Nicholas Confessore (Wash. Monthly): Comparative Advantage (on Krugman)

Subtitle: How economist Paul Krugman became the most important political columnist in America.

There have always been columnists who, for better or worse, commanded the greatest attention of their day. Think of Walter Lippmann during the postwar consensus, Joseph Kraft during the Vietnam era, or George Will during the Reagan years. William Safire heralded the Clinton backlash of the early 1990s, Maureen Dowd the frothy, decadent latter half of the decade. In much the same way, Paul Krugman, who has written a column twice-weekly for The New York Times since January 2000, is essential reading for the Age of Bush. If you work in Washington, you probably read Krugman's column, and if you read Krugman's column, you probably have strong feelings about Krugman himself. Mention his name at a Washington dinner party, and at least a few people are bound to rave--or curse.

It's not immediately clear why. Krugman is a pretty good writer, but not a great one. He's adept at explicating numbers and statistics in clear English, but he's not a stylist like Dowd or the The Washington Post's Michael Kelly. Krugman isn't well-connected in Washington; in fact, he almost never leaves the environs of Princeton University, where he has taught economics since 2000. He's not a connoisseur of politics. He can't tell you how many votes John F. Kennedy won Illinois by in 1960 or who Arthur Finkelstein is. Nor is Krugman much of a reporter. There are few facts in his columns that any Times intern couldn't glean from documents published daily by the Congressional Budget Office or dozens of Beltway think tanks. Krugman doesn't travel around the country interviewing lieutenant governors or lard his columns with juicy blind quotes. He doesn't plot Democratic strategy like E.J. Dionne, dine with foreign dignitaries like Thomas Friedman, or write smart big-think like Ronald Brownstein. Nevertheless, for nearly two years, Krugman has been the columnist every Democrat in the country feels they need to read--and every Bush Republican loves to hate.

Krugman's primacy is based largely on his dominance of a particular intellectual niche. As major columnists go, he is almost alone in analyzing the most important story in politics in recent years--the seamless melding of corporate, class, and political party interests at which the Bush administration excels. Like most people, the Washington press, and especially pundits, were slow to grasp the magnitude of the shift. Krugman, whether puncturing the fuzzy math of Bush's tax cut or eviscerating the deceptive accounting behind Bush's Social Security plans or highlighting the corruption behind Dick Cheney's energy task force, has nearly always been the first mainstream writer to describe--and condemn--Bushonomics in plain English.

As an economist, of course, Krugman surely has an edge over most liberal pundits; his sterling academic reputation gives his critiques a punch that few Democratic politicians or liberal editorialists could hope for. But in truth, little that Krugman writes about has relied on his academic expertise. His columns aren't about trade theory or stochastic calculus, but about flagrant deceptions and fourth-grade arithmetic. What makes Krugman interesting, in short, is not just why he writes what he writes. It's why nobody else does.

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http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0212.confessore.html

BTW, of all the recent books, so far I find Krugman's to be the most important.

I need to rake some leaves and then the reward will be to start Krugman's book. I haven't looked at it. Is it mostly his columns? I've read most of them but won't mind rereading them. My educational background is in Economics and I have great respect for Mr. Krugman.

and although I had read them all when they originally came out (and posted most here unless beat to the punch by another DUer) I was blown away by the power of them all collected in one place. However, the book also features a long introduction that helps tie all the columns together. I hope you enjoy the book as much as I did.

I'm sure I'll enjoy it. I'll post about it when I finish it.

But the intro will chill your bones. Also, I hadn't read all the columns, so the book was a real eye-opener for me.

He knows what to do to get us out of the mess we're in!

for the link, I really enjoyed the article.

- not by bribes

but by being paycheck cowards - and lazy once they understood how little merit means in the post Reagan world.

Check out today's Dilbert.

I think many journalists and opinion writers are too caught up in the social aspects of their lives, they want to be "cool" and depend on those party invites to feed their egos. Krugman is not part of that scene and it shows in his honesty.