The Innocent Mistakes Of Paul Krugman
By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in History | Innocent Mistakes | Paul Krugman | Ronald Reagan — Comments (24) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
So there is this campaign to condemn Ronald Reagan for supposedly relying on Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy" to get elected to the Presidency in 1980. Paul Krugman is elbowing competitors out of the way to issue the condemnations. But I think that perhaps Krugman may have committed some innocent mistakes.
There is a lot more below. Read on . . .
First of all, Krugman repeatedly brings up the issue of Reagan's 1980 speech in Mississippi to prove that the 40th President was a racist. As long as two years ago, Jon Henke called Krugman on this issue and corrected his many errors. The issue also got covered here. Google is a powerful tool and one would think that someone like Krugman would use it to see whether his arguments have stood up under the scrutiny of others. Evidently, on this issue, Krugman hasn't taken the past corrections of his charges into account. Indeed, he doesn't even acknowledge them except in the most oblique terms, thus ensuring that people won't know much about Krugman's critics and what their criticisms entail.
But I'm sure that's an innocent mistake.
I suppose that I could also point out that nowadays, caring about racial equality and wanting to bring it about entails things like supporting school choice--an issue which has huge support in minority communities since it is a surefire way to improve education and lift people out of poverty. It also entails coming up with innovative ways to move society past its current over-reliance on palliatives like affirmative action to remedy the past wrongs of racism. We recall, of course, that during the Clinton Administration, we were promised that government would "mend, not end" affirmative action. Well, government certainly didn't end it and "mending" affirmative action is apparently just the same as "keeping the status quo when it comes to affirmative action." One wishes that Paul Krugman would at least address these issues. Most of the time, of course, Krugman appears to ignore the issues of school choice and affirmative action reform altogether, evidently not believing them worthy of discussion. If he has ever given any kind of serious examination to these issues, I am certainly unaware of it.
But I'm sure that's just an innocent mistake.
Speaking of whispering racial campaigns, perhaps Krugman would be good enough to take on the slur that if you are an African-American who works in a Republican Administration (like Condoleezza Rice or Colin Powell), or if you are an African-American who also happens to be a conservative (like Clarence Thomas or Thomas Sowell), you are somehow a "race traitor," whatever that means. To the best of my knowledge, Krugman has not addressed this slur.
But I'm sure that's an innocent mistake.
It would be nice as well for Krugman to take some history into account. For ever election cycle starting in 1932, the New Deal coalition Krugman so evidently reveres and cherishes was a dominant force--indeed, the dominant force--in American politics. Just about every election from 1932 to 1980 involved a contest between New Deal Democrats on the one side and "me too" Republicans on the other, who were willing to do just about everything the New Deal Democrats wanted to do, only slower. I say "just about" because the only time the Republicans did not put up a "me too" candidate for the Presidency prior to 1980 was in 1964, when Barry Goldwater put forth a distinct conservative vision in opposition to the traditional New Deal way of doing things. But that doesn't really count as far as the New Deal partisans are concerned, since Goldwater got stomped--in part thanks to people like Bill Moyers, who worked for Lyndon Johnson and was responsible for dirty tricks against the Goldwater campaign like the one discussed here. (Paul Krugman hasn't exactly gone out of his way to denounce such dirty tricks. I'm sure that it must be an innocent mistake.)
The 1980 campaign broke the mold in that it featured a conservative Presidential candidate who not only won the election, but won it going away and took a sledgehammer to the New Deal coalition in the process. Oh, to be sure, elements of that coalition remain and can be reassembled. But 1980 was traumatic for New Deal acolytes, especially because in the process of losing an election by a rout, significant portions of the New Deal coalition defected to the Republican side in the process. As Theodore White pointed out in his book, the 1980 campaign:
. . . was unlike previous campaigns. Fifty years of Democratic dominance of American opinion were being challenged--and challenged at every level. The opinion of the thinking classes was divided. Here one had the great civil libertarian, Democrat Morris Abram, coming out for Reagan; as did Edward Costikyan, the first of the original Democratic reformers of Manhattan. And then two of the country's most distinguished blacks, the Reverend Ralph Abernathy of Atlanta, successor to Martin Luther King, and Hosea Williams both came out in support of Reagan.
(Emphasis mine.) The fragmentation of the New Deal coalition was extraordinary and devastating, as White discusses. But just as notable were the defections of key civil rights figures from the Democratic side over to Reagan. These defections were notable not just because they played havoc with traditional national coalition politics as practiced since 1932, but also because the supposedly "racist" Ronald Reagan was able to draw the support of figures whose civil rights credentials were utterly and completely unimpeachable.
Partisans like Paul Krugman don't want 1980 to repeat itself. As mentioned above, Krugman reveres the New Deal and its legacy and he doesn't want to see the remnants of the New Deal coalition scattered and annihilated beyond recognition. Quite the contrary; Krugman hopes (perhaps against hope) that the New Deal coalition can reconstitute itself and once again march from victory to victory as it did during the heyday of Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. And having seen the movie of 1980 and its feature scene involving the defection of key members of the civil rights movement over to the Republican side, Krugman wants to do everything in his power to stop the filming of a sequel.
Thus this renewed argument over whether Ronald Reagan was a racist--the facts provided in the links above notwithstanding. Again, Paul Krugman hasn't addressed those facts. Additionally, he hasn't addressed why, if Reagan was such a blatant and obvious racist, people like Ralph Abernathy and Hosea Williams were willing to support him. Abernathy and Williams were not stupid and surely wouldn't have been taken in by a genuine racist pretending to lack a prejudiced bone in his body. And Abernathy and Williams never stopped caring about the cause of civil rights, so it is hard to believe that they would have made common cause with a racist. Ronald Reagan's ability to draw support across racial lines in 1980--and to disrupt and gravely wound the New Deal coalition in the process--throws a huge monkey wrench into the gears of the argument that in 1980, Reagan openly and notoriously relied on the "Southern strategy" to propel himself to the Presidency. And Krugman doesn't even lift a finger to argue otherwise or to take Reagan's support in the civil rights community into account when making his "arguments."
But I'm sure that's just an innocent mistake.
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