Of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose david brooks is here, an oped columnist for the New York Times since 2003. His writing spans politics, culture and the social sciences. He authored several books. His latest column out today examines observations from Election Results and what they tell us about the voting trends across the country. Pleased to have david brooks at this table. Welcome. Good to be back here. Rose great to have you. I want to talk in broad themes about what you have been writing about, were living in a day of global populism. Global populism has affected american politics and youre saying its the agef global populism. I compare it to years because certain periods in history countries are having the same problem but answering it in different ways. Were facing now the rise of populism. I read over a bunch of my columns to prepare for this very humbling experience, by the way. What i see is me and a lot of other people noodling over the same issue. Were in this Pivotal Moment and what exactly is going on. The thought that occurred to me this morning is i was in europe in the 90s. I saw the decline of the soviet union, german reunification. Mandela coming out of prison, the oslo peace process, i saw a great advance of what we call liberalism, not Walter Mondale liberalism, john lachman liberalism, the idea that a free conversation, free trade, Free Movement of people, global democracy. Its just on the advance, now since, starting in yugoslavia, but since, its in retreat. It started in retreat in the 90s with some of the factual fighting and then the decline of democracies around the world and now with our own shores, sometimes an assault on democracy, a talent for authoritarian. Glor and now the habits of liberalism, respecting truth, having open conversation whether on campus or the campaign trail, so it seems to be in retreat in a crisis, and populists are people who decided that system of openness aint working for me. And i dont approve to have the the open immigration, i dont approve of open trade, global immigration, i dont approve of people who could live anywhere, who look down on me when im rooted here in my specific land and theyre rebelling all around the world. Rose you used the expression there is people from somewhere and people from anywhere. Brexit, that was a referendum and then here the election of donald trump. Yes. At election say about the rise of populism . So because were not at a normal moment normally, you know, you have electoral swings. The president is unpopular so the other party wins. This is not like that. The basic tectonics of our politics in our society are shifting and, so, to me what happened was, used to be you had the democrats did well in the cities, republicans did well on the farms, and then the suburbs were in contention. Inner ring suburbs which had professionals, those people tend to vote democratic, outer ring suburbs, more corporate managers, voted republican. This was the basic geographic alignment of our politics. But now the republicans have the farms and theyve given Everything Else away to the democrats. So the split between the suburban managers, outer ranks, suburban professionals. We saw in virginia the outer ring voted like the inner ring for the democrats. Youre defined by your skills, not where you live, and they want a society that has open trade, that has open globalization, open social mores. So what you see is a realignment of a lot of former republicans who were friendly to globalization and meritocracy are now becoming democrats. Rose is it more sustaining beyond one election and one election period . Well, i think it is because its not just trump. The Republican Party has become the party of the somewhere also, to use this phrase, the party of people rejecting the meritocracy, rejecting globalization or at least extremely skeptical of it. So its deeper than just one person. Second, i think its going to be a long time before a party that is frankly stained by trump can erase that stain, and weve seen parties like that. And, so, this strikes me as a much deeper. Now does it mean the democrats are suddenly going to have 30 years of total dominance . Possibly. But you look around the world, and you do not see leftwing dominance in this moment. What you see is leftwing parties collapsing around europe. Rose except in britain. Where they come back because to have the mistakes of the brexit. Rose the Government Party and the brexit, right. So what youre seeing id include britain in this, the collapse of parties together, all the parties at once and the fragmentation of the parties out to the marginal parties and the collapse of the centrist parties, and i think you will see some of that in britain, thats certainly how they talk, that all our parties are in decay. Its interesting because they have parliamentary systems with parties, we just have two. What does a Party Collapse look like when you just have two parties . That to me is an interesting question, and to me the answer is you get the parties being taken over by small, passionate minorities within the parties like steve bannon. Rose steve bannon talks about being a populist and suggests populism is here to stay but doesnt know whether its going to be populism in the end from the left or from the right. I agree with him. I mean, around the time you had your 60 minutes interview here, i met with him and it was like he has a 50year or a 100year plan, sarah palin and buchanan was part of the plan. Donald trump has a plan. I think hes right that it will be around forever, that its the fundamental definition of our era, populism and espoons to populism. Populism or broadly defined liberalism. These are the two sides. Whats striking about the battle is the populists are filled with conviction and organized by people like bannon or other people in europe. The liberals will call them, the people who believe in free exchange, im one, were dispersed. We have no conviction, no faith in ourselves and were so unused to defending the things we believe in weve forgotten the arguments. Rose did the gingrich revolution and the conservatism that preceded it, when it became a movement as we used to say from buckley to reagan and forward, that was a movement. Tid that have conviction, ideas . Did that for sure. When i was my mentor was william f. Buckley. Rose right. When i joined National Review in 1985 or 84, it had a long history, edmond burke, and we had a cohesive movement mentality and a set of ideas that were right for that moment, in my view. But the boo the book explains t, thomas kuhn has a framework that seems to explain reality and over time the facts begin to contradict the framework and then somebody smashes the paradigm and that was donald trump, he came in and went poof, and the republican paradigm just collapsed. Then you get a period of competing paradigms as we compete to see whats next. So i compared trump like an abby hoffman who was great at political theater and used theater to expose the weaknesses of the old order, thats donald trump. Rose is the damage you believe donald trump has done, how would you characterize its . Well, hes degraded public life. Hes aroused bigotry. Hes degraded intellectual virtue, just the idea you should try to be honest and if somebody exposes youre against the evidence you should at least try to feel uncomfortable about that fact. Hes destroyed the Republican Party as i know and a lot of my friends know it. Rose destroyed it . I dont think its coming back to what it was. And i should say hes not the only destroyer. It aged. It stayed stuck with Ronald Reagan and stayed stuck with reaganism from 1980 to 2017, long after it should have been retired. So the old order and this is true across this whole deal the old order is complicit in its own destruction, that liberalism, broadly defined, really didnt Pay Attention to a lot of people who were suffering from it. The mer tock se and the privileging of Ivy League Schools and all that, those people really did drift off into another university filled with selfsatisfaction, high incomes, no contact with anybody else. So, when you get an historical transition the way were in, its not just the peasants rose up and theyre the last gasp of the dying white america, there were significant flaws within the establishment that had to be addressed by somebody, and if the establishment was too lame to do it themselves, well, donald trump was happy to do that. Rose lets talk about the Democratic Party, opinion had on this program the people who talk about the future of the Democratic Party and Bernie Sanders and what it might look like and how many people might run. We also have a review of what happened in 2016. Did donald trump win that election or did Hillary Clinton lose it . Well, of course, the answer is always both, but i would say you have to blame the republicans who lost to trump and hillary and they didnt understand what year they were in and they didnt understand what debate was happening. They still thought the debate was big versus small government and donald trump knew it was opened versus closed and he was having a different dewait that he would use government for this, at least in his promises, and not for that. I see the democratic reaction to the republican tax plan as old thinking. Like henry ford could sell every color model t as long as it was black. He had one model. The democrats respond to every republican tax plan by saying its money go to the rich, taken away from the poor. Rose political slogan. Thats the truth but not really. The republican tax plan takes a lot of money away from the rich, they just happen to be democratic rich people who live in states like new york, california, who live in homes where the mortgage is over 500,000. Rose and put a cap at 500,000 mortgages. Theres a lot of stuff in the republican plan that takes away from rich people, but basically its an argument against blue state rich people and for corporations. Its a belief in the corporate order, that corporations are the tool to generate broadspread wealth. I believe Human Capital is the way to generate wealth. So i wouldnt tax student loans. Le they believe in corporations. Its a different debate than were taking from the poor to give to the rich, much more complicated. Rose believe if corporations because they believe corporations in a sense will create a vital and growing economy . Yeah, an thats their belief, an its not a stupid belief. You know, if you did Corporate Tax reform, our Corporate Taxes are way high, and its tough for us to compete for a Global Investment on those grounds. Rose and have billions of dollars overseas they can use here. And theres one study that if you did corporate reform right, it would increase Median Household Income by 3,500, that would be huge. Rose when you talk about Donna Brazile has written a book also in terms of trying to talk to the Clinton Campaign and didnt feel like she could break through, they have come back and said the campaign she describes is not one they know. But you raise a point in tads todays column that if the democratic majority which came out of the election on tuesday is to succeed and sustain itself, they will have to have a practical plan to enhance universal mobility. Universal mobility, you know, the age of democratic dominance, if they can find a way to create that, then they can dominate. Right. Rose because those people who are providing electoral majorities for them in tuesdays election in the suburbs, thats what theyre looking for. Right. Rose thats what they their lives are all about rising, you know, in Northern Virginia where this election was decided this week, the immigrants who were there and the immigrant richness in Northern Virginia is just amazing, or whether theyre the whites who live in Loudoun County or work around the dulles corridor. The democrats say well give you a sense the life is on the move and american mobility is on the decline, thats what those people want. But there is going to be tanned si, the democrats moved left, theyre going to move left, no question, if they talk about thats not where the people in Loudoun County, douglas county, colorado, in columbus, ohio, that to them is oldfashioned liberalism. Thats not where they are right now. So at a time when populism is rising in the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party, too, will have to say are we with this kind of populism or are we looking for an agenda thats more about universalism, not rich versus poor, not us versus them but we can all rise together. Rose whats the populism within the Democratic Party . The belief the oligarchy rigged the syste Bernie Sanders, that is populism. Rose but Bernie Sanders is a perfect example of laying everything at the foot of wreath is he not . Or the fundamental inequality is the top 1 . Its not the 1 , its the top 20 . Its the people with College Degrees who are just taking off from everywhere else and that makes a less good bogeyman story to tell, oh, its just the hedge fund guys. Its the meritocracy, the way people with College Degrees are investing in their children different and isolating themselves through marriage and becoming more ten waited from the country. Rose access to the media because to have the internet in the arab spring, they looked and saw other people doing well and they werent because of autocratic regimes and they saw unemployment at high levels, they saw the world competition, and they saw places where they were doing quite well, so they revolted, starting certainly in egypt thats what it was about. And some of us were nie ive. I didnt cover that, by i covered russia, the decline to have the soviet union. Get rid of totarianism and embrace democracy. A lot of the people in the middle east said no thats mott the answer and theyre mention more open to other answers, and the reason they think thats not the answer is its not working for them, but b it creates a crisis of social solidarity, it creates too much loneliness, too much social frag men taigs and its not giving them the Rich Community thats the essence of a good life. So the failure of the old order is not only an economic failure, its a spiritual failure. Rose so what happens to those people who are living in some where . Whats their future . Well, you know, i would say to this political story, michael cruz, where he went to allentown or jonathan, steel mill, and weve all been to the towns where the mill is closed, everyone knows theyre not coming back, but their family is there, but there is nothing to do, so the opioid awe buys is terrible. Rose more people died from opioid abuse last year than the entire vietnam war. Pittsburgh is a great city to go to now, and you think pittsburgh is having a revival. Well Carnegie Mellon is having a revival. The steel towns along the river are not. If we lived there we would all be on opiates because there is nothing else to do. How to get a revival in those places is a very difficult problem. Its so socially deep because its not simply that you can give them jobs because to get a good job you have to drug test and most people, especially young men, cant pass the drug tests. They dont h have the habits to pass the drug test or to show up at work every day. So its such a deep social crisis. Thats why its a crisis of neighborhood, community and family and its going to take a different role of government to reweave the social fabric. Rose whats happening on some University Campuses is when the right of free speech is simply not respected. Yeah. Well, to me, thats a creature of two things. Thats a very complicated problem. A, its what i have been talking about. The loss of belief in liberalism, that conversation, but its also caused by what i have been talking about which is the kids on campus that are doing this, they want to be a part of a moral crew said and have morally meaningful lives, but theyre growing up in a meritocracy that treats them only as instruments, as Human Capital to get a job, and theyve not been given any moral categories or moral instructions. So if you create intense anxiety about the world, loss of faith in liberalism and no moral education, what you end up is sort of spasms and a sort of absolutist moral pan, which you see on some campuses. Rose youve said in one to have the columns that i read, the notion that any idea that simply this is about getting around a table and trying to find Common Ground is no solution. Of course thats what i thought. If we could only get together and weve all been in conversations where we try to gettogethers, but what bannon represents is a belief system and you cant beat a belief system with a process. Getting together is just a process. Rose you have to know what you believe and have to act on what you believe in. I think it involves rearticulating what liberalism stood for. Its not the automatic state of affairs. It was created by people like locke, by the founders. The system was created and then defended by a series of generations, and now were seeing it fritter away because weve forgotten what it takes to defend it, and part of it is just the example we set, each of us set in respecting conversation, respecting evidence, holding to intellectual honesty before partisanship, and thats part of it, and part of it is then extending it