Three things changed to convert Paul Krugman from a raving Michael Moore-ish leftist (in the eyes of the Establishment) into a very serious man.
1. He won the Nobel Prize in Economics
2. A Democrat took over the White House
3. Krugman is now attacking a Democrat rather than a Republican
Winning the Nobel Prize does confer a degree of credibility. I think the same factor has helped Al Gore be more persuasive as an advocate for addressing climate change. But the reason Krugman gets his face on the cover of Newsweek with a headline Obama is Wrong is primarily because he is a Democrat criticizing a Democrat, and that is more newsworthy because, if nothing else, it is at least somewhat surprising.
Even though Krugman enjoys some rather well-credentialed Establishment perches (NYT’s opinion page, Princeton University professor), it was easy to dismiss him during the Bush years. His track record as a critic of Bush was strong, but that didn’t seem to gain him much respect. He was more likely to be invited on Bill Maher’s HBO program than This Week with George Stephanopoulus. Meanwhile, NYT’s centrists like David Brooks and Tom Friedman seemed at times to be ubiquitous on the Sunday morning political shows, cable news, and even PBS.
Some of this is justified. It was much more newsworthy when a William Buckley or Newt Gingrich came out and criticized Bush than when some Democratic columnist did so. The reverse remains to true for an Obama administration. Yet, even acknowledging this, the default position of the Establishment press is that liberals are not serious and their views can be ignored until such time as they begin bashing a Democratic president. If nothing else, this dynamic is annoying.
Writing in Newsweek, Evan Thomas seems to blame Krugman for this situation.
Paul Krugman has all the credentials of a ranking member of the East Coast liberal establishment: a column in The New York Times, a professorship at Princeton, a Nobel Prize in economics. He is the type you might expect to find holding forth at a Georgetown cocktail party or chumming around in the White House Mess of a Democratic administration. But in his published opinions, and perhaps in his very being, he is anti-establishment.
I think it’s a difficult case to make that a man like Krugman can be anti-establishment. What he is is a man within the Establishment who is willing to call bullshit on his peers. And that is a rare and valuable thing. I admire Paul Krugman for his willingness to be contrarian both now and when the rest of his pack was ginned up to invade Iraq.
Of course, that doesn’t mean I think he is right about a lot of what he saying lately. His vision of a world without securitization seems almost stupid and not worthy of an economist of his stature. His statement this morning on This Week, that we’re going to have to apologize for criticizing the Japanese because we’re doing the exact same thing, was somewhere between imprecise and dishonest.
I’m going to keep my eye on Krugman as the media builds him up. Is he letting his sudden acceptability go to his head? Is he falling into a role (Uncle Tom) that he is supposed to play? Is he bitter that Hillary Clinton didn’t win the nomination?
Krugman is not an idiot, but he should be careful that he isn’t treated as a useful one by corporate and Republican enemies of Obama’s policies.
