Oh, Paul Krugman, here is why I love you!

his blog today in the NYT:

Feb 9, 7:21 pm 1
Who’s Savvy Now?

Via Digby, Jay Rosen has a very good piece on how some reporting on the CBO report was distorted by what he calls the “cult of the savvy”. It goes beyond what I said about second-order journalism; Rosen argues that there’s a value system at work, where being in the know about political maneuvering is considered all-important, whereas understanding the actual policy issue is for the drones.

The thing is, my read — and yes, I’m doing a bit of second-order journalism myself for a moment, but bear with me — is that the CBO affair actually ended up hurting Republicans. By the end of the week a barrage of press reports, plus those mighty figures Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, had effectively changed the story from “CBO predicts massive job losses” to “Republicans lie about CBO report.” In reality, it’s unlikely that it would have mattered at all even if the first story had stuck. But to the extent that such things matter at all, Republicans ended up losing the week.

So the savvy cultists were wrong even on their own terms. And notice why they were wrong: It never occurred to them that understanding the real issues might matter, and so they were caught completely off guard when Republican lies about policy matters produced a backlash.

So here’s a radical thought: Maybe the truly savvy thing is to take policy seriously, not to pretend that it’s all a game, and that only you understand the rules?