the book was co-written by new york times columnist tom friedman, our guest panelist.serve american power in the world. the key to america's resurgence they argue is to mimic china's surging without mimicking china's politics. tom friedman, the book appears to be america has fallen behind the world, that america invented. can you give us a rap sheet on that. >> the basic argument is simple. we argue that what made america great is we had an amazing public-private partnership and the public side of that that enabled the private sector and growth these years, was bit. on five pillars. one we educated our people beyond to whatever the technology was, cot in gin or the super computers. second we had the best infrastructure, roads, airports, telecom. third when the most own immigration policy to attract the brightest minds, and most energetic people to start 30 to 40% of the companies every year in silicon valley. four we have the best rules for capital formation for risk taking and preventing recklessness and lastly the most government funded research to push out of the bo

we'll talk to "the new york times's" tom friedman. you name it. i've tried it. beat my back pain. then i tried salonpas. it's powerful relief that works at the site of pain and lasts up to 12 hours. salonpas. ♪ you want to save money on car insurance? no problem. you want to save money on rv insurance? no problem. you want to save money on motorcycle insurance? no problem. you want to find a place to park all these things? fuggedaboud it. this is new york. hey little guy, wake up! aw, come off it mate! geico. saving people money on more than just car insurance. >>> it has been chaotic couple of week in egypt. military violently cracking down on egyptians who are demanding the military regime runninging the country step aside, demanding the democracy they fought for last january be put in place. today was a step towards that democracy with regular egyptians voting for a new parliament. the first voting since the demonstrations brought down hosni mubarak. they sealed boxes with candle wax. some voters said they were willing to wait as long as it took. they believe

. >> rose: your colleague tom friedman 1ed "here we are on the eve of a major budgetary destation by yet another bipartisan committee and does anyone know what president obama's preferred outcome is? exactly what taxes does he want raised and which spending does he want cut? the president's politics on this issue seems to be a bowl of poll-tested mush. >> rose: i agree with tom on that. i admire president obama, he's hanging in there in the pools because a lot of people feel the way i do. disappointed but he's still a reasonable guy. but you're president of the united states. your country has no economic policy. your country has no fiscal policy. that's your job. and i think he' held back. >> rose: america likes strong political leaders. they want boldness. >> rose: >> and they want a sense of "where are you going?" president obama gave a speech at georgetown which he's very proud of-- justifiably-- called "the new foundation." foundation for what? what kind of economy are we building? and i think supreme a sense we've allowed ourselves to have institutions which have vs phi sod we n

>> joining me now is "new york times" tom friedman, co-hift author of the new book "that used to be us, how america fell behind in the world we invented and how we can come back." nick kristoff in the studio he with me. nick, you wrote a recent column in which you talked about the stakes in this election. i want to quote from it. you said, for a couple of years the left has joined the right in making obama a pinata. think back in 2000, many journalists were dismissive of al gore and magnified his shortcomes. we forgot the context and won eight years of george w. bush. this time let's doing a better job of retaining perspective. is it time for the left and democrats to mute their criticism of the president on different policy choices going guard? >> it's important to hold the president' feet to the fire and the left has every bit a right to do that as the right. i think as one approaches an election year, one faces the need to remember we're facing not a referendum but a choice. in 1980 something similar happened in terms of the malaise toward jimmy carter, if you will, that helped put

tom friedman today has a coln called "go big, mr. obama. president obama has a clear choice in how to approach the 2012 election. he canpendis energy defining mitt romney, newt gingrich or whoever ends up in the republican nominee as ugly a way as possible or he can define the future in as credible a way as possible if he spends his energy defining his republican opponent there's a chance the presint ll win with 50.0001% of the vote and no mandate to do what he needs doing. if he defines t future in a credible way he will not only win but he will have a mandate to take the country where we need to go. is that a dilemma that the administration is looking at? is that a choice they are looking at? >> i think that they'll take the victory with 50.0001% of the vote. i mean, i think that this... >> rose: (laughs) >> look, when you're a president with under 50% approval rating just as a student of politica history the way you win is by make your opponent less acceptable than you are. that's how george w. bush won reelection in 2004 and i think tha

newspaper columns, at the pundits write or the editorials that the government is dysfunctional and tom friedman describes this and what upsets me who is very, very smart and he recognizes i believe, correctly, our political system is in trouble but he does not connect the dots between the constitution itself in some of the explanations for those functionality is and i don't think it is all the constitution to talk to other sorts of general problems but i do think it makes its own negative contribution to the president in happiness where current polling data shows congress has approval rates of 12 or 14% and at that level it cannot be explained on grounds of partisanship. you might imagine and democrats alike conflict -- congress republicans would but when it is 12%, one of the things that you know, in the overwhelming amount of the country of really does feel alienated from its political system. >> host: when you go back to the original intent of the founders i'd like you to expound on that phrase original intent but was it part of their intent to protect the minority to avoid for allowing for

you think about the way tom friedman writes, the profit of globalization, a hedging your news work aftereptember 11, some of the most beautiful riding. steve lopez has a series of columns that ended up in the movie the soloist. he writes for the l.a. times now. a classic example of the reported column in during. >> here is the cover of the book. it is called "deadline artists." our next call comes from right here in florida. david can help south florida. >> you got it right this time. if you. >> i wanted to say that i became interested in columnists by reading the old new york post's of the 1950's and '60's. you had some great ones there. mary captain, human justin. langston hughes. langston hughes wrote a column for the new york post, and i learned quite a bit about the black community from that column. you are right. the new york post, i think, went down because it was columnist heavy. i don't think that even the fortune could sustain it. we lost a lot when it finally -- excuse me, james wechsler failed to get in. i am not a liberal anymore. nonetheless. i have to say that from those p

still holds to his colleague tom friedman's notion that free trade is a good brain well you know it's a supported nafta i don't want to pick on proven but his support and yeah i know it and this is and i in the end i think this is the liberal class that you're talking about the liberal plus is people who who you know it's very easy and in fact there's a certain kind of snobbery associated i think with the with the with the with the thomas frank perspective i'm not picking on thomas frank is a brilliant guy. but put the perspective of what's the matter with kansas or that there's something wrong with these tea partiers and it's these people who are as they don't know what's going on but in fact there's something wrong within the liberal but that's exactly right you know that we are frank and it is a good book what's the matter with kansas but the final premise is that he asks how can these people vote against their own interest rates on a pittance they're not fighting against their own interests they fully understand that the liberal class betrayed them and those liberals who continued

that came up with this car but a japanese car automaker yeah well i don't want tom friedman said that i thought it was kind of ridiculous because he was basically trying to dictate you know what i mean i'm not surprised because all the innovations coming out of asia and you have the tech sector in the u.s. steve jobs but that's not g.m. g.m. got a bailout they were bankrupt you know so i'm not surprised if anyone would come out with maybe it's ford but g.m. and chrysler they were bankrupt government bailouts so i wouldn't be expecting anything like that come out of the more importantly would you drive a car. it was for me and was free yeah i don't if i pay for it which is the whole point which is why i don't know you know if it's really all that all that electricity is supposed to be a total disaster if you get in a car accident just ask anybody with a prius is that is all we have time for that's it for our show thanks so much for tuning in you can feel free to follow me on twitter at lauren lester to let us know what you think give us feedback at youtube dot com slash capital account

pundits write or editorials whereas the editor that our government is dysfunctional, that, in fact, tom friedman in the "new york times" described this path loming call. now, what upsets me about somebody like friedman who is obviously very, very smart and clearly recognizes, i believe, correctly, that our political system is in trouble, is that he doesn't connect the dots between the constitution itself and some of the explanations for the pathologies or dysfunctionalties. i don't think it's all the fault of the constitution. one has to talk about other sorts of general problems, but i do think the constitution makes its own negative contribution to the present unhappiness where i think current polling data shows that congress has an approve rate of something like 12%-14%, and at that level, it simply can't be explained on grounds of partisanship. i mean, you might imagine, well, democrats don't like congress, but republicans would or republicans wouldn't like congress, but departments would, but when it's 12%, one of the things you know is that an overwhelming amount of the country really does

. >> it's been there for a year now, saved, and tom friedman was here a cup days ago why can't the president go back to the blueprint and let's adopt it. >> the fact is neither simply bowles, nor the gang of six nor the super committee did anything beyond the beltway. while i agree there's a lot of positive things about simpson bowles, i don't think you want to go to the american people with a particular plan. i think you want to go to the american people with where we are, where we're headed, how we need to make tough choices, and provide illustrative examples. >> where do you see that happening? what steps would you take? >> first i think we have to recognize today that there's so many technologically capabilities available through the web, through social networks that just didn't exist in 1992. one of the things that comeback america initiative is going to start with in the next couple weeks we're going to issue a fiscal i.q. test for both citizens as well as elected officials to help understand some basic facts and also whether or not they're likely to be more part of the solution or the

. >> tom friedman, thanks. >> pleasure. >>> still ahead on the program, fallout from the death of a drumofficials have called robert champion's death hazing related. now the family wants to expose what they call the school's culture of cover-up. >>> plus standing up for freedom of speech when it comes to twitter. the story of a high school senior called on the carpet for dissing the governor of her state in a tweet. >>> we're sure j. lo meant no disrespect to new york city. tonight why the controversy about a commercial she made ends up on the ridiculist. ps. thermacare works differently. it's the only wrap with patented heat cells that penetrate deep to relax, soothe, and unlock tight muscles for up to 16 hours of relief. that's 8 hours while you wear it, plus an additional 8 hours of relief after you take it off. can your patch, wrap, cream or rub say that? so if you've got pain... get up to 16 hours of pain relief with thermacare. [ knock on door ] cool. you found it. wow. nice place. yeah. [ chuckles ] the family thinks i'm out shipping these. smooth move. you used priority mail flat

. >> what happens is you're able to get alignment and the last thing that's fascinating is and tom friedman amplified this for me, leaderless. these are leaderless organizions. there is no leader of occupy. now occupy came out of ad busters. it was ad busters a canadian foundation who scale up th this photo they had the price tag on the bottom occupy wall stet and call for this kind of protest but then it just took off. in that idea i call that social. i have thisind of acronym. social which is speed open collaborative individuals alignment leaderss. because that's how i -- >> leadership. >> leadership or leaderless. i think now we have a new type of leadership and so that's how i'm trying to frame it, and when i talk to our customers, when i do these programs, i said hey the world has changed. it's a social revolution and that's not just about facebook look out your window. my office in san francisco at 1 market street that is where occupy san francisco is. we built these beautiful new -- you woul love them, charlie. gorgeous, people could call and play botchy ball all over san francisco.

. >> tom friedman, thanks. >> pleasure. >>> still ahead on the program, fallout from the death of a drumhampion's death hazing related. now the family wants to expose what they call the school's culture of cover-up. >>> plus standing up for freedom of speech when it comes to twitter. the story of a high school senior called on the carpet for dissing the governor of her state in a tweet. >>> we're sure j. lo meant no disrespect to new york city. tonight why the controversy about a commercial she made ends up on the ridiculist. i take my multi-vitamin but wanted to do something more for my nutrition. there's so much information out there. what's good for you today, is bad for you tomorrow. i had no idea what to choose. until i found pronutrients -- a new line of supplements from centrum, who i totally trust. omega-3 supports not only my heart, but my brain and my eyes too. probiotics helps with my digestive balance and my immune function. and fruit & veggie has antioxidant properties. new pronutrients from centrum helps make nutrition possible. nice, huh? yeah. you know what else is nice i