back in 1958. it is an extraordinary situation. you have two candidates, one of them from a party that didn't even exist a year ago, and the other from the far right. so i think there's a mood of, you know, some apprehension, a little bit of surprise about the outcome but also a bit of excitement. >> rose: and we conclude this evening with wendy lesser who has written a book about the great architect louis kahn. >> he didn't fall into any camp so the brutalists love him, the modernists love him, the class suss love him, everybody from all the different sources of architecture seem to feel that he is the one that best represents them. >> rose: hundred days of trump, the french election and louis kahn the architect, when we condition continue. >> funding for charlie rose is provided by the 2308ing: 2308ing:-- following kl: >> 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. >> we begin tonight with a series of programs leading up to president trump's 100th day in office which is april 29th. since the presidency of franklin roosevelt, the 100 day mark has represented an important symbolic milestone. as president trump nears his 100th day in office on saturday, his administration continues to pursue an ambitious agenda. the president is looking to move this week on a second effort to repeal and he replace the affordable care act. and in the face of a possible government shutdown, he also plans to reveal information about tax reform later this week. supporters applaud his recent strike on syria and the confirmation of neil gorsuch to the supreme court. critics say that trump has made little headway on major legislative efforts and that his record low poll numbers reflect this reality. joining me now to talk about the trump presidency so far from washington, glen thrush, he covers the white house for "the new york times." from california, hew hewitt, is he the host of the popular conservative radio program the hugh hewitt show. and here in new york dan senor former advisor to paul ryan and also an official in the office of gorge w bush and philip bump for "the washington post." i am pleased to have all of them here. hugh because are you in california, let begin with you, the furtherrest away. how do you go about an assessment of this president after 100 days. >> i think you have to use the old richard nixon yellow pad, the good and the bad, charlie. it's been the best of times and worst of times, neil gorsuch is a 30 year win, maybe a 40 area win, a significant win. they had a huge free exercise case last week before the court there will be many more 5-4 decisions on which justice gorsuch is on the side of the originalist. i think st almost impossible to overstate how big that win is. it is the first time the supreme court justice was confirmed in the first 100 days in over a hundred years. on the other hand the loss of the obama care repeal is vastating to the idea that the republicans could accomplish something if they had all three branches of government. they haven't. and that's a major drawback. they're also 20 circuit courts that are vacant for which only one nominee has been put forward. that's a downside. on the upside there are 13 kojal review act statutes, not executive orders statutes which have long-lasting deep implications for the rollback of the federal administrative state. so it is a 50/50 good time bad time situation from my perspective. >> rose: glenn? >> hugh i think is grading on a little bit of a curve here. i think, i will give him props for that. but look, you know, this is a president right now who according to a pair of polls that came out, the abc "washington post" poll and another poll by nbc a couple of days ago, was in the 40 to 42% approval rating. that is the lowest by far of any president in the modern era it means he has far less political capital with which to act. he was handle handed a humiliating defeat on the health care stuff. more than that, i think, there was a fundamental misapprehension by the president and his team, particularly steve bannon about how the presidency fundamentally works. i think they thought that they could achieve a great deal through executive action, instead of realizing what most presidents he know, which is executive orders tend to be more effective at the end of an administration, at the end of a first or second term. one legislative routes have been blocked. so i think the president right now what we're seeing seeing ism learning on the job and really over the last couple of weeks, if you are a republican in support of the president, there have been a handful of encouraging signs that he is sort of learning the presidency finally after three months. >> but there is also this. his support among his core base remains very high. >> 96% of the people i believe in the "washington post" poll who voted for president trump in november still support him. and his presidency among republicans is still well north of 80, as high as 85%. but his erosion has been fundamentally with those people in the middle. independents who voted for him, in a lot of these swing states who still disapproved of him. remember, this is one of the most extraordinary elections in modern history because a very substantial number of the people who voted for the president disapproved of him. >> rose: there's also a poll that shows, i'm not sure who did this poll, somebody at the table may know this, that said that he would still beat hillary clinton by three points in the popular vote i think that was the washington poses poll, when you look at the erosion, where trump was holding his base where clinton supporters are expressing regret, look that they would have looked elsewhere, maybe third party, trump seized on that as he is looking for wins over the past week as an example of some place where he has done well. >> rose: and to the larger question. >> to the larger question, i think the surest sign that donald trump is not happy with how he is doing is how he is trying to downplay the hundred day mark. is he a person without very much celebrates when he feels he has had successes. is he not celebrating this week. i think he has had some core win, the tbor such nomination, approval say big win. but he has really done a good job of sort of ynd mining the establishment in washington, undermining the bureaucracy in washington, making things a little uneasy which i think is something that he set out to do. and something that a lot of his supporters approve of. i think he's also done a good job of putting question marks next to a lot of president obama's legacies which again, president obama, when we talk about how popular donald trump is with republicans, we have to keep in mind that is a very, very partisan, very polarized point of are for politics. so a lot of republicans wanted to see president obama's legacy undercut to some extent and i think trump has done a good job of moving down that path. >> rose: beyond the specifics of health care, those kind of leblg slative challenges, what is his biggest weakness and biggest strength in terms of the way he has conducted himself? approximate it in terms of leadership within the white house. >> i would say mostly impatient. -- impatience. he has this sense that in order to be successful he has to rack up big wins early. i think you're right, he got trapped by this hundred day measure. and it fueled much of what is going on in the white house. if you look historically, bill clinton was wildly panned for his fir hundred days. the press report, totally shambolic. >> locker rooms and pizzas and the rest. >> grornlg work bush, his signature peetion achievement no child left behind didn't get a year until he swor in, obamacare, affordable health care act wasn't enacted until 14 months after elected. there is a sense in the white house that go, go, go, go, go, as opposed to taking a step back saying this hundred day mark is meaningless, let's be patient here. in other areas they did act quickly where the president can act quickly and doesn't need congress which is on syria. hugh listed off some of his wins am i'm very critical of a lot of the self-inflicted wounds that this president has made and a lot of the noise that sort of shapes, you know, furnishes the daily headlines is justified in that regard. but i would add syria because he basically enforced barack obama's red line which barack obama didn't do through his entire second term. and trump did it within a matter of days. and you have had bipartisan support for what he did which is pretty amazing. i don't think, people including me would have expected that. >> rose: what about temp you arement, hugh, bob gates has been on this program a number of times and said this probably to you and me as well, that the mark of a great presidency is temperment. does donald trump score high on temperment? is. >> not high but rising. particularly when it comes to appointments. i 24eu what dan just said, that you look at general mattis, now secretary mattis, you look at secretary kelley formerly general kelley and especially mr mcmaster replacing michael flynn in the white house and you have a trio of national security serious people that have really amped up and i think created credibility around the president where he was perhaps weakest coming too office. so that the obama years, the sea change that is under way from the obama years where it was leading from behind, jv's red line, aleppo, libya, ukraine, crimea, you name it, it was he retreat and reversional day after day, and a frostiness with israel, our closee ally that was at arctic temperatures. and that's all changes in a hundred days. so the temperment has maybe even matched the fact that he is upping his personnel game and with it his ability to get control of the second 100 days. >> how do we measure this idea that he las changed some of the campaign promises and some of the programs he suggested that he would enact as president? does changing your policy or changing personnel in the first 100 days count for you or against you? >> i think what donald trump, and i will jump in, i don't want to hog all the time. i think it counts for you. i think the fact that he reached out brdly to secretary gates to recruit for example secretary tillerson to the administration counts for him. i see a lot of good developments in donald trump learning how to be president. he's a good developer. is he learning as developers do on the job as to how to get the next project done. i remain concerned, the biggest problem in the first 100 days is that almost no one is with rex tillerson at the department of state, only jeff sessions has really staffed up a cabinet department. scott pruitt is all alone at epa. almost nobody at defense with jim mattis because they are at hogger heads, that is a big break down and administrations usually have more people in the pipeline especially on the judiciary. >>so that's a failure. >> on the issue to national security, how he is managing his administration, folks i speak to in the white house say look, on domestic policy and economic policy it's chaotic. they are not going to mask that. on national security issues he seems, the president seems strikingly defer recommendation to mcmaster, mattis, kelley. >> rose: in an area where he had no experience. >> right. >> he's deferred to people without did have 13er7bs. >> when they are dealing with syria he is saying slow me options, show me options, they gave a range of options, asked a lot of question, back to back meeting, the interagency work there was tight. and he actually chose the most cautious option they presented to him. so on the national security front he seems to sort of respect expertise that is not his own and boundary z. >> rose: on the economic issue, philip, he also has gary cohen in that white house, he has mnuchin at the treasury. he has other people, the secretary of commerce wading in on economic issues. so there are multiple heads speaking to that. >> yeah, and i think we saw in early test of his ability to actually affect economic change with the health-care bill which i think did not go well. and i think in part that was simply because he didn't have a lot of ownership over it. they tried to take ownership of the bill. he will announce his tax reform package, it is going to be a 15% tax rate for corporations in the united states that will be a big lift. i think there will probably be more from republicans for that than you might expect. that will be a good test of the extent to which donald trump to the point that was just made, this is an area where he said i can get the job done. this is my wheelhouse. this is what i can do. it's going to be a big test to that. and i think that he showed during the health care fight that he has trouble figuring out how to manage congress and get congress in the right direction. this will be the secretary big challenge. >> he also pulled out a tpp but that was a simple thing to do. so glenn, what about self-care legislation. can he make a deal with the caucus. can he shoi quie elevator the ranks in the republican party and get a health-care bill passed? >> well, i think it's pretty unlikely. a lot of the pressure to do this was coming from his chief of staff reince priebus who as everyone knows is very close to house speaker paul ryan. both of them took it mutually on the chin during this. preebus, his position is some what more secure than it was in the white house, but he's still not a very powerful chief of staff at all. so he is taking a lot on reviving the health care thing in order to get it through the freedom caucus he is going to have to get rid of the preexisting conditions provision. and this is a one house bill. we're talking about the potential of passing this, jamming it through the house, having members walk the plank on it only to have it killed in the senate. so i think that that is a really difficult situation for him and as we know there is a knockdown affect because they were hoping to achieve saves off of that so they could then roll it in to the tax cuts. so now what they have to do is cme up with a trillion dollars or do some serious deficit spending swi an anathema to am so of the other folks in the house. wherever he goes is the point here. he finds somebody blocking his way. there is a reason there's been gridlock in washington. and i agree with hugh, about the president's sort of changing the general tone of the place. but in terms of figuring out how to actually get this stuff done, and remember this is a guy now whose party controls absolutely everything in washington. it was funny, you know, we're hearing people today talking about the schumer shutdown. the republicans are trying to push this notion that chuck schumer and the democrats are going to stop this train from leaving the station. i think right now it is not just a test for the president but for the republicans who, after all, are the dominant ruling party in washington d.c. >> well, i agree with glenn, if you compare this period to barack obama, president obama had a unified democratic party. and obviously very organized opposition. trump has a pleatly disunited, ununited republican party. >> rose: but he controls all sectors. >> but it they are at war with each other partly because president trump didn't run on a conservative agenda. everyone is trying to figure out where they fit in this new republican partying will lead by done alz trump. and it's many things but it is not movement conservatism as we have known it for the last 30 years. >> rose: on syria, hugh, obviously that was a successful strike in terms of limited-- the goal was to stop them from using chemical weapons. on the other hand, people point out, that there is no strategy. and there is no real knowledge of where to go from here except for the fact that the president said i don't want to get involved in the syrian civil war. that's not what i want to do. >> i think we saw secretary mattis in afghanistan this morning, and hr mcmaster following him there if he's not there already as they prepare a syria plan for the president which i expect him fully to adopt. and i do believe he's going to get the military plus up above the 54 billion that nick mulvaney has for in a continuing resolution passes. >> i'm one of those republicans calling it the chuck schumer shutdown because it takes 60 votes to pass a continuing resolution and if there is any border security, any border wall in the cr, senator schumer said will shut it down. the strategy, i think, has to be charlie, first, restock the shelves. president obama left the department of defense baron. 60% of our f-18s are judged not ready to fly. we've only got ten carriers deployable right now. the japanese defense forces are sending destroyers out with the carl vinson to the korean peninsula. the cup board is bare so we have to plush up that defense budget. that will be a big win for me in these hundred days if it comes through the cr. if cheuk schumer wants to shut down the government over the wall, the democrats, we should talk about them in the hundred days. they have really moved to the left. i think we are seeing the bernie sanders effect on the democratic party is going to part of the legacy of these hundred days is they have gone way to the left in a hundred days. >> rose: northed korea is hig his biggest challenge. >> president obama was handing the transition off to the incoming administration. apparently he and his team warned the incoming administration that this was it. this was the sleeper problem that could consume his administration f there was one problem they felt that they didn't address that they would have, it was getting a handle on north cor qua. >> rose: because president obama had a philosophy, let's just-- they thrive if you pay a lot of attention to them, we don't pay any attention. >> correct, don't make a lot of noise and they won't make a lot of noise. the people around trump president have been forward leaning just like on syria. they have been forward leaning on north korea. they are not interested in just rachel-- ratcheting things down, they reratchetting things up. >> rose: general mattis said the days of strategic patience are over. >> right. and i think that, you know, there's potentially some-- again i don't want to overstate it but there is some early prog ves-- progress in that regard and especially getting china on point here is no small thing 78 when people say president trumped on the krnsee manipulation, which again i get all these flips are a little, you know, you can get whiplash trying to keep track of them. however t was probably in response to the fact that the chinese government for the first time was sending ships back, kohlhepp ships, the on thing the north koreans export to china is kohlhepp. and they were sending ships back. >> rose: keep your kohlhepp. >> first time. i mean thes into was starting to tient. done know, but it certainlyted seems like more than a coincidence. >> rose: china has certainly begun to pay attention. >> correct. >> rose: other than foreign policy, one of the things that was said about president obama is that there was great reservation about his will. after the red line stop. and especially among the arab countries, a a rain yarks the emirates, others, where does donald trump stand on that? is that a plus or a mine us or wait. >> i think that donald trump has shown that he is willing to take action that, without reservations to some extent. certainly we made the point earlier that he is sitting down and talking with foreign policy experts and making decisions on that. but is he not showing the same lack of will willingness to enter into foreign policy challenges, to tackle those challenges, with regard to nor courtia he said on the campaign trail he said he will make china deal with the issue. it seems he has to some extent gotten china to wrap their hands around it more than barack obama was willing to do he has, i think one of the things that he managed to do on the campaign trail is portray himself as a sort of different sort of foreign policy person that he is going to be as president. he sort of talked about himself as being hands-off and leaving it up toker o people but he has shown a willingness to dive in the way barack obama did not. >> people on the conservative foreign polls hee right, people i hang out with all excited to claim trump as ao con. is he showing that he is willing tone gage in the middle east, willing to use force. the truth s es he's not a neo con but is he is also not an isolationist. people thought he was going to be an isolationist, me included. he has proven is he not. >> rose: that has changed. >> right. >> i think he's leading the world into a different era. president sees come into the white house, king abdullah coming to the white house, benjamin netanyahu, the sunni-israeli axis aligned with president trump to oppose the syria-a ron and hezbollah access is real and that's significant. i think we can put to bed talks that vladimir putin and trump will be best buddies, that is clearly not happening. and i think theresa may going to the electorate on june 8th is going to again strengthen the idea that the world longs for leadership from the west. not le pen, le pen is off of this chart. she is not trumpist, i don't believe that's part of the global realignment under way. i think she is an outliar as everyone in france-- but donald trump has had a lot to do with it as has jim maltist and nikki haley at the u.n. i'm very saghtsified at the way he has begun his foreign policy much more so than i am with his domestic a againa in the house. >> rose: hugh, have i to end is there. thank you, thank you, fill you know, thank you, dan, thank you, glenn. >> thank you. >> rose: we'll continue all week talking about president trump and the first 100 days, exploring things that we didn't talk about today including the economy and including regulation or the end of certain regulations. all of that and more as we look at president trump's first 100 days. back in a moment. stay with us. >> rose: on sunday france held what as been called the country's most quengs election in recent years. two anti-establishment candidates, marine le pen of the far right and centrist he manual pack macron advance to the run off. the result was seen as a rebuke of france's traditional mainstream parties but today le pen stepped aside as leader of the national front party. sunday's results may predate the dislution of the french party system as well as the european union. the general election proves to be a crucial test case for both the future of france and europe. joining me now adam gopnik, author and staff writer at the new yorker. michiel vos. from rtl and from parp is france sophie pedder, the paris bureau chief of the economist magazine. i'm pleased to have all of them here to talk about the implications of the first round of the french vote. and i first want to go to paris. sophie, tell me the mood in france today after seeing this first round results. >> well, i think the french are really just beginning to come to terms with what they have managed to do which is to evict both of the two parties that have dominated french president sees since the fifth republic was established back in 1958. it's an extraordinary situation. you have two candidates, one of them from a party that didn't even exist a year ago. and the other from the far right. so i think there's a mood of, you know, some apprehension, a little bit of surprise about the outcome but also a bit of excitement because, you know, one of the candidates is only 39 years old. and in a country where candidates tend to be around a long time before they make, become president, this is a big change for france too. >> rose: how do you explain that phenomenon of emmanuel macron. >> i think that, you know, he responds to a mood in france which is something different. but that mood, you know, has been partly met by the candidates on the extreme. but there is also a kind of yearning for a different sort of 308 particulars. i think the french are fed up with the fact that the president rotates from left to right and things don't really change that much. growth is slow, unemployment is high. youth unemployment is about 25%. and i think that the people feel that they want a different way of doing politics. and you know, along he came, is he young, energetic, he decided to try and build something across party borders, sort of across partisan, attempt. and an end to gesture politics, point scoring. this was the divisions we've seen over the last 20, 30 years. and i think that has just captured the mood. but it has only captured the mood of a certain percentage of the population. his great time will be to build on that, on the 24% he got and try and make sure that he can bring the country together in the second round. >> rose: adam, i know how much you love this country. and we're looking at a place where we are looking at a year and two years in which we've seen lots of upsets and populist uprisings. could it happen? >> we've been think being it, right, the terrible tri effecta brexit, trurch and le pen, anything can happen and we've been shocked too often to deny the pont. it seems unlikely. macron's lead in the polls is quite large and something beyond that, even. and even more important than that was what happened yesterday, francois fillon who was the leading conservative can-- ksh candidate, without got he derailed by corruption scandals immediately endorsed macron. even though there say large gap idea logically between them, exactly what no respectable establishment republican would quite do in our election in 2016, that is not only criticized donald trump but say openly i'm going to vote for hillary clinton. and fillon said openly i'm going to vote for the patriotic candidate instead of the nationalist candidate. i'm going to vote for someone, endorse someone who doesn't share my ideology but is scheerly not an enemy of the fifth republic. >> rose: do you expect other endorsements will come along. >> i think they are happening right along. i think that that is part of the french inheritance. frankly, charlie, history affects everything. of vichy, of the lesson that there are-- it's a presumary division between enemies of the republic and friends of the republic. and that even someone who is on a great idea logical divide from you who is clearly invested in the idea of republican politics, republican in the french sense, the democratic politics is a more reliable, more essential ally than any idea logical divide can account for. >> rose: can we say in anyway that this is a victory for marine le pen and people point to the next presidential election five years from now. >> yeah, if you-- you could say that. if you look at how the establishment is now reacting. macron has painted himself as not being from the establishment. but now of course, and adam said this rightfully so, everybody lines up behind him immediately. at ten past eight the endorsements rolled in. and it's a little bit different than in 2002 when her day jean marie le pen also made it to the second round. now she makes it to the second round. but back then there was sort of a populist ooh la la, we're about to hand the republic to, like into the abyss. we have to do something. now 15 years later these endorsements for macron and couldn't ra le pen are some what more, at least that is how i feel, adam, he they feel a little mechanical. there we go again, there is a le pen in the second round. let's round up the usual suspects. let's dot endorsement, fan shoi fillon and hollande saying macron is our chance, our 0e7b8 way out, our exity to keep europe, to not go xenophobe, do not go anti-immigrant do not close ourselves off from the rest of europe, break europe and go against immigration, et cetera. it feels a little tired. i mean i hope he wins, let's just be honest. full disclosure. but it feels a little tired that the establishment almost gives him the kiss of death. he becomes the establishment by embracing or being embraced by that same stebment-- establishment, now you young boy, 39 year old, now you have to save the republic. it's almost-- a country is in deep crisis when that happens, i think. >> maybe so, mike michiel, but it seems it depends on your vision of politics f you believe in utopian politics it is probably a bad thing. if you believe in remed yal politics, one of my great mentors in france andre glukman, he died last year, he said i don't know what is good but i always know what is bad. and we can build our political faith on identifying what is bad and doing our best to prevent it. so in that minimal but very crucial remed yal sense, i think that the coalition behind macron is a positive thing. and i will add too, you know, i wasn't there yesterday. so i am in the role of the expert who gives you his opinion of what he hasn't seen. but in talking to french friends and people i respect all day today, what i have heard is that there was a surprising amount of positive optimism about macron. many people have compared him to obama eight years ago. that they see him as a unifying figurek as a breathe of fresh air. there is a great deal of excitement about macron, especially, charmie, after you, a as you and i talked about many times, the overt failure of the last three french presidency, char okay, sarkozy and hollande are all perceived as abyssal mail feurs in many yeahs, i don't think macron is 1eu6r7ly the finger in the dike putting his finninger in the dike against le pen. >> i think he's also. >> i no he what you mean. >> i think he say positive force in many people's mind. >> rose: i want to go make sophie's point, but the idea of the disleutionz of the french party system, two parties noo that have done well in not doing well. >> the parties of the right have always been in flux in my years living and studying in france, we had the rally for the republic, the union for the presidential majority, then the republicans. so the gallest parties right wing parts are always changing their name and identify a little bit. the national, extreme right wing party has been around for a long time now it is an entrenched party of the extreme right there is no question that macron represents as obama did in 2008 at least the appearance of an alternative form of politic its. and likes obama it is pred kateed on the idea that we are less divided than our politics make us seem and all of those things. which as we know is very hard to sub stand yaition-- sub stand yait as a governing party. he will have a legislative assembly that does not share a platform with them nor share any kind of partisan identification with him. >> so then the big loser, of course, let's just say he makes it. then the big loss certificate the average le pen voter who is maybe not all racist or antimuslim but is also feels left out of the system. a little bit like the trump voter. feels like an outsider in his own country, not represented by paris, by the-- not represented by bankers or by the elite, by the establishment. ft out.se people are going to be she did very well, in vast swaths of the north and east, the rust belt if you would call it that way, of france. those people are sort of like, so here we go again. now some guy made out the party, a little to the left, to the right, he looks good, presented well and will take it away from us. and you know, she ran, le pen ran very much like i am la france, they all tried that. >> rose: the question is what does it mean to be french. >> yeah, what does it mean to be french. you could go the goal, like she now has wrapped herself, i represent the goal, they all try that, of course. and you know, that's a big question. it is always the fight about what is france. it seems to me that if you look at it in the big picture, right, what's happening now in our world. that is really the question, scary and provocative question. and it does seem as if the things that mack ron stand for, is liberal democracy opens society, openness to the world, certainly not free market economics and the narrow sense but some form of social democracy, have governed in regulated free market. i see now not to fulfill people's enormous app tietd-- appetite for identity, for firm identity, for feeling that they have a common national identity, that allows them to find, feel a safe place in the world that was true here, clearly true in britan. and that seems to be motivating this vote in the large part. i'm a bit of a heretic about it. it seems to me tha many economic issues and many economic successes. but this shall. >> and always a large role of the state. >> a huge role of the state and the economy. >> you know, someone suns said to me in france you have to understand france is the one country where communism worked. and i think that that is in large part true. but that issue shall. >> you know yesterday, maybe. >> but that issue of identity-- identity versus cosmopolitanism is pervasive t is the thread that runs through all of these events it seems to me. >> pop lism in every election. >> right. >> that is a cultural factor too. >> i think adam touches upon, like did you or do you benefit from some sort of broad sense of globalization, international brussels, europe or du not. and if you do, it is macron. and if you do in the benefit from all of those international factors, open culture, international culture and globalization, then you tend to vote either extreme left or extreme right. >> i also wonder beyond soort sort of pop lism that there is a kind of feeling of. >> dread. >> le pen is show because of her father and what he was, and how some of the views he expressed. some of the people who stood around her they think are too deeply connected, either in terms of their own ideas or in terms of their own personal opinions to fascism. >> there is no question about it. le pen senior, jean marie was what used to be called the-- a follower of the vichy regime, admirer of it, open admirer of it, that is what the roots of this party are, there is no denying it. she has tried to sanitize it a good deal. >> rose: but the advertisers. >> you can't sanitize it completely. and though the core, the kruks of the ideology now tends to be anti-islam, anti-muslim rather than anti-semitic as a french friend said to me not long ago, you have to always remember that hating mugs limbs is a recreation for such people and hating shoes is a religion. so i don't think that you can rule out the anti-cementic or pretend it is not a ang strong anti-semitic element here too. these are scary people, the old french far right who collaborated and were part of vichy. there is no putting a pretty face on it. what marine le pen stands for is the worst. >> rose: sophie, is there some sense, anywhere in this election, and maybe very much so, that france looks at the world and we know if you follow it closely that there are a lot of very smart technologies that have been developed in france, and reflect some of the things that have made america great, they have that. but a sense that show france has fallen behind what it might have been because it was not a modern state, and did not have the same kind of economic growth engines that other states did, whether in asia or the united states. >> i think that this is particularly-- well, i would say that this is actually particularly the case with relations in germany. france and germany, the founding members of the european project and they consider themselves equals or at least the french consider themselves equal of germany, really in the last 15 years you have seen an extraordinary divergeence in performance, germany has done very well, it has benefitedded from the euro zone, it has full employment. it's a country which has outperformed the average in terms of economic growth. and france has done pactly the opposite. it has, you know, just never quite managed to break that sieblg of joblessness and poor growth. and i think that the french feel that that has been is, it's very uncomfortable. because in a way their political clowt within europe and even to an extent on the world stage is depend ent on their economic clowt. and losing that sense of sort of economic power has been very difficult, i think, for france. and it has made them in a way the junior partner, particularly in the last five years but even before that, with germany. and that's uncomfortable. i mean who does one call when one wants to talk to europe. it's angela merkel, it's not the french president. and that's sort of added to this sense that france has show lost its way. >> rose: have i to say good-bye to you because we will lose the feed from paris but thank you so much, sophie, great to you have on the program. >> a pleasure, good to be with you. >> to pick up on sophie, one could ask yourself is, ask one self n europe, how can you run a european union when every two months, hollande or france now and god knows what next country, not only is regular-- on the ballot but also the existence of the european union there is always one party who does very well or near the top that says we're going to get out of the european union, no more currency, we're done. like it's after over, it's done, not working for us. it it is hard to run to consider it like we have faith in this whole project, the your mean union like, that if it's brexit, after the, luke a taste of brexit or the chance of brexit coming up in every election it goes from country to country. and that is very disorienting for many europeans, i feel. and i hear. and that is-- that came newspaper this election. and it's going to come up in the next election. >> rose: the interesting question is if macron does win, whether he can become part of the leadership of the new european union. >> i think that is what many people in france hope and can rejuvenate the your mean union and make it it, you know, the picture of the european union was always a french jockey on a german horse. and the jockey has been mud bound for quite some time. and i think that that is part of it. i do think, you know, that one of the things that is alarming to any of us that left france is how quickly we have amnesia about what the european union accomplished, right. coming out of 70 years of the most horrific wars ever fought, certainly in the west, and then the european union has give eneurope with all of its faults and bureaucratic nonsense and so on, has given 60 years of peace and prosperity. >> that was overwhelled by the notion that show brussels was controlling local affairs. >> a legitimate complaint, real questions about dem october-- dem october advertising the union. >> brussel made it easy for people to run against brussels, went too far. and now people are reexisting that. >> emmanuel macron appeared on this program a number of years ago, while he was the economics minute ter in the hold 57bd government. here is one question that i ask him, you know, about the future of pop lism in europe, here it it is. >> look, i think pop lism and ex-- are fueled by, in the first crisis, by unemployment. but they are largely hell by the absence of project, the absence of vision, the as sense of willingness some of i'm not concerned or feared about that. i just want to solve the situation and fight against it. and my deep conviction is that there is a strong future for europe. europe is is a great continent. and what we have to do now is to accelerate our reform program, to accelerate solely the program inside europe, precisely to deal with unemployment and especially unemployment for young people. and to propose something new, to propose a future to this generation. if we stay like that, if we don't have, i mean, the dismantling of the eurozone will be a fate. >> rose: with those are kind of ideas that won him the election. >> i think. so i think watching it it you can see part of macron's appeal steady unblinking blue eyed gaze he looks sort of like a greek general. and at the same time i think anyone that sim pathizes with him and admires him is also bound to be a little bit struck in the pit of your stomach by the generalities that he is offering. we need more solidarity. we need a project for youth. those are the kinds of words we heard many times before. they don't just lack specificity, that's politics. but they lack any particularization somewhere along the political. >> he is called the french kennedy, to be called the french kennedy is always good in france but to be called something american could be a tad slick for the french. they need more grounding and details. >> rose: so. >> how about france giving it over then, let's say to a 39 year old neo fiet who has never run for elected office after so many years of grand old statesmen who may not have done good jobs, but it's amazing how fast this country has sort of like yes, that's t the 39 year old or right wing extremist. >> he reminded may for, jfx still remains hugely popular in france, the image of jfx. reminded may more of tony blair in 1997, right. a new wind, a young man, hugely appealing, a third way. and intended to dissolve and dematerialize in the absence of a specific project. >> reinhaven'ting politics t is always a reactive policy and it denned -- tends. >> but it works. >> he came apart on that particularly but it had sog-- there is something wish bfl it, and i would far sooner have the wishfulness of macron than the wickedness of le pen but none the less we can't prevend there isn't a wishfulness in. >> well ale see you how he does in the debate on may 3 and if he survivors that-- . >> rose: we'll see what kind of government he forms. great to you have here it is great to see adam gopnik on this program again because he has been away, composing a musical which will debut in new haven, connecticut soon. >> may 109 we'll be opening. the most beautiful room in new york. >> rose: back in a moment, stay with us. >> rose: louis kahn was one of the 20th century greatest architects. his work is known for combining modernism with the power of ancient monument, philip johnson has called him the most beloved architect of our time, his son nathaniel made a 2003 documentary about his father. here is a look the louis kahn in his own words. >> when i went to high school i had a teacher in the arts who was head of the department at central high. william gray. and he gave a course in architecture, the only course any high school, i'm sure. and in greek, renaissance, egyptian and-- architecture. and at that point, two of my colleagues and myself realized that only architecture would be my life. and how accidenteddal are our existences are, and how full of influence by circumstances. >> rose: author wendy lesser's new look, you say to brick, tells the story of his life and work. i'm pleased to have her to talk about him and about architecture. your interest, where does your interest come from. >> how did i bet interested in louis kahn? mainly, originally through nathaniel he's movie which i saw in 2003 a couple of times when it came out. then i let that laps for awhile until they built the fdr for freedom's monument on roosevelt island. and i lapped it to be walking there on a sunday walk soon after it opened. and i was just stunned by the architecture and what it said to he me, essentially, but it spoke in a way that i felt i could respond to. so i had been looking for the subject is of another biography and that seemed to be the right one. >> rose: was philip johnson right, he was the most beloved architect. >> he seems to have been because he didn't fall into any camp. the brutaluses lover him, the post modernist love him, the classisises love him, everybody from all the different sources of architecture seem to feel that he is the one that best represents them. >> rose: why is he considered a great architect? >> i think for sort of the reason you mentioned earlier, that he combines modernism with something more ancient and weightier. modernism was in danger of being some what inhuman and machine like and lots of steel and cold surfaces. >> and he after a stay in rome at the american academy in rome was very influenced by ancient roman architecture, also by the pyramids and by greek ruins. so he built into his buildings from 1950 onward, that kind of heavy, solid, concern with materials. that is one reason. another is is his use of natural light. he's really great at bringing natural light into his buildings and it plaiks them wonderful. >> rose: but there were a series of buildings that brought him worldwide acclaim. >> he yes,s that he's true. i mean i think there are six undebatable master pieces, those two you named, the kim ball and the salk plus the philip exeter library, the yale center for british art in new haven. and two on the indian sub continent, the indian institute of management, and the national assembly being in dhaka, the capitalist bangladesh. so those are the six that i think no one would argue with. and then i think there are about another eight terrific buildings that he made from 1953 onward starting with the yale art gal erie, the one across the street from the yale center and extending through several private houses and a number of other very a beel-- appealing buildings. >> you understand the architect and then we talk more about the man and you understand the man, you will understand the architecture too. the first one is the salk institute, in california, la jolla california. just an amazing building because right beyond the edge is the pacific ocean. >> yes. >> it's wonderful. and the way he structured the view in that way so that your eye pulls toward it. >> right. the second one is the louis and-- a picture of them as small children in estonia. when did he come to the united states? >> when he was five years old, that was in 1906. >> rose: next one is louis kahn at the art gallery. there is more him in the building. >> the next is is philip's -- library exterior, comment on any of these that you want to. >> this was provided by the philip exeter library t san old shot but it kind of looks like a roman ruin up he at the top where there are those open windows. >> rose: and the roof of the dhaka assembly building. >> this is wonderful. it it is by-- the picture the by the photographer raymond mier who did wonderful pictures of dhaka. this you can see is kind of like a tent floating over the assembly hall. >> rose: then there the mosque and the dhaka assembly building. >> that might be my favorite room of 5u8, of any that he did in any of his buildings. you can see the way the light comes in. >> rose: what was it about the film, nathan yal's film that is so shall. >> that attracted me? well, two things. i mean it is a great film as a fim, as an essay film, a person writing about his father only is he not writing, he's taking pictures and talking but the person portraying his father in a way that is interesting about their relationship. it also shows the buildings in a light that i have never seen in any still photographs. you actually get a feeling for them because of the way he moves the camera through them. but the most interesting thing about the movie and what everyone remarks upon is that louis kahn had three families. he had three children with three different women, all essentially living simultaneously in philadelphia. he remained married too his wif, the mother of the oldest child even as he had two other children with two successive lovers. so that is a pretty interesting story. >> rose: did they all know about each other or not. >> that was one of the discoveries i made when i was researching my book. that they did know -- they knew all about each other. they actually knew each other in person. the children had met, and through the children the mothers met. so the wife was not eager to associate with the other two women, although she was aware of them and was aware of the other children. but the other two women became friends and their children became friends. >> rose: have you written-- you have written about music. >> i have. >> rose: you have win a novel. >> yes. >> rose: but not about architecture. >> i haven't written about architecture before but when i was in high school and college i was very interested in becoming a city planner which i never did. >> rose: yeah. >> but i did a certain amount of work in that field and research into that field. and so this was sorlt of a coming back to something that i had once been interested in. >> rose: tell me about his death. >> his death took place in penn station here in new york. and what i was interested in, and part of the reason i put his death at the beginning of the book is that it was an unsolved mystery. and a lot of people had a lot of different kinds of confusion about it. some people thought he had been car heing a crossedout pases port and that's why he wasn't identified for two days. some people thought that he died in grand central, some people thought other things. some people didn't realize he died naturally of a heart attack. so i wanted to kind of straighten out that store hee and i ordered the police report and i opened up a box that had never been opened in the philadelphia archive to investigate his death. and it was pretty simple the explanation. the police got his address wrong because they probably pulled a business card out of his pocket or something. so instead of notifying his wife at her home address that he had died, they had his name, but they notified the police in philadelphia to go to the work address. and it was a sunday and it was saint patrick's day. and the message didn't get delivered. and that miscommunication resulted in his body being lost for two days or kept in missing persons in new york, until they finally found him. >> rose: they finally got to the wife and identified him within the wife after searching madly because from the moment he didn't show up she and his secretary were both making phone calls and trying to call important political figures to help them search. so there was a whole search on for him until he was finally found. >> rose: does he remind you of any other architect that we know in america? >> none, in my case. i can't think of anyone else that does exactly the same sort of work. he has inspired a lot of younger architects. and i think they all borrow something from him when they're interested in materials and natural light. but nobody else's work looks just like his, to me. >> rose: that is the distinction of what makes a great architect, if you can see a building and say oh, that is frank geary, oh, that is louis kahn, that is richard mier or. >> yes, and many of them are recognizable, the great ones. but what makes him different is when you go inside, the story that the building tell its su different. it leads you through it in a way that is is an actual narrative. and i don't find that in too many other buildings. >> rose: did he design bad buildings? >> yes. i mean he designed buildings that are not as good as his great ones. you don't think any of them should be torn down, he is he a great architect it, everything he made is worth preserving. but for instance right next to the philip exeter library which is one of the greatest buildings he ever made is the philip exeter dining hall which is one of the least great buildings he ever made. but probably they could fix it if they just rerouted the traffic inside or something. >> rose: and was he friends with architects? did she-- they. >> he was. he certainly was friendly with philip johnson who was head of the moma architecture department at that point. >> rose: who played a role in defining architecture. >> exactly. and one of louis kahn first great triumphs was that at the got a single exhibition at momma devoted to his blrk the richards building in philadelphia. there had been no exhibition for one single building before but in 1961moma gave that to louis kahn and that was largely philip johnson he's doing. he was the teacher and employer for a short time of shafty. >> rose: he had been burned as a kid. >> when he was three in estonia, he was burned by a fire. he saw some beautiful gloaning greenish colored coles and he put them into his little pin a for and they came up and burned his face. >> rose: so he lived it with that the rest of his life. >> it did. >> rose: did it have an impact, you think. >> probably it had many impacts but one was immediately his father when it it hend say better he should not live, they were russian jews in estonia. you can imagine with the correct estonian accent and the mother said no he will be a great man. and in some way i think her effort to compensate for this had an influence on him, made him confident and maim him feel he would be a great man. he had all these relationships with women and that may have been a kind of compensation-- compensation for being scarred. but in fact, everybody reports that he was an extremely charismatic man. and he triumphed over the scars and everybody thought he was personally attractive, if not physically so. >> rose: how old was he when he died. >> he was only 73 and he was at the full strength of his career. i mean he had about 10 assignments on the table, three of which got completed and he was zipping around the world on airplanes and he was still very strong. but heart trouble ran in his family. his brother died at 41 of a heart attack, that is what killed him. >> rose: the book is you will cad you saved a brick. the life of louis kahn, wendy lesser. thank you. >> thank you. >> rose: thank you for joining us, see you next time. >> for more on this program and others visit us online. 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. >> you're watching pbs.producti. ♪ ♪ sbrocco: another umami bomb. woman: umami bomb!