attitude of ` This is what I think . This is why I think it . ' I 'm not in a popularity contest . '' Before his current position , Friedman served in various posts at the New York Times , including chief economic correspondent , chief White House correspondent and bureau chief in Beirut and Israel . His reporting from Lebanon in 1983 and work in Israel in 1988 won him Pulitzer Prizes for international reporting . Taking in the world provides never-ending fascination , he says . `` I have the best job in the world , I mean , somebody has to have it . '' He 's recently trained his eye on how America can reassert itself by leading the way in green technology , encapsulated in his latest book `` Hot , flat and crowded . '' As he admits , the environmental aspect is not the point of the book ; really it 's a treatise on how America `` lost its groove and why we need to get it back by taking the lead in the energy revolution . '' One man who will need to take a pivotal role is the
-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Thomas Friedman is never short of a word or two . Thomas L. Friedman : `` Incredible opportunities masquerading as insoluble problems . '' The celebrated commentator occupies a position in his profession that many of his contemporaries would rival . He gets to go where he wants , when he wants and write about what he thinks , or as he puts it : `` I get to be a tourist with an attitude . '' Officially , he 's The New York Times ' foreign affairs columnist -- a position he 's held since 1995 -- as well as the author of five books . Through his syndicated column his opinion has become a recognizable American voice on the international stage , and with it has come a sense of responsibility . `` I agonize over every column . Precisely because I know it is going to be read by a lot of people and it 's going to be in Google forever , '' he told CNN . `` So there is that sense of responsibility , but at the same time you do have to take the