Planet Utah

The Krugman conundrum...solved

I finally realized today why Paul Krugman holds Republicans and conservatives in such contempt: He believes in a caricature of them. Check out these two excerpts from his latest NYT column:

(The right) believes that people have a right to keep what they earn, and that taxing them to support others, no matter how needy, amounts to theft. That’s what lies behind the modern right’s fondness for violent rhetoric: many activists on the right really do see taxes and regulation as tyrannical impositions on their liberty.

***

(The right) saw (health care) reform as a moral outrage, an assault on the right of Americans to spend their money as they choose.

I grew up in the one of the most conservative states in the country. I started voting Republican in 1984, when I turned 18. Since 1990, I have been a student of politics (for six years literally, as a graduate student, and for 15 years professionally, as a writer and researcher). Since 1996, I have worked for a conservative think tank supported by the largest conservative foundation in the country. I'm pro-life, and I've backed up that belief by marching, by donating money, and by volunteering my time. I'm a lifetime member of the NRA. I've been a subscriber to National Review for nearly half my life.

In other words, I am fully steeped in conservatism and conservative rhetoric, have actively participated in conservative public discourse, and have spent much of my personal and professional life in the company of conservatives.

In my experience, the type of belief/rhetoric that Krugman describes is extraordinarily rare. I cannot recall a conservative ever talking about taxation as theft. The conservative movement as I know it has no more fondness for violent rhetoric than does the progressive movement. Conservatives don't see taxes and regulations, per se, as a problem, but see extremes of taxation and regulation as a problem. The vast majority of conservatives I know didn't see health care reform as a "moral outrage," either, but as an unworkable, unaffordable attempt by government to suspend basic principles of economics in the healthcare marketplace. 

In short, the conservatives Krugman is describing are unlike any that I know, and are unlike the overwhelming majority I've ever read, or met, or heard give a speech.

Krugman is working from a caricature, plain and simple, most likely one nurtured during years of living in a liberal cocoon...a cocoon that protects him from genuine engagement with real conservatives and real conservatism...a cocoon in which bigoted, anti-conservative ideas and opinions are not only tolerated, but are affirmed, celebrated, and rewarded.

Footnote: If you've got some time on your hands, you can undoubtedly chase down a quote or two in which a conservative describes taxation as theft. Every movement, though, has its extremists. What I'm describing in this post is the norm...the mainstream...the center of gravity...the overwhelming majority.

Krugman writes as if the extremists ARE the mainstream.

Brass balls, but no honor

In one of his blog posts today, Paul Krugman quotes, approvingly, the following passage from President Obama's speech yesterday:

Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.

President Obama might as well have been speaking directly to Krugman...and yet Krugman quotes the president with an implicit, "Amen!"

Good line from Krugman

He's directing this to commenters on his blog posts: "Get your insults right. There is, I believe, a fair bit of evidence against the hypothesis that I’m stupid. What you mean to say is that I’m evil."

A word about Paul Krugman as political/economic analyst

I don't read a lot of liberal political/economic commentary. Most of it--like most conservative commentary--is bad, and the stuff that's good induces cognitive dissonance. Who needs that?

One guy I do read regularly, though, is Paul Krugman. Why, I'm not sure. I guess I keep hoping he'll live up to his potential. And yet, he almost always disappoints.

I say this for two reasons.

First, Krugman continually writes the same column: President Obama is timid, and Republicans are black-hearted liars. If you've read one of these columns, you've read dozens of them.

Second, Krugman is frequently intellectually dishonest. When I read his columns, I often find myself saying, Sam Alito-like, "Not true."

Mind you, I'm not saying, "I disagree"--I'm saying that Krugman is making an assertion that isn't true, or that is true but misleading, or that is true only in certain contexts, or that is true but much more complicated than he lets on. Granted, "on the one hand, on the other hand" doesn't make for a great column...but neither does righteous thundering based on a tendentious reading of the facts.

But, you ask, don't we have to take Krugman seriously? After all, he was a decorated economist even BEFORE he won the Nobel Prize. Then he got the Nobel Prize. So, you know, isn't he like the neighbor that comes into your home, strips down naked, and starts peeing on the carpet? I mean, don't you have to deal with him? 

No.

Let me tell you why.

Those of you who had the good sense not to get a doctorate in the social sciences may not realize that, in truth, such a degree confers very limited expertise. As an example, my doctorate is in political science, with a major in American politics and public policy. In theory, then, I should be able to offer expert, scholarly opinions on Congress, the presidency, the bureaucracy, the Fed, interest groups, voting and elections, public opinion, media and politics, American political theory, federalism, the budget, specific areas of public policy...in short, all of the things you'd find in an American Politics 101 textbook. 

Know what? I can't. That's because like virtually everyone else who gets a doctorate in the social sciences, I picked a couple of narrow areas of study, focused intensely on those, and pursued them for many years professionally. Sure, I had to read and write deeply and widely in order to pass my qualifying exams, but since then, everything outside of my little niche has fallen by the wayside. 

Now, I can probably still give you three to five major bullet points on Congress, the presidency, political participation, etc., that represented the most important research findings in these areas at the time I completed my doctorate...in 1996. But if you want an informed scholarly opinion on, say, the federal budget-making process, and you want it to be based on the most current research, you better look elsewhere.

And now, let's circle back to Krugman. Krugman is an economist who spends most of his time writing about politics and policy-making. He has no claim to expertise in the latter fields. Furthermore, when Krugman writes about economics--a field in which he can claim expertise, albeit with the caveat that I just raised, namely, that the expertise conferred by a doctorate ends up being very narrow--he rarely writes about the research area that earned him his Nobel Prize (international trade).

Long story short, if you miss a Krugman column, you're not missing anything you can't read in a thousand blogs written by guys and gals who don't have "Ph.D." after their name, who haven't won a Nobel Prize, and who don't write for the most prestigious paper in America.

The hackiest phrase in the world?

Not too long ago, Greg over at Espresso Pundit pointed out how lame it is for anyone to use the "shocked...shocked" line from "Casablanca." I agree. That stopped being clever in mid-February, 1943. (I won't bore you with the exact date, time, and location.)

I think I can do him one better, though: the various riffs on "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." For example, here's a story with the ingenious headline, "Mr. Stewart comes to D.C."

You get that? It's like that movie "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," only they made it "Mr. Stewart," because it's about Jon Stewart instead of Mr. Smith, and they made it "comes" instead of "goes," because the headline-writer actually lives in D.C., and Jon Stewart was coming to D.C., and, well, anyway, you get it, right? Super-clever and funny and original, don't you think?

Uh, sure, aside from the fact that it's already been done 48.6 billion times. Plus infinity.

Why, though, do I say that it's worse than "shocked...shocked"? Well, for one thing, it's been around longer. "Mr. Smith" came out in 1939, a few years before Casablanca. So I'm sure that the first usage was right after the 1940 elections.

Beyond that, though, you're really only permitted one syllable after "Mr." and before "goes." Why? Because "Smith" has only one syllable in it. If you try to send a polysyllabic guy to Washington, you totally screw up the rhythm.

For example, I'm sure somebody must have written the following at some point: "Mr. Eisenhower goes to Washington." But come on! "Eisenhower" has four syllables. You can't do that. It's nails on a chalkboard on top of being hacky, which makes it TWICE as hacky, because it indicates extreme laziness on the part of the writer.

The obvious solution here is for me to issue a binding edict prohibiting further use of the "Mr. So and So..." construction. And so it is done.

Footnote: Speaking of Eisenhower, in 1957 my grandfather cold-cocked a guy in a Detroit nightclub for saying "Eisenhowernomics." I asked him about this many years later, and I'll never forget his response: "Everybody knew you didn't say such an ugly word out loud, particularly in mixed company. You said 'Ike-uh-nomics,' or you kept your mouth shut."

Public opinion polling and the Magic 8-ball effect

I used to work with a woman named Barbara who was a human Magic 8-ball. If you had a question, she had an answer. She was wrong most of the time, but saying "I don't know" was apparently a much worse offense in her world than giving a wrong answer.

(By the way, you can observe this same phenomenon if you ever travel in Mexico. Ask a Mexican for directions, and you will ALWAYS get directions. Very often WRONG directions. In Mexico, it's considered impolite to say "I have no idea; ever heard of Google?" So, your average Mexican will invent some plausible-sounding directions, send you on your way with a smile, and hope he hasn't delivered you into the hands of a major ring of gringo kidnappers.  I asked an ex-girlfriend about this phenomenon once; her parents were Mexican, and she was a first-generation American who grew up just this side of the border. Specifically, I asked her, "Why do Mexicans give wrong directions instead of just saying, 'I don't know'?" She said with a smile, "We're just trying to be helpful." I replied: "How is that helpful?")

What brought all of this to mind was a news report I heard this morning regarding a public opinion poll conducted on the war in Afghanistan. I'm betting that about half of Americans can't spell Afghanistan, and about three-quarters couldn't find it on a map...of Afghanistan. And yet, pollsters have no problem calling up some poor jerk and saying, "Do you think the new counterinsurgency strategy against the Taliban will prove effective, or should the U.S. devote its resources instead to building infrastructure in Afghanistan?"

Like my co-worker Barbara, most people will give you an answer to a question like this. But you'd have just as much luck asking the 8-ball.

Footnote: Recognizing the Magic 8-ball effect, I think it's irresponsible of media outlets to ask many of the questions they do, and to publish the results as if they mean something. I'd rather see polling that begins with the assumption that Americans don't know much about politics and typically don't think about it with much sophistication. We'd learn a lot more that way than by asking a truck driver how he'd feel if Senate Democrats were to use the reconciliation process to pass health care reform.

Ann Coulter seems shockingly reasonable

See for yourself. She and James Carville do a side-by-side interview, and while Carville is Carvile--though he seems a bit more detached from reality than normal--Coulter refuses to be Coulter. I even found her--dare I say it?--likable.

If I were seeing her for the first time, "I'd say, 'Wow, who was that girl? She should do TV more often.'" But because I know who she is, I'll just chalk it up to Ann having an off day.

Everybody just chill

There's a lot of discussion these days about why the Obama stimulus plan isn't working and what that means for Democrats' political prospects.

Please. Things will probably change a hundred times before 2010, let alone 2012.

Think back to 1982. The economy was in a severe recession, everybody said Reaganomics had failed, the Reagan revolution was over, etc. Then in 1984 the economy was roaring, it was morning again in America, and Ronald Reagan won every state except Minnesota.

I know that the 24-hour news cycle demands ever-changing story lines...but that doesn't mean you and I have to take them all seriously.

Who needs cable (he asked rhetorically, but defiantly)?

When I moved to Austin, I discovered that cable TV cost about 50 percent more than it did in Phoenix. I'm not a big watcher of original TV programming, so I decided to go without cable. Let me tell you what I've done instead.

First, I bought a DVR called DTVPal. It's a bit like TiVo, only: a) it doesn't require a subscription; and b) it's not quite as smart. But it can do the basics.

Second, I hooked up a cheap, Web-connected computer to my TV.

Third, I bought the cheapest available subscription to Netflix, which costs nine bucks per month.

With the DVR, I can record regular network TV fare and syndicated reruns, and then play them back at my convenience, skipping through the commercials. This allowed me to watch, and enjoy, an entire season of "24" for the first time in my life.

With the computer hooked to my TV, combined with the Netflix subscription, I can stream movies directly from the Netflix Web site to my TV. You can't stream the very best stuff from Netflix, but there's plenty of good stuff...including lots of television series.

One thing that has NOT worked particularly well is using sites like Hulu to run TV or movie content from the Web to my TV. The video quality just isn't that great. I'm sure it will be, though, in the not-too-distant future.

So, that's my inspirational story. If you want to be like me and cut the coaxial cord connecting you to Time Warner, Cox, or whomever your provider might be, a little bit of hardware and a cheap Netflix subscription might provide as much entertainment as you need.

Did you know Anderson Cooper was gay?

I didn't, until the "tea parties" and Cooper's reference to "teabagging," which I heard described as "a kind of oral sex," but which I think of more as a fraternity prank. Anyway, I'm surprised that Cooper is gay, and I'm surprised that I went this long without knowing that he was gay.

Footnote: In case the link wasn't clear, when Cooper mentioned teabagging, radio commentators started talking about the fact that he was gay, and that that's how he knew what teabagging was.