Paul Krugman and the Unbearable Lameness of Partisanship
In a recent appearance on bloggingheads.tv with Mark Schmitt, I expressed disdain for the current spate of conservative-bashing books by Jonathan Chait, Greg Anrig, and Paul Krugman. Now don’t get me wrong: conservativism deserves some fairly spirited bashing these days. But what I objected to about these books was their crude partisanship — specifically, their grossly distorted, black-hats-versus-white-hats version of recent American political history.
I didn’t get a chance there to flesh out my criticisms in any detail, so I’d like to do a little bit of that here. And thanks again to bloggingheads.tv (if you’re not familiar with it, it’s really a terrific site), I’ve got an excellent jumping-off point: an interview of Paul Krugman by none other than Mario Cuomo. Cuomo, it turns out, is an excellent interviewer, carefully drawing out Krugman’s views and gently challenging him at a number of points. And the picture of Krugman that emerges is one of a man completely besotted with ideological enthusiasm.
You have to remember who Paul Krugman is, or at least who he was: an immensely talented economist, winner of the John Bates Clark medal, capable of analytical ingenuity at the most rarefied level and simultaneously a gifted popularizer of complex economic ideas. So how can someone with so much brainpower, with such talent for subtlety and insight, say something like this? Or this?
Let’s focus on these two snippets. In the first, Krugman says that the middle-class society he grew up in (i.e., the American political economy of the quarter-century after World War II) did not evolve by the invisible hand of the market; it was created by FDR and the New Deal. Meanwhile, the “second Gilded Age” we now live in (i.e., the American political economy of the past quarter-century) was created by Reagan and other right-wing politicians.
And in the second clip, Krugman defines liberalism as the idea that we are our brothers’ keepers, and that government needs to ensure a basic minimum for all citizens. Conservatives, on the other hand, believe “you’re on your own.”
In these clips we see, not subtlety or insight or analytical ingenuity, but the Manichean worldview of the true believer: one mass political movement, defined by its noble intentions, accomplishes unalloyed good, while a rival mass political movement, motivated by base and selfish values, works to undo that good.
For an alternative to Krugman’s stick-figure morality play, you can read my book on the coming of mass prosperity and its cultural and political consequences. For present purposes, though, note just a few things that Krugman’s FDR worship/Reagan demonization skips over:
- the extent to which widespread prosperity was the result of impersonal market competition rather than benevolent politicians
- the extent to which the “great compression” of the early postwar decades was created by the cataclysms of depression and total war
- the extent to which the New Deal included policies that most economists today of whatever ideological persuasion would regard as utterly wrongheaded (e.g., the farm subsidies regime of the Agricultural Adjustment Act, and the industrial cartelization attempted by the National Industrial Recovery Act)
- the heavy reliance of the New Deal political coalition on support from southern segregationists, and the consequences of that reliance for the shape of many New Deal policies
- the fact that the postwar system of political economy led after a couple of decades to stagflation and a breakdown in productivity growth
- the fact that one after another unionized American industry proved incapable of keeping pace with foreign competition during the ’70s and ’80s, and thus that business as usual was unsustainable
- the fact that Great Society social programs were followed, not entirely coincidentally, by an explosion of crime, urban riots, family breakdown, and welfare dependency
- the fact that Cold War liberal internationalism produced the Vietnam debacle
- the fact that the New Left and the ’60s counterculture exerted powerful influences on reshaping the character of American liberalism, with important consequences for the appeal of that liberalism to traditionally Democratic working-class constituencies
- the fact that the sweeping economic deregulation of the ’70s and ’80s enjoyed bipartisan support (much of it occurred during the Carter administration)
- the extent to which the increase in measured income inequality reflects demographic rather than economic or public policy changes (e.g., more single-parent households, more dual-earner households, more immigration, older population, better-educated population)
- the fact that, according to virtually every conceivable physical indicator, material living standards for Americans across the board have risen dramatically over the past quarter-century (i.e., the so-called “second Gilded Age”)
How can someone as intelligent and informed as Krugman concoct an interpretation of the post-World War II era that does such violence to the facts? How can someone so familiar with the intricate complexities of social processes convince himself that history is a simple matter of good guys versus bad guys? Because, for whatever reason, he has swapped disinterested analysis and scholarship for ideological partisanship. Here, in a revealing choice of phrase, he paraphrases Barry Goldwater’s notorious line: “Partisanship in the defense of liberty is no vice.”
To be a partisan is, by definition, to see the world partially rather than objectively: to identify wholeheartedly with the perspectives of one particular group and, at the extreme, to discount all rival perspectives as symptoms of intellectual or moral corruption. And the perspective Krugman has chosen to identify with is the philosophically incoherent, historically contingent grab bag of intellectual, interest group, and regional perspectives known as postwar American liberalism.
Of course, over the period that Krugman is addressing, the contents of that grab bag have changed fairly dramatically: from internationalist hawkishness in World War II and the early Cold War to a profound discomfort with American power in the ’70s and ’80s to a jumble of rival views today; from cynical acquiescence in Jim Crow to heroic embrace of the civil rights movement to the excesses of identity group politics to a more centrist line today; from sympathy for working-class economic hardship to hostility to working-class culture and back again. Yet with a naive zeal that leaves even Cuomo visibly nonplussed at several points in the interview, Krugman embraces the shifting contents of this grab bag as the one true path of virtue.
I understand the us-versus-them pleasures of ideological partisanship. In my younger days, I indulged in them with gusto. But at some point, ideology joined Santa Claus and the tooth fairy in my attic of discarded beliefs. Firm values, yes; definite points of view on contested empirical questions, to be sure — but to see a country as diverse, yet blessedly prosperous and stable, as this one as an ongoing war between angels and devils is to live in a fantasy world.
November 1st, 2007 at 8:12 am
Brink, Your comments here and on bloggingheads don’t address the substance of my book, The Conservatives Have No Clothes: Why Right-Wing Ideas Keep Failing. Please feel free at some point to respond more directly or, if you like, we could debate in the venue of your choice. I have already engaged with conservative and libertarian critics here:
http://bookclub.tpmcafe.com/book_title/the_conservatives_have_no_clothes
and here:
http://bookclub.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/oct/19/the_rights_ideological_purity_dodge
Those discussions have been meaty and interesting, and I’m sure we could have a similarly useful exchange.
Best, Greg Anrig
November 6th, 2007 at 9:17 pm
Hi Brink,
The theme that seems to pervade their arguments is that the political right sneakily forced their economic policies on an unsuspecting public, these policies have done great harm, they must be undone and the old top-down regime restored.
Also check out the reply Art Laffer writes against Jonathan Chait’s book at http://www.kudlowsmoneypolitics.blogspot.com/.
The authors have not figured out that the policy changes were a pragmatic response to the problems that became evident in the 1970’s, as you note.
November 20th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
Well done, Brink!
My theory is that Krugman, who’s much smarter than his partisan persona, spotted an irresistible career opportunity and seized it with gusto. How do think his net worth now (not to mention fame and acclaim from one political sector) compares with his net worth as a mere economist? He’s just another rational economic actor, if an extraordinarily cynical one.
November 23rd, 2008 at 3:25 am
Brink Lindsey:
Several of the changes that occurred during the 1980s under the Republican were practical responses to genuine problems. Not only, I think for awhile the Democratic Party got too ideological and lost touch with the majority of the people. That said, and of course it favors the Republicans as far as it goes, there is a great deal that remains unsaid. (Let’s skip over Iran Contra, the killings in Central America, etc. Let’s skip over the several million dead Vietnamese–for those Republicans who felt we didn’t stay long enough there. Let’s skip over the “never seen I war I didn’t like” crowd.)
Take the Willy Hortan ad run by the first Bush as a symbol. You yourself have criticized the “segregationist sleeper cells” that filled the Republican ranks, after their desertion from the integrationist Democrats. This unfortunate group (we need to forgive them, understand them, help them–but not repeat their views) drags America down all the time, and the Republican Party empowers them. This unfortunate group is notoriously deaf and blind when it comes to seeing the world from the point of view of another culture (say France, or even Palestine). Take Bush II’s reasons for invading Iraq: 1) to take the war to the enemy so that the enemy doesn’t sick the dogs of war on us, 2) to install a democratic regime for the Iraqis, who are our friends–in a cardboard cut-out type of way (could be our enemies again? depends maybe on the rhetorical needs of the moment?). This is morally incoherent, but who knows and who cares when the “segregationist sleeper cells” are in the Republican Party driver’s seat. This is reason enough to oppose the Republican Party, period. As a partisan for the forces of transparent equality of opportunity. A very vigorous, savy, cunning, strong, and committed partisanship. I’d follow Jimmy Carter, the redeemed southerner. (Besides, I know there are good people with blind spots; I’d want to be included if I had a blind spot, which I infer I must.)
As to the economy, did you notice that during Eisenhower’s administration the income distribution was a lot more equal? We lost that due to the Republicans. The CEOs of corporate businesses make several hundred or more times the salary of the guy on the factory floor, unionized or not. (When the old U.S.S.R. was our competitor ideologically, this would make bad propaganda. But after its collapse, who cares?) This is due to malfunction of corporate governance.
When F.D.R. set up the practical fixes that marked the New Deal, the idea was for a free market that was regulated to avoid the situations of market failure and market inefficiencies that had resulted in the Great Depression. Latter known as Keynes’ liquidity trap. The market left to itself is an amoral mechanism that can function imperfectly in a warlord society or one menaced by criminal organizations, or one merely run by unscrupulous business people. Prof. Phil Gramm evidently didn’t read this part. The market when its well regulated by enforcing a sense of public policy per John Rawls, etc., works just about as good as it gets. The Republicans however somehow seem to think that the “natural” unregulated market will function for the happiness of its consumers and producers, just “naturally”. Adam Smith long ago warned us about leaving economic matters to the schemes of private businesses (or their lobbyists). You need government regulation that works. You need government that works. Even F.E.M.A.–agencies that work! Not sabotaged by anti-state, Republican appointed know-nothings.
I think it is established that when the citizenry has a minimum of security about their stake in society, there is less worry, less stress, and a healthier more fit and alert citizenry. This not only reduces the health care costs, but makes the country a more friendly place, a more enjoyable place to live and work, and a safer and more secure society. So, the ecomomics of providing a floor for the welfare of everyone makes sense from a practical point of view. True, it’s a political job that requires perennial adjusting and reforms. A job made for a two-party system, with both sides working for the common good, which has happened in the history of America in the 20th century.
I was astounded when after 9-11 a Republican woman stated that she felt for the first time that Americans were in something together. She was clueless. She evidently was so intent on competition that she lost track of the fact that she had neighbors, that her country was more than a government with too high a tax rate. Health care, anyone? Or is this civil virtue for the Republican Party? Selfish in peace, gaga in war.
So give the Repubulican their due, give them the benefit of the doubt. Nonetheless they empower the culture of the ethnically “see no evil, hear no evil.” The Republicans promote the the world view of people without a clue as to who their neighbors are domestically. The Republicans are go-it-alone, unilateral, anti-international law, anti-sovereignity for anybody but us. The Republican economic thinking is economically uneven, flawed, full of holes, even if it is right twice a day. A better model includes people with heart and vision, wise to the pitfalls, wise to the opportunities. That model is worth being partisan for.
So, if Senator Snow and Senator Luger and Senator… Danforth were the bulk of the Republican Party, then no need for a strong partisanship. But I don’t see that they are. Wishing doesn’t make it so.
Yet I salute President-elect Obama: may he be successful in building a bridge to a responsible Republican Party (hopefully it won’t be a bridge to nowhere).
NOTE: I realize that the Lindsey piece is a year old. (The door to it for me was the bloggingheads in the New York Times, post election 2008.) How is the “libertarian liberal” view distinguished from , say, Anthony Giddens and social liberalism?
February 3rd, 2010 at 3:07 am
Took me ages to find this post, this time I’ll bookmark it.
February 22nd, 2010 at 2:08 am
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April 26th, 2010 at 12:52 am
Good Post! Good to read it.
June 4th, 2010 at 5:20 am
Great read thanks for the post!