I always enjoy tuning into Fareed Zakaria's GPS. Zakaria, who also writes for the Washington Post and Time, strikes me as a man largely free of assumptions, or political bias. Last week, for example, he provided helpful explanation of Mitt Romney's all over the map positions, motivating Republicans, whether liberal or conservative, to be wary. Romney's shifts lie behind retired general and former Bush secretary of state Colin Powell's endorsement on Thursday of Obama for reelection.
Zakaria offers that Romney's protean shifts are due to Tea Party elements within the Republican Party. It's stratagem entirely, though one could argue this reenforces the widely-held notion Romney's deceitful. According to Zakaria, Romney's surge in the polls is due to his moving over to more moderate positions on key issues. In short, this is the real Romney who can now return to the middle that characterized his tenure as Massachusetts's governor. After all, Obamacare is modeled after Romney's historic health insurance legislation in Massachusetts. While it doesn't get Romney off the hook, it's analysis like this that can provide another purview.
I also enjoy the broad spectrum of GPS' panel feature with its participants drawn from neo-con to far left. Again, cool-headed analysis to extract the factual and reasonable governs Zakaria's show.
One of my favorite, can't wait show elements comes at very end when Zakaris gives his weekly book recommendation. I've actually taken him up on several of his recommended reads such as Charles Murphy's Coming Apart: the State of White America, 1960-2010, a book by the way that supports Romney's off-the-cuff notion of the 47% who pay no taxes and not necessarily from need. I intend to pursue this week's recommendation of Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail--but Some Don't.
For me, Zakaria provides a refreshing change from the pervasive mortar shelling of the current political scene, whether at MSNBC or Fox News, or among the partisans of the print media and social networks at large. After all, I like finding the truth for myself as best we humans can get at it to someone's imposing her notion of the truth on me.
You can dismiss me as quixotic, but I find the probing almost as much fun as the finding.
Thank you, Fareed!
Be well,
rj
