Paul Krugman and the Politics of Distortion

 by George Shadroui  

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According to Paul Krugman, Republicans win elections only because of their exploitation of southern bigotry, evangelical mobilization, media influence, and exploitation of security issues.  A review of The Conscience of a Liberal.

The Conscience of a Liberal
by Paul Krugman
published by W. W. Norton (October 1, 2007)
Hdbk., 352 pgs.
ISBN-10: 0393060691
ISBN-13: 978-0393060690

Caricature is inevitable and even understandable to a degree in political journalism, but crude caricature incapable of distinctions should not be taken seriously.
 
Folks like Al Franken, Ann Coulter and Michael Moore can be outrageous, amusing and even relevant in helping to outline the limits of reasonable discourse, but they make their living creating political interference and audiences should adjust their political antennas accordingly.
 
Paul Krugman, on the other hand, is packaged as a man of serious academic and journalistic credentials. He is a columnist for the New York Times and an economist at Princeton University. He is (or was) taken seriously because of his pedigree, and so it is disappointing that he has proven yet again in The Conscience of a Liberal that he cannot escape the prison of his partisan biases.
 
Krugman, who thinks economics is the motivation behind all politics, complains that Republicans and conservatives (he makes little distinction) win elections even though the majority of their voters would benefit from a more socialized approach toward government sponsored programs and benefits. They are able to do this, he continues, for several reasons:
 
— The exploitation of racial bigotry in the South, which delivers the southern states as a bloc to the Republicans. He has not a word to say about how Democrats exploit identity politics to their advantage or why many southern blacks are more conservative than the Democratic Left when it comes to social issues.  Krugman writes as if Bull Connor still runs city hall and segregationist George Wallace still occupies the governor’s mansion in Alabama, when, in fact, the South is increasingly progressive on issues of race. It is shameful that liberals continue to demagogue the issue.
 
— Evangelical political mobilization, which Krugman concedes is less of an overarching explanation for why Republicans win but still has an impact.
 
— Growth in media and policy influence, which Krugman ties directly to big money. To listen to Krugman complain about conservative think tanks and FOX News is like hearing the sun curse the garish moon. Liberals and leftists control most of Hollywood, all the major networks (save FOX), most of the major newspapers, and the nation’s largest foundations. They also monopolize the academy at virtually all of the major universities, whose collective resources dwarf anything the conservatives can muster.
 
— And finally exploitation of security issues, as if the Cold War and the threat of terrorism were concocted by Reagan and the Bushes to ensure electoral power. Here Krugman makes the astonishing claim that Rambo movies tainted Democrats as weak on defense, totally ignoring the botched handling of Iran, the Church Commission’s role in debilitating our intelligence agencies or President Carter’s inability to manage Soviet expansionism. That former Soviet Premier Gorbachav gives Reagan more credit for being a great leader than the Democrats speaks directly to how far left the Democrats have moved.
 
Why expend all this energy to ensure that Republicans win elections? Well, of course, to repeal the New Deal and thereby ensure that the rich get richer (at the expense of the middle class). This is, in a nutshell, the thrust of Krugman’s political and economic argument; readers familiar with David Brock, Eric Alterman, Bill Moyers or Garrison Keillor have heard it all before.
 
The more interesting arguments have less to do with politics and more to do with economics and health care. Krugman argues that this nation enjoyed great economic growth in the post-World War II period, when the rich bore a disproportionate share of the taxes. Liberal policies redistributed wealth to the middle class while unions put pressure on major corporations to keep the wage spread reasonable. The result, he argues, is that our nation thrived economically and socially. The rich did not do as well as a class, but they did okay. And the rest of the nation benefited by becoming more cohesive, more secure and more humane.
 
Is Krugman right?
 
There is a lot of debate about these claims. Was the economic growth due to tax policies, or a post-World War II productivity stimulated in part by the rebuilding of Europe and Asia, new technology and massive infrastructure projects (such as the interstate highway system)? Did Unions really play a critical role in ensuring economic equality? At least some economists argue to the contrary. Are punitive taxes on the rich helpful or harmful in the long run to economic prosperity and innovation?
 
Even an economic novice like myself knows two things that Krugman doesn’t address: 1) when taxes drop, economic activity is stimulated and the total tax paid by the wealthy actually increases; 2) many of the entitlements that Krugman cherishes, including social security and Medicare and Medicaid, threaten to bankrupt the nation – so what is to be done?
 
Here Krugman is suddenly vague. If taxing the rich will bankroll all the socialized programs he supports, why doesn’t he provide the evidence to support the claim? And if the Republicans intend to repeal the New Deal, how does he explain Bush’s liberal spending, including the expansion of Medicaid?
 
None of this is meant to deny the importance of some of the issues raised by Krugman. When inequality in wealth is taken to extremes the social contract is endangered. Today, the average CEO salary is 300 to 400 times that of the average worker, whereas only a generation ago it was only 30 to 40 times greater. Disparities in wealth are increasingly obvious, though Krugman makes no effort to determine empirically if the middle class truly is in danger. The average male worker (as opposed to household) earns less today (adjusting for inflation) than he did 30 years ago, though he might be better off in ways difficult to calculate, e.g. total quality of life.
 
The fortunes made by Wall Street money managers who manipulate the nation’s wealth in questionable ways are incomprehensible even to those who are making the money (see Michael Lewis), and someone is paying for it, most likely the vast middle class. As recent financial scandals show, corporate capitalists and Wall Street elites are out of control. A little tough love and regulation might be in order.
 
Health care is another interesting case. Krugman presents a reasonably convincing case that the current health care system is not working all that well. It is expensive, inefficient and unfair. With some clever policy-making, Krugman suggests, we might address these issues in a comprehensive way. Comprehensive health care, then, through some kind of umbrella health insurance program is the mantra being pushed by the Democrats and even by many states run by Republicans.
 
Which leads to another interesting observation noted by Krugman: even before the New Deal, many states were passing laws to protect citizens. In fact, almost a dozen states had passed unemployment compensation, pension protection and various other economic measures that benefited working class Americans. Likewise, today, many states are dealing with the health care crisis by passing their own legislation. Should the federal government preempt state efforts to address these needs and might they be better equipped to deal with them?
 
Nevertheless, Krugman may be right that a shift in priorities and policies is required. Liberal England learned two centuries ago an old axiom: we must change to remain the same. At the end of the day, the economic and social fabric of any nation must be strong enough to withstand the tug and pull of material interests. Nations harshly divided between rich and poor, with no strong middle class, are by definition unstable and subject to turbulence of the most dangerous kind — all the more reason to regret Krugman’s tendentious version of history. A few questions are in order.
 
Is there any chance that Republicans truly believe centralizing power is inefficient and wasteful, as documented by the Grace Commission and other investigations over the years?
 
Is there any chance that conservatives support lower taxes as a matter of principle because high taxes erode individual liberty?
 
Is it possible that traditional values matter to conservatives because crime, broken homes, and deteriorating values endanger our children and our nation?
 
Might it not be true that most whites wish no ill to African-Americans, but sincerely believe that dependency on government programs, which are often poorly run, leads not to liberation but another form of enslavement?
 
Krugman has every right to support socialism or liberalism of whatever variety but if he cannot make the case on the merits without demonizing every Republican and conservative in the nation, then he can blame no one but himself if he fails to persuade those of us who still try to think through issues without resort to reactionary rhetoric.
 
To sum up the contributions of Ronald Reagan, Bill Buckley and National Review by quoting a couple of comments made generations ago is like rating FDR’s presidency based on comments he made while serving as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. On a given issue, “movement conservatives” may have been wrong, but in forcing a genuine debate about the relative importance of liberty versus equality, the proper role of government and the desirability of a market driven economy, they served our nation well and conducted debate with an intellectual honesty that, alas, is consistently missing in Krugman’s polemics.

The Conscience of a Liberal is available on Amazon.com.

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