Pundit Boxscore for Wednesday 16 July 2003

SIX MONTH REVIEW -- PAUL KRUGMAN: New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is unusual among the top pundits in that he writes regular columns while continuing a full-time career as an award-winning economics professor at Princeton University. From his biography:

Paul Krugman joined The New York Times in 1999 as a columnist on the Op-Ed Page and continues as Professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University.

Krugman received his B.A. from Yale University in 1974 and his Ph.D. from MIT in 1977. He has taught at Yale, MIT and Stanford. At MIT he became the Ford International Professor of Economics.

Krugman is the author or editor of 20 books and more than 200 papers in professional journals and edited volumes. His professional reputation rests largely on work in international trade and finance; he is one of the founders of the "new trade theory," a major rethinking of the theory of international trade. In recognition of that work, in 1991 the American Economic Association awarded him its John Bates Clark medal, a prize given every two years to "that economist under forty who is adjudged to have made a significant contribution to economic knowledge." Krugman's current academic research is focused on economic and currency crises.

Paul Krugman easily topped last year's partisanship rankings, but he has dropped into third place so far this year, behind two columnists who are new to Lying in Ponds. Because of his high scores, Mr. Krugman has at times dominated the discussion here, and he continues to be a hero to the left and a lightning rod for criticism from the right. It would be a full-time job just to keep up with the missiles flying between the "Krugman Truth Squad" and Donald Luskin on one side, and Bobby Pelgrift's Unofficial Paul Krugman Archive and Mr. Krugman's own website on the other. Because of heightened reader interest in Mr. Krugman, we have a very large body of his columns to examine -- all of them written for the Times in 2000, 2002 and 2003.

Over these two and a half years of columns, Paul Krugman's commentary has been one-sided to an extraordinary degree. It is simply astounding that not a single one of his 243 columns has been devoted mainly to criticism of Democrats or praise of Republicans. At first, Mr. Krugman wrote many witty, thought-provoking and completely apolitical columns about economics, but they have dwindled as the frequency of partisan screeds has increased. In 2000, 53 of his 98 columns contained no party references, but in 2002, only 8 of 99 did, and so far this year only one lonely column of 46 was non-political. Although Mr. Krugman himself has explicitly denied the charge of partisanship, the data doesn't seem to support any of the proposed explanations for his one-sided punditry:

• Krugman is simply being critical of the party in power -- Although Mr. Krugman's early criticism of the Clinton administration is often cited, there is little evidence of such independence in recent years. In his 2000 columns, he made over 140 negative references to George W. Bush, but only 13 to Al Gore and a grand total of 3 to Bill Clinton, who served as a high government official at the time.
• Being hostile to Bush policies isn't the same as being a Democratic partisan -- Although he has called Democrats "hapless" and "ineffectual" on his website, Mr. Krugman has praised them consistently in the Times, with positive references exceeding negative references by a 3-1 ratio in 2000, 4-1 in 2002 and increasing to 5-1 this year.
• Krugman writes about economics, and he happens to disagree with Republicans on economic policy -- Mr. Krugman wrote many columns on non-economic topics in 2002, but they're just as partisan as the economics columns. There was an anti-Republican screed on the church and state issue, an anti-Republican screed on Trent Lott, an anti-Republican screed on climate policy, an anti-Republican screed on forest policy, an anti-Republican screed on drilling in Alaska, an anti-Republican screed on French elections (huh?), and many more.

All of this is made much more disappointing by the fact that Mr. Krugman's intelligence and credentials as an award-winning economist are sorely needed in the national debate. For those of us who know next to nothing about economics, a thoughtful opinion from someone with Mr. Krugman's background would be invaluable, but after slogging my way through 243 columns without a single substantive deviation from the party line, how could I expect to learn something about which party's position is better on any issue, when I already know what his answer will be?