ariana huffington, steve rattner, david frum and mort zuckerman. next up, what do the shipyard in tahrir square have in common? a lot. first, here's my take. i spent the last few weeks working on an essay for "time" magazine on barack obama's foreign policy. and in association with that piece, i interviewed the president last wednesday in the oval office. let me give you a few of my thoughts and impressions. obama seemed relaxed, calm, confident. i asked him about mitt romney's attacks on him as indecisive, timid and nuanced. i don't quite know why being nuanced is a bad thing but that is what romney said. obama responded that romney and the rest of the republican field are going to be playing to their base until the primary season is over. after that, he said, he looked forward to having a foreign policy debate. overall, i think it's going to be pretty hard to argue that we have not executed a strategy over the last three years that has put america in a stronger position than it was when i came into office, he said. i think obama has good reasons

he is back in business now, and mort zuckerman never left the business. he is the chairman of boston properties and the editor in chief of u.s. news and world report. welcome to you all. david, let me start with you. one of the things i have been puzzling over is what happened to the tea party? this was the party -- this was meant to be the thing that was going to totally transform the republican party. it doesn't quite seem to have had that affect. >> well, it's failed to generate an alternative to mitt romney, and it's taking a bad humiliation because of it. i think a lot of the energy has gone out of it, and especially in south carolina. here's something that i think is maybe relevant. senator jim demint, a senator from south carolina, has been a vocal advocate of the tea party. he has been the leading opponent of dredging the harper of charleston. charleston needs a deeper harbor if it's to compete with savannah, where dredging is beginning right now. people of south carolina are saying, wait a minute, this is beginning to interfere are somebody's liv

fareed zakaria is here, arianna huffington and mort zuckerman. fareed, is american capitalism the problem here? is it broken? is it doing what we expected it to do? >> i don't think american capitalism is broken, but i think that there have been fundamental changes that have taken place over the last 20 years. if you look at the american economy over the last 20 years we have created net no new jobs in what is called the tradeable sector of the economy. the part of the economy that is subject to global competition. the only jobs we've created have been in health care, in government and in fields like construction, which are not really subject to outsourcing. you can't outsource the building of a new york skyscraper. something has happened and i think it's a combination of technology and globalization that is pressing down very hard on the average american worker. it becomes very difficult for him to find a way to raise his wages or her to raise her wages so that's real and i think it's a huge problem for an economic system which has been able to

joining me is laura tyson and former economic adviser for the clinton administration and mort zuckerman chair and ceo of boston properties and u.s. news and world report editor in chief. good to have you here today. we are seeing signs of life in the economy. jobless claims at the lowest number since 2008, the unemployment rate moving lower recently. there seems to be less worry about europe, as well. earnings season not so bad. where do you think we go from here? >> i think there have been some signs, tentative signs and i feel they are overexaggerated and overstated in term of economic kons senses. the rnc reason the jobless claims have dropped is fewer people are fired but few are being hired. that's where the choke point is on unemployment and that kind of weakness, i hope it turns better, but it is hard to predict. >> what do you think, laura? how do you see it? >> i think that the situation is very fragile. i think there is a degree of maybe exaggeration of the stren the -- strength of the economy. the economy's potential growth rate is cyclical up or downturn is in the 2 1/2 rang

mort zuckerman editor of "u.s.and world report" said we need to start training people to fill the jobs that are available today. >> there's a whole mismatch in terms of the number of people coming out looking for jobs and the qualifications that people need for jobs, particularly those who are educated, particularly in the world of science and technology. there are shortages of people, literally millions of open jobs. >> and there are. manpower group found that 47% of u.s. companies that were having trouble filling specific jobs did complain about a lack of skills within the pool of applicants and many of those are technical or scientific jobs. but here's what else the company said. 52% complained that applicants were looking for more pay, which i think has been going on since the beginning of time. 35% cited a lack of experience. that's a tricky one in a tough job market, because you need a job to get experience. bob herbert senior fellow at demows and former column misfor "the new york times," bob, you mentioned