Mr. Krugman.

You're a shining example of what's wrong with the media.

No real substance. No real insight. Just hack politics.

Total deception by an insider too worried to ruffle anyone's feathers in Washington to truly be a difference maker.

Every time anyone lionizes Ronald Reagan
someone else should play back his nationwide
apology for Iran contra. Just for balance.

From the op-ed - qte - Bill Clinton knew that in 1991, when he began his presidential campaign. "The Reagan-Bush years," he declared, "have exalted private gain over public obligation, special interests over the common good, wealth and fame over work and family. The 1980s ushered in a Gilded Age of greed and selfishness, of irresponsibility and excess, and of neglect." -unqte-

Then Bill Clinton aided by his buddy Bob "Citibank" Rubin pushed through NAFTA and WTO, and a bad China deal - exalting private gain over public obligation, special interests over the common good, wealth and fame over work and family, continuing the Gilded Age of greed and selfishness, of irresponsibility and excess, and of neglect.

Brilliant piece. Very clear and direct. Superbly organized.

So, naturally, we have a host of rocket scientists declaring the author an idiot (and worse). Envy will get you nowhere--except the Huff-Po comment section.

Krugman's assertion that theres danger in "Barack Obama's praise for Ronald Reagan"

Krugman's statement, "The fact is that how we talk about the Reagan era still matters immensely for American politics," is his opening to a criticism of Obama for "praising" Reagan.

Krugman shows what appears to be amazing hypocrisy in his latest anti-Obama column. The TPM website points to Krugman's OWN BOOK, Peddling Prosperity, which has the following opening passages:

"In 1981 Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan uttered a startling pronouncement: "The Republicans," he declared, "are now the party of ideas." Moynihan was and is a moderate Democrat. He once served in the Nixon administration, and he earned the ire of many 1960s liberals both by his willingness to talk about the disintegration of black families and by his authorship of a leaked memo suggesting that the race issue be treated with "benign neglect." By 1980, however, the rightward shift of American politics had put Moynihan's positions well to the left of center, so this was a self-punishing admission.

"Why would Moynihan say such a thing? Because as an unusually bookish politican, a former Harvard professor who prided himself on his intellectual honesty, Moynihan felt compelled to admit the impact of conservative ideas on American social thought, above all in economics. His generosity was refreshing and also ironic; for it came just at the moment when conservatism was simultaneously seizing real power and losing its soul, experiencing a process of intellectual and moral debasement."

You people scare me. Such amazing leaps of logic..you deserve to be in the Olympics! Certainly, no one despises RR more than I do. Before his presidency, he was our governor for 8 years..during which time I worked 3 jobs (while George drank away his trust-funded, legacy-greased Harvard "education") to pay for my food, lodging, books and Reagan's newly imposed college tuition. Now, I'm trying to decide who to vote for. My first choices were squeezed out by the MegaSyndicatedMedia. I do know that, whether I choose to vote for Obama or Hillary or neither, the misquotes attributed to both of them are sheer twaddle.

Unlike so many of you, I didn't want to get suckered into "what someone said, about what someone wrote, about what someone said". Remember "Gossip", where one person whispers to the next and it goes around a circle, ending up a completely different story? Hence, I went to the source (www.rgj.com), where you can watch the full 49 minute video made by the Reno Gazette-Journal. You may then hear for yourselves that Obama makes an objective, analytical statement as to the extent of Reagan's influence..and he was correct. Hey, look at the vitriol generated by RR even now..and the enduring socio-economic mess he left us in! Absolutely NOWHERE does Obama use the words "admire", "like", or "good", in relationship to that man.

Maybe Bill's ego was bruised and, being human, he over-reacted..because he's far too bright to make such an otherwise Roveian, Bush-esque comment. In kind, Hillary's MLK/Johnson quote was out of context, too. Bill Moyer's Journal (PBS) ran her entire video statement last Saturday. When will you learn that the MSM, run by the likes of GE, Viacom, Disney..the GOP power structure..is doing everything possible to control you..not inform you? About 5% of you had the sense to check out this baloney before you passed judgement. To the rest..stay after school and write on the board 100 times.."I will think before speaking!" Shame on you!

Obama was NOT praising Reagan. (If you think he was, please read what he actually said -- not a media soundbite or paraphrase.) Obama was simply acknowledging that Reagan shifting the role of the federal governent toward less government, less regulation (pro-business and deregulation), and we are still living with the Reagan legacy. (1980's S&L crisis...2007's subprime crisis. Both failures of government regulation and oversite.)
I think the fact that Obama is thinking in broader terms -- of going outside of the core Democratic Party to bring in Independents and even some Republicans is a good thing.
I understand that the "change" message is overused and now has no meaning. However, Hillary and Bill are stuck in the 1990's fighting Tom Delay, Newt, and the rest of the Republicans. Can't we move on???

There's enough in the world going on to have this dupe off the page now. Old news.

Krygman is a egotistical IDIOT.

What prevents people from ACTUALLY READING what Obama ACTUALLY SAID instead of playing mind-reading games and guessing at his motives?

The issue Krugman cares most about for domestic policy is health care. His latest book Conscience of Liberal, a great read, discussed health care at the unfinished business of the New Deal / Great Society. This issue matters passionately to him.

Kucinich is proposing the single-payer health care plan Krugman thinks we need. However, he talks up Edwards the most as having the closest to that. He prefers Clinton's plan with a mandate to Obama's non-universal plan that will leave millions if not tens of millions behind.

I agree with having a mandate, for we will never get to universal health care unless everyone participates somehow. The key is having sufficients subsidies for poor people, and a government-run insurance plan people can buy into so this doesn't become a sop to insurance companies.

Health Care is the domestic issue I care most about and I am glad to see him speaking out clearly and consistently on this issue.

People who agree or disagree with Obama's non-universal approach or Krugman's prioritization of Edwards/Clinton over Obama on this issue are free to argue the point.

Or, they are free to agree or disagree with what Obama said about Reagan.

However, these personal attacks on Krugman are ridiculous and only make Team Obama look bad. First they said he had a son working in the Clinton campaign (Krugman has no children). Then his comments were "tinged with racism" even though Krugman is in a mixed-race marriage. Then he's a "shill for Hillary" and "bucking for a cabinet post" even though he's publicly criticized her in the past and made no endorsements this race.

Back when the Clinton's were triangulating and the Congressional Democrats were cowering in the face of Bush, Krugman was boldly speaking out. He has more credibility than any of the candidates running.

Krugman's offense? He's not taken in by Obama's cult-of-personality campaign. He's holding everyone's policies to the same standard.

Get real folks, Obama Never, Ever, Ever, said he agreed with Reagan or the Republicans, he merely said they were effective and knew how to get Americans to vote against their own financial interests.

It would be foolish to ignore the tactics of the last president to win the white house in a landslide.

Lets remember Bill only won by 43 percent not exactly a majority, and if not for Perot papa Bush probably would have won re-election.

Oh well, I understand the Times is down seizing and this shit head is being let go. Remember they do have Crystal now so who needs this dwib. His comments are right up there with Andrew Young.

Krugman's an idiot. He's just buying into the Clinton spin that it's praise somehow, by simply stating a fact: That the Republicans have been the ones coming up with ideas, while the Democrats have just been rehashing old Democratic and Republican ideas for the past 20 years. It is true. Anyone who has studied history at any level can plainly see that. It's not praise, and Obama never said the ideas were good ones. He simply stated a fact, and Hillary's media attack dog Krugman, instead of taking a rational and logical position on the issue, has decided to further twist the statement around to cozy up closer to the Clintons. Even Hillary plainly knows the game she's played herself into, by even admitting they were new ideas...all she ended up doing was finishing Obama's sentence for him, that they weren't GOOD ideas. However, Obama didn't have to even say that much, he can leave it up to the listener to decide whether those ideas worked out well or not. By doing so, he also gives the disenfranchised Republicans out there a different option, instead of further dividing the country and pandering to the mob mentality. If you don't like where the country is right now, screaming and blaming the Republicans isn't going to fix the problem...it's just a distraction. Holding folks accountable will happen in time. Making a big, grandiose show of blaming the Republicans, at this point, only serves for those who feel they need to erase their complicit records by feeding off the anger of their base. That is what Edwards realized early in his campaign, unfortunately, and that is what Clinton bought into a little later. That they could win the nomination if they just played all those people who were angry. But that doesn't guarantee a win in the general election, not by a long shot...it guarantees you about 40% of the vote.

You people are missing the point. Obama wasn't praising Reagan. He was merely stating that America went through a right-wing shift during Reagan. Unfortunately, this is true. And the country did NOT go through a left-wing shift during Clinton. It's not about Reaganomics (which was a failure). It was about Reagan somehow convincing Americans that government was the problem and laissez-faire capitalism (and deregulation) would be the answer. Russia's downfall played into this (capitalism beat out communism).