Memorable moments on this program. Historians discussing our nations Founding Fathers. It was a great moment of improvisation. They discovered the two principles that over the course of the last two centuries have proven to be the recipes for success for all nations. A political system bottoms on the principle of popular sovereignty, democracy. An Economic System is under the conviction that energies of individuals citizens are the source of the real productivity. Call it capitalism. Theres something that washington throughout his life that people were confident entrusting power in him. He inspires confidence, level headed, not drunk with power and somebody who understands that military power has sob subordinated to civilian power. Adams steered a very careful dangerous, treacherous, even course among the shoals and the whirlpools of diplomacy and managed to keep america neutral not to side with either england or france. And franklin is somebody who believed in moderation and compromise. He thought he could negotiate a settlement between britain and america. But by late 1774, hes fed up, hes given up and comes back to philadelphia, in 1775, declares hes a rebel is for the revolution and became one of the honest patriots. Rose David Remnick looking at Obamas America and some elite historians looking back at the Founding Fathers who created it all. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose on this independence day, we begin with a look at this moment in American History, the events of the last few weeks have brought Sweeping Change in the United States. Theyve also revived president obamas momentum in this final stage of his ten your. The Supreme Court upheld the healthcare law and legalized samesex marriage nationally. A tragic killing at a black church led to a movement against the Confederate Flag and heightened the conversation about race in america. Congress passed the president s trade legislation and relations with cuba were formally reestablished. Joining me with David Remnick editor of the new yorker magazine, his latest article called ten days in june. I am pleased to have him back on the program. Welcome. Great to see you. Happy fourth of july. Rose to you as well. The lead paragraph in your first paragraph, ten days in june does that come back to your russian knowledge . It started with the shooting and ended with that amazing eulogy, those are the ten days. Rose what a series of days in American Life furious debate, mourning and finally justice and grace as president obama led thousands of mourners in Charleston South Carolina in amazing grace, i thought about the late 2013 and early 2014, obamas presidency was surely dwindling if not finished. His mood was somber philosophical, which is good if youre a philosopher, if not not. Obama described himself to me then in terms of his limits as a relay swimmer in a river full of rapids and that river is history. More than a few believe obama was now resigned to Small Victories at best but paused to think of what happened, the scale of recent events. And there you go. I was recalling a time when the Healthcare Plan had its unbelievably stumbling, at best rollout, and people were starting to say, well, this is the beginning to have the lame duck presidency of barack obama and whats next and, of course, some months later you had the midterm elections which were business mall for the democrats and bismal for the democrats and the talk of lame duckery and the thought there was no way in the world obama would get anything done any which way. So thats setting the terms. It was just striking to me not to overstate it, not to say that the new deal has been passed in the last couple of weeks but rose but something was in the air. Absolutely, and the parameters were defined by an hoer renne cows tragedy that seemed so horrendous tragedy that was so familiar and to have the president come out and say ive made these statements too many times before, and some of the statements, to be honest, always struck me as not political enough, not ferocious enough, not revealing enough of what one knows to be inside of him in terms of fury and frustration about whats going on racially and in terms of relations with the police and all the rest. This time it didnt happen. This was, to coin a phrase, a tipple point. Rose yes. At least in his rhetoric and what he allowed himself on that day. And then you had the eulogy in charles, the south carolina, and it was political. It was emotional, it was very much of the black church, there was no holding back. This is who i am in terms of my politics, in terms of who i am in terms of my solidarity and my alegions and my and my allegiances and passions. Rose i think it was about him, in a sense when he came to washington, yes, he wanted to be aspirational, he had been on the campaign train, but he realized there was a practical job ahead of him. Early on in the presidency, i was working on a book that became a kind of biography about race with obama called the bridge, and as some book writers do, i got an interview at the very end of this process and we talked about race a lot during this talk. Then when it was over and he was, you know, forthcoming as much as he thought he could be or wanted to be in the oval office. And then the interview ended and he started walking down the hall away and came all the way back and said, ive got to tell you, its very difficult for me to talk about these issues im not quoting directly, but this is the way i recall it issues the way i want to because i know that just as i can move markets inadvertently with a stray word about financial policy, i can exacerbate the situation, i can make things worse or i can arouse passions on both sides that i dont necessarily want to do if i set a foot wrong on this discussion, and the implication being the most important thing i can do as in the history of race in this country which is after all, the most painful narrative that we can you know, talk about in American History on this holiday or any other the most important thing ive already done, i have been elected. And then subsequently reelected. That it seems to me to have changed. It seems to me that because of these tragedies and the repetition of these tragedies, i think hes allowed himself to become more fullthrowedthroated on these issues. Rose he said to you or someone that he lamented that he couldnt talk about economic inequality the way he wanted to because it would be defined as class warfare. It was defined as class warfare. He made one mark about fat cat bankers, and you would think he was carrying a pitch fork through america. Rose he did use pitch fork at one time in another conversation. But not like he wanted to bandish one. Rose yes. And he lost a lot of support in the fat Cat Community as a result. Rose i think he said the only thing that stands between you guys and pitch forks is me in corporate america. Delicate sensibilities to billionaires. Rose ed luce in open ed said he went to charleston to speak at a funeral and left at his ten your brought to majesty both the limits of the presidency, he would not be the same on anyone elses watch. Well, he could well, he could perform in a way any number of politicians to the right or left can. Rose because hes africanamerican. Yes. That adds to the emotional fray to what happened in that church in that eulogy. Rose it was one of the great moments anyone has ever seen who believes in someone having total command of the moment. But there was some of the samesex marriage thing in the rose garden. There was a sense of ideas i believe in coming to foer. But, again, with samesex marriage, he also and i dont say this dericively played politics. When barack obama was a state senator, he filled out a questionnaire, and one of the questions is do you believe in samesex marriage. He wrote, check yes i do. And he equivocated later on as he ran for this office or that office and he would go back and forth rose he began to say im evolving. Im evolving. You know, you read David Axlerods book and you know what that was, he was very frank about it. It was politics. No one ever accused barack obama of leading the charge on Marriage Equality but i think it was quite clear what you were supposed to derive from his message, after all. I want to say one thing about both those issues we should be very careful about thinking now race in america is a solved issue. Rose i know. And peoples views are resolved. Look at the Confederate Flag symbols. The flags are going down all across the south and yet polls came out today the majority of people still think of the Confederate Flag as a symbol of Great Southern heritage, not as a racist symbol. These things take time and not everybody comes to the same conclusion all at once. Rose and on samesex marriage, they also talk about religious freedom as well. I understand that. What i think is there are two different ways of looking at it. Theres one thing about people personally accepting a given issue, the other thing is politicians stirring the base by saying that theres a war on christianity, as weve seen ted cruz and other politicians do. One i understand, the other is not healthy, i think, for american politics. Rose a writing said sometimes history speeds up. Rarely has a single act broad such a surging change and sweeping set of challenges to past assumptions. Bit by bit, all at once. In other words people getting hit over the head and worse in the struggle for gay rights for decades and decades and decades so its not something happened just because Anthony Kennedy cast a deciding vote. This came out of nowhere but it is a moment, like brown v board of education, like the loving case on interracial marriage where there is a decisive breakthrough moment. Rose and understanding this was a dramatic and consequential ten days, exactly what is the moment and what did it change . Did it change something in our consciousness, in our better angels . Did it change something so that we crossed some river . Well, its interesting to see reports there is a difference between something being a movement and something being the law of the land, and you watch reports this week i have, and you have, too of local clerks who are in charge of marriage licenses saying im going to refuse to do this, and its, on the one hand, youre angry at that person for the obvious reason. On the other hand, there is a sense that, well, no kidding that person couldnt change from one day to the next 180 degrees. Its not shocking that thats the case. On the other hand, that person can no more make up his or her own law on gay marriage as he can about speeding tickets or this will be absorbed at different rates by different people, but it is our law. The big part is its now the law and, to me its a moment of fantastic triumph. Rose but i want you to deal with the question of whether there is something beyond the law that somehow this has something to do with the psyche of the country. I think it does i think suddenly now what are we discussing . We are now discussing think of where we were. Andrew sullivan wrote a cover piece in the new yorker excuse me, unfortunately, not the new yorker for the new republic years ago about gay marriage from a conservative point of view and its shocking. Rose a gay man and a conservative. And a conservative catholic. I think his politics have changed since on many things, but now what are we discussing . Were discussing whether transsexuals, whether transpeople should be able to serve in the military. That is an amazing thing. I mean, to see people struggling with these gender issues, with these issues of sexuality, with these issues of equality and respect on things that were unimaginable unimaginable five ten 20 years ago is, yes to me, it makes a very happy july 4th lets put it that way. Rose are you surprised or did you always know this is a man that i as a journalistic observer that you never believed that he had begun to he always wanted to have do boldness, he always wanted to give expression to his deeper self, his non obama . Rose yes. Well, ive always thought that obama hides in plain sight. Rose exactly. I always think that he is who he says he is. I think hes the opposite of somebody like nixon or the ultimate due due duplicitous president. It always paid off to take him pretty much at his word, maybe a sophisticated view of it when it came to foul ticks of Marriage Equality, but it never occurred to me to think otherwise he was a left of center democrat. Thats what he was from the beginning of his career, that he was not any great radical. His model of how to deal with social movements was Franklin Roosevelts dealing with the nations civil rights movement. You remember, this is a story obama tells all the time. The early civil rights people come to the white house to talk about f. D. R. And say we want this, this and this and we want you to speed up and f. D. R. s response is make me, that f. D. R. Cannot be the head of a movement, that the movement has to force a sympathetic president forward. Rose it has to come from the groundup, so to speak. It does. So when were congratulating each other on july 4, i think a lot of the names of gay rights, whether theyre the kind of more or less establishment liberals on this or radicals like larry cramer need to be congratulated and acknowledged as every bit a central as any politician. Rose this is what he said to you in a 2014 interview, i have strengths and weaknesses like every president , like every person. Do i think one of my strengths is temperament. I am comfortable with complexity and i think im pretty good at keeping my moral compass while recognizing i am a product of original sin and every morning and night im taking measures of my actions against the options and possibilities available to me, understanding there are going to be mistakes that i my team and america makes understanding there are going to be limits to the good that we can do and the bad that we can prevent and that there is going to be tragedy out there and im part of that tragedy occasionally but that if im doing my very best at basing my decisionsen the core values and ideals that i was brought up with and i think they are pretty consistent with those of most americans that, at the end of the day, things will be better rather than worse. Well, look, this kind of talk was maddening to some people when published in the new yorker a year ago. Rose because . Because it seems so philosophical and a little resigned. I would beg of people to compare that rhetoric to some of the rhetoric were hearing in the current and growing president ial race. Race. Is that the temperament thats desirable, that kind of thoughtfulness, or some of the other stuff were hearing now. Right now running number two in the republican race is donald trump. Rose so . I think its a product of people who are. Rose its personality and marketing. He has a brand name. His name is all the over the side of golf courses, and hes just a man who is willing to say anything to be noticed. Anything. And what he recently said rose about immigrants. About mexican immigrants and rapists finally crossed the line, so egregious that a Major Television network said, you know what . No more. They came under pressure from Hispanic Media watchdoggers, and nbc is throwing him off the air. Rose oh, thats right. Macys doesnt want his apparently, he has a mens line. Rose a pretty nice line, too. Also nice, charlie. What a country. Rose what a country. What a country. Rose what a country that donald trump is out there which is a product, as you say a Business Success to some degree, but at the same time but a go desk baffoon we should be able to call things as they are rose you just did. There have been a lot of baffoons in life but this is someone who uses hate as his message. Rose but youre here to say he knows hes a baffoon, he knows what hes doing its all a connivens to get more attention and by chance it might work and he may get some momentum and nomination to be president. I very much doubt that. Rose okay. So its a product of the moment, that his star shall fall . I think he likes attention. He likes attention. Rose so hes not serious about wanting to be president . Oh, my god, dont even say it. laughter i mean, this is the most Serious Office imaginable, and he doesnt know anything and he doesnt know what he doesnt know. Rose okay, but thats you looking at the kind of person that you would like to see look, i dont agree with ted cruz on almost anything. Ted cruz is an intelligent person. Rose hes a road scholar. Hes a very intelligent person and there are any number of people running for president on the republican side who are intelligent, serious people. I dont agree with them on almost anything, but rose yeah. Its well, thats another thing. Rose this is the same country were talking about. Were talking about Barack Obamas country Donald Trumps country, because were looking at the Founding Fathers, we embrace a variety of types. There is also Bernie Sanders drawing record crowds. 10,000 people in madison wisconsin. Now, madison wisconsin, is the whitehot center of rose guess who the governor of wisconsin is, guess where paul ryan comes from . Madison, wisconsin. Its like austin, texas. Its quite different from the rest of texas. Nevertheless, its an expression of people on the left in the Democratic Party who want Hillary Clinton to be more like them, its an expression of economic populous, and its interesting to note that the black v