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 dececration 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. they 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 so our super panel, and all the other things swirling around american politics. joe cline is time magazine's political columnist. katrina van den hovel is the editor of "the nation." christian freeman is -- writes about 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 wrush 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 social issues. 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 barronness 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 ab 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 rather than a mrurality? >> it's becoming normal because the process has changed, and you have a proportional representation. if these were aylwiner take all primaries, you might see a different effect. by the way, is he 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 linneage. >> 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 conferses 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. but their shakes aren't always made for people with diabetes. that's why there's new glucerna hunger smart shakes. they have carb steady, with carbs that digest slowly to help minimize blood sugar spikes. and they have 6 grams of sugars. with 15 grams of protein to help manage hunger... look who's getting smart about her weight. 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[ female announcer ] yoplait. it is so greek. have more fiber than other leading brands. they're the better way to enjoy your fiber. we are back with joe cline. >> 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 ride 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 that, and the economy does ram few it. >> i was talking about the technical tonic 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 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 affluent. that is a genuine problem. >> i want to answer the point. 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 viable, and i think that's a real mrob. i think it's not quite -- people don't realize that they're on the take. ha, ha, ha. >> there's a reason people don't realize it. >> we have a lot of -- you reviewed -- 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 would say -- >> are you saying 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 you were approaching. the thai rest raubt 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. 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. >> it contributes to inequality. we do. >> i promised you 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 rahan 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 steel, restoration. this is conservatism, and a financial -- small financial transaction tax, which is appreciated by angela merkel, the conservative leader. >> sex and religion. we go straight to the financial transactions tax. >> i would say -- >> 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. why you make them as opaque as possible, if you had a universal health law that was based on taxes ask 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 does not work, then we make it transparent later. >> well, here i agree with rahan. i think that american progress sifz 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. >> they're essential. >> we have to acknowledge that time is up. joe cline, katrina, rahan, kristen, up next what in the world. where could the next crash come from? 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