This entry was posted on 2/13/2008 10:13 PM and is filed under 2008 Election, All Posts.
Regular readers of Paul Krugman's twice-weekly New York Times column have likely noticed a curious development in the pugnacious liberal economist's writings. In the past several months, he has gone from bashing the Bush administration's regressive tax, environmental and social policies, to bashing Sen. Barack Obama's...everything.
He dislikes his "post-partisan naiveté". He scoffs at the junior senator's "inexperience". And he is downright revolted by Obama's intention as president to—God forbid—reach out to Republicans to enact dreadful things like...universal health insurance.
The only substantive critique Krugman has levied against Obama is that the senator does not include mandates in his universal health insurance plan. Fair enough. There are merits to both sides of the "mandates" argument, and I'd be happy if Krugman stuck to the substance.
When John Edwards was still in the race, the conventional wisdom assumed that Krugman's favorite for the nomination was the populist former senator from North Carolina, and that was why he aimed so much fire at Obama, in an effort to knock off Hillary's other challenger to Edwards' benefit. After all, Edwards' strident attacks on the Bush administration and "corporate Democrats" were more in line with Krugman's polemics on American corporatism than any other Democratic candidate.
What the conventional wisdom failed to explain was why Krugman spent so much of his column space attacking Barack, with the rest devoted to convincing his readers that Hillary really was no less progressive than the Illinois Senator. Barely a word was actually devoted to supporting Edwards, merely to tearing Obama down.
With Edwards out of the race, and Krugman proceeding to step up his attacks on Obama, his preference became clear: he was supporting Hillary. This despite Hillary's vote for the war, her support for Kyl-Lieberman (the 2007 resolution declaring Iran a terrorist state), the credit card bankruptcy bill, keeping upper-incomes from paying Social Security payroll taxes, and on, and on, and on. A close read of Krugman's columns over the last 4 months leads to one conclusion: a progressive candidate is only judged by whether he, or she, includes mandates in their universal health insurance plan. Every other cave a Hillary-style corporate Democrat made in their careers means nothing, so long as she says she'll make everyone get coverage.
However, Krugman's bashing of Obama goes beyond policy differences. He typically lumps together Obama's electoral success against Hillary with the media's regular pillorying of her, as if they are one and the same, all part of one unified campaign, with Obama as its frontman. Krugman also positions himself as a holier-than-thou, impartial observer to the contest, hoping everyone could just get along, rather than admit to being the obvious Hillary partisan he has become.
He was back at it again this past Monday, in a typically subtle column entitled "Hate Springs Eternal":
Supporters of each candidate should have no trouble rallying behind the other if he or she gets the nod.
Of course, Krugman has no dog in this fight. He just wants what's best for the party.
Why, then, is there so much venom out there?
Wait, huh? Where's this going?
I won’t try for fake evenhandedness here: most of the venom I see is coming from supporters of Mr. Obama, who want their hero or nobody. I’m not the first to point out that the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality. We’ve already had that from the Bush administration — remember Operation Flight Suit? We really don’t want to go there again.
Whoa! Did you see that? In the span of four sentences, Krugman went from neutral party-healer, to competing for Howard Wolfson's job! Did this liberal economist who so eloquently took on the Bush Agenda for the last seven years actually compare Barack Obama to the worst, most reactionary president in American history? Did he actually do that? And, why hasn't Hillary used some of these lines?
What’s particularly saddening is the way many Obama supporters seem happy with the application of “Clinton rules” — the term a number of observers use for the way pundits and some news organizations treat any action or statement by the Clintons, no matter how innocuous, as proof of evil intent.
I'm not sure what Krugman means by "Obama supporters seem happy with...". I do notice that Krugman already seems willing to apply his own set of "Obama rules" to anything and everything he hears negative about the Clintons. If there is some bad story out there about the Clintons—something sexist said by a reporter about their daughter, some new piece of muckraking by the Wall Street Journal on her past business-dealings , etc., Krugman simply attributes it by proxy to the Obama campaign. Unless the Obama campaign enlists itself to rebut every bad thing said about its opponents, the Clintons, they are by default "happy with the application of 'Clinton rules'". That's a both fair and realistic standard for American politics, Paul!
During the current campaign, Mrs. Clinton’s entirely reasonable remark that it took L.B.J.’s political courage and skills to bring Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream to fruition was cast as some kind of outrageous denigration of Dr. King.
I agree with Krugman. I don't think these comments were meant to denigrate MLK. I think they were meant to denigrate Obama. The young, inspiring black preacher versus the older, unlikeable yet brilliant legislator? Yes, Hillary, we do get the comparison. And there is nothing "entirely reasonable" about it whatsoever. Here is the full quote:
“Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the president before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done."
Was she saying that she is like LBJ, in that she has this amazing mastery of the legislative process? That's funny. I wonder why the Clinton universal health care plan went down in flames in 1993, even though Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate?
Or perhaps she was saying that it will literally take a president to sign legislation passed by Congress, and since she is running for President, while Barack Obama of course is not, she will be the one to get it done. Oh, right...that just doesn't make sense either.
But I digress. Krugman tries finishing the column on a noble note.
Racism, misogyny and character assassination are all ways of distracting voters from the issues, and people who care about the issues have a shared interest in making the politics of hatred unacceptable.
MLK couldn't have said it better. I'm so glad Krugman's not interested in dividing Democrats along these racial, gender, ethnic or religious lines.
One of the most hopeful moments of this presidential campaign came last month, when a number of Jewish leaders signed a letter condemning the smear campaign claiming that Mr. Obama was a secret Muslim. It’s a good guess that some of those leaders would prefer that Mr. Obama not become president; nonetheless, they understood that there are principles that matter more than short-term political advantage.
I spoke too soon! Why, Paul Krugman, would it be a "good guess" those leaders "prefer that Mr. Obama not become president"? Oh right: Everyone knows that Jews hate the blacks, and blacks hate the Jews. Thanks so much for bringing us together.
Perhaps the simplest, and therefore best, explanation of why Krugman digs Hillary over Barack is this comment I read on a TNR blog entry on the subject:
I attribute it to the fact that Krugman appears to understand absolutely nothing about politics. On policy of all kinds, most particularly economic policy of course, he is quite brilliant. But, as I have said elsewhere, I wouldn't have him run a campaign for dog-catcher.
I think Professor Krugman just responds to Hillary's wonkishness — in a sense he wants to see someone more like him become president — and resents the fact that political gifts are gifts of another kind. Being first in the class just doesn't get you all that much in life.
Brilliant. Krugman digs Hillary, because Krugman is Hillary. It all makes sense now.
This was the most dismaying in a long series of WTF?-worthy Obama-slams from Mr. Krugman. First Obama's like Bill. Now he's like W. What next-- Nixon? I think a) Obama's success would disprove the premise of Krugman's book and b) Krugman loathes the irratic, irrational nature of American politics and wishes that people would listen to plain sense about policy. But they won't, and they never have. Obama seems to understand this perfectly, and I think that it drives Krugman crazy. The cruellest irony is that you have this smart, otherwise rational liberal trying to paint the guy with the most liberal voting record in the Senate as a right-wing appeaser. Yeah, how about that rotten vote to disallow an amendment barring individuals from suing telecoms who gave private information to the governme... Oh, wait. Obama voted against that, and Hillary didn't show up. On second thought, you're right, Paul, what was I thinking, this guy is actually the most brilliant criminal mastermind of our times, fooling everyone but you into thinking he's a decent, essentially honest progressive, while really he's a mere pawn for the neocon conspiracy! Mwahh ha ha!
