Yes, Andrew Sullivan Is Still a Dork

He writes:

www.AndrewSullivan.com - Daily Dish: MANKIW ON KRUGMAN: Almost as damning as Dan Okrent.

And gets eviscerated by an anonymous correspondent:

You are dead wrong (as well as sloppy and lazy) in your portrayal of Okrent and Mankiw's statements about Paul Krugman. (For the record, I know both Paul and Greg. although not well.)

The Okrent case is the more egregious: he says that Krugman "slices and dices" data to support his point of view, without offering an example. I'm an economist myself, and know the macro data very well. I can't think of single example to support Okrent's statement. (Paul has published corrections regarding a couple of minor, and non-substantive, points.) Most conservative attacks on his arguments involve innumeracy or sheer ignorance of basic facts or basic principles of economics; many involve willful misrepresentation.

Now consider Greg's statement (and I'm paraphrasing) that "Paul seems to think that everyone who disagrees with him is either fool or a liar." To begin with, I'll stick to economics. The plain fact is that the Bush Administration has been consistently and deliberately mendacious in its public portrayal of its economic policies. (This characterization, by the way, is the overwhelming consensus in the professional economics world, which includes many conservatives.) Capable policy apointees (like Greg or Glen Hubbard) have had no meaningful input in this Administration; nor has the professional staff at places like Treasury or CEA. All economic policy involves politics. But the politicization of the policy making process in this Administration is without precedent in my professional life.

Paul would have been called a moderate or even conservative Democrat prior to this Administration. (Read his classical essay, "In Praise of Cheap Labor," if you're under the illusion that he's some sort of leftist.) So would I. Paul appears strident only because he's had the bad manners to say that people are lying when they're obviously lying. (A prominent case in point: many of the President's public statements about the finances of the social security system have been plain, simple untruths.) And what's maddening to Paul, and to me, is that there's no core of conservative principle in this Administration. A conservative devotion to free markets has been displaced by reckless spending, reckless tax cuts, crony capitalism and special interest give-aways. What "balanced" take on these issues should Paul offer?

More generally, you should know better. Remember, I've confined myself so far to economic policy. Do you want to defend the honesty and integrity of this Administration on, say, abuse of detainees?

And then gets re-eviscerated by Matthew Yglesias:

Matthew Yglesias: The Lies, The Lies: As we know, and as this letter writer to his site reminds us, Andrew Sullivan has been a pretty consistent proponent of the view that Paul Krugman is some sort of liar. At issue, are Krugman's repeated insistences that George W. Bush's economic policy is founded on a tissue of lies. Krugman is, of course, entirely correct about this. The unnoted irony here is that in his May 14, 2001 column 'Downsize,' Sullivan conceded Krugman's point:

Ah, but the details. The Krugmans and the Chaits will shortly have a cow, if not a whole herd of them. The Times will weigh in again with yet another barrage of articles, editorials, and op-eds opposing any tax relief that would actually benefit those who pay most of the taxes. And, to be fair to these liberal critics, they're right about one thing. One of the tax cut's effects will surely be that the United States won't be able to afford a vastly expanded Medicare drug benefit. And the archaic sinkhole known as Social Security won't be shored up either. And Medicare, may the gods preserve us, may even have to grow at a slightly slower rate. In fact, many of the spending programs that some still believe solve most human problems will encounter the only political resistance that matters in budgetary matters: insolvency.

To which my response is: Hoorah. We don't need these expansions of the welfare state. We need to privatize Social Security if we want to provide for our retirement in ways slightly more up-to-date than those based on economics and life-expectancy figures devised in the 1930s. We don't need to add yet another entitlement for the most pampered generation--our current seniors.

And if there is one thing we have learned in the past 20 years, it's that controlling government spending is simply impossible without deficits. Look back at the last decade. A huge part of Bill Clinton's economic success was his remarkable grip on public finances. He deserves credit for this, although the Republican Congresses from 1994 to 1998 were mainly responsible, and Ross Perot made deficit-cutting hot. But from 1998 on, all hell broke loose. Last year, discretionary spending increased by a whopping 8 percent--under the Republicans. The minute deficits became surpluses, in other words, the politicians started bribing the voters with their own money. The only relevant question is: Why do Dennis Hastert, Trent Lott, Dick Gephardt, and Tom Daschle know better than taxpayers how to allocate their own resources? . . . Some commentators--at this magazine and elsewhere--get steamed because Bush has obscured this figure or claimed his tax cut will cost less than it actually will, or because he is using Medicare surplus money today that will be needed tomorrow and beyond. Many of these arguments have merit--but they miss the deeper point. The fact that Bush has to obfuscate his real goals of reducing spending with the smoke screen of 'compassionate conservatism' shows how uphill the struggle is.

Yes, some of the time he is full of it on his economic policies. But a certain amount of B.S. is necessary for any vaguely successful retrenchment of government power in an insatiable entitlement state. Conservatives learned that lesson twice. They learned it when Ronald Reagan's deficits proved to be an effective drag on federal spending (Stockman was right!)--in fact the only effective drag human beings have ever found. And they learned it when they tried to be honest about taking on the federal leviathan in 1994 and got creamed by Democrats striking the fear of God into every senior, child, and parent in America. Bush and Karl Rove are no dummies. They have rightly judged that, in a culture of ineluctable government expansion, where every new plateau of public spending is simply the baseline for the next expansion, a rhetorical smoke screen is sometimes necessary. I just hope the smoke doesn't clear before the spenders get their hands on our wallets again.

Now needless to say, Sullivan differs from Krugman in thinking that this is a good thing, while Krugman thinks it's a bad thing. But that's really all there is to it. Bush was lying. As Sullivan correctly points out, the lies were integral to securing public tolerance for Bush's agenda. Krugman has tried to expose the lies in hopes of denying Bush's agenda public support. It's very hard to see how Krugman can be held culpable in this scenario.

Comments

[hack]

I wonder what Mankiw hopes to gain by publicly humiliating himself like this.

Of course Okrent and Sullivan are unhumiliatable.

[Jonathan King]

Andrew Sullivan is, indeed, a dork.

I have often wondered exactly why Paul Krugman has caught such flak, and the best I have come up with is that it his directness that people find completely infuriating. The quasi-quote from Mankiw was:

> "Paul seems to think that everyone who disagrees with him is either
> fool or a liar."

And I think this is exactly why people, especially those who have had to spin their message while working for the current administration, get exasperated. The canonical Krugman argument in a column, after all, goes like this:

IF (the administration understood the econ AND were being honest about their actions and opinions)
THEN (the administration would do X, where X is the universally accepted policy).

They don't do X,
THEREFORE
It is not true that (the administration groks the econ) AND (they are being honest)

which is logically equivalent to "They are either fools or liars".

Now in response to Krugman, some of the hard right have taken to the weird idea that Krugman is actually a complete idiot about economics. And that's pretty much a non-starter, and *almost* irrelevant since most of his columns that go like this are based on such boringly well-accepted principles that it is a wonder that they are seen as partisan.

What I think Mankiw (and maybe others) are thinking is more like "Paul, there is really no way to be as frank as you can be in academia when you're working in the government. You imply that I'm a fool or a liar, but, hey, you're there back in Princeton having ZERO influence while I can get something done."

And then the next question is the one Brad DeLong always asks, which is "If you *do* have such influence, then why the heck did we just pass that {farm bill, corporate tax cut, tax cut that should have increased consumption but won't...}?"

As far as I can tell, the only responses to this are all pretty fallacious. They're either contrary to fact arguments ("It would have been worse...") or special pleading ("It's tough to have an impact in this administration") or irrelevent ("But you'd be wrong if you argued {something you didn't argue}"). Or sometimes a mixture of all three.

Another way to put this is that Krugman doesn't play the "press game" of he says/she says, or just reporting what anybody says without openly questioning the real meaning.

All that said, I think there are some legitimate criticisms of Krugman. His worst columns really kind a look like they were put together from Google searches. He really did predict a double dip recession that didn't happen. He, like some others, apparently underestimated Greenspan's ability to avoid a deflationary scenario, at least in the near term. Of course, when you look at who he's competing with on the Times editorial page, the record holds up extremely well.

[ahem]

That anonymous correspondent sounds curiously like our host... care to fess up, Brad?

[cw]

Andrew Sullivan is a weird case. He is a good writer and seems well educated in the english tradition. Plus he is fairly intellectually honest. He will and has admited that he is wrong (see the past five years of posts on bush) and he will print letters that convincingly contradict him. He is also right (as I judge) a fair amount of the time

But for all that, he seems kind of dumb. It's pretty easy to pull the wool over his eyes. Naive. Maybe it's becasue he's from England and doesn't truely understand the US culture. Maybe he's sharp as a tack in England.

[Bruce Webb]

"I have often wondered exactly why Paul Krugman has caught such flak"

Because the Bush Administration and its supporters are running on the basis of pure ideology which they assumed was based on facts. Critics would be silenced and humiliated once the US Army came across those warehouses stuffed with WMDs in Iraq and surely the business pages would not be filled full of news showing that Social Security was fully funded under any conceivable economic performance. Reality dealt them a bad hand.

Some of these people are out and out liars, but a lot of them are believers that have a choice: accept the fact that you were a chump or blame it all on Paul Krugman.

We are in the lash out period. People don't want to concede that Iraq is a quagmire, people don't want to concede that just about everything they "know" about Social Security makes them know-nothings.

Cognitive dissonance is on the verge of cranium explosion and the reality based community is at risk of getting splashed. Be careful out there, and carry a tissue, you will need it. And double that if your last name starts with Krug.

[jonathan Goldberg]

I read part of the comment section on this post. There is still one holdout who argues that Matt hasn't made his arguement because he hasn't established that Bush is a liar. Something like "In the reality-based community all you have to do is say something for it to be true."

On the surface it's not unlike our criticisms of what Okrent wrote about Krugman. It's a thin surface.

[rea]

Oh for crying out loud, Mr. Goldberg--you don't think the administration's mendacity/fecklessness has been adequately demonstrated?

Go through Prof. DeLong's archives, looking for posts with "liars", "fools" or "clown show" in their titles . . .

[rjw]

cw said

"But for all that, he seems kind of dumb. It's pretty easy to pull the wool over his eyes. Naive. Maybe it's becasue he's from England and doesn't truely understand the US culture. Maybe he's sharp as a tack in England."

I'm know this was in jest, but it still kinda grates. In the UK the stuff Bush and his press corps come out with would not pass a laughing test with the British public. Most of us can't understand how you guys voted in someone who just tells untruths when he opens his mouth.

Tony Blair did it to us over Iraq and the intelligence on WMD - and the political damage it caused in the recent election was just extraordinary. He probably personally cost Labour 5% points in the polls. And with a half reasonable opposition Labour might have even come close to losing, despite the strong economic performance.

Bush misleads on every issue under the sun and he wins a second term handsomely. I'll leave you to draw out your own conclusions from this about the political sophistication of the respective electorates.

[liberal]

jonathan Goldberg wrote, "On the surface it's not unlike our criticisms of what Okrent wrote about Krugman."

Nonsense.

As Bob Somerby pointed out in the _Daily Howler_, Okrent is a thug who presented no case against Krugman, then lashed out at him at the very end with no supporting evidence.

Somerby, as usual, has the best coverage of this topic; he's discussed it in multiple _Howlers_.

[Chad]

The last month or so Krugman has been spot on, previous to that you could pick out things where he brought his politics, which I apparently don't agree with, into the columns.

[radek]

Andrew should get credit for publishing that letter though - without any deregatory comments, insulting remarks or the like. Not everyone is willing to do that.

[Tim Worstall]

Leaving aside the economics for a moment I have certainly found things in Krugman’s columns that are, shall we say, "economical with the actualite". His descriptions of the changes in the UK pensions systems over recent decades come to mind (he conflated changes in the State pension, the earnings related State pension, private pensions, company pensions, State employee pensions, some of which indeed led to problems, but didn’t point out that the changes he identified didn’t lead to the specific problems he identified.)

[He only has 700 words per column. I agree that he ought to have 3000 once every two weeks--that the NYT is misusing him.]

[Larry Maggitti]

Almost no one is willing to do that. Can you imagine Instapundit printing a critical letter like that?

I kind of like Sullivan, actually, despite his (because of?) his many quirks. He blows hot and cold on so many issues - one week an optimist on the future of Iraq, one week a pessimist, back and forth. On Krugman, he goes with the knee jerk right wing line on him, but it's pretty clear that on the substance he knows Krugman is right - about the factual stuff, at least; Sullivan's policy preferences are obviously quite different than Krugman's.

[Bruce Webb]

Hey Tim Worstall, can you bring some specfics to this debate? Like cite some columns and link them to some real numbers where Krugman distorted something. Because frankly third party distortions of what actual numbers reveal is what got us into this quagmire to begin with. Privatizers lead with "up is down" "lets state as facts what we read in the WSJ opinion page". Give some specific instances or take a swift gulp of STFU.

[sglover]

"Of course Okrent and Sullivan are unhumiliatable"

Yikes. It's a good thing "unhumiliatable" isn't a real word. At least, I hope it isn't... Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, does it?

[liberal]

Tim Worstall wrote, "Leaving aside the economics for a moment I have certainly found things in Krugman’s columns that are, shall we say, 'economical with the actualite' ".

Yes, well, without lots of specifics, I'll turn that around that say that I thought your posts on sci.econ (USENET) were not very convincing. So I'll answer your "don't necessary trust Krugman" with "don't necessarily trust Tim Worstall."

As for your own work, Tim, here's some posts by Tim Lambert:
http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/blog/2004/11#tcs3
http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/blog/2004/11#tcs2

Second post states, "Sometimes I think that there must be a qualifying exam in order to write for Tech Central Station. Fail the exam and you’re in. They seem to have exams in at least physics, economics, statistics, and epidemiology. Tim Worstall, the author of today’s article seems to have failed both the statistics and epidemiology exams."

First post does state, "On his blog Worstall thanks Daniel Davies and me for the correction. Such decent behaviour is unfortunately not common at Tech Central Station."

While I agree with that (having found your posts on sci.econ polite, etc), I don't consider you a credible critic of Krugman.

[Neil S]

Brad

I love your analysis. I hate your name calling.

[dogfacegeorge]

Brad,
I love your analysis. I love your name calling.

[Tim Worstall]

Bruce and liberal. You may not wish to sully your pure thoughts with reading material at Techcentralstation but I did two columns there on precisely this subject.
http://www.techcentralstation.com/122304E.html
http://www.techcentralstation.com/012405D.html

[It is an arm of a lobbying organization, and thus hard to take seriously.]

[liberal]

Tim Worstall wrote, "You may not wish to sully your pure thoughts with reading material at Techcentralstation but I did two columns there on precisely this subject."

Not a matter of sullying my thoughts. Rather,
(1) there are only 24 hours in a day,
(2) Lambert has written a lot that casts doubt on the usefulness of TCS as a source for anything (beyond the posts I cited above).

Let's not forget the central role of James "Dow 36,000" Glassman in TCS. Not only were that book's predictions wrong, it committed some egregious fallacies, such as essentially double-counting corporate profits.

[Vanya]

RJW,

In defense of the US electorate - it is a stretch to stay that Bush won "handsomely." At the moment Bush is one of the least popular sitting Presidents in memory. He came very close to losing Ohio and Florida, and you don't have to be a paranoiac to find the stated results a bit suspicious when comparing them to exit polls that in the past at least have usually been pretty accurate. And Kerry really was an "anybody but Bush" choice for most people, a stronger candidate should have wiped the floor with Dubya.

[Barkley Rosser]

Well, I have a different take on Krugman, which leaves most people I know annoyed. I think he has been great on exposing what liars and fools the Bushies have been on economic (and some other) policies. He has drawn their wrath because he is articulate and pretty accurate, despite occasional minor slips. Gives them hell they fully deserve and can't stand getting.

My problem has been more in the past, that he has had an unfortunate tendency to take credit for things he really did not invent, but which he could articulate better (I realize the same could be said of Adam Smith). Thus, he may deserve a Nobel for his excellent work on exchange rates, but he invented neither "new international trade theory" or "new economic geography," although lots of people, and most journalists, think he did. Regarding the new economic geography, I laid out the case in a book review of his _Development, Geography, and Economic Theory_, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, December 1986, vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 450-454, the concluding sentence of which is "If he is indeed the emperor of the new economic geography, then he is an emperor who has no clothes." (Just for the record, Krugman has cited some of his predecessors on the new international trade theory, but has not done so for the real predecessors on the new economic geography).

That said, he has been spot on regarding the Bush administration. Keep it up, Paul. Folks like Sullivan just end up looking certainly like fools.

[rea]

"'Hey Tim Worstall, can you bring some specfics to this debate?'

"You mean, in addition to . . ."

Well, Mr. Sullivan, in the first example you give, concerning British pensions, Mr. Worstall's identification of Prof. Krugman's supposed errors was too vague to enable me to tell what Krugman supposedly did wrong.

The second example given by Mr. Worstall was simply nonsense--"Krugman talked about A and B, but failed to point out that A was not B." Classic Picklerism . . .

[Joe O]

It does take guts to put well writen email clearly showing that you are mistaken on the main page of your blog.

[PaulC]

> most of his columns that go like this are based on such boringly well-accepted principles that it is a wonder that they are seen as partisan

The only well-accepted principle is that if you criticize the policies of the current adminstration, you are a "partisan Bush hater."

Hope this helps.

[PaulC]

I am repeating myself from Matt's blog comment board, but:

I'm not really sure why so much time is spend dissecting Andrew Sullivan's commentary. It's so obvious to me that he's rooting for the wrong side--the one that'll toss him out as soon as he stops being useful to them--that I can't even muster any animosity toward him.

Sullivan once wrote a Salon column detailing the concept of a "bear" in gay culture. This was about the same time he was in high form spinning Bush's Iraq policy. When I read him (rarely) I just have to stand in awe of his capacity for cognitive dissonance.

[Samuel Knight]

Hate to disagree with some of the people above. Andrew Sullivan is a hysterical hack - and shouldn't be trusted on anything. Like Hitchens, Blair and a few of the other transplanted Brits, he makes things sound plausible, but they are in fact BS.

He never offers a balanced assessment. He uses every cheap shot technique in the book: name calling, attack on motives, mis-direction, etc.

And he never, ever thinks something through. Read Krugman, his logic is clear, A is true, therefore B is true, therefore C is true, as is "D", etc. In other words a nice string of logical steps. Sullivan never has that. He just "A" emphatically, vigorously, and unquestioningly, and then "B".

And he's wrong a lot of the time.

[Tim Worstall]

Liberal,
I realise that it was Bruce that asked for specifics and links but your response does seem a little, ummm, weak. Whether or not Krugman has been absolutely and entirely correct in all of his assertions might be a question well answered by reading something that purports (only purports mind you, perfectly happy for you to disagree, after you’ve read it) to point out that this is not so.

[liberal]

Tim Worstall wrote, "I realise that it was Bruce that asked for specifics and links but your response does seem a little, ummm, weak."

Hardly. As rea pointed out, "Mr. Worstall's identification of Prof. Krugman's supposed errors was too vague to enable me to tell what Krugman supposedly did wrong ... The second example given by Mr. Worstall was simply nonsense--".

"Whether or not Krugman has been absolutely and entirely correct in all of his assertions ..."

To which I must answer: Krugman is human. The question *should* be, how accurate is he compared to a reasonable standard?

If we take "reasonable standard" to be "that of his detractors," he passes with flying colors, given Tim Lambert's comments I cited on the quality of *your* accuracy.

[praktike]

A. A! A? A!!!!!! A!!!!! Down with B!!!!!! A!!!! B is for traitors!!!!!!!

[chris]

No even the worst blog-o-matic thing on Kaus, but an easy to pick up sample:

"Frist, Do No Harm! LAT ed-page editor Andres Martinez should resign immediately for his bungling failure to use the obvious pun in an editorial calling on Senate Majority Leader Frist to quit the Senate. ... P.S.: Why does the Times say should Frist leave? Well, he failed to block a stem cell bill that the LAT ed board didn't want him to block! (They would prefer that he succeed like, say, Tom DeLay? ) ... Or maybe the problem is that Frist tried to "ram through the 'nuclear option'" against filibusters. ... But wait, the Times says Frist was "right to try to get rid of the filibuster." ... Or maybe the hard-to-find LAT ed page, in a desperate quest for attention, is stunting in a way that ironically parodies the worst sort of hyperactive, overblown Beltway CW! ("The Bolton nomination was postponed! Frist is a loser!") ... If Johnny Apple and Andrew Sullivan had a love child, he might find this editorial highly persuasive. ... P.P.S.: See Patterico's highlighting of a mighty-convenient new explanation of the Flibuster Deal that portrays Frist and Bush as in control all along. ... 3:30 P.M."

This is bloviation.

And here's Andrew:

"THE SPIN CONTINUES: The toilet incident allegation has been withdrawn, after the detainee was "reinterviewed." The detainee was never asked specifically about the toilet allegation in his "re-interview". Reassured? Still, it's progress to have the military concede what others still refuse to see and what the miitary was denying outright only a week ago. Remember also that at Gitmo, none of the interrogators was an amateur. They cannot pull the Lynndie England defense. Someone somewhere thought this was a good idea. Who? Did anyone explicitly authorize this? Or was it a function of unclear guidelines? In which case, who was responsible for unclear guidelines? Did the memos allowing for far greater leniency in interrogatory abuse have anything to do with this? We currently have many more questions than answers. Frankly, we need an independent inquiry into all this. The military is deeply hobbled by its past errors in this area. Now watch the spinners: this couldn't happen; this didn't happen; it's Newsweek's fault; it only happened five times; the military says that eight allegations didn't pan out; even if it did happen, it's a "much-ado-about-not-much story"; whose side are you on anyway?"

Lot's of questions. Sounds like we need a journalist but putting out this story will show you as an anti-American let the Taliban win, Bush hater.

[Bruce Webb]

Worstall, I am not sure what the current British slang is for linking to yourself but in American folklore it puts you at risk of going blind.

In the end numbers are going to rule this debate. And currently the American economy is simply spanking Intermediate Cost. (Hope that did not come too close to home.)

[Tim Worstall]

Bruce,
I deliberately did not link to my blog which would, as you say, come disturbingly close to self-abuse. Yet given that I’ve written several thousand words on precisely this subject, am, in fact, the only person who has actually analysed Krugman’s statements on the subject, where would you like me to link to, if not to those few thousand words? Write it all out again here in the comments section? Not talk about it at all as I’ve already had my say elsewhere?