Like a lot of people, I used to be an admirer of Paul Krugman. Even where I disagreed with his books and articles, he generally wrote from a level-headed, principled position and was not prone to distorting the position of his opponents. All of that changed, however, when Krugman started writing a regular column for the New York Times. There, Krugman seems to style himself as a Democratic attack dog in the vein of Paul Begala or Joe Conason.
Take the recent row over Trent Lott’s praising of Strom Thurmond. This should be an easy home run for Krugman, but in today’s column, Krugman commits a gaffe worthy of the Thurmond-admirerer himself. Krugman asserts that Republicans have a “Southern strategy” of appealing to Southern white racists. Krugman writes,
Of course, Mr. Lott isn’t alone in that role. The Bush administration’s judicial nominations have clearly been chosen to give a signal of support to those target Southern voters. A striking example has just emerged: We’ve learned that Mr. Lott supported the right of Bob Jones University to keep its tax-exempt status even while banning interracial dating; supporting his position was none other than Michael McConnell, a controversial figure recently confirmed as an appeals judge.
This is absurd. Lott’s brief in United States vs. Bob Jones University cannot possibly be construed as “a striking example” of the Bush administration’s judicial plans, given that the case was decided by the Supreme Court in 1983 and the last time I checked, George W. Bush didn’t actually take office until almost two decades later. Yet Krugman clearly intends the reader to lump together Lott and McConnell’s actions almost 20 years ago with the Bush administration’s current slate of judicial nominees.
Krugman commits these sort of distortions on a regular basis, which has gradually transformed him from an interesting, lively observer to a second-rate hack which is really a shame since the old Paul Krugman would have a lot of interesting things to say if he wasn’t constantly lowering his standards to those of the likes of Begala and Conason.
Source:
The Other Face. Paul Krugman, The New York Times, December 13, 2002.