Right Now Paul Krugman is Missing Journolist Something Awful
John on August 8, 2010 at 1:45 am
In his last column, Krugman leveled a particularly nasty shot at Paul Ryan, calling him a flimflam artist. The response has not been very good, even from usually friendly quarters:
I don’t think Ryan is a charlatan or a flim-flam artist. More to the point, I think he’s playing an important role, and one I’m happy to try and help him play: The worlds of liberals and conservatives are increasingly closed loops. Very few politicians from one side are willing to seriously engage with the other side, particularly on substance. Substance is scary. Substance is where you can be made to look bad. And substance has occasionally made Ryan look bad. But the willingness to engage has made him look good. It’s given some people the information they need to decide him a charlatan, and others the information they need to decide him a bright spot. It’s also given Ryan a much deeper understanding of liberal ideas than most conservative politicians have.
Megan McArdle goes farther, pointing out that the gist of Krugman’s attack seems to be based on Krugman a) not knowing what he’s talking about in general, and b) not knowing the facts in this case.
it is not correct to accuse Ryan of deliberate dishonesty; he asked the CBO to score it, and they turned him down. Nor is it correct to imply that this is somehow out of the ordinary. If you supported the health care plan, you supported the exact same process that Ryan is now proposing to use to tweak his proposal. Were they all brazen liars because the tweakery turned out to be a lot harder than they’d hoped?
No, they were brazen liars for other reasons. But point taken. McArdle also notes that even the Tax Policy Center is defending Ryan, making this something of a rout for Krugman with left, right, and above-the-fray all agreeing he’s out of line.
This is just the sort of situation where having an off-the-record gathering of like-minded journalists pre-screen your talking points would have been really helpful. No doubt someone on the list could have talked Krugman off this particular ledge. Left alone with just his wife for assistance (seriously…Krugman’s wife reportedly pushes him to use more zingers in his pieces, e.g. flimflam artist) Krugman went too far. Where is a left wing media cabal when you need one?!
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