Pundit Boxscore for Tuesday 23 September 2003

ANGRY, APOPLECTIC, MODERATE, OPTIMISTIC: Paul Krugman's book The Great Unraveling continues to generate strong reaction from the right and the left. Bruce Bartlett of the National Review Online says that Mr. Krugman is "bent out of shape by supply-side economics":

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is an angry man. If he were a cartoon character, he would probably look like Donald Duck during one of his famous tirades, with steam pouring out of his ears every time he hears someone say "tax cuts" or "George W. Bush" or "supply-side economics." All these things seem to set him off so much that he becomes just apoplectic, which he pours into twice-weekly columns that have become must reading for those on the left-wing fringe.

Oliver Burkeman of The Guardian on the other hand, sees his critics as "hysterical", and Mr. Krugman as "a mild-mannered university economist":

Still, there's an important sense in which his views remain essentially moderate: unlike the growing numbers of America-bashers in Europe, Krugman doesn't make the nebulous argument that there is something inherently objectionable about the US and its role in the world. He claims only that a fundamentally benign system has been taken over by a bunch of extremists - and so his alarming analysis leaves room for optimism, because they can be removed. "One of the Democratic candidates - who I'm not endorsing, because I'm not allowed to endorse - has as his slogan, 'I want my country back'," Krugman says, referring to the campaigning motto of Howard Dean. "I think that's about right."