Pundit Boxscore for Monday 22 March 2004

Following is the first of a special five part series discussing the work of New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. One part will be posted on each day of this week.

KRUGMAN 400: Paul Krugman reached a milestone a couple of weeks ago -- he's now written over 400 columns for The New York Times, yet not a single one of them has been a "crossover column", consisting primarily of substantive praise of Republicans or criticism of Democrats. The award-winning economist and leading columnist has never written an entire column praising the Republican Party or any individual Republicans on any issue. He's never written an entire column criticizing the Democratic Party or any individual Democrats on any issue. Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that a liberal columnist such as Mr. Krugman would be stingy with praise for Republicans, but even the most strident ideologues will tend to criticize members of their own party for failing to live up the party's principles, or for being too willing to compromise with the other side. Yet Paul Krugman has managed to write two columns per week for the last four years (including the final year of the Clinton administration) without finding a single occasion to substantively take issue with the Democratic Party. How is that possible?

An important part of the answer is that Mr. Krugman has chosen to systematically avoid issues or persons in the news which reflect negatively on his own party. Mr. Krugman has never mentioned in one of his columns the universally-condemned 2001 pardon of Marc Rich by President Clinton. Despite living in New Jersey, he has never mentioned former Senator Robert Torricelli, who withdrew late in his 2002 reelection campaign because of a fundraising scandal. He has never mentioned former Democratic kingmaker and still-active presidential candidate Al Sharpton. He has criticized controversial Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe on only one occasion in four years.

Here at Lying in Ponds, a crossover column is defined as one which leans the opposite way of a pundit's usual party orientation. As an attempt to exclude non-substantive efforts (accidental or offhand references), a crossover column is arbitrarily required to contain at least five non-neutral party references. So if a pundit writes a column with three negative but only two positive references to their own party, that would count as a crossover column -- certainly an extremely lenient standard. Is Mr. Krugman's lack of crossover columns unusual? How often do other columnists cross party lines by writing an entire column contrary to their normal orientation? Might there be an explanation for 400 one-sided columns other than the obvious one -- partisanship?

Tomorrow: Part 2: How Common are Crossover Columns?