Legal Commentary

Pulling Up Powerline Quotes

By Big Tent Democrat

So this 2005 Powerline quote on Krugman is making the rounds:

It must be depressing to be Paul Krugman. No matter how well the economy performs, Krugman’s bitter vendetta against the Bush administration requires him to hunt for the black lining in a sky full of silvery clouds. With the economy now booming, what can Krugman possibly have to complain about? In today’s column, titled That Hissing Sound, Krugman says there is a housing bubble, and it’s about to burst. . .

I use John Cole's cite because he has the decency to add "[c]onsidering my recent past (at least up until mid 2005), I am not really in a position to get all high and mighty . . ." Indeed. Now, I guess it is bad form to talk about Andrew Sullivan's joining up with Donald Luskin in their anti-Krugman crusade for so many years. It seems to me Andrew would be well served to acknowledge his errors and disavow Luskin, once and for all. He could cite this rant from Luskin on Krugman's Nobel prize:

With today's award to Paul Krugman, the Nobel as gone to an economist who died a decade ago. The person alive to receive the award is merely a public intellectual, a person operating in the same domain as Oprah Winfrey. And even as a public intellectual, the prize is inappropriate, because never before has a scientist operating in the capacity of a public intellectual so abused and debased the science he purports to represent. Krugman's New York Times column drawing on economics is the equivalent of 2006's Nobelists in Physics, astromers Mather and Smoot, doing a column on astrology -- and then, in that column, telling lies about astronomy. But what's done is done. The only question now is whether Krugman will pay taxes on the prize at the low rates enabled by the Bush tax cuts he has done so much to discredit, or if he will volunteer to pay taxes at higher rates he considers more fair.

You see, this is the level of discourse Sullivan maintained for many years towards Krugman. He should acknowledge his errors here. Indeed, it is precisely the type of thing Sullivan would have written in, say 2003 and 2004. Come clean Sully. Admit your idiocies. Start fresh.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on October 13, 2008 (boomark / email).