New Columnist 'War': Marcus of 'Wash Post' vs. Krugman -- As Tom DeLay Also Takes a Shot

By: Greg Mitchell As we have documented in recent days, there has been quite a squabble lately at The New York Times' op-ed page over the unlikely subject of Ronald Reagan's infamous "states rights" statement back in 1980. It has pitted David Brooks and Lou Cannon on one side vs. Paul Krugman and Bob Herbert, though none of them mentioned an antagonist by name. Now a Washington Post columnist is attacking Krugman - and naming him.

And Krugman, on his Times' blog, has quickly responded. He also quotes Tom DeLay, at a Washington party, referring to Krugman this week: "I'd like to bitch-slap him."

Today at the Post, Ruth Marcus hits Democrats, including Krugman, for taking a "dishonest" and dangerous "don't worry, be happy" turn on Social Security.

"The argument," she writes, "has two equally dishonest components. The first is to deny that Social Security faces a daunting financing problem -- one that will be much easier to fix (and less onerous for the low-income retirees that the head-in-the-sanders purport to care about) sooner rather than later. The second is to mischaracterize the arguments of those who advocate responsible action, accusing them of hyping the system's woes.

"One prominent practitioner of this misguided approach is New York Times columnist Paul Krugman." She then cites one of his columns from last week: "Inside the Beltway, doomsaying about Social Security -- declaring that the program as we know it can't survive the onslaught of retiring baby boomers -- is regarded as a sort of badge of seriousness, a way of showing how statesmanlike and tough-minded you are. In fact, the whole Beltway obsession with the fiscal burden of an aging population is misguided."

Marcus then quotes Krugman statements from a few years back, to put his new views in bold contrast. One from 2001: "[A] decade from now the population served by those programs [Social Security and Medicare] will explode. . . . Because of those facts, merely balancing the federal budget would be a deeply irresponsible policy -- because that would leave us unprepared for the demographic deluge, with no alternative once it arrives except to raise taxes and slash benefits."

Krugman on his blog replies. Here is an excerpt.
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Wow. Early in my tenure at the NYT, I was advised that it?s a bad idea to devote a column to attacking another columnist ? not just at the Times, but anywhere. Why? Because it makes you look small ? as if you have nothing better to do than snipe at other commentators, rather than trying to deal with real problems.

But I?ve obviously touched a nerve with my recent writing on Social Security. The Beltway crowd loves their Social Security crisis, and they won?t give it up without a fight.
I won?t waste scarce column inches on this, but I guess this needs a reply somewhere.

Part of Ruth Marcus?s attack involves selective quotation from my writings circa 2001. Mark Thoma has already done the spadework here. What I was arguing then was not that Social Security itself was in crisis, but that the rest of the government budget should be run responsibly ? basically, that the lockbox should be honored....

As for what I wrote in 1996: the world looked very different then. On one side, Social Security projections were much more pessimistic than they are now, basically because the projections assumed that the 1973-1995 era of very slow productivity growth would go on forever. On the other side, the 90s were the era of the great pause in health expenditures, the (it turned out) brief era in which the rise of managed care stabilized health spending as a share of GDP. So Medicare and Medicaid looked less important as sources of fiscal problems than they do now.

John Maynard Keynes is supposed to have said, ?When circumstances change, I change my opinion. What do you do??

UPDATE

Krugman later posted again, adding this:

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Faced with a major public issue, such as the future of Social Security, one might think that the crucial thing would be to ascertain the facts. If I say ?there is no crisis,? and you think there is, well, produce the evidence that shows that my arithmetic is wrong ? not something I once said that you think proves that I?ve changed my mind. Making this a game of gotcha is just childish.

But here?s the thing: this childishness infects a lot of political discourse. Think about what passes for a ?tough? question on the Sunday talk shows. It?s not ?Senator Bomfog ? you say X, but the statistics show that it?s actually Y. How can you explain this discrepancy?? In fact, I?ve never seen that happen. In political reporting, being wrong means, at most, that your claims are ?in dispute.?
No, what actually passes for ?tough? questioning is ?Senator Bomfog, you say X but last year you said Y. Aren?t you flip-flopping??

Like I said, it?s childish ? and destructive.