Going to have an agreement ever on this issue it has to be between parties that actually, actually legitimately represent the steak hold in other words this issue. And that is not going to be served by keeping palestinians divided. Obama on obama and palestinians on hamas when we continue. Funding for charlie rose is provided by the following. Theres a saying around here you stand behind what you say. Around here, we dont make excuses, we make commitments. And when you cant live up to them, you own up and make it right. Some people think the kind of accountability that thrives on so many streets in this country has gone missing in the places where its needed most. But i know youll still find it, when you know where to look. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. We begin with president obama, it is a testing time for him, and he contends with one Foreign Policy after another. From ukraine to iraq, to ga, to the demands of the moment have disrupted longer term planning on the domestic front, economic numbers have improved but with twothirds of his presidency behind him many policy goals remain elusive, the economist magazine has run several covers critical of the president during the past year, joining me now from london, john micklethwait, she the editor of the economist and recently interviewed the president aboard air force one, i am pleased to pleased to have him back on this program. I want to talk about this very, very interesting interview but i made the reference to the number of covers that you have run of the president , raising questions as do, you know, about Foreign Policy as well as domestic policy as well as leadership and a lot of other things you endorsed this president twice. But you have raised critical questions. Now you get an opportunity to talk to him on air force one, three of you hovered over a microphone talking to the president. Describe to me before the optics of this before we talk about the content of this. It is very good, but the original reason he wants to talk to us was to talk about africa and then he suggested we talk about Foreign Policy, we talked about that and he himself made a pitch to talk about the economy and his attitude toward business. So it sort of follows that track to some extent extent and the second thing as you say it is a small group of people, three people huddled over a microphone in air force one, we land halfway through it and keeps on talking. And the last thing, very obviously is i lack your silky tongued interrogation skills, but what is interesting i think is he does talk quite at length about how he feels about the world, how he feels about business, and how he feels about africa. And what was most interesting about how he feels about the world, about africa, and about Foreign Policy . And business . It is interesting. I think if you are a critic of obama and as you said we have endorsed him but also done so somewhat grudgingly, the economist, he should do because we endorsed him and then he pointed out rather grudgingly rather correct we certainly last time around were rude about certain things he has done. We think he has been too tough on business and we have been rude about his Foreign Policy in terms of particularly the issue of what exactly would america fight for . What exactly would it stand for . But i think the bit where the sort of passion comes upmost is on the issue of business, he comes back quite hard and tries to make the case that Corporate Leaders should love him, he has produced a wonderful economy for him and he still doesnt get why they dont entirely like him, i think. Did you produce that question for him in terms of that perhaps he doesnt get what it is about him that they dont like . Well, there is a particular exchange where he cites an example, well companies, their main priority is just to serve shareholders and i understand, toe pointed out that is exactly what executives come, they run into the white house which doesnt realize the modern chief executive is somebody who has to look over a great many things, executives spend half their time doing socially responsible things, it is a vast part of what they do. They get involved in things to do with workers, with dealing with different stakeholders, all of those sort of things and one of the things they get frustrated about with Obama White House they usually mention jared very quickly is they are always seen as people just trying to make a quick buck, and his response was, yes, they say that but he dont do quite enough of it and he said, every time they say that i ask why are your lobbyist out, why arent your lobbyists out there campaigning for these things but a very con at the native president and thats the part of obama in some way i am surprised he doesnt do more interviews like that because actually you give obama time to talk, he is an interesting, thoughtful man and that is really, i think, the obama that Americans First voted for and actually still do fairly largenr ny looked at the world u learned a greatnini deal. 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R grestnr emergingco et the way that america guidedco te las i bignrnico emwreing ecofjs asia, you lookni at sortnini wentcoxd toconre1]in china,ni aa lot of bloodco andnintr treasurg ton is it committed tooknr donr th thingni in africa, you haveninpe africannintrcoxd sunm is interesting and so onnrninrnw far is america prepari that . ni az queswy tonrniq of advantages in africa. Doesnt have the burden of all ofxde1 that. eh q9n it is reasonable to uphold obama against questions. There is also this these things require effort. Of the overview of the president expressed in part in this recent political profile titled the obama paradox written by carrie brown and jennifer epstein, quote, obama has always projected the aura of a deeply confident man, someone on the basis of past experience was justified in assuming that good luck just naturally happened to him but in the second term, confronted by recurring setbacks and regular reminders of the limit of his power, he began to convey a sense that even hopeful news might be ephemeral, a mirage. I think that is interesting. I would have agreed with that before that week, oddly, i think maybe when you saw he was an unusually good news, he got good Economic News which seemed to justify his faith in the american economy. I think there is slightly more optimism in obama, maybe be, may be beginning to creep back, but it is very, you know, his presidency is one of those where i think you will look back on it both in terms of being frustrated by a Republican Congress but also in terms of missed opportunities, you and i have talked before about simpsonbowles, the issues of reforming american government. He had that chance and didnt take it. I would say drawing a red line in syria and not actually punishing assad when he went over it, that was also a mistake, and had he really brought china in, i am looking at Henry Kissingers book which is still to come out you look at the way in which he thinks about the world, obama, has obamas Foreign Policy really tried to do that level i am not so sure. Rose what would be kissingers advice for obama and china . I think kissinger has a long record of trying to work out what the interests of countries are and focusing on those and trying to come up with new versions of an order based around that, and i think there is there is definitely an interesting thing as you look at the chinese now, when you ask them about the americans they talk to, they talk about henry kissinger, they talk about bob zell elect and they dont talk about people within the Obama Administration in the same way, and that is partly because they prefer slightly older people, with all due respect to bob zelek, thats the way they think. It still shows something and this is something where you have to develop these relationships, so the point about obama really he talks about china again in the interview, he says, he gives china quite a good hand in africa, it is a very easy, slight to do, to say the chinese are causing trouble in africa, he goes on about it the more the merrier, let them in and very happy to compete with them, the chinese are good at some things in Foreign Policy more generally he does accept bringing china into the World International order is a great test of this thing, i think it is fair, if obama ends his presidency second term of his presidency without having done that, i think that really will be difficult, but he does talk again about the need to be tough with china as well. Rose well, let me read this from his mouth to your ears. You have to be pretty firm with them, talking about the chinese, because they will push as hard as they can until they meet resistance. They are not sentimental and they are not interested in abstractions, that can come right out of the mouth of henry kissinger, i mean it sounds like kissinger, does it not . Yes because he is talking about fundamental interests of what the chinese want and how they define themselves and i think actually a lot of the Obama Presidency is being learning that. You have to have some sympathy with him. He has a country at the moment which is not enthusiastic about foreign entanglements and i think that is different and it is interesting the way first you have those desperately keen you could run a moral living Foreign Policy and the obama crew that seem to take a broader first do no harm. Either which of are particularly rose no, no, not first no harm, first dont screw it up. Dont screw it up. And that i think is that the way you want to look back on it i think he is beginning like most president s to suddenly realize just how big and complicated the world is and the fundamental, the big bit we push him on in the interview is the obama Foreign Policy has been based around this idea that a group of reasonable people will come together and back things, that is pretty much the way he imagined the arab spring would go. He has tried to do other sort of more of a coalition of the willing. It is a coalition of the reasonable people, but he runs into these two problems as i mentioned earlier, one is, you know, the unreasonable people, Vladimir Putin is one, net huh netanyahu, many would argue he is unreasonable. The allies that havent really come to support him and realizing it is a more complicated world people dont know what your interests are. Rose you know, he defined his view of the world in a speech at west point and he also said to you about the u. S. Role in the world and he answered the question you posed in your magazine cover, what would america fight for . The president said part of my job has been to try to persuade countries that the United States will always shoulder a greater burden than others, but we still can not do it alone, given the complexity and interconnectedness of todays world. So assess that for me. I think that is true. He also talks, i think, in an interview if i remember it correctly he talks about the idea that americans in some ways can never get it right. Either intervening to too much r too little, people are probably missing it now i would argue on a lot of the fringes of russia, in terms of japan, in terms of the gulf states, all of those people feel that america is not enough there at the moment, they may have been the people that wanted george w. Bush complained about too much of america being around. I think he is still wrestling with that and i think that is his part of the elements of letting him talk for some time, amateurish, charlie rose, to give him time to say what he thinks. And i think he does find this world both absorbing and also actually strangely he is beginning to analyze the more and more he does. Rose you call middle class and working class families his obsession it is where we have made less progress than he would lying. It does. It is interesting he comes at the end i talked about actually toward business and, you know, business, you have got to not just lobby for things, in a publicly you have to lobby for them privately as well, but he also goes to the rich. He doesnt like the idea that he is seen as a class warrior and has a bit where to Hedge Fund Managers you can keep your, he said you can keep your 0 house in the hamptons i wont take it away from you but it is not the rich he argues that that should be complaining they have done pretty well. His argument for what it is worth, he talks about the, the rest of his life the fighting for people lower down, the lives havent improved as much and i think that is a bit of the obama maybe that is sort of passionate domestic bit which waits to come out, and i think he does sort of veer with you and i have talked to you about this before, there are at least two big, i think debates going on in the world at the moment one is to do with inequality and that is what he begins to veer toward and that is, pool of people, pulling people toward the left, it is difficult to follow that without thinking about redistribution, yes, you can think about things like education as well and or on the other thing, which bring up in my book with obama as i am with you, the issue of government, and that brings and reforming government, that takes society to the right. And i think that is an interestg bit and obama is always caught in the middle of that. He is prepared to look again at how you examine government, his own focus i think is going to relentlessly going to be on inequality and that particular he keeps using the word fair a lot and thats a trend throughout the entire world at the moment. In terms of left of center politicians he says, in terms of the ban in britain and in france, but also i think you are beginning to think quite a lot in terms of the certain trying, you say Angela Merkel and cameron as well. That is an issue. Rose thank you, well done. Thank you very much. Rose we will be right back, thank you very much stay with us. Rose joining now four guests to talk about pa palestinians and the conflict in gaza. Chacha. He is a fellow at the Brookings Institution and former advisor to the palestinian leadership. Rula jebreal, host, author and political commentary and a Foreign Policy analyst for newsweek yousef munayyer. I am pleased to have them here to talk about the way they see the events in the middle east from the palestinian perspective. This is the Palestinian Community supportive of hamas in terms of this conflict . With israel. And thanks for that question, charlie. I think one of the biggest misunderstandings about this conflict was that the people participating in the militancy on the ground in the gaza strip were just hamas. And that, in fact, is not the case. Every palestinian Political Party that has a military wing was engaged in the resistance to the israeli attacks and i think what that reflects is a broad will among the palestinian population to resist this Israeli Aggression on the gaza strip and of course the siege on the gaza strip which does not discriminate between members of hamas, it does not discriminate between the young and the old. It is the indies discriminate collective punishment of one point a Million People in the gaza strip. So i think this is not just about hamas. This is about the Palestinian People in the gaza strip, and of course everywhere wanting to push back against this ongoing occupation and of course the siege which for the last several years has paid put a huge toll on the civilian population there. Rose other questions about that, let me just understand the notion of who is fighting there. What other palestinian groups with military wings are you speaking of that are engaged in the fighting . Well there are lots of them . There is of course hamas sway Political Organization has a military wing which is the bring gay, Islamic Jihad has a similar situation. The popular front and the Democratic Front for the liberation of palestine, the popular resistance, committees, and also by the way the martyrs brigade which is affiliated with militant organization which is of course the party of president Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, so what you are seeing here is not simply about hamas. I disagree, actually on this point. I think it was clear that hamas was leading Islamic Jihad was following, popular front participated, but i dont think pa really agreed or even participated in most of the operation. I think they agree on a fundamental i dont agree on a fundamental part on how to achieve Palestinian Statehood and sovereign palestinian state by and the palestinians in the west bank with leadership of abbas and before under the Prime Minister, told the palestinians, and promised them they can achieve sovereign state through negotiation, renouncing violence, and what happens the moment they didnt get anything through those negotiation, the credibility was und