Lying in Ponds

I doubted that it was possible, but Paul Krugman, with yesterday’s well-timed perfectly partisan effort, has now written 500 New York Times columns, and not a single one of them qualifies as a “crossover column” — one which consists mostly of criticism of one’s own party, or praise of the other. Remember that his column began in January 2000, so the unwillingness to cross party lines extends back to the entire final year of the Clinton administration. At the 400 mark last March, I tried to summarize Mr. Krugman’s record in a series of posts, so I won’t do that again (nothing has changed), but here’s the brief version of how he does it:

1. Of course, Paul Krugman has written exhaustively on Republican scandals. His coverage of the Enron scandal was one-sided even when compared with that of his colleague Frank Rich.
2. He has systematically minimized or completely avoided commentary on any news uncomfortable to Democrats. Phrases such as “Marc Rich pardon”, “Robert Torricelli”, and “Al Sharpton” have never appeared in a Paul Krugman column.
3. Although it’s often argued that he writes only about economic issues, he actually discusses a full range of political topics including non-economic subjects such as the Trent Lott scandal, and is able to find an anti-Republican angle in any subject, even elections in France.
4. While many Democratic-leaning pundits tend to selectively criticize Democratic candidates during a presidential election, Mr. Krugman has followed a purely partisan approach. Early in the 2004 campaign, he singled out Howard Dean and Wesley Clark for praise, but avoided direct criticism of the other candidates. But once John Kerry took control, he was one of the pundits most favorable to the Democratic nominee.

Here’s the way I concluded the “Krugman 400″ piece last year:

Let’s agree that Paul Krugman was a non-partisan economist as recently as a few years ago. Granting that, how many hundreds of astonishingly one-sided New York Times columns must he write before even his supporters are forced to confront the notion that he has since become something very different — “a firm adherent to a party, faction, cause, or person; especially: one exhibiting blind, prejudiced, and unreasoning allegiance“? When measured by the Lying in Ponds approach of evaluating individual references to the two parties, Paul Krugman is far more one-sided than the average pundit, far more one-sided than any other New York Times columnist, and is rivaled only by Ann Coulter and Robert Scheer of the major pundits evaluated here. The crossover column analysis shown earlier suggests that Michael Tomasky’s approach of quantifying partisanship by evaluating entire columns would yield a similar result. The conclusion is inescapable: Paul Krugman’s columns for the New York Times have been extremely partisan — it’s not a close call.

Paul Krugman has referred to himself as “the lonely voice of truth in an ocean of corruption“. Some critics suggest a descent into paranoia. When Lying in Ponds hears from Mr. Krugman’s many fans, it’s clear that many of them remember his more balanced commentary during the 1990’s and, while admiring his skewering of the Bush administration, assume that he has continued to criticize Democrats as well. Thanks to the untiring efforts of archivist Bobby Pelgrift, each one of his 400+ Times columns is preserved online, and that record is perfectly clear. At some point prior to the presidency of George W. Bush, Paul Krugman abandoned substantive criticism of Democrats. As the Bush administration proceeded, Mr. Krugman’s non-partisan economics columns disappeared, and he began to ruthlessly simplify every topic according to a formula that even non-economists can understand — one political party is very good and the other is very, very bad.

NOTE: I’m an election official in my precinct, and will be at the polls all day today for a municipal bond election. So I won’t be able to evaluate today’s columns until tonight or tomorrow morning.