Paul Krugman: Heck of a Job, Bushie

Paul Krugman takes a look back over the last year and assesses changes in the political landscape and changes in the view of presidents who break the law:

Heck of a Job, Bushie, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: A year ago, everyone expected President Bush to get his way on Social Security. ... A year ago, everyone thought Congress would make Mr. Bush's tax cuts permanent, in spite of projections showing that doing so would lead to budget deficits ... But Congress hasn't acted... A year ago, Mr. Bush made many Americans feel safe, because they believed that he would be decisive and effective in an emergency. But Mr. Bush was apparently oblivious to the first major domestic emergency since 9/11. ... [A]ides ... finally decided, days after Hurricane Katrina struck, that they had to show him a DVD of TV newscasts to get him to appreciate the seriousness of the situation.

A year ago, before "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" became a national punch line, the rising tide of cronyism ... unqualified political appointees attracted hardly any national attention. A year ago, hardly anyone ... had heard of Jack Abramoff, and Tom DeLay's position as House majority leader seemed unassailable.

A year ago, Dick Cheney, who repeatedly cited discredited evidence linking Saddam to 9/11 ... was widely admired ... A year ago, Howard Dean - who was among the very few ... to question Colin Powell's prewar presentation to the United Nations, and who warned... that the occupation of Iraq would be much more difficult than the initial invasion - was considered flaky and unsound.

A year ago, it was clear that before the Iraq war, the administration suppressed information suggesting that Iraq was not, in fact, trying to build nuclear weapons. Yet few people in Washington or in the news media were willing to say that the nation was deliberately misled into war until polls showed that most Americans already believed it.

A year ago, the Washington establishment treated Ayad Allawi as if he were Nelson Mandela. ... But Mr. Allawi turned out to be another Ahmad Chalabi, a hero of Washington ... who had few supporters where it mattered, in Iraq. A year ago, when everyone respectable agreed that we must "stay the course," ... It would have been hard to imagine the top U.S. commander in Iraq saying, as Gen. George Casey recently did, that a smaller foreign force is better "because it doesn't feed the notion of occupation."

A year ago, Mr. Bush hadn't yet openly reneged on Scott McClellan's 2003 pledge that "if anyone in this administration was involved" in the leaking of Valerie Plame's identity, that person "would no longer be in this administration." ... A year ago, we didn't know that Mr. Bush was lying, or at least being deceptive, when he said at an April 2004 event promoting the Patriot Act that "a wiretap requires a court order. ...When we're ... chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. ... constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution."

A year ago, most Americans thought Mr. Bush was honest.

A year ago, we didn't know for sure that almost all the politicians and pundits who thundered, during the Lewinsky affair, that even the president isn't above the law have changed their minds. But now we know when it comes to presidents who break the law, it's O.K. if you're a Republican.

Update: Full column.

Previous (12/26) column: Paul Krugman: Health Care Costs.
Next (1/2) column: Paul Krugman:  No Bubble Trouble?

Comments

[save_the_rustbelt]

Gee, I hope this blog doesn't become a Krugman rerun center.

[BBeatty]

Thanks for doing the masses the favour of posting NY Times columns otherwise hard to access!
Keep 'em coming!

[Mark Thoma]

I've posted, pretty much, any public statements by prominent economists as I've found them - e.g., Feldstein (12/18), Prescott(12/20), Mankiw (12/6, whimsically after that on 12/18), Varian (11/17), Krugman (12/29), Greenspan (12/16, one of many this month alone) Bernanke (12/20 by Blinder about Bernanke) - some, such as Krugman, appear more often as they write more often, all on the list appear more than once, and there are many others as well. Most anything I come across written by a well known economist, I post.

[Movie Guy]

I'm not sure if Krugman' message was clear in that column...

[Pete]

Hypocrisy.

[anne]

Paul Krugman's column is an excellent reminder of this Administration, but as any such truth filled reminder makes conservatives especially uncomfortable :) The abstract is especially useful for and will always be appreciated by those who are not able to subscribe to the New York Times. Here is a public thinker to be proud of, in a distinctly important American tradition.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/30/opinion/30fri1.html?ex=1293598800&en=2da9cff025450a73&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

December 30, 2005

The New Year in Taxes

A surprise awaits the nation's highest earners when they file their 2006 tax returns. Their taxes are going down again - whether or not Congress passes the investor tax cuts the lawmakers have been promising. On New Year's Day, two additional tax cuts will kick in, allowing people who earn upward of $200,000 a year to claim bigger write-offs for a spouse, their children and other expenses, like mortgage interest on a vacation home.

The bolstered write-offs were enacted in 2001, but with a delayed start date because of their high cost: according to Congressional estimates, the new breaks will cost $27 billion over the short term, exploding to $146 billion from 2010 through 2019. By then, most of the benefits would flow to taxpayers who make more than $1 million a year.

With the nation deep in debt, at war in Afghanistan and Iraq, with Congress voting last month to slash programs for health care and student loans, and with a debilitating shortfall building in Medicare - the decision by Congress to let these particular tax breaks take effect now is flabbergasting. But it is not out of character.

The Bush family has a long history with this particular part of the tax code. In 1990, the first President Bush - in a move that now seems quaint in its sense of responsibility - had to raise revenue to rein in the budget deficit. He was loath to hike the top tax rate, then 31 percent. So he opted instead for a provision that limited the amount well-heeled Americans could deduct from their taxes for a spouse and dependents, and for certain expenses, like vacation home mortgages. Tax cutters in Congress, known then as supply-siders, were furious....

[PEmberton]

Mark, thanks for putting up Krugman's columns, and others.
If Rustbelt doesn't like the columns, there is always the option to scroll past.

[anne]

Imagine going through a sequence of 13 short term interest rate increases by the Federal Reserve and long term rates remaining about where they were to begin with, or the long term Treasury at 4.34%. Vanguard's long term bond index is likely to match the S&P stock index, and the last 6 years have marked one of the great bull markets in bond market history as well as marking the greatest added return over the S&P index since the Depression.

[anne]

Mark and Pemberton, thanks :)

There is a sad sad investing trick here however. Smart friends with significant bond portfolios built by advisers have been subject to call after call, and made nothing like the gains they would have made with Vanguard where capital gains are protected in bond funds. Also, aother mutual fund company managed bond portfolios tend to be absurdly expensive. The Vanguard 6 year long term bind index return will have averaged about 9%, with the S&P about 0, a superb show of what diversity can and should mean for investors.

[save_the_rustbelt]

So reprint Krugman when he talks about serious economics, not when he is writing on behalf of the Democratic National Committee (and I'm no Bush fan).

[Mark Thoma]

STR - I spent more time than you might guess thinking about this. I think there are arguments on both sides.

Politics can affect policy recommendations, not the ones made in an abstract perfect textbook world, but rather the ones made in the real world with all its politics. There are issues I believe need attention, but I do not trust this administration to put policies into place to address the problems. For example, suppose (and this is just an example, not necessarily how I feel) I thought the Endangered Species Act needed its economic analysis sections overhauled. If I do not trust this administration to open this door because they might go far beyond what I think the optimal policy is, I may not be willing to ask for reform of any sort. Better to wait until an administration is in power that has views that accord more closely with my own. Or, I may propose policies that are guided by the political realities. I hope that in doing so I would state both the preferred policy absent politics, and the policy conditional on political realities.

In such cases, knowledge of my political views will help to make clear why one economic policy is proposed over another. Because political views can affect policy prescriptions in this and other ways, I decided that it was best to err on the side of more information rather than less in posting Krugman, et. al. If Mankiw for example or someone else on the right publishes their political views, I will also carry those for the same reason. I think it’s helpful to have the full perspective when evaluating policy prescriptions. For example, my view of policies that Feldstein and Prescott are advocating has changed as I’ve learned their politics and ideology - that’s a view I did not get from only reading papers in professional journals.

Suppose that, in the next column, Krugman comes out and says he favors a particular administration proposal (I know, but suppose anyway…). Having read this column and knowing his view of the administration, think tanks, etc., how would that affect your view of his endorsement of the policy? I would think it conveys information, tells you that in spite of all the negative things he has said, he still supports this idea so he must think it’s a pretty good proposal.

I’m still thinking about this though…there are other arguments as well.

[anne]

My, my, we have a bully, an offended bully, as dear William Bennett who would begin public television discussions thanking the hosts for having a token conservative on :) My, my.

[anne]

http://select.nytimes.com/2005/11/30/opinion/30dowd.html

November 30, 2005

The Autumn of the Patriarchy
By MAUREEN DOWD

In the vice president's new, more fortified bunker, inside his old undisclosed secure location within the larger bunker that used to be called the West Wing of the White House, Dick Cheney was muttering and sputtering.

He wasn't talking to the pictures on the wall, as Nixon did when he finally cracked. Vice doesn't trust those portraits anyway. The walls have ears. He was talking to the only reliable man in a city of dimwits, cowards, traitors and fools: himself.

He hurled a sheaf of news reports with such force it knocked over the picture of Ahmad Chalabi that he keeps next to the picture of Churchill. Winston Chalabi, he likes to call him.

Vice is fed up with all the whining and carping - and that's just inside the White House. The only negativity in Washington is supposed to be his own. He's the only one allowed to scowl and grumble and conspire.

The impertinent Tom DeFrank reported in New York's Daily News that embattled White House aides felt "President Bush must take the reins personally" to save his presidency.

Let him try, Cheney said with a sneer. Things are nowhere near dire enough for that. Even if Junior somehow managed to grab the reins to his presidency, Vice holds Junior's reins. So he just needs to get all these sniveling, poll-driven wimps and losers back on board with the master plan.

Things had been going so smoothly. The global torture franchise was up and running. Halliburton contracts were flowing. Tax cuts were sailing through. Oil companies were raking it in. Alaska drilling was thrillingly close. The courts were defending his executive privilege on energy policy, and people were still buying all that smoke about Saddam's being responsible for 9/11, and that drivel about how we're fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here. Everything was groovy.

But not anymore. Cheney could not believe that Karl had made him go out and call that loudmouth Jack Murtha a patriot. He was sure the Pentagon generals had put the congressman up to calling for a withdrawal from Iraq. Is the military brass getting in touch with its pacifist side? In Wyoming, Vice shoots doves.

How dare Murtha suggest that Cheney dodged and dodged and dodged and dodged and dodged the draft? Murtha thinks he knows about war just because he served in one and was a marine for 37 years? Vice started his own war. Now that's a credential!

It always goes this way with the cut-and-run crowd. First they start nitpicking the war, complaining about little things like the lack of armor for the troops. Then they complain that there aren't enough troops. Well, that would just require more armor that we don't have....

[Bruce Webb]

Rustbelt from another thread: "Let them play, but only if they smuggle a lot of cigars.

We Republicans are willing to violate the law occasionally for a good cause.

Posted by: save_the_rustbelt | Dec 30, 2005 11:41:50 AM"

This one: "(and I'm no Bush fan)."

Was the former comment irony or disclosure? Otherwise STR's animus against Krugman remains inexplicable . What exactly is Paul getting wrong? "Of course the Emperors new clothes are magnificent!! What do economists know about tailoring anyway??"

Maybe I am feeling a little sour this morning, but I have been putting up with varieties of "Former Democrat" for years, and somehow I have come to doubt their sincerity even as they 'regretfully' ask us how to combat the Republican talking point which they unfailingly lay out in detail.

STR has opinions, PK has opinions, I have opinions on economics and politics and all kinds of things. But only in STR world does Princeton Professor Paul Krugman have to defend his bona fides, while STR and I get a free pass to pass wind and call it 'gravitas'.

[anne]

The Republican pattern is, we will do what we wish and criticize the press before and after we act to intimidate and discredit reporting. Maureen Dowd, for instance, had her White House press pass denied in the early months of 2001. Bill Moyers was continually attacked while reporting for PBS, attacked especially by a Republican PBS President who was forced to resign after being accused by PBS investigators of violating federal law in attempts to subvert the programming.

[ilsm]

I am a fan of Krugman and any economist who will pointout the sharp issues with those in power.

Here is something to think about.

Gonzales and the Justice Department is "going after" the guy(s) who "leaked" the recent administration crimes including wiretapping.

Seems this administration thinks their crimes if opened to the public would cause serious damage to the national security.

As if Bush and the security of the nation are the same.

We cannot allow Bush to use a phoney definition "national security" to destroy the US constitution.

I think Bush takes liberties with his importance and is using Hitler's play book.

Get out and demand impeachment hearings.............

[casandraMMV]

The evidence continues to mount that our government is in the grip of a cabal of evildoers who have no regard for our institutions, traditions or laws.

It is of little consequence to clench our fists and demand Constitutional remedies when those demands fall on deaf ears.

It is obvious that the safeguards envisioned by the framers are useless when there is no will to apply Constitutional curbs where the political party of the executive dominate the Congress.

The end to our Constitutional Crisis has only one solution.

In 2006 we absolutely must remove the Bush/DeLay majority from the US House of Representantives.

That must be the foremeost action item on the agenda of any who would undertake to salvage our country....

We simply have to contribute whatever time and money are necessary, or forever hold our peace....