What's the Matter with Paul Krugman?

On February 11, Paul Krugman touched off a mini firestorm with his New York Times column, "Hate Springs Eternal," which asserted that Obama supporters had been infected with the disease of Clinton-hating spawned by the right wing. "I won't try for fake evenhandedness here: most of the venom I see is coming from supporters of Mr. Obama, who want their hero or nobody," wrote Krugman. Then, came the real fireworks: "I'm not the first to point out that the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality." While Krugman may not have been the first to compare the Obama campaign to a cult (see this insightful piece by Jonathan Tilove of Newhouse News), being the first to do so in the pages of the New York Times raises eyebrows. This came on top of his assertion that it was not the Clinton camp, but the Obama camp that was playing the "race card."

Negative responses from readers came flying in fast and furious. Adding even more fervor to the argument, many expressed "say it ain't so, Joe" disillusionment. The arguments for and against Krugman's assertions can all be found in the comments left on his blog. And while I do think Krugman is dead wrong in his assessments, it is more important to me to dissect his method of reasoning. I have never met Krugman, but I have read enough of his work to recognize how his line of thought parallels that of many (not all) liberal academics I find myself surrounded by in my line of work.

During the Bush years, Krugman has been a champion of liberalism, his Times column providing an oasis in a sea of despair. I first encountered Krugman's writings more than a decade ago, when I was a grad student and he was a Princeton economist producing mild-mannered assessments of the pluses and minuses of free trade. In recent times, I have closely followed and generally agreed with his analysis of the housing bubble and other aspects of the coming economic crisis. But Krugman has become a prominent voice in politics primarily because of his scathing critique of the Bush administration and the war in Iraq. Not only does he expose the faulty logic governing the administration's actions, he also condemns such actions as unconscionable.

Nevertheless, times are changing. The wonderful development of the primaries is that anti-Bush voters are such a strong majority that the campaigns have had to articulate what they positively stand for. The basis of Krugman's anti-Bush analysis -- his distress that rational thinking has disappeared from politics -- was previously a source of both strength and inspiration. But this same mindset is now a limitation. I am not a foe of rational thinking, but whether a choice is deemed rational depends on who is deciding what the parameters of choice are. The rational analysis that may prove so vital to studying topics like climate change, demographics, or infectious disease does not equip academics to make sense of social movements. Academics tend to live in a bubble -- one to be sure that is enriched with a diversity of intellectual ideas and creativity. But it is a bubble, nonetheless, in that many academics are by and large divorced from what most Americans consider to be the real world. And this helps to explain why their political analysis can not only strike others as off the mark sometimes but also condescending.

"As I've said," Krugman wrote back to his critics supporting Obama, "you've been played like a fiddle by journalists who hate the Clintons, and just make stuff up about how evil they are." Translation: you are so easily manipulated you are starting to look like a cult. Or, in other words, you're thoughts and actions defy the rationality that is the universal standard for social order. Krugman apparently fails to see the irony in his remarks. In the name of liberal/progressive unity, he is warning Obama supporters not to embrace Clinton-hating because it will eventually be turned against Obama. Yet, what he has done is taken his condemnation of Bush's irrationality and focused the same critique on Obama supporters. What seemed righteous and yielding in the face of Bush now looks rigid and strident in the face of an emerging movement. It's what Obama would call "sloppy thinking."

The liberal side of Krugman's rational thinking is best expressed in his embrace of economic populism and praise for John Edwards's candidacy. Edwards "ran a campaign based on ideas," Krugman writes, changing the dynamic of what would otherwise have been "a cautious campaign." By contrast, Obama does not, in Krugman's eyes, represent real "change" because his call to transcend partisanship means he won't really fight for populist causes. In fact, Krugman has felt it his duty to point out that Obama is really not "progressive" at all, again implying that progressives are being driven by emotion rather than reason. That is why he has spent the last several months trying to demonstrate that Hillary has a more populist health care policy. His pose is something like: I've already thought through all of this, so now progressive change is just a matter of winning votes for the candidate with the best platform. These are the misguided sentiments of an academic with no concept of how social change actually happens.

While Krugman's rational assessment of the candidates' policy proposals is welcome, he should recognize that policy proposals are not the exclusive or even the most crucial site of new "ideas." Obama's first new "idea" is that real progressive change can only occur if we start by changing the way politics operates. This is not something than can be done simply by agitating the Democratic base harder and stirring up resentment of Republicans. It requires new energy to marshal change from the bottom up and new ways of engaging an active citizenry in participatory democracy. Whereas Howard Dean tried to give meaning to a campaign that his grassroots supporters were driving, Obama himself embodies bottom-up organizing. In the world I live in, it's not "cautious" but rather daring to run for President stressing your work as a grassroots community organizer as your formative experience in life. (This 1995 article on Obama's first electoral campaign reveals his progressive roots.) Hillary's suggestion that LBJ was the decisive figure who made Martin Luther King's dream a reality was not racist. However, it revealed her regressive top-down thinking and the limited appeal of her "experience" theme.

Krugman also misses Obama's second fresh approach: the call to shift the terms of political debate. He thinks Edwards did this by injecting economic populism into the campaign. When Krugman writes, "Racism, misogyny and character assassination are all ways of distracting voters from the issues," he is echoing Thomas Frank's "What's the matter with Kansa s?" argument that liberals need to stop fighting irrational "culture wars" and return to the rational bread-and-butter issues that were once the heart of the Democratic Party. In this way, they think the party can win back Reagan Democrats and low-income social conservatives. This type of populism is actually driven by liberal elitism and reductive economism. It assumes that those engaged in the "culture wars" suffer from the disease of false consciousness and the cure is rational economic thinking.

What Obama is proposing, and what Krugman only sees as moderation, is to engage Republicans and independents in a different way. The way to move beyond the "culture wars" is not to ignore culture but to stop seeing our divisions as impassable. Krugman says progressives should lead with their maximum proposals, then compromise only what's necessary to get measures passed. Obama proposes to start political debate by identifying the common values we share in order to develop policies that will be meaningful to a large majority. Evangelical conservatives, for instance, may not support abortion. But if progressives don't write them off as irrational, they may find that the value of compassion is a basis for common cause around issues like AIDS or Darfur. This is a strategy that recognizes the relationship between short-term reform and long-term transformation. Obama tried to point out that progressives needed to learn from the history of how Reaganism deployed such a strategy. The Clinton camp ignored the substantive point and made a guilt-by-association attack ad depicting Obama as a Reaganite.

Obama's third bold approach, which is really the foundation of everything else, is to insist that we need a politics based on hope rather than fear. It boils down to the question of how different America could be if we all bring out the best in ourselves and see the best in others; if we focus on what we are for rather than what we are against; if we unite to face the challenges of our lifetime rather than argue over who is to blame for our failures.

An injection of hope might just expand the realm of what's possible. It might even do so in ways that Paul Krugman's rational mind cannot imagine.

Scott Kurashige is an associate professor of American Culture, History, and Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies at the University of Michigan and author of The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles (Princeton University Press, 2008).

Comments

[annalivia]

Actually, the adulation of Paul Krugman at the netroots bordered on personality cult too. He's an adequate economist whose dissections of the fallacies in Bush's approach were important when others were mute. But Krugman is now also mute on Clinton's opposition to a progressive Social Security system, and that undermines Krugman's claim to being a progressive economist.
He is also mute on the social context in which this election is taking place. A black man running for any office, much less president, is constrained - unable to show any anger or defiance. Clinton is less constrained - at least she can cry - but she is constrained nonetheless. Edwards' full throated anger is a luxury not afforded to other candidates. And as Feingold has stated, Edwards himself voted against his own platform when he served in the Senate.
But Krugman gives Edwards a pass on everything and has piled on Obama throughout the election.
Perhaps Krugman is just an economist used to deference who is indifferent - therefore ignorant - of how social change happens. Or he could simply be hostile to Obama for political and personal reasons. Vanity? perhaps he was courted by Edwards and Clinton and not by Obama. Not a stretch.
But Krugman fits with the NYT editorial page quite nicely. When Kennedy endorsed Obama, Gail Collins went after him - missing the story - and today she's belittling caucuses. Soon the NYT opinion page will be telling us superdelegates are more important that elected delegates.
Even opinion, to carry any weight, has to be grounded in some reporting and evidence. But the Times Op Ed - with Krugman as exhibit A - looks more like Judith Miller these days than Sy Hersh.

[Ides]

Truly. The reality is that Edwards is a moderate on quite a few issues. He's against gay marriage, he was for the Iraq War, he is against the decriminalization of medical marijuana, he had backwards positions on credit and banking bills. He was even vehemently against expanding healthcare until last year. Edwards is, bluntly, a populist, not a progressive.


And yet, a lot of Liberals rallied around him for no apparent reason. Like Krugman. Hillary Clinton is much closer to Edwards than Edwards is to Obama, and both Clinton and Edwards are farther to the center than Obama. On policy. The "REBORN" Edwards was a new animal, but I hardly consider it anything but a "political" rebirth.

[Querent]

(1.)

The reasons why people rallied around Edwards are clearly apparent. He articulated an ideology based on a logical and rational analysis of the current political situation, the most outstanding feature of which is the illogical and irrational conservative creed which has ruled America for around 9 years now.

It is rather amazing how many people have never made a study of symbolic logic, which is not a very daunting subject, yet who feel themselves qualified to pass on the question of whether or not an argument is logical. Most people appear to believe that something is rational if they agree with it, and irrational if they don't. The fact is that logic has rules, principles, established methods, and means of validation. What is rational is clearly defined by several of the sciences, notably psychology, and is clearly distinguished by them from what is not rational.

A political ideology is a means of evaluating political proposals as being either in accord or in conflict with a set of established values and meanings. In order to be self-coherent, it must be logical and rational. The words "logical" and "rational" are not subject to arbitrary redefinition to suit somebody's agenda. It is the values and meanings which drive the agenda. This is what Edwards offered, and his rather devout pursuit of the ideology was leading him to a more and more consistent set of positions on the issues. That is why he was visibly becoming more and more progressive.

The question about Edwards was, how much of it was to get elected? The consensus was that too much of it was ambition, and not enough of it was conviction.

[ChimpmasterDJ]

Krugman cannot wrap his mind around the fact that some voters viscerally reject anyone who can cast votes to systematically enable the neo-con agenda, at ever critical juncture, and then lie about it. Not to mention the completely un-necessary vote against the banning of cluster-bomb use on civilians. Such things don't even begin to register on Krugman's radar, so he'll never "get it".

[Jazzylady26]

well, have you read these posts? do you wonder why Krugman says they're a cult?

[1DarkCelt]

These posts are reasonalble and well thought out. Its fine for you to embrace Hillary as you do. Good for you. The rest of us, want someone better. You sound like someone from a George Carlin routine when he asked "How come your stuff is stuff, but other peoples stuff is shit?"

[SamThornton]

Like most writers, Paul Krugman is a genius when I agree with him and an idiot when I don't.

Without completely agreeing with him in this instance, I think he does make at least a somewhat plausible point that some people commenting on some blogs in favor of their candidate do seem to be plumbing new depths of vituperation. What seems to have escaped Mr. Krugman, however, is that this is not a signal characteristic limited to Obama supporters.

On this issue, perhaps we should accord Mr. Krugman the mercy of going back to the drawing board while he more thoroughly analyzes his data.

[smzzzz]

A dead-on analysis of not only why people like Krugman misunderstand the Obama phenomenon but also of the specific reasons for his appeal. What's funny is Krugman's use of irrationality as an attack point when it's obvious he has become so emotionally caught up in trying to shoot down Obama's rise because the electorate is not going the way he thinks it ought to. That is classic ivory tower liberalism.

[Boadicea]

Excellent observations.

[transendentilist]

"....so emotionally caught up in trying to shoot down obama's rise...."

And you know this...How­??? You are a mind reader now??
The article was anything but emotionally charged. Funny you use that phrase, because your post is emotionally charged. Krugman wrote a concise, rational article, not some emotional tirade.
Why do obama supporters always twist the truth???

[blueshift]

The point of Paul Krugman makes in every single column is that he's right. Now, I happen to agree with most of the time, but not always. And his going out of the way to insert himself into every column ("I'm right," "I told you so," etc) is tiresome.

[Unsui]

Good work. Thanks.

[Desiderata]

Barack Obama has proposed a $1,000 cut on payroll taxes for working families, the elimination of income taxes on retirees making less than $50,000 a year, a 10 percent tax credit on mortgage interest payments and a $4,000 tax credit for college tuition.

Obama also promised to pass a universal healthcare bill that would cut family premiums up to $2,500 by 2012.

Obama said he will, "press firms to put more money into their pension funds and require firms to disclose their pension fund agreements­."

In another effort to provide relief for middle-class Americans, Obama proposed to create a credit card bill of rights that would ban unilateral changes to a credit card agreement.

The senator also promised to expand both after-school programs and the Family Medical Leave Act, crack down on mortgage fraud and reform student aid programs.O­bama"s campaign estimated his proposals would cost $26 billion a year.

Source:
http://thehill.com/campaign-2008/obama-unveils-sweeping-middle-class-relief-plan-2007-11-07.html

[pimothy]

Paul was picked off of third base just when he could have scored the winning run in the final out of the World Series.

[tecumseh80]

Excellent post - full of interesting tidbits to chew on.

What I find remarkable about the campaign so far is how many academics from outside the discipline of political science have commented on the campaign - that is great, but I was curious as to where my colleagues are on this.

True that many of the Americanists are writing their opinions, but the strict adherence to methodlogy that many political scientists studying American politics subscribe to make their arguments rather specailized.

The vast majority of political scientists who should be commenting - the comparativists and theorists - are remaining silent. As a comparativist what I find intriguing about Krugman is that he is not betraying his roots - an economist cannot let go of that bottom line; that always the structural forces of economics shall explain it all.

Letting go of ratioanlism is the key for me - around the world democratic cultures are sustained by the activity of its citizens (for whatever reason they do). I suppot Obama because he and he alone has been responsible for the mobilization of the American voter at a level not seen since 1968. Democracy is more than left v. right and it is certainly more complicated than policy and personality. Democracy is sustained by us showing up - and even if Barack is not the "most experienced candidate", he gets people to show up and that leads to a better democracy however you cut it...

[Ankhst]

Thanks, I think this is one of the best places where we agree.

While I can agree with Rrhain's point that social movements also helped give us the successful redefinition of estate tax to death tax (against the common good), I feel that the message of hope is not as intangible as Clinton-supporters represent. I don't think it is farfetched to say that the single largest cause of GWB and the recent Congresses is the apathy of the American voters. If the voters are not going to hold you responsible for your actions after getting elected, where's the impetus to serve anyone's interests but that of yourself and your friends?

The more people get actively involved in voting and American politics, the more likely they are to actually vote their own interests.

Of course I do not know whether Obama's message of hope and change is ultimately legitimate or not, and whether he would reveal some surprise corporate puppet strings once he gets elected.
We can't know. But any way I look at it, Obama seems the clear choice.

Even my pessimistic escape plan devil's advocate side points to Obama: if this really is a swindle, and we are just letting a father figure tell us what we want to hear (and letting the bulk of MSM sell it to us), then we need an
overwhelming example of this swindle so that we
can give up on image-based politics for good and all. I think it would take a betrayal this large for Americans to stop treating EVERYTHING like American Idol... and really, it's almost a scientific challenge to see how things could get worse than they are today.

However, I will invoke the Standard Dem Voter Disclaimer, i.e. if Hillary does somehow win the nomination, of course I will still vote for her over McCain any day of the week (including not abstaining from voting).

[emjay1954]

Krugman is not pro-Hillary, and his critique of Obama's campaign is worth taking seriously. Your specific comments, Scott, exemplify what is at least questionable, probably wrong, and maybe even hazardous about Obama. You point out three "fresh approaches," that you define as "new energy to marshal change . . . and new ways of engaging an active citizenry;" "shift[ing] the terms of political debate;" and "a politics based on hope rather than fear."

Nobody can take exception to those things, but do you realize how vague they are? What does it mean to engage an active citizenry? Engage them how, and to do what? How do you shift debate, when the other side actually likes the current debate--terrorism bad; taxes bad; military spending good? And what will Obama do to end the politics of fear? Will he expose the real reasons we invaded Iraq, will he expose how much spying Bush has illegally allowed, will he expose the use of torture? Or will he keep those covered up?

There is nothing wrong with rhetoric in the service of ideas, and I hope Obama's actions will justify his words. I, however, am concerned (as I think Krugman is) that the vagueness of Obama's speeches will come home to roost as good intentions that go unrealized.

[hyjanks]

Perhaps it is better to be rather vague now, adapting to situations as they arise than to be cock-sure of ones agenda and go full steam ahead, you know, like the current occupant of the White House. And we all know how that turned out, don't we?
Besides, what is this "vagueness" of which you speak? Every Obama critic insists upon this as pure, unadulterated fact. Perhaps you can list some specifics for us.

[presto]

I think emjay actually did list the specifics of the vaguery:

1. New energy to marshall change
2. Shifting the terms of political debate
3. Politics based on hope rather than fear.

[chendri887]

I second that response.

[HFh]

Interesting. You say:

>How do you shift debate, when the other side actually likes the current debate

But who is the other side? If the other side is the politicians, you may be right, but if the other side is the voters typically voting R, than I suspect you're very wrong... and that's actually crucial to whether one can be transformational by creating coalitions of constituents that then marginalize the extreme politicians.

I'm also more than a little confused by this "vagueness" charge. It's not as if he doesn't have very detailed policy positions. Anyone who wants to know what he wants to do can find easily out (the same is true for Hillary, or McCain or anyone else). In fact, this is the source of Krugman's critique of his health care policy: he doesn't like the details. Who cares whether he goes into mind-numbing detail about them in his speeches? I don't (but then I don't listen to almost any of their speeches).

[bobdob]

Krugman is not pro-Hillary??? Ah, perhaps you haven't read his anti-Obama, pro-Hillary screeds of late.

The problem Krugman is having (and it sounds like you are as well) is that he doesn't understand the function of Obama's speeches. They were never intended to lay out the details of his policies. They're designed to rally the troops and give people a reason to come together. Obama has a website where his policy positions are laid out in detail. I'm pretty sure Krugman can read. I think he's probably just chosen not to.

[Pendejoe]

As a 60 year old lawyer and realist who has concluded that Obama is the best option available to America at this time, I resent being accused of being too stupid to think. Like many Krugman readers, I have been dismayed by his strangely emotional screed against Obama supporters. It underminds his credibility on everything he writes in the future. It's like seeing someone you really respect abuse a waiter or kick a dog; you never view him the same way again. This article is refreshingly analytical and unemotional. I used to recommend Krugman's writing to my friends for that very reason. Ironically, I will support Hillary aggressively if she gets the nomination, but my relationship with Paul Krugman has really taken a hit.

[bluestatelib]

I agree wholeheartedly with your post. I'm a 33 year old lawyer and Obama supporter. I'm also someone who used to hold Krugman in great esteem (and maybe will again). Krugman was a person who expressed to the NYTimes reading world my frustration at the Bush administration. To see him turn his 'righteous' anger so bizarrely towards Obama is truly eye-opening.

Krugman has now forced me to reconsider all of his previous columns and positions. Were his previous columns criticizing the Bush administration and promoting his version of economic and social liberalism as filled with such emotional reasoning, misplaced anger and illogical conclusions as his recent screeds against Obama?

The moral of this story is, ironically a point Krugman seems to be making, namely, that it behooves everyone to be skeptical of blind hero-worship. I've worshiped Krugman's columns more so than I've ever supported Obama. But the problem with blind hero-worship is that inevitably your hero will let you down.

[WmC]

"I resent being accused of being too stupid to think."

Good point, Pendejoe. Interesting that the educated tend to favor Obama over Clinton; probably even the majority of Krugman's students.

[DumbDad]

It does NOT undermine Krugman's credibility on anything, and if the professor who wrote the original were in his league as a contributor to the nation's intellectual struggle this column would have said something different. Sorry, boys, you lost an important potential ally in Krugman, but not because of what he said. How you attacked him instead of his points.

[IndependentMeans]

Professor Krugman disappoint­s.......I really respect him on economics, but this stuff just divides. In any event, anyone who can rally the voters and give hope to a country who has lived without for so long now must be doing something right. THAT matters. Obama will surround himself with highly competent people when in office, that is evident from his campaign.

[patrice37]

Paul Krugman brings to mind the old joke: Why is the infighting in academia so poisonous? Because the stakes are so small. Somehow, he decided that paragraph 23 of Barack Obama's health-care-finance position paper was going to rip the earth from its axis. After that, no argument and no sense of proportion was necessary for Dr. K. Of course, nobody's health-care plan is going to make it through Congress without getting ground up and pasted back together (may the most talented politician, not Hillary Clinton, please be assigned to this one?), but Krugman has only the barest comprehension of politics. Either that, or some kid who looks suspiciously like Barack Obama once stole his lunch money.

[DeeLuzon]

i have been an enormous fan of krugman's, but i think he and others are confusing passion with irrationality. it is possible, after all, for a woman to be both "on the rag" and not crazy when yelling at her husband for not ever taking out the garbage.