Pundit Boxscore for Wednesday 24 March 2004

Following is the third 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.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH CRITICIZING REPUBLICANS? A couple of years ago, Paul Krugman responded to the charge of partisanship by saying that it would be irresponsible or even unethical for him to criticize Democrats in the context of Bush administration policies: "Does the ideal of 'nonpartisanship' mean that I should have mixed my critiques of Bush policies with praise, or with attacks on the hapless, ineffectual Democrats, just for the sake of perceived balance?" Here at Lying in Ponds, Mr. Krugman is not faulted for serious and substantive criticism of Republicans, but for his consistent failure to apply the same (any?) standards of judgment to Democrats. Why is it not possible to write and chew gum at the same time, to believe that the Bush administration has been dishonest and incompetent, yet offer principled criticism of one's own party in cases where it is clearly deserved? Not once, in 400 columns? Other liberal columnists such as Frank Rich, Mary McGrory, Michael Kinsley and even Robert Scheer and Molly Ivins have managed to do so. Mr. Krugman has not, because he has systematically minimized or avoided commentary on any news uncomfortable to Democrats -- the Marc Rich pardon, Robert Torricelli, Al Sharpton, Gray Davis, etc.

In the same 2002 statement on his website, Paul Krugman described himself as "writing an economics column". Yet the Lying in Ponds analysis of his columns from 2000-2003 clearly shows that his non-partisan columns on economics, very frequent in 2000, have almost completely vanished, replaced by partisan screeds on a wide range of subjects. Now even columns on completely non-economic topics such as elections in France are routinely used to bash Republicans. The Economist has noticed the same thing:

For while he has had some journalistic coups during his time as a columnist -- most notably in recognising, long before most other commentators, that market manipulation played a role in the California energy crisis -- perhaps the most striking thing about his writing these days is not its economic rigour but its political partisanship.

Paul Krugman has many thoughtful defenders, who often point out that he frequently criticized Democrats such as Robert Reich during the Clinton administration. While Lying in Ponds has not attempted to analyze Mr. Krugman's pre-New York Times writings, it is clear that he was far more willing to criticize Democrats back then. Given that, it would be natural to theorize that Mr. Krugman is a critic of whichever party is in power, that his beef is with the Bush administration rather than Republicans in general. When Howard Kurtz asked why Mr. Krugman had failed to criticize Democrats, he responded: "It hardly seems worth it . . They don't have a whole lot of power." A problem with that theory is that it's easy to show that Mr. Krugman's gentle treatment of Democrats began at least as early as 2000, when he wrote 99 columns containing a grand total of only three (3) individual negative references to the sitting Democratic president. Further, Mr. Krugman's partisanship score would be high even if every reference to the Bush administration, even if every single Republican reference of any kind is ignored, due purely to his favorable treatment of his own party.

Tomorrow: Part 4: But What About Substance and Accuracy?