Fareed Zakaria’s New Show on Foreign Policy

Watching Fareed Zakaria’s new show on CNN. It’s called GPS– Global something or the other. He assembled a good panel to discuss global issues. I love shows like this because they follow an interview format with people who actually know what the hell they’re talking about; they’re actual scholars, not just political hacks.

The debut episode’s panelists include China scholar Minxin Pei, Christiane Amanpour, former Irish PM and European Commission President John Bruton, and the asshat (and Bushie) Doug Feith. I’m both enjoying and squirming at the muffled insults being tossed at Feith (and Bush, indirectly). Those of you who remember may know that that Feith was a DoD intelligence man, who cooked the Iraq intelligence and is so ridiculously neoconservative that it led Colin Powell’s chief of staff to claim “I’ve seldom in my life met a dumber man.”

Bruton, Amanpour and Pei are good. I find their perspectives refreshing, especially Pei. I don’t know much about China nor have I heard much from Chinese scholars so it’s interesting to hear a China scholar talk so bluntly about how the Chinese perceive Obama (not on their radar yet), how China is handling Tibet (stupidly) and press access in the recent Chinese earthquakes (unprecedented, but not as big a deal as people would like to believe).

Generally when people I abhor talk, I tend to tune out– especially in this case that wicked buffoon Feith. (Why is he teaching at Georgetown? Is he serving as a living example of what not to do?). But nowadays I am trying to listen to these whackjobs (or “differing voices” as some might like to say) because of an article written by Samantha Power, where she decries the way we read things online (the echo chamber of only the opinions/ stories that reinforce our perspectives rather than the wide array of differing opinions in a newspaper). So I did try to listen to Feith even though it did feel all nails-on-a-chalkboard, to me.

Anyway, back to Fareed. He’s a good questioner and clearly knows the issues, whether it’s China, India, the middle east or the US government’s policy toward various African nations. He’s also written a very good book recently about the growing marginalization of the US government in global treaties and deals.

Two things about Zakaria that I find interesting still:

One, that he has done no mea culpa ala Andrew Sullivan, for his flawed, arrogant support of the war. It’s one thing to have supported the Iraq war with a measure of humility, and on the basis that you were supporting it based on the facts you had. But to breezily and harshly dismiss critics as peacenik pansies and then to be critical of that same war a few years later without having the decency to apologize, is just ridiculous.

Second, and completely unrelated– he’s still an average host. His transitions and segues are weak, his intonation, elocution and pacing of words is choppy and uneven. I think a lot of Indians who’ve lived in both the US and India, sound like that. We lapse into our faux-English pronunciations one minute and a US pronunciation the next, and the overall sound is awful. He needs to practice with some news anchors and he can smooth that out.

That said, I have hope for this show. It’s the closest thing I’ve seen to an intelligent discussion on foreign issues, on a US TV station. Which means it probably won’t do very well outside of the Charlie Rose set *cough* me *cough*.