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What are Peggy Noonan and Walter Isaacson smoking?—and Fareed Zakaria for that matter. During this 'very serious' debate on CNN's GPS, Peggy Noonan claims that President Obama is 'governing from the left' and that he's 'damaged his brand' by threatening to raise taxes. She also tries to paint the New Jersey governors' race as a twenty point drop in support for the President.

I didn't know he was on the ballot there Peggy. And Walter Isaacson thinks Obama should have had brought in John McCain, Bobby Jindal and Bob Dole to help draft his health care policy. So allowing the Baucus-dogs to run the show in the Finance Committee and the 180 Republican amendments they adopted wasn't quite bad enough for you Walter?

When have any of these Villagers ever suggested that if a Republican President had just brought in the Democratic challenger and allowed them to help craft policy that the public would have been more accepting of it? Did we hear any of this kind of talk after Gore or Kerry lost? I don't think so.

This is not included in the clip above, but here's how Zakaria framed the panel discussion.

ZAKARIA: We have a great show for you today -- a star-studded panel of historians to talk about Obama's first year in office, the political climate in America and around the world.

In the United States it was a good week for the Republican Party that has been on the retreat for almost five years now. It's actually also a sign of a fascinating global pattern, which might not turn out to be bad news for Democrats.

Imagine that you have been told five years ago that a financial crisis, prominently featuring irresponsible banks, would plunge the global economy to its worst level since the 1930s. If you were then asked to predict the results of elections held after this crisis of capitalism, you might have said that the right, the party of free enterprise and of bankers, would do badly, and the left, the party of government, would do well. And you would have been dead wrong.

Last week in the United States, the Republicans did better than anyone expected. Last month in Germany, the center right won a resounding victory. In France, Nicolas Sarkozy's right-wing government reigns with considerable public support. In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi has managed to stay in power, largely because the electorate is dissatisfied by the left. In Britain, the conservatives are poised to win their first national election in 17 years.

Why?

Look at the kinds of right-wing parties that are winning. David Cameron of Great Britain calls himself a progressive conservative. Sarkozy of France assails bankers, and calls for much stricter financial regulation. Merkel of West Germany rejects arguments for free market reform and defends Germany's social market economy.

Even in America, the Republicans who did well did so by stressing mainstream positions on restricting government spending. The right has moved to the center, which remains the high ground of politics these days. If Democrats want to stay vibrant, all they have to do is just remember that.

[...]

All day long on cable news talk shows we hear about how President Obama is doing. On Fox, some say he's a socialist who's trying to indoctrinate our children, even as he mortgages their future. On MSNBC he is the lonely hero, fighting to give help to the sick, employ the jobless and end racism in our time. And here on CNN, well, I won't say an answer today.

I wanted to see if we could get some of a clear-eyed look at what kind of a president he really is, and what kind of a world he faces. So I've gathered a panel of talented historians and writers -- people who know greatness and the lack thereof when they see it, to help me accomplish this mission.

They all somehow forgot to talk about the Congressional races that the Democrats won, and Fareed Zakaria actually implied with a straight face that the Republican Party is moving to the center and the Democratic Party has not already. Who does he think he's kidding? So no, this is not Fox News Fareed, but it may as be when you’re reciting from the same talking points that they are. Transcript from CNN below the fold.

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Fareed Zakaria talks to former Foreign Service officer Matthew Hoh who recently resigned as a Political Officer in Afghanistan. You can watch the entire interview here.

ZAKARIA: Matthew Hoh is the young Foreign Service officer who resigned this week from his post in Afghanistan. He joins me now.

Matthew, I'm going to just start by reading a bit from your resignation letter. You say, "I fail to see the worth or value in continued U.S. casualties or expenditures of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is truly a 35-year-old civil war."

And then you go on to say, "Thousands of our men and women have returned home with physical and mental wounds. The dead return only in bodily form to be received by families who must be reassured that their dead have been sacrificed for a purpose worthy of such futures lost, love vanished and promised dreams unkept. I have lost confidence such assurances can any more be made. As such, I submit my resignation."

These are very strong words.

Give us some sense of what this insurgency that we are fighting looks like. What did you think people were fighting U.S. troops for?

MATTHEW HOH, FORMER MARINE CAPTAIN AND U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: The first place where I really had -- where this was codified for me and where I started to understand what we were doing and how we were involved -- the Korengal Valley, which I'm sure a lot of your viewers are familiar with. It's been on the cover of TIME Magazine. The "New York Times" refers to it as the valley of death. Off the top of my head, unfortunately, I can't remember how many American soldiers we have lost there, but it's probably 30 or 40.

This is a valley, I don't know, 15, 20 kilometers long. There's only 10,000 people in it. They speak their own language. They speak Korengali. In the year 2009 we have a valley with people who speak their own language. Their only trade is the timber trade. And when they move their timber, they don't even leave their valley. Most of the time, I believe, they just take it to the Mazar Valley, and a middleman picks it up and brings it to Pakistan for them.

We show up. We enter their valley. We occupy the richest man's timber mill. And then we bring in Afghan army and Afghan police, who aren't from there.

And then what do we do? Then we have the Afghan police and Afghan army. They say to the Korengalis, they say, "These mountains here that your families have been cutting trees down, sustaining yourselves for hundreds of years, you don't own them. The central government does. And you have to pay tax on that."

I'm not sure how many people anywhere else in the world wouldn't take up arms against something like that.

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Newt advises Sarah (h/t Blue Gal. Click here for larger.)

Can you believe it? I'm actually looking forward to this morning's shows. No, not George Snufflupagus on This Week or William the Bloody on Fox News Sunday, but our very own Rachel Maddow is subbing for David Gregory is on the panel opposite Dick Armey on Meet the Press. Rachel has been relentless in the last couple of weeks on the astroturfing of FreedomWorks, so this promises to be a lot of fun. Around the dial, it's all about the health care reform bill, with HHS Sec. Kathleen Sebelius on This Week and State of the Union, Robert Gibbs on Face the Nation and executives from the AMA and AARP on Fox News Sunday. Arlen Specter will be on This Week, to share his take on the recent Town Hall shout fests. Fareed Zakaria will continue his interview Sec of State Hillary Clinton and you can bet her defensive responses in Africa will definitely be brought up.

ABC's "This Week" - Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius; Sens. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - White House press secretary Robert Gibbs; former Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb.; former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - FreedomWorks chairman and former Rep. Dick Armey, R-Texas; Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.; former Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D.; R. Bruce Josten, executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.; Gov. Bill Ritter, D-Colo.

NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Rick Stengel, Trish Regan, John Heilemann, Kathleen Parker. Topics: Has the domestic "change" President Obama promised stalled? How has Woodstock in 1969 impacted the politics of the past forty years? Meter Questions: Will outspoken fringe players dominate GOP for the rest of Obama's term? YES: 9 NO: 3; If unemployment is still high next year, will Obama revise his tax proposals? YES: 11 NO: 1.

CNN's "State of the Union" - Sebelius; Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo.; Reps. Mike Ross, D-Ark., Tom Price, R-Ga., and Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - The first television interview with Michael Oren as Israel's new Ambassador to the United States. Plus, the Prime Minister of Kenya and an unusual event in Nairobi featuring Hillary Clinton and Fareed.

"Fox News Sunday" - Sens. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., and Richard Shelby, R-Ala.; J. James Rohack, president of the American Medical Association; John Rother, executive vice president for policy and strategy at AARP.

So, what's catching your eye this morning?

Counting Crows – Mr. Jones

It appears that National Security Advisor James Jones is hitting the trifecta of bobblehead shows, appearing on Face the Nation, Meet the Press and Fox News Sunday. I’m guessing that he’ll be discussing North Korea and running defense over the insane GOP talking points.

Of course, the rest of the shows look like nothing more than partisan navel-gazing. My Deaniac heart thumps loudly that Howard Dean will be on This Week, only to sink at the thought of Dean being forced to appear next to Newt Gingrich. Ugh. Carl Levin will be on Face the Nation, but with the perennial Republican guest Lindsey Graham. Maybe Bob Schieffer will ask Huckleberry how he feels about being the only GOP vote for Sonia Sotomayor. I'd like to think that Fareed Zakaria will have a good interview with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but given that one of the topics on the table is the non-existence of Chelsea Clinton's engagement, I'm not too optimistic.

ABC's "This Week" - Former national Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - National Security Adviser James Jones; Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - Jones; New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg; Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, N.J.

NBC’s “The Chris Matthews Show” – Panel: Rick Stengel, Trish Regan, John Heilemann, Kathleen Parker. Topics: Who is responsible for the heated rhetoric over President Obama's ethnicity? How has Nixon's reputation recovered? Is Clinton seeing the same resurgence? Meter Questions: Will outspoken fringe players dominate GOP for the rest of Obama's term? YES: 9 NO: 3; If unemployment is still high next year, will Obama revise his tax proposals? YES: 11 No: 1.

CNN's "State of the Union" - Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; Sens. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and John Cornyn, R-Texas; Republican pollster Bill McInturff; Democratic pollster Peter Hart; Linda Douglass, communications director for the White House's Health Reform Office; Ed Gillespie, former Bush White House counselor.

CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” - Fareed Zakaria sits down with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Kenya for her most exclusive interview yet. How did former President Bill Clinton end up on the mission to secure the two journalists' freedom in North Korea? Plus her views on Iran, Afghanistan, health care, and Chelsea's hand in marriage.

"Fox News Sunday" - Jones; Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; Maj. Gen. Carla Hawley-Bowland, commanding general of Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the U.S. Army's North Atlantic Regional Medical Command.

So, what's catching your eye this morning?

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Fareed Zakaria got into a little spat over the weekend when he interviewed via satellite Tehran University Professor Mohammed Marandi. Zakaria grew exasperated with Marandi's efforts to minimize the brutal crackdown in Iran. Marandi blamed opposition leader Mousavi for causing civil unrest within Iran after the election, and the United States and other western countries for urging Iranians to riot, in the hope of regime change. Zakaria compared Marandi to the 1980's era Soviet officials who "spoke perfect english, where everything was fine" until it all collapsed, asking if he too will one day be viewed as a "mouthpiece for a dying repressive regime."

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Wolf Blitzer asks Fareed Zakaria if he agrees with former CIA agent Bob Baer's assessment that there has been a military coup by the revolutionary guard in Iran. Zakaria is not as willing to use the word coup, but does feel that there is some conflict between the clerics in Iran.

As Zakaria points out, the dynamics of those conflicts and the ease with which they can be blamed on American interference is exactly why it was wise for the Obama administration to be cautious with their rhetoric.

BLITZER: One Middle East expert says what we're seeing unfold in Iran right now isn't just a government crackdown, but an actual coup by the country's elite revolutionary guard.

ZAKARIA: Do you think it's pretty clear that the government has the ability to really consolidate power and crackdown on this?

BAER: Fareed, I'm quite sure there's been a military coup d'etat by the Islamic revolutionary corp in Tehran. They're taken over. And the fact that the Basij came out so quickly. They could have only done that on orders from the IRGC. The fact that Ahmadinejad's a former IRGC officer, he has the backing of senior officers. I think what we've seen is a military coup against the old clerical establishment.

BLITZER: Let's bring in Fareed Zakaria to join us now. Fareed, what do you think? You are an authority on this subject?

ZAKARIA: I think that Bob Baer is on to something. I'm not sure I would use the word coup, you know, that strongly, but there is no question what we're witnessing in Iran is the displacement of the old clerical establishment and the rise to power of some new clerics, but mostly a group of people who have much closer ties to the military, to the intelligence organizations, to the police, and to the Basij. So what you're seeing is a kind of consolidation of a pure military dictatorship, losing the trappings of the Islam and the ideology as much.

And by the way, this is very much part of Ahmadinejad's strategy when he is now attacking America. It is an attempt to consolidate power and to move beyond the debate about what's going on in Iran.

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Fareed Zakaria talked to author of Liars Poker, Michael Lewis, about what the future is for Wall Street and the economy, and Lewis is not optomistic due to the revolving door between our government and the financial sector.

ZAKARIA: And we are back with Michael Lewis.

Michael, there are sort of two views on the future of Wall Street. One is, this whole game is over. And sort of, to a certain extent, you've been expressing it a little bit, that, you know, this is a 30-year boom. We're going to look back it the way we did the 1920s, maybe the 1890s.

But there's another view that says there are so many smart people out there, and they are so hungry, and they desperately want to find ways to make money, that you're going to actually see new and interesting ways that these firms will either produce money, or there'll be a whole series of smaller firms -- you know, risk-taking firms like hedge funds on the one side, much more staid banks on the other.

What do you think? What does your gut tell you the future of Wall Street is going to look like?

LEWIS: I think that we are in for another day of reckoning down the road. I just don't know when it is.

I think that they haven't even properly evaluated the institutions. They haven't been honest about what these institutions have on their books. They've had phony stress tests.

So, we're in a kind of, I think, right now, in a period where there's a false sense that it's over, that the crisis is passed. I don't think the crisis is passed.

Now, they haven't all deleveraged. Morgan Stanley did, to its chagrin. But everybody else is still running these huge -- a huge amount of leverage. But that's going to change. I think the general sense that this sort of risk-taking should not take place in a public corporation, especially one that's too big to fail, will express itself in regulation that will prevent it from happening.

But you're right. There are all these smart people. And they're used to making huge sums of money. And it's kind of hard to believe that that will just end.

I don't think it will just end. I think it will find a different expression. I think that what you'll see is hedge funds will become more and more interesting.

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April 23, 2009 Anderson Cooper 360.

COOPER: Two big stories happening right now, the breaking news, the ACLU saying that we will soon be getting another batch of photos depicting prisoner abuse, not just in Iraq, but also Afghanistan, that and the latest threat to America's vital ally in the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban, Pakistan.

[....]

COOPER: Let's talk about these photos that the ACLU has just said that -- new photos that they say show U.S. personnel abusing prisoners in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

We know that -- that the techniques, the interrogation techniques used in -- in Guantanamo Bay, used in these CIA black sites, we know that they were used at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. We know they were also obviously used at -- at Abu Ghraib and other sites.

What do you make of this report that new photos are coming out?

ZAKARIA: It's pretty troubling, Anderson.

You know, I tracked the -- the -- public support in Iraq for the U.S. occupation very carefully. And the month before Abu Ghraib, the -- the photographs from Abu Ghraib came out, there were about 60 percent of Iraqis were still supportive of the U.S. occupation.

It dropped almost 25 points over the course of the two months that the -- that the Abu Ghraib photos came out. This stuff really has a major effect on our reputation, on our image abroad. It changes what our allies can do, because they're scared of their publics.

This is one of the reasons why I think this broader issue of whether the United States should engage in practices that are really outside of the pale, this is not just a technical legal issue. It has huge foreign policy implications.

COOPER: Fareed Zakaria, appreciate your joining us tonight. Fareed, thanks very much.

My friend John Amato has been asking where are the economists debating what's going on in this country on my television. Well, Fareed Zakaria had just that kind of discussion on his show GPS. This is a debate worth listening to with some actual economists on where we're at right now. The one thing that struck me with watching this clip is just how severe the problem of poverty is that is not being addressed by the media in the US and being ignored as part of our national dialog.

Full transcript to follow:

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