A WORD ON KRUGMAN
Paul Krugman used to be an economist I admired. I would lap up any paper with his name on it. I checked his book "The Return of Depression Economics" out of the Notre Dame library one Friday afternoon and read the whole thing at one sitting, finishing around midnight. He is just the sort of economist who deserved an appointment at the New York Times. An essay in which he used the Capitol Hill baby-sitting co-op to illuminate the reason for the recession in Japan (and the need for managed inflation there) is one of the best examples of economics writing I can think of-- it's whimsical, close to home enough to make it easy to understand, and yet embodies the central practice of the discipline-- understanding the world through reducing it to a mental model-- brilliantly. He was lucid and honest, combining the virtues of an economist with an awareness of the discipline's limitations, and great fun to read.

No longer. At the NYT, Krugman has lost his old brilliance, and turned into a grim partisan hack. It's a very sad story.

I remember my first premonition that Krugman was going down the wrong road. It was in a bookstore in Charlottesville, Virginia, just before the beginning of grad school. I was there with the family, no friends or anything and not much to do, and I stopped into a bookstore one afternoon, and found Krugman's "A Citizen's Guide to the Bush Tax Cut." He was still lucid back then and I read about half the book at one sitting-- I should have bought it and read the rest, instead of Robert Putnam's "Bowling Alone." But there was one part that made me really mad. He first described how seniors guzzle up about 45% of the federal budget, then he made it clear that opinions could differ about that, but he thought it was a good thing, for some trite reason about a "more caring society."

I had recently read Lester Thurow's book, "The Future of Capitalism," in which he exposes in chilling terms the way seniors are getting more and more money, have become the most well-off group in society on the government's largesse, how child poverty has increased directly as the elderly have gotten richer; the inordinate power of lobbyists like the American Association of Retired Persons; and blunted concluded something like "we know who the fiscal enemy is: the elderly." Those dollars that are going to pay for Grandma's Hawaiian vacation could save dozens of lives in Africa. Now most people aren't smart enough to know this, but Krugman is. He could do this kind of calculus, the luxury of the American elderly vs. African lives, he probably has done it, and he just doesn't care.

I would call Krugman's problem "Ethics Deficiency Disorder." He faced a choice, a profoundly moral choice, and he didn't bother to think it through to the end, he just flippantly cast his lot with welfare to seniors and that's that. (I'm not saying that our bloated Social Security program couldn't be argued for, by the way-- there are arguments for it, though not in my view good ones-- but Krugman didn't even try.) Since then, Krugman's ethics shortage has spilled over into the rest of his thought and overwhelmed all his other virtues.

Look at this column. The main thing to note is that it has nothing to do with Krugman's expertise, namely economics.

The analysis is all right, I suppose. I think the neo-cons might be trying to avoid "reconciliation." Hurrah! Jacques Chirac did everything he could to maintain in power a man who murdered hundreds of thousands of people. It was one of the most morally disgusting spectacles of my life. Most of the French people supported him in this decision. Now I would forgiven him if he had reversed his position a month later, and pleaded that he was just worried about the cost in human life; seeing that the war was much less bloody than the regime had been (he might say) we no longer stand by our former position. But no. I don't want to be reconciled to a country that stands by such vile behavior. It offends me every time I hear the word "ally" applied to France.

So I guess if you take Krugman's analysis alone and ignore the value judgments he brings to the table-- which are peevish, prejudiced, and devoid of reflection-- then he's still tolerable. But why can't he go back to writing lucid columns about the Capitol Hill baby-sitting co-op. I want the old Krugman back! America has truly lost one of its great minds.

I don't want to give everybody the blues, so let's look at a happier story. Tom Friedman also writes for the left-leaning New York Times, and his partisan temptations would be towards the Democrats. The first book I read by him was "The Lexus and the Olive Tree," a book about globalization. Considering that he's no economist, I was dazzled by how well he could write about globalization. He had great flair, great metaphors. He has an advantage over Paul Krugman: he actually knows something about the Middle East, having started his journalism career there.

Friedman has kept his head through all this, and recognizes that good things are happening in Iraq. He really that there is a lot to admire in Bush's vision and he colorfully and optimistically describes the changes that are underway there.

FIRE THE OPPOSITION
I was thinking more about the point my friend made about "there's truth on both sides." Do I agree with that? Well, there's certainly error on both sides, but is there truth? At a superficial level, the Democrats sometimes get their positions right, but at a deeper level, I think all the truth is pretty much on one side (though with a lot of error mixed in.) When Democrats are right, as Clinton was on a lot of things, they're just mimicking Republicans.

As citizens of a democracy, we enjoy the right to fire our government. But what do you do when you need to fire the opposition?

This column expresses a Democrat's frustration with his party. He's got just one thing wrong:

"God and the Republicans have blessed the Democrats with the high ground on one important issue after another, from the war in Iraq to national economic policy to health care to education to the environment."

Nope. The war in Iraq-- a boon to the Iraqi people, as most of them agree. National economic policy-- not great under Bush, but not terrible either, and the Democrats, if history, their platforms and voting records are a guide, would be worse. Health care, well, no comment from me, I can't tell how the parties differ. Education-- the Democrats are in the thrall of the teachers' unions, who thwart what most blacks (the worst victims of our present school system) want, namely vouchers. Environment-- Bush was right to reject Kyoto, whose economic costs vastly outweighed its notional environmental benefits.

Herbert's point about the Democrats' chaos is appreciated. But the cause is different. Bush-hating Democrats want to fight, but most Americans don't hate Bush. Moderate and conservative Democrats are more electable, but their critiques of Bush are really from the right-- the budget deficit, for example, the sort of stuff the Cato Institute would like. The far left gets its energy from extremists like Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky, who frankly hate Middle America (though Moore is admittedly charming.) The Democrats have nothing to stand together and offer America.

We need an opposition, but the Democrats are not it. But how does a democracy go about firing the opposition?

My ideal outcome for the elections in 2004: Republicans take every seat available in the Senate, and 85% of the House. This is not because I think Republicans are so great, or because I don't think an opposition is important to a democracy. It's because I think the Republicans would split. The libertarians and free-marketeers would revolt, and attack Bush from the right for corporate welfare and Medicare splurging. That's the kind of opposition we need.