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So they are talking about a place that on a very fundamental level they actually don't know what they're talking about. they know what they've read and they know what people who used to live there a long time ago have told them about it, but they never have had the experience you have had of being in cuba, of studying the culture closely and ultimately writing a book about it as you and bill leo grand have done. what are they missing by not having gone there? >> this is not the cuba of 1959, obviously. you see the pictures of the old cars and everything. well, yes, you see the old cars there, ...

The extent to which the u.s. policy is a central argument that the castro regime makes for its repression. unfortunately, we can't allow freedom of assembly and expression, freedom of the press and freedom to form political parties because, well, we have this aggressive hegemonic neighbor to the north. look at the blockade. look at everything they have done to sabotage the cuban revolution. that sound laughable perhaps, but it's not laughable in cuba. and that is literally almost every speech you've heard out of the castros for a long, long time. it comes back to that theme. the fact that they...

Incremental changes based on steps taken on the cubans. if the cubans were going to allow, for example, labor unions or political parties, maybe then we should have made a step towards them. free elections or the process to allow freedom of the press, then additional steps. i thought they should have been steps taken side by side towards that sort of democratic opening in cuba. what the president has done here is given the castros everything they've asked for. in exchange, given nothing when it comes to democracy and freedom. >> let's go to havana right now. i want to get a sense of what peopl...

Tune with the rest of the world who wanted to know why you're so fixated on this. let's get on with it and let's have normal relations. i mean -- >> why do we care what the rest of the world thinks? i thought we were supposed to be standing up for the repressed people of cuba, the way the castros treat them is horrific. this staunch communist regime which affords no source of living to anybody living in cuba and on and on. aren't we against all that? >> sure we are. we speak out about the way china treats its people. we speak out about -- you know, things that have happened in lots of countrie...

Something for nothing so can i. same thing in russia. >> but these earlier presidents they stood up to the castros. but it was earlier in time. there hadn't been such a long period of time where the embargo was in place and the relations frozen and no progress being made. the obama's defense is that wasn't working. >> what wasn't changing is the castro brothers were there. the problem with the embargo isn't that the embargo wasn't squeezing the regime, unlike burma, the regime wasn't willing to negotiate. put aside the efficacy for a second. we've had the embargo in place for five decades. the...