only 4% of americans want to hear presidential candidates talk about the national debt, so you are on to something. thank you so much for watching "state of the union." i'm candy crowley in washington. join me next sunday at 9:00 a.m. eastern for my exclusive interview with senate majority leader harry reid. for or viewers here in the united states, fareed zakaria gps starts right now. this is "gps, the global public square." welcome to all of you in the united states and around the world. i'm fareed zakaria. first up on a great show today, we'll tackle politics. tuesday in america is not just any tuesday. it's super tuesday when one-fifth of the states in the union will go to the primary polls. we have a great political panel. later in the show will israel attack iran? my guest says yes. he is a very well connected israeli reporter.

you'll want to hear what he has to say. then the u.s. tax code is 70,000 pages long. do either president obama or mitt romney have good ideas for reforming it? nope. that's what a long-time republican says. i'll talk to him. also, china's growth is fueling a fair portion of the global economy. what happens if that growth slows down? we'll explore. first, here's my take. the controversy over the d desecration of copies of iran and the murder of americans that follow is at one level, one moment in a long complicated war. it also highlights the difficult and ultimately unsustainable aspect of america's afghan policy. president obama wants to draw down u.s. troops, but his strategy remains to transition power and authority to an afghan national army and police force as well as to the government in kabul which would run the country and its economy. this is a fantasy. we must recognize that and pursue a more realistic alternative. the united states tends to enter wars in developing countries

with a simple idea, modernize the country and you will solve the national security problem. an articulation of that approach came from none other than newt gingrich during a 2010 speech. >> the fact that we have been in this country for seven years, almost eight years and we have not flooded the country with highways, we haven't guaranteed that every afghan has a cell phone, we haven't undertaken the logical steps towards fundamentally modernizing this society? >> now, assuming that every afghan got a cell phone and could travel on great highways, here is what would not change. the afghan national government does not have the support of a large segment of its population. the pashtuns. the national army is regarded as an army of tajiks, uzbeks and hazarahs. the old northern alliance that battled the pashtuns throughout the 1990s.

and simply put, afghanistan's economy cannot support a large national government with a huge army. the budget for afghan security forces today is around $12 billion paid for by the u.s., of course. that is eight times the amount of the afghan government's total annual revenues. as america has discovered in countless places over the past five decades, there are problems with this nation building approach. first, it is extremely difficult to modernize a country in a few years. second, even if this were possible, the fundamental characteristics of that society, its ethnicity, religion, national and geopolitical orientation persists despite modernization. accepting reality rather than wishing for some fantasy change in afghanistan would not leave america without options there. we could have a smaller true presence, but we could still pursue robust counterterrorism operations.

the alternative is that we maintain our current approach, which is to bet on the success of not one, but two very large nation building projects. we have to create an effective national government in kabul that is loved and respected by all afghans, whatever their ethnicity. we have to expand the afghan economy so that a large national army and police force are sustainable for the long run, but to succeed, we also have to alter pakistan's basic character, create a civilian dominated state that could shift the strategic orientation of the islam government so that it shuts down the taliban sanctuaries in pakistan and starts fighting the very militant groups that it created and supported for the last three decades. does anyone really think this is going to happen? let's get started.

>> let's come straight to our super panel to talk about super tuesday and all other things swirling around american politics. joe cline is time magazine's political columnist. katrina van den hovel is the editor of "the nation." krissia freeman is editor, and a writer of politics for " the daily and the national review" on-line. joe, looks like romney has sort of wrapped it up one more time. sort of written still say he is not doing what he needs to do. >> there was something of a turning point for romney. we finally found out that there was something that mitt romney wouldn't do to win the nomination. he said he wouldn't set his hair on fire by making outrageous comments about barack obama. that's nice, but it really point out a major deficit in his campaign so far.

if he is running as the electable one. electability is a concept that you should never tout, but should also always prove by winning elections. you know, if you're running as the electable one, you have to show your appeal to moderates and independents. bill clinton did this by pushing for welfare reform, which the base of his party didn't want. george w. bush did this with compassionate conservatism in 2000. up until this point mitt romney has given nothing to moderates and independents in the electorate. he has tilted way to the right and what we may have seen this past week is the beginnings of his attempt to come back to somewhere near the middle. >> what do you think of that? as our resident right winger. isn't it fair to say that at some point he has to start pivoting to the center on some substantive policy issue? doesn't romney have to provide some -- something that makes moderates feel, oh, he is one of us -- or independents feel he is one of us, not one of the tea party. >> fareed, you made a wonderful

point by saying it's about what people feel. it's about affect. you are right that in a primary process the affect that one must project is an affect that resonates with base voters, and that's always going to be complicated regardless of the political coalition that you are a part of, and that's something that as he racks up victories, assuming he racks up victories, he will be able to do. >> you know, 2012 is not 2008 in terms of what this primary -- long, messy primary did in the democratic campaign. i think it elevated, amplified candidates. we're seeing all of these candidates, with the exception i think of ron paul, dirtied, at the same timed. mitt romney has been losing independents and moderates with every breath and step he takes. it seems to me there's a bias of sorts in the mainstream coverage that is associates extremism solely, almost solely, with soc. like abortion and gay marriage. when, in fact, there is an extremism of economic policy, and i would argue mitt romney has now moved very far partly

because of the base of a party that sees economic policy almost as a cultural war and his policies, tax policies, for example, are evidence of an extremist for the privilege, an extremist in pinstripes, and he is perceived more as the moderate because of the landscape you could argue, the barrenness of the landscape around him. >> fareed, you asked exactly the right question, and the big question and the challenge for mitt romney, if he gets the nomination, which he will have done partly by catering to the extremes in his party, is he going to be able to pivot? you know, i think there is an argument that his weaknesses in the primary, the voters' suspicion that really he is a moderate pretending not to be could be a strength in the general election, but he said so many things now that he will be doing his triple flop. >> say whatever you want, but i also want you to answer my question, which is you -- you have covered this so much.

i'm struck by if you add up all the non-romney votes, everywhere they beat him, is that normal? at some point shouldn't he be getting a majority somewhere as opposed to a plurality? >> it's becoming normal because the process has changed, and you have a proportional representation. if these were all winner take all primaries you might see a different effect. by the way, he is about to have a tough, tough couple of weeks. you know, super tuesday is not going to be a picnic for him. >> do you think gingrich will take some of the south? >> i think gingrich will take georgia. santorum is way ahead in places like tennessee and oklahoma. he is ahead in ohio, but that will be competitive. romney's successes have been limited to new england and that stripe of mormon states just inside the pacific coast. you know, i think that it may well be that new york state turns out to be his fire wall in late april. the other thing i wanted to point out about romney is that

katrina was limited in her description of this extremism. he has been an extremist on foreign policy. he has willfully misrepresented the president's position on israel. he keeps on saying that the president believes in a return to the 1967 borders, but he never includes the words with mutually agreed upon swaps. he is an extremist when it comes to immigration, and that is a big deal because i don't know whether latinos are going to believe it if he tilts to the center. >> in the sense of what the gop is doing on immigration policy, as it faces its own numbers, its own numbers. i mean, in 2020 the electorate will be one-third non-white, and this is a changing country, and this party is, at the moment, not trying to educate americans. maybe that's not the role of campaigns anymore, but in the terms of the decline of their role in america, but it's playing to their fears and grievances.

i would argue rick santorum most stridently in the long lineage of right-winged demagogues -- >> what do you think of mitt romney? is he to your mind, you know -- is he the center of the republican party? is he on the right? is he -- he ran in just four years ago as the right wing alternative to john mccain, but he is now seen as a moderate. hasn't the party shifted. >> fareed, here's what i think happened. between 2002 and 2008 there were many close elections, gubernatorial elections in the united states, in which the republican lost narrowly. so had a few more of those elections gone a different way, we would be looking at an entirely different set of candidates. what i'm saying is that politics is extremely contingent. we try to draw out these larger lessons. you know, this person is moderate. it all depends on what are the things, what are the controversies that happen to blow up at a given time? mitt romney tried to offer a minimal plan on taxes, but then he saw that, well, this is not good enough.

i have to move the needle, and that actually is a very awkward situation when you are actually governing. >> all right. we will talk about all this and more, if economics isn't sexy enough, we'll talk about religion and sex, i suppose, when we come back. ♪ [ male announcer ] for our town. [ dog barks ] for our country. ♪ for our future. ♪ this isn't just the car we wanted to build. it's the car america had to build. ♪

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we are back with joe cline. katrina vanden hufl, reihan is alan and chrystia freeman. you wrote a piece talking about the book, which basically says that the tea party may seem as though it's animated by economic issues, but really at heart there's a lot of social conservatism and a lot of religious fundamentalism, right? >> yeah. i mean, that was her assertion, and the other thing that she found was, you know, really talking to tea party activists that they were driven less by a coherent ideology and more by a set of very specific issues. so on the economic issues, she said they were actually very concerned about keeping their entitlements for themselves and the way they saw it was it's a question of who is working hard and who who wered it? it was a lot of retired people who felt we've worked for a living, we've worked for our savings, we've earned all of

these social security payments and medical support. >> it's factually entirely untrue. >> she found that -- >> the system is much less. >> versus a perception of now inhabiting this nation of free riders, and what she found very interesting was the free riders -- there's my grandkid who is still on the couch. doesn't have a job yet. >> they're freaked by their grandchildren. >> yeah. >> one thing i find, and i spend a lot of time out in the middle of the country, is that people who are the republican party base and the heart of the tea party, who are white, tending towards elderly and so on, are kind of worried about the fact that this is not the country they grew up in. you know, if you go to a town in arkansas and you find all the convenience stores are run by south asians, and there are mexicans all over the place, and people talk to you about their grandson has just become gay and their granddaughter is dating a japanese guy, and the president of the united states does not have the good sense to be black or white, and his middle name is

hussein, and they are scared about this and the economy i think does ramify it. >> this is talking about the tectonic shifts in this country. this is a period of change, and one can approach that change with fear or playing to the electorates, the tea party's grievances and resentments, which i think we see in all of these candidates, with the exception of ron paul, but i do think we're living in a time where government is misunderstood by those who need its benefits. tax cuts do not revive auto industries. that's why the republicans are going to lose michigan and ohio. >> we've got to -- we've got to get -- >> how splendid that we have such consensus around the table. i would argue that tax expenditures are a very big part of the transfer state in this country. if you look at tax expenditures, the $600 billion according to one estimate of tax expenditures a year, we have a state, a transfer state, that is at least as large as what you see in

northern europe, and the trouble with our transfer state is that unlike those that you see in other parts of the world, it's skewed towards people who are middle income and people who are fluent. that is a genuine problem. >> i want to you answer the point that all three have made, which is -- >> well, actually, this way of exercising government policy is a way of making the exercise of government policy relatively less visible and i think that's a real problem. i think it's not quite -- people don't realize that they're on the take. ha, ha, ha. >> actually, there's a reason they don't realize that. >> i want to ask you specifically to address this issue that you have a lot of fear of social change, to the point joe was making, you reviewed the book "in foreign affairs." >> in 1970, the united states was 3.8% foreign born. right now the united states is 11% foreign born, and another 12% has at least one foreign born parent. i happen to be in that latter category. now, when you think about that, in the space of 40 years you've

had that extraordinary change, okay? now, when you think about the level of social peace and civic amity that we have in this society, given that extraordinary demographic change, i think that a lot of the nostalgia that you see on both sides, beth on the left and the right, think about nostalgia on the left, the idea that the midcentury economy in the united states is the way that an economy should always be. that model of new deal social democracy and that's the way that an economy should be. it happened in a world where there were no thai restaurants, fareed. the country was 3.8% foreign born, and when you had those changes, it actually accelerates, intensifies, and exacerbates certain types of structural differences and inequality. >> i think in talking -- >> i would say -- >> the question is what do you do with that and do you actually -- >> you celebrate it. >> i think in talking about this social issue, i think we're missing what is actually driving this which i think reihan was approaching. the thai restaurant is not the point. it might be the easiest thing to latch on to, but the big

transformation and the painful -- and the really painful transformation is the stagnation of middle class wages, and the polarization of income in the united states. >> that's right. >> those middle class jobs that those retirees used to have. their grandkid is on the couch. not because the grandkid is lazy or has tattoos. >> high skilled immigrants contribute to inequality here. >> the jobs aren't there. >> guys, guys, i promised the viewers sex. we have to get to it. joe, it seems clear that the raising of issues like contraception, obama's -- the issue with regard to the what catholic charities could or could not provide. net, net, that is helping the democrats because it's making a lot of independent women say, wait a minute, we don't want people telling us what contraception we can use. >> it's helping the democrats,

but i think reihan is going to faint when i say that i think that the strongest case that the republicans have that's been obscured by all of this craziness is that the regulatory state has gotten out of control. so when you bring it down to contraception, you ask yourself, why in a country where we don't require employers to provide health insurance should we require them to -- those who do provide health insurance to provide contraception? now, i'm all in favor of contraception, but i think that this is a major overstepping of the state's role. >> could i pick one thing up? we were talking earlier. simple things instead of the big regulatory state which i would argue is overstated. you could have a restoration of glass steigal restoration. this is conservatism, and a financial -- small financial transaction tax, which is appreciated by angela merkel, the conservative leader. >> sex and religion. ergo, we go straight to the financial transactions tax. >> tax and sex. >> to joe's point, i want to say that i see it somewhat differently. i see an effort to make certain aspects of government policy

making as opaque as possible. and why do we make them as opaque as possible? if you had a universal health law that was based on taxes and transfers in a very transparent way, as they do it in canada, it would have been really unpopular. do it for a mandate. do it for regulation. do it through all these ways in which the costs have become invisible rather than visible. then maybe we can get it through. then later on when we discovered this jerry rigged structure doesn't work, then they make it transparent later. >> last word. >> well, here i agree with reihan. i think american progressives really need to bite the bullet, and they need to say let's bring our country into the 21st century and have a universal single-payer health care system, and then these debates would be -- would happen in a very different context. >> that's what the progressives have been fighting for. >> get your president to do it then. >> we tried. that's part of what we do. >> the tax increases are essential. >> we have to acknowledge that time is up.

joe cline, katrina, reihan, chrystia, thank you. up next, what in the world. o

now for our "what in the world" segment. we've gotten used to the rise and rise of china. every year for the last three decades it has had growth at staggering rates. almost 10% a year. we've almost become used to the idea of a permanent china boom. now, what if that were to change? what if china were to hit a big speed bump? that's what a new world bank report worries about this week. it's called china 2030, and it warns that unless beijing puts in place a number of structural reforms, it will be doomed to what it's calling a middle income trap of slow growth. that's what happens when the factors that lead to high growth, cheap labor, for example, disappear once it becomes a midtier economy, and its growth rate slumps. to avoid that fate, the world bank makes a series of recommendations from letting the market play a role in setting interest rates to decreasing the

role of the state in business. now, these are smart ideas, but they're not new. economists have been saying this kind of thing for years. so what's the fuss? well, it turns out the report was co-authored by a top chinese think tank, which often advises the chinese government. this is important because for the first time it gives a world bank study a semi-official stamp of approval. perhaps this chinese dissident didn't know that as he interrupted the reports unveiling to call the world bank's prescriptions poison. he was, of course, led away. but his demonstration of nationalist pride is a sign of a debate going on in beijing at the highest levels. on the one hand you have some pragmatic economic minds who acknowledge that for china to become the world power it aspirz

to be, it must allow the world and the market in more. foreign ebanks, for example, manage less than 2% of the chinese financial system. on the other hand, china's state-driven economy has served it well. it's been barely impacted by the recent financial crisis. it was also insulated from the asian financial crisis 15 years ago. that kind of resilience allows conservatives within beijing's top echelons to oppose any major changes or reforms. what's clear to me is that this is a year of waiting and watching in china. in a year where 70% of the country's leaders will change over, no senior official will take the kind of risk that would jeopardize his or her career. that only increases the risk of a slump in a few years if nothing is done now. the financial times columnist martin wolf points out that the next global financial crisis will likely come from china. simply because of its scope and size. that's not a far fetched assumption. remember also that very few countries have avoided financial crises after reforms and global integration. martin wolf points out, as examples, the u.s. in the 1930s,

japan and sweden in the 1990s, or the euro zone right now. china is on course to become the world's biggest economy even if and when it slows down as per the world bank's projections, but it will need to make major structural reforms to have its growth be sustainable and to make it more harmonious with the global economy. there's a danger to rushing into reform. that's what is keeping china cautious right now. they've handled things well so far. but one of the lessons of the financial crisis surely is that nothing goes up in a straight line forever. up next, will israel attack iran? my guest is a well-connected israeli journalist who says it's only a matter of time. stay with us for that and much more. [ male announcer ] there's been a lot of talk about the chevy volt lately.

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will israel strike iran in 2012? it's a simple question, but with extremely complicated answers, everyone, you ask, has a different opinion, but most people don't have sources like my next guest. roenan burgman, the senior political and military analyst for israel's most widely read

daily newspaper. he joins us from tel aviv. welcome. >> hi, fareed. thank you for inviting me. >> let's start with the bottom line. you believe that it is likely that there will be an israeli strike on iran? >> yes. after speaking with many of the israeli leaders and chiefs of the intelligence and the military, i have come to the conclusion that there is a strong likelihood that israel will strike iran during 2012 because iran is getting too close to what was coined by minister of defense ehud barack as the zone of immunity. this is the specific point on the timeline after which iran nuclear sites are going to become immune to an israeli strike. according to israeli latest intelligence assessment, iran is something like nine months away from entering this so-called zone of immunity. therefore, there are many in israel who believe that israel should take the initiative and strike before, because sanctions do not yield the result that israel hoped it would result in, and the covert actions that did cause some delays to the iranian nuclear project have exceeded or

exhausted their ability and iran is accelerating towards its ability to produce the first nuclear weapon device. >> there is, at least looking at it from america, another window that would -- that perhaps is closing, and i'm wondering whether that has been part of the israeli discussion, again, with your sources at the highest levels. that is this. you have a window until november. until the elections are over in the united states, it will be very difficult for an american president to criticize israel or to do anything but support it unconditionally. do you think that that is a factor, that people know that until november you have a guaranteed support of the american president? >> yes. fareed, i think the u.s.-israeli relation, the complex strategic

allies between these countries and especially when it comes to the iranian issue are a central factor in the israeli decision making process, and as you said, the coming u.s. election is also a factor. you can look at one side guaranteed u.s. support, and you can look from the other, because the president, maybe the next president, president obama, has asked israel, requested, not to strike in iran, and, therefore, an israeli strike before the election, a strike that can complex things for president obama, might be interpreted by president obama as sort of a defiance to his request. therefore, you can look at it from both sides. however, at the end of the day the minister of defense, barack, told me, and he is writing the israeli doctrine when it comes to possible israeli strike with iran. he said all options are on the table, indeed, he says, but from our point of view there is one option that is not on the table. this is the c option, containment. israel, he says, will never contain a nuclear iran. there is no possibility that we are going to accept such a country holding such a weapon. >> so take us now into the -- into the israeli decision making

process because one of the things we hear is that the israeli military and intelligence apparatus is not as keen on this idea as prime minister netanyahu and defense minister barack. that they believe that the games which would be probably an 18-month delay in iran's program are not worth the costs which are, of course, the regional instability, the possibility of iran retaliating. is that true? >> there's a difference of opinion, and as you correctly said, fareed, people in the military and the defense and the intelligence establishment who object the strike because they say it would not heed the significant required delay of from 18 months to three years. the inevitable day after consequences, including a rain of rockets coming from iran, from hamas in the gaza strip, from hezbollah into the north of israel are going to be intolerable by the israeli

public. when i asked minister of defense barack about this, he said i am supportive of difference of opinion. i support the debate, but, he says, when the chiefs of the military looks up -- look up, they see the prime minister and the minister of defense. when we, the prime minister netanyahu, and myself look up, we see nothing but the sky. we have the responsibility, he says, for the continuation of the -- for the faith of the jewish state, for the fate of the jewish people. therefore, we have to make a strike. they are, fareed, numerous reasons why not to take such an action. why this could inflame a new war in the middle east, but the mind-set that i get from these people, especially from the political leader, from the political level, is that for the first time i hear that they feel a sense of urgency and they feel

that unless something, i would say, unpredicted, un -- which seems impossible like the iranians give up their complete nuclear project, and this -- unless something like this is happening, israel would need to make a call and would probably go for a strike. >> what do you think prime minister netanyahu is going to tell president obama at the oval office on monday? >> i would assume that the israeli prime minister would ask president obama to give israel assurances on what exactly does it mean when he says that the u.s. is determined to prevent iran from becoming a nuclear state. is the u.s. willing to guarantee israel that if israel doesn't strike, the u.s., when the time comes, and the iranian supreme leaders orders his scientists to stop producing the first, then the u.s. would strike. i would assume that on that specific issue, the president of the united states would be very

cautious from making promises and obliging himself to restricted military action, and on the other hand, i assume that prime minister netanyahu is going to use the same vague language as he used before when the president will ask him to refrain from attacking. he would say something like israel reserves itself the right to defend itself and will not promise the president not to strike or to give the u.s. a heads up prior warning before a strike takes place. >> ronan bergman, fascinating perspective. important reporting. thank you very much. coming up after the break, how to fix the unfixable, america's system of taxes. we'll be right back. a you know when i grow up,

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both president obama and mitt romney have ideas for fixing the u.s. tax code. will any of it work? my next guest says no. bruce bartlett has served as an economic advisor to two republican presidents, ronald reagan and george h.w. bush. he has a terrific new book out, "the benefit and the burden." welcome. >> thank you. >> first, you make a distinction between obama and romney's plan. what do you think the big difference is?

>> well, the big difference is that romney's plan is a huge tax cut, especially for the rich, and it's really written primarily not really to be enacted into law, but to appeal to the republican electorate. i think obama's plan is more an opening bid in in terms of doing something substantial where the two sides are close enough to deal. i think the real problem with obama's plan is that he talks about evening the playing field, but at the same time he wants an extra low rate for manufacturing companies, and i think that in a way he is going in opposite directions simultaneously. >> when you look at the u.s. tax code and its incredible complexity and you compare it to other countries, the thing that stands out is what is called tax expenditures. these kind of tax breaks that cost the government money just as surely as it were spending

it, and there are hundreds, thousands of these tax expenditures. when did they develop? why do they exist? >> oh, they've always been there. but it wasn't until the 1960s that we started to create a list, and the reason they started creating lists is because nobody knew, and i think everybody was quite astounded once they went through the tax code systematically to try to figure out these things because it was felt that at the time that there was a lack of transparency. that if you could get a special deal into the tax court, it was sort of there forever, and if it was small enough, nobody would really notice. >> say that again. that's very interesting right there, that you have a tax expenditure that once you put it in, it's there forever, whereas when the government spends money, that spending with request has to be renewed every year and is scrutinized, whereas the money that it spends, in effect, through the tax code you

do it once, and it's there for 50 years. >> pretty much. there's a real lack of transparency, and part of the problem is, as you said, there are so many of these things, and, of course, we talk a lot about the really big ones, such as the exclusion for health insurance and mortgage interest deduction, but there are hundreds and hundreds of others that the revenue loss is only in the low millions, and -- >> what's the total cost to the federal government of all these tax expenditures? >> the number i've heard is $1.1 trillion, but they're not really additive. you can't add them quite the way you do spending. it's certainly a very, very substantial number. so many of them are just a few million million dollars, and they're worth a lot to the particular industry or group that it benefits, but -- it's not a large enough sum of money to really bother going after unless you're going to go after everybody in which that's really what we need to do. we need to kind of get a lot of these small ones and go after them all at once so it adds up to some real money, and you can do some significant simple fiction in the process. >> how would you reform the tax code? would you get rid of all these tax expenditures?

i would if i could. i think that's pie in the sky hopelessness. you i think what we could do is meaningful simplification for the vast majority of people by changing, getting rid of the income tax and replacing it with value-added tax. in which we pay our tax as we buy things. and this could be done very easily. the problem is there's a strong segment of the conservative community that is just adamantly opposed to a value added tax and will fight to the death against it. >> and the argument -- the value added tax is much more efficient, is much less cheating. it actually reduces the thing that we worry about in america, which is too much consumption, but the argument is that -- i have heard on the right as well that this would give the government -- it's almost a fear that it is too efficient at raising money. >> you're exactly correct. they're afraid of it because it's too good at what it does. they have an extraordinarily

simplistic argument. to listen just yesterday i was arguing with dan mitchell from the cato institute about this. to hear him tell it, all of europe is a giant slave if you live in europe because you pay high taxes and all because of the vat. you know, i've been to europe. germany doesn't look like a slave camp to me. it's just gross exaggerations really that fuels a lot of this and just fear of the unknown, but it could clean up so many of our problems on the tax code. we could get about $50 billion per percentage point if you did it just as a tax reform. you could use that money to fix an enormous number of problems in our tax code and get us on to a better track. >> how do you get the republican party -- i mean, you come from it. you work for republican presidents. right now we are taxing at about 16%. we're spending at about 24% of gdp.

it's not just tax reform. you're going to have to raise more revenue. it seems that every republican candidate on these primary debates said that they wouldn't raise a dollar of new re news. -- revenues. >> well, i think that, you know, they go around telling people, well, we just need to cut 7% or 8% of gdp as if they wave their hand. it's utterly ridiculous, and they won't deal seriously with the problem of entitlements and the problems of the elderly and the costs of health care. they just lose themselves. >> have you been excommunicated on the right for saying all this? >> yes. there are certain things you're just not allowed to say, and saying that we need to raise taxes is unfortunately one of them. i think that's, you know, ostrich head in the sand kind of attitude, and it's going create a lot of unnecessary economic problems in the future. >> bruce bartlett, thank you so much for joining me. >> thank you. >> and we will be back. up next, how a scene that looks

like something out of "kill bill" or an asian "james bond" is actually geopolitics in action. i'll explain. wednesday was leap day. progresso. it fits! fantastic! [ man ] pro-gresso they fit! okay-y... okay??? i've been eating progresso and now my favorite old jeans...fit. okay is there a woman i can talk to? [ male announcer ] progresso. 40 soups 100 calories or less.

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wednesday was leap day. that means this year we'll have 366 days, of course. it got me thinking about how it all started, and that leads me to my question this week from the gps challenge. who invented the concept of the leap year, was it a, aristotle, julius ceasar or gal leia or pope gregory xiii. go to cnn.com/fareed for more of the challenge and lots of insight and analysis and it follow us on twitter and facebook, and remember, if you miss a show, go to itunes. can you get the audio podcast for free or you can buy the video version. go directly there by typing itunes.com/fareed into your browser. this week's book of the week is for those of you avidly watching the american election. theodore white's pulitzer prize winning "the making of the president 1960" is the original political campaign book. it's probably not the first, but certainly it is the model that

many have followed. white's vivid look inside the 1960 presidential race. john f. kennedy versus richard nixon is wonderfully written and in many ways just as relevant today. now for the last look. i have a riddle for you. what do you get when you put 40 heads of state 30 miles away from a rogue nuclear nation? the answer, nervous heads of state. the solution? a little showing off. splendid tough guys repelling down the front of a building with guns drawn. black tie tough girls taking out the enemy with a swift kick to the face. no, this isn't some asian james bond film. this is real life, or at least a drill. so south korea is just a hop, skip, and a jump from the dmz, and that nation's version of the white house called the blue house will host the 2012 nuclear security summit at the end of the month. and this week their presidential security service was on display

showing their daring and their ability to take out a bad guy and fast. just in case anybody tries to do anything. the response from the government of young mr. kim across the border they think the sum it is a childish farce. the correct answer to our challenge question was b, we have julius caesar to thank for the extra day this week, but caesar's version essentially adding a day every four years, was imperfect. it made things off kilter by about three days every 400 years. in 1582 pope gregory 13th devised the calendar which adds a day almost every four years with some exceptions. thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. i will see you next week. hello, everyone. i'm fredricka whitfield. with a check of your top stories. fresh from a win in washington

state, mitt romney picks up a key endorsement in the race for the white house. this one from the leading house republican eric cantor. romney and the other contenders are on the campaign trail with super tuesday less than 48 hours away. tune in at 4:00 eastern time today for our special 2012 contenders hour. president barack obama reiterates diplomacy is the way to go in trying to resolve the deepening nuclear standoff with iran but in his remarks before the largest american jewish lobbying group he said all elements of american power including military action are on the table. there's better weather today across what can only be called a vast tornado zone. and that should help with the tough task of cleaning up five states are reporting deaths now, for now the number of dead stands at 37. ohio's governor describes the mood in his state this way, quote we're knocked down, but we're not knocked out. >