is if you were to see protests begin in saudi arabia. >> you've seen them. >> and if they were to continue, what would you advise the president of the united states to do at that point? >> i subscribe to the idea that in formulating and implementing our foreign policy we should adopt an approach of pragmatic idealism, that is we never walk away from our principles and values, support for democracy and human rights. but that cannot be the end all-be all of our foreign policy. that cannot be the only thing. here in the case of saudi arabia, we have a huge national interest at stake. if we lost secure access to the energy reserves of the arabian gulf, we would be in big trouble in this country and in the west generally. i mean, you talk about our economy being in trouble in terms of job creation. if something happened to our access to those energy reserves we'd see some real chaos in our economy. so we have a huge national interest at stake there.