Pundit Boxscore for Tuesday 23 March 2004

Following is the second 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.

HOW COMMON ARE CROSSOVER COLUMNS? At the bottom of today's post is a table which lists the Lying in Ponds pundits with the fewest crossover columns in 2003. Clearly, crossover columns are relatively commonplace. Even pundits who are frequently criticized as partisans write some -- George Will and Maureen Dowd had ten each. Cal Thomas wrote a column entitled "The embarrassing GOP". Even columnists who have been fixtures in the Lying in Ponds Top Ten over the last two years such as Michael Kinsley and the late Robert Bartley had two each. Anyone can do it.

Only four columnists failed to cross over a single time last year: Ann Coulter, Molly Ivins, Paul Krugman and Robert Scheer. Let's look at the records of each of the four. I have evaluated two years of Ann Coulter columns so far. She did have two crossover columns in 2002, but they were both directed at Norman Mineta in his role as the Bush Administration Transportation Secretary. Of course Mr. Mineta is actually a Democrat, so those columns qualify as crossovers only on a technicality. Ms. Coulter has been even more one-sided in her commentary than Mr. Krugman over the past two years and her "irrational rhetoric and pervasive factual errors and deceptions" and desire for the death of her political opponents puts her in a league entirely of her own.

I have only one year of data on Molly Ivins and Robert Scheer. Both were very consistently partisan last year, although Mr. Scheer came close to crossing over with a column criticizing California Attorney General Bill Lockyer. It's not very difficult to find evidence that Mr. Scheer can criticize his own party if you browse back through his archives for a couple of years. He defended Arnold Schwarzenegger against Gray Davis and criticized Gary Condit in 2001, and in 2000 wrote a column entitled "Al Gore, gutless wonder". Similarly, clicking back through Molly Ivin's archives yields at least one column where she praises Republicans and criticizes Democrats over the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill.

That brings us back to Paul Krugman, who has placed 400 columns on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times going back to the beginning of 2000, yet has never written a substantive column criticizing Gray Davis, Gary Condit, Al Gore or any other Democrat. Lying in Ponds has the statistics for his columns in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004, and the entire set of columns are available online at The Unofficial Paul Krugman Archive. Of course Mr. Krugman has occasionally criticized Democrats in his columns, but it's usually done tactically in the context of much sharper criticism of Republicans. An example of an almost-crossover was a September 2000 column with the promising title "Gore's Tax Problems". The column does contain substantive criticism of the Gore-Lieberman economic plan, but in the end, Mr. Krugman judged the plan as "merely uninspiring" when compared to George W. Bush's "grossly irresponsible" tax plan. Relative to the rest of Mr. Krugman's NYT canon, that column qualifies as harsh treatment of Democrats. The point is not whether his views on that subject were valid, but rather that Mr. Krugman has simply been utterly unwilling to offer undiluted criticism of any Democrat, on any subject, for a span of 400 columns.

Tomorrow: Part 3: What's Wrong with Criticizing Republicans?

Fewest 2003 Crossover Columns

Ann Coulter	0
Molly Ivins	0
Paul Krugman	0
Robert Scheer	0
Walter Williams	1
Robert Bartley	2
Mona Charen	2
Daniel Henninger	2
Michael Kinsley	2
Thomas Sowell	2
Charles Krauthammer	3
Brendan Miniter	3
William Raspberry	3
Linda Chavez	4
David Brooks	5
E.J. Dionne	5
Jeff Jacoby	6
William Safire	6
Cal Thomas	6
Robert Samuelson	7
Maureen Dowd	10
George Will	10
Thomas Oliphant	14
Clarence Page	16
Richard Cohen	19
David Broder	36