The Second Most Biased Opinion in Politics
Is it just me, or was there a time in the not-so-distant past when Paul Krugman strove for some kind of nonpartisan credibility?
I mean, I agree with him a lot of the time, but presumably the reason his voice means anything more than the average run-of-the-mill liberal fire drill is that he's supposedly a highly respected scholar of economics, not a hysterical left-wing rabble-rouser. Yet with each new column, he seems to be gradually frittering away his Ivy-bestowed credibility on half-truths and unsubstantiated claims, earning SECOND PLACE (just behind Anne Coulter) on Lying in Ponds' Top Ten Most Partisan Columnists index -- a laurel that shocked me when I first read it but is beginning to seem rightfully bestowed. And Spinsanity.org even takes him to task for his views on Iraq.
In his column today, he goes back to straight economics, where he should be expected (or at least I still expected him) to have something useful to say. Seems Team Bush is using a new catchphrase -- "ownership society" -- to describe their new dystopian vision. Krugman's take: this is another attempt by the administration "to provide pseudopopulist cover to policies that are, in reality, highly elitist." Oh, ha ha -- the Bushies attempt to get popular support for the object of Krugman's favorite (and probably most true) critique of the sitting President: his rob-the-poor-to-feed-the-rich tax policy. Great copy.
But in order to engage the public in a true discourse over the actual foundation of Bush's policies -- to engage the ideas that so many Americans (though obviously not Krugman's readers) STILL find appealing -- an honest look at what Team Bush actually says to those people would be necessary. So here it is, straight from a speech delivered to supporters at the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans, in January of this year:
A compassionate society must promote opportunity for all of us including the independence and dignity that come from ownership. This administration will constantly strive to promote an ownership society in America. See, we want more people owning their own home. We have a minority home ownership gap in America. I proposed a plan to the Congress, starting with helping with the poorest of poor make a downpayment for a home, to close that gap. It's in the national interest that more people own their own home.
We want people owning and managing their own healthcare accounts and their own retirement accounts. We want more people owning their own small business. This is an administration that understands when someone owns something, he or she has a vital stake in the future of our country.
Now, aside from the mild revulsion that comes with being able to totally envision the bastard delivering these lines, what I see is an opportunity for Krugman (or anyone else) to engage these ideas, and probably to refute them. Is an increase in minority home ownership or small business ownership a bad idea? No. Will the Bush economic plan cause that to happen? Probably not, but Krugman, the economist, could probably do a better job of telling us why (and maybe even giving Club Kerry a few pointers on how it might truly be done, being that people seem to like the idea so much).
Too bad Krugman's content making the easy arguments: tearing down the silly social-security privatization plans which, he says, even Bush's own team admitted would never work, rather than getting to the root of an issue he only briefly mentions: the fact that Bush's "tax plans" fly because people are compelled by arguments like the one Bush actually made -- that everyone will get a piece of the pie, that "everyone can join the elite." True or false? Why or why not? These more complex issues of economics do not seem to concern Krugman quite as much as the easy shot. But more importantly, by sullying any hope of a reputation for impartiality, he simultaneously detracts from the arguments he does make well, rendering him powerless to convince anybody but the already convinced.
Posted by Palabris at August 13, 2004 12:00 PM
Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a
great crystal river. Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to
the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of
life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth. But
one creature said at last, I trust that the current knows where it is
going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I
shall die of boredom.
The other creatures laughed and said, Fool! Let go, and that
current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the
rocks, and you will die quicker than boredom!
But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go,
and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.
Yet, in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current
lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.
And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried,
See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the
Messiah, come to save us all! And the one carried in the current
said, I am no more Messiah than you. The river delight to lift us
free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this
adventure.
But they cried the more, Saviour! all the while clinging to
the rocks, making legends of a Saviour.
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