems at a distance yet when it is drawn up over the knees and breast, it brings no comfort. where has the tree gone that locked earth to the sky, what is under my hand that i cannot see you. why did that peek to you. >> oh, because i think that sometimes we have that sense in our own lives of being disconnected from the things that made us feel safe and sound. that sense that we're not at home in the world. that is so powerful and so overwhelming. and i think he completely captures it with that poem. >> so how did we come to every last one? >> i think i thought a lot. i have obviously thought a lot about motherhood. and that was something that i wanted to write about in this book. my oldest son quinn studies with amy bloom in college and we were looking at an interview, amy, the wonderful writer, had done. in which she said something like, every writer has one subject and mine is love. and we were looking at it together. and quinn said well mom, if every writer has one subject yours is motherhood. and i was really gratified that he got that. but the more i thought about it, the i thought i have two subject its and it is motherhood and loss together. that sense of having this thing so dear to you that you are always worried maybe riped away in some fashion or another. it's a theme in all the other novels. certainly in black and blue and in blessings. and one true thing as well. and so i have been thinking for a long time about that sense of loss of control and security that we have after 9/11. that sense that anything could happen. and about how in a family you try to hold that notion at bay. that notion that bad things could happen. and yet you know how-- how haphazard peril can be in the world. and so the more i thought about it, the more i began to think about this woman and this family in which small events happen and small decisions are made that ultimately come together in a way that causes great cataclysm. >> who is mar either-- mary beth lapin. >> she is the narrator of the book. the first person narrator of the book. and the book actually is told in the present tense which was something i was nervous about, was it going to work, was i going to be able to sustain it. but i wanted you to be with her in realtime. i mean the first sentence of the book is this is my life. and i wanted you to have that sense of being sucked in to her life. and being with her and not having foreknowledge. she doesn't knows what's coming around the pike because it's unif you recalling before her. and neither do you because are you with her. >> rose: you lost your mother when you were 19. >> yes. >> rose: and what impact. >> huge. i mean for many, many years the biggest thing in my life. until the day i was 31 and i gave birth to my first child. i mean i do think of those as the book ends of my psyche. and i also think of them as refernses points to this sense of peril and loss of control. i mean i remember after my mother died, a year or two afterwards thinking, well you know, i'm lucky in a way because nothing as bad as this will ever happen to me again. and then i had children. and i realized that there is one thing worse than losing your parent and that's losing your children. >> but can you be too protective, can you be too worried. >> somewhere i can hear all three children yelling yes, charlie, yes! >> rose: yes, thank god somebody stood up for us. >> yes, i mean, look, it's pretty easy to raise psychological cripple. if you do everything for your kids, if you take care of everything, if you rewrite their papers. if you vet all their friends, if you insist on knowing. >> it becomes a cycle, dependent too. >> then they can't really go out into the world which may be the point of the exercise because they don't know how to negotiate by themselves. so it's always this push and pull. and it's something i tried to illustrate in here between how much independence you want to give them and how much oversight you should give them. and as they move through the teenage years, you never really feel like you are getting that exactly right. because of course they're always pushing to really be independent of you. but the hardest thing is figuring out that's one spot, where is the balance. >> rose: how do you know? >> well, you don't. but you have to trust. you have to trust your gut. you have to trust your intuition. and sometimes you get it wrong. and you know, if you get it wrong and you hit a golf ball wrong, are you in the rough. but if you get it wrong with your kids, sometimes worse thing tas than that can happen. >> rose: exactly. now there are savage acts of violence here. is that hard or easy to write. how do you-- what informs you writing about violence? >> the acts of violence in this book, because you are seeing it through mary beth's eyes, tend to be somewhat off stage. and that in some ways makes it easier. what comes later which is loss and grief and all the rest, nass's incredibly challenging to write. because you don't want to be floor i had. and you know from having watched friends of yours who have gone through loss that it doesn't tend to be a big muscle thing. that it's not the whaling and nashing of teeth. it's those small disconnections from life, from energy, from happiness, that kind of subtle way in which people who have lost people they love are tilted away from the world. and that's a very difficult thing to capture in proceeds. i really felt like i was working my subtlety gene on this one as much as i knew how to do it. >> how you have changed as a writer over the last ten years? >> i am better at it. >> rose: i know are you. >> i'm better at it. >> rose: we would hope so too. >> yeah, well, people say what's your favorite book and out there on book tour i have been saying this one is. >> rose: because you have more skill at work,. >> first of all, if you are going to keep doing this, novel after novel this is my 6th, you better like the most recent ones the most. there's ebbs and flows. i mean i will never forget going down to key west when i was in my 20s and interviewing tennessee williams. and him having this great seeping sad js about the fact that he felt that he would never again write a streetcar named desire or the glass menagerie. and you wanted to shake him and say but did you write those two plays. but when are you sitting down every day to try to write a new play it's not good enough-- . >> rose: and you don't know how to recapture. >> exactly. i just feel like i have a control of my intention and my form now that i didn't have as fully when i first started out. >> rose: but one has informed it. >> i think doing it i think doing it over and over again. you learn more and more but also i'm older now. i wrote my first novel when i was in my 30s. and i think i understand things about the play of happiness and sorrow that i didn't, for example, understand 20 years ago. so the technical stuff and the light stuff come together in a way that i think has enriched my work. >> rose: it's like some people say, you shouldn't read war and peace until you are at least 30 because you just won't get it. >> well, yeah, but actuallys there a a beauty in not getting things and then getting them. i read mobee dick the last time when-- moby dick the last time when i was in college. and didn't care for it much. and my oldest son insisted that i revisit it this year. because he said mom, you're just wrong about moby dick. i still can't see what he sees in conrad, in exactly the way he does. but he's right about moby dick. and knowing that i had developed enough to appreciate a book that i hadn't appreciated 35 years ago was a terrific maturational process. >> rose: so where are we with women today, you know, your subject, beyond motherhood, your other subject is women. >> we talk about how, you know, half of the institutes in medical school now are female. half of the institutes in law school are female. but a very exhaustive study of women in leadership positions in all businesses and industry was done last year. and it showed that basically there's a leadership lid of about 20%. and almost no place are there more than 20% of the leaders of institutions, ranging from newspapers to television networks, to wall street who are female. so we got to a point where everybody said isn't this wonderful, we're doing the woman thing and what doing the woman thing meant at a leadership level was one woman or on a good day, maybe two women. you know. everybody makes a huge fuss about-- pepsi in part because she is the woman. and also there's lots of countries that have learned to do much better on this than the united states has. i mean when you look at the list, for example, of women in government. >> rose: right. >> there is many, many nations ahead of us including, for example, rwanda. i mean we are not as terrific at this as we would like to think that we are. but there is no question that huge progress has been made. it's just that at a certain point we reached a kind of a plateau, i think, at which we got comfortable with a certain stature and visibility. i mean am i thrilled that the secretary of state of the united states has been a woman so consistently that when she was younger my daughter once said to me can i guy be secretary of state. because she had seen mad line and condoleezza rice and now-- and now hillary, of course. it is fantastic. >> rose: they own the jurisdiction now. >> well, let's hope so. obama, has he turned out the way you wanted him to? >> i'm happy but not thrilled. i didn't-- . >> rose: what is the difference between happiness and thrilled? >> i love having someone in the white house who i can tell is smarter than i am. i really love it. i mean the man has a very quick mind. >> rose: and what is your best evidence of that. >> the way he answers any given question. the way he responded to any given situation. you can tell he has the back story. you can-- you can tell that when something happens in chechnya, he understands the back story of that conflict. you can tell on health-care reformhat he understands the back story. it's the same skill that secretary clinton has always brought to the table that she has this huge wealth of information. but i didn't vote for him so he could announce increased off-shore drilling. so as a liberal, a proud liberal, i feel like he is ed ed-- treading a much more moderate path than i'm comfortable with. i would have wanted not only a public option, but a single payor health option. >> rose: you are food for single payor. >> i go all the way up to the edge of the earth. but on a lot of other things, i'm happy. >> rose: you should be happy about this book. every last one, it's a novel, anna quindlen, need we say more. thank you. >> thank you, charlie. >> rose: thank you for joining us. see you next time. within how did it happen that you ended up in business coverage? >> i really fell into business. i study economics at nyu. and i was just taking economic because i was doing well with it. i thought we'll see, you know, what happens when i'm ready. and my mom said to me why don't you take journalism. i think you would be good at it. so i did. i absolutely loved it. and then switched to economics. i started as an internal at cnn. and because of my economics background at nyu, they offered me a position in business news. it wasn't any master plan to go into business journalism. but it worked. >> rose: and how did you get on the air? >> well, i was a producer at cnn business news working for lou dobs. and loving my job. i used to put pieces together for other women without went on the air, people like jan hopkins and terry keenan who really were the early stars of business news. and then they reorganized the assignment desk and lou dobbs gave me the great news that i was geting pro meeted with more money. but i was being taken out of the field. and you know, one of the reasons that i made self-knowledge the first law of success, story of success is because you have to know yourself. and i knew myself. i knew what i was good at. and i was good at being in the field. and so i went in the ladies room and i cried my eyes out and i ran into kitty pilgrim at cnn and she said to me, maria, you have to think about where you see yourself in five years. and you have to move toward that goal today. and it was the first time anybody had ever talked to me about long-term thinking. and so i put a tape together. i sent it to cnbc. and amazingly they called me to be on air. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org