Yet another reason why we all need to read Paul Krugman at least twice a week:
Posted by DeLong at February 7, 2004 05:15 PM | TrackBackOp-Ed Columnist: Get Me Rewrite!: February 6, 2004 OP-ED COLUMNIST Get Me Rewrite! By PAUL KRUGMAN
R>ight now America is going through an Orwellian moment. On both the foreign policy and the fiscal fronts, the Bush administration is trying to rewrite history, to explain away its current embarrassments.
Let's start with the case of the missing W.M.D. Do you remember when the C.I.A. was reviled by hawks because its analysts were reluctant to present a sufficiently alarming picture of the Iraqi threat? Your memories are no longer operative. On or about last Saturday, history was revised: see, it's the C.I.A.'s fault that the threat was overstated. Given its warnings, the administration had no choice but to invade.
A tip from Joshua Marshall, of www.talkingpointsmemo.com, led me to a stark reminder of how different the story line used to be. Last year Laurie Mylroie published a book titled "Bush vs. the Beltway: How the C.I.A. and the State Department Tried to Stop the War on Terror." Ms. Mylroie's book came with an encomium from Richard Perle; she's known to be close to Paul Wolfowitz and to Dick Cheney's chief of staff. According to the jacket copy, "Mylroie describes how the C.I.A. and the State Department have systematically discredited critical intelligence about Saddam's regime, including indisputable evidence of its possession of weapons of mass destruction."
Currently serving intelligence officials may deny that they faced any pressure — after what happened to Valerie Plame, what would you do in their place? — but former officials tell a different story. The latest revelation is from Britain. Brian Jones, who was the Ministry of Defense's top W.M.D. analyst when Tony Blair assembled his case for war, says that the crucial dossier used to make that case didn't reflect the views of the professionals: "The expert intelligence experts of the D.I.S. [Defense Intelligence Staff] were overruled." All the experts agreed that the dossier's claims should have been "carefully caveated"; they weren't.
And don't forget the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, created specifically to offer a more alarming picture of the Iraq threat than the intelligence professionals were willing to provide.
Can all these awkward facts be whited out of the historical record? Probably. Almost surely,
President Bush's handpicked "independent" commission won't investigate the Office of Special Plans. Like Lord Hutton in Britain — who chose to disregard Mr. Jones's testimony — it will brush aside evidence that intelligence professionals were pressured. It will focus only on intelligence mistakes, not on the fact that the experts, while wrong, weren't nearly wrong enough to satisfy their political masters. (Among those mentioned as possible members of the commission is James Woolsey, who wrote one of the blurbs for Ms. Mylroie's book.) And if top political figures have their way, there will be further rewriting to come. You may remember that Saddam gave in to U.N. demands that he allow inspectors to roam Iraq, looking for banned weapons. But your memories may soon be invalid. Recently Mr. Bush said that war had been justified because Saddam "did not let us in." And this claim was repeated by Senator Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee: "Why on earth didn't [Saddam] let the inspectors in and avoid the war?"
Now let's turn to the administration's other big embarrassment, the budget deficit.
The fiscal 2005 budget report admits that this year's expected $521 billion deficit belies the rosy forecasts of 2001. But the report offers an explanation: stuff happens. "Today's budget deficits are the unavoidable result of the revenue erosion from the stock market collapse that began in early 2000, an economy recovering from recession and a nation confronting serious security threats." Sure, the administration was wrong — but so was everyone.
The trouble is that accepting that excuse requires forgetting a lot of recent history. By February 2002, when the administration released its fiscal 2003 budget, all of the bad news — the bursting of the bubble, the recession, and, yes, 9/11 — had already happened. Yet that budget projected only a $14 billion deficit this year, and a return to surpluses next year. Why did that forecast turn out so wrong? Because administration officials fudged the facts, as usual.
I'd like to think that the administration's crass efforts to rewrite history will backfire, that the media and the informed public won't let officials get away with this. Have we finally had enough?
E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com
That's the second time Bush has said that - "Saddam didn't let the inspectors in" - within the past few months. Maybe the first time he was just a victim of his own ignorance, or lack of curiosity, or phobia of newspapers. But the second?...
And his explanation of the deficit is similarly obtuse - "we were attacked, we had a recession, we're in a war," throw in corporate scandal, stock market crash, etc. and you've got about 1/3 of the deficit explained.
What about the other 2/3rds Bush?
Whether or not one thinks a deficit is important, he's still grossly misrepresenting the causes. Why won't anyone question it? Is it normal for the press to repeat quotes of the preznit when he is obviously dissembling, without even motioning to well-known facts. Aren't big stupid lies also a "story?"
Posted by: andrew on February 7, 2004 08:38 PMI realize that offering a contrary opinion of PK on this site is a bit ridiculous, but what the heck.
BD: "Yet another reason why we all need to read Paul Krugman at least twice a week."
This strikes me as kind of an odd way to express praise for this particular column, because this is a column that will impart to BD readers information they are possessed of already - and in far greater detail. (I could be overestimating the likelihood that other BD readers also read talkingpointsmemo or are familiar with its content).
In this particular Krugman column, he devotes 70% of his space to the Bush efforts to spin their WMD/intel problems, and 30% to the Bush efforts to spin their budget problems.
The WMD/intel issue is embedded in much larger questions about the wisdom of the war itself, about the track record and competence of the Bush team, the history of the CIA wrt Iraq, and so on. This isn't to say that there aren't things here which reflect badly on the Bush administration - just that it is peripheral to those other issues (which may even reflect even more badly on the Bush administration).
Meanwhile, the budget issue really is the issue - it is embedded in the larger issue of how well the economy's doing, but fiscal policy is, well, fiscal policy. And of course, I feel like there's lots more I could learn about this issue, if he'd tell me, but he just used the first 70% of his column to not give me that information. Time for a quick gloss on the Bush budget spin, and the column's over.
This column strikes me as one more reason why I don't need to read Krugman anymore.
Having said that, when I went to the NYT to check that BD had posted the entire 2/6/04 column, I discovered Krugman's 2/3/04 column, which I would rate as easily his best NYT column (that I've read) ever. (I could be forgetting). I'm undoubtedly overstating the case, but it actually contains information which seems to be there, not because it's a stick to hit Bush with.
I find Krugman's "shrillness" to be actually more Orwellian than Bush administration spin. Expressing contempt (and the need of your readers to see that contempt expressed) has at least an echo of the desire to police thought. Bush spin may be worse in degree than the spin of past administrations, but is hardly different in kind.
Posted by: Joe Mealyus on February 8, 2004 03:36 AMJoe:
You had me, then you lost me.
I find Krugman's "shrillness" to be actually more Orwellian than Bush administration spin.
Being upset equals the desire to police thought? I mean, what, is Krugman supposed to just politely agree with everything Bush says? Christ, have you heard a Bush speech? He's ten times as 'shrill' as Krugman is.
You have about half a point, in that yes, Krugman should focus more economics. But "Krugman is more Orwellian than Bush, because while Bush rewrites history to suit his insane fantasies, Krugman goes around being upset that Bush rewrites history to suit his insane fantasies?"
And the statement that "Bush spin may be worse in degree than the spin of past administrations, but is hardly different in kind. "
... I mean, look, I don't have time to go into how wrong this statement is, and all the ways that Bush's many layers of dishonesty are fundamentally different from past presidents. When you make a statement like this, all you're really saying is "Hey everybody, I'm not paying very much attention!"
Posted by: agrajag on February 8, 2004 06:27 AMJohn Snow has even gotten into it with his hilarious "Strong Dollar" policy.
Posted by: Bob H on February 8, 2004 07:06 AMThis column as column after column by Paul Krugman is brilliantly and courageously written. Here is a columnist and teacher to admire. Read whom you will, I always learn from Paul Krugman.
Posted by: lise on February 8, 2004 07:10 AMA few days before the Krugman column referenced here, on January 2nd, I posted on my weblog (at http://unfutz.blogspot.com/2004_02_01_unfutz_archive.html#107577694535521806) an excerpt from 1984 in which Orwell introduces the "memory holes" and the functions of the "Ministry of Truth". I also posted (at http://unfutz.blogspot.com/2004_02_01_unfutz_archive.html#107578021701854240) a short "screed" in which I wrote, in part:
Without anyone of consequence to call them on their untruths, Bush & Co. enjoy the functional equivalent of Orwell's memory holes and his Ministry of Truth (see the previous post), and so, unfettered, they constantly re-write history in their favor without being challenged on it by anyone except some bloggers and a few muckrackers that few people pay attention to. Unless mainstream journalists and the Democrats wake up and change their ways, they will continue to get away with their deceptions.
It's exceedingly unlikely that Krugman read my blog, which is generally seen by approximately 3 people every other Thursday, but it is interesting that we both pulled the same meme out of the air.
Still, what else can you call living under the constant lies & rewriting of history endemic to the Bush administration except "Orwellian"? Do people not read 1984 in school any more, as they used to? You'd think that more people would catch on to Bush's tricks.
Posted by: Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) on February 8, 2004 12:17 PMagrajag: "You had me, then you lost me."
Because I wrote: "I find Krugman's "shrillness" to be actually more Orwellian than Bush administration spin."
Okay, maybe that was a bit nutty. I don't find either to be particularly "Orwellian." But to me, "Orwellian" is in a sense the opposite of "spin." What Orwell saw in Spain wasn't the Soviets (or those backed by the Soviets) doing rewrites of history, it was the Soviets making it up the first time. And having the power to make it up.
Take the WMD/intel issue. Did the Bush forces decide to press ahead with a phony rationale, figuring they could get away with it, or was it a more complicated process, where they convinced themselves the phony rationale was the truth? The former is Orwellian, the latter is simply not. The latter is called "incompetence."
Or take the budget issue. Bush can say his budget will do X, when patently it will do Y, but this is hardly Orwellian, because he doesn't have the power to make his interpretation stick. In fact, I think Bush now stands a huge chance of losing re-election to an almost bizarrely poor opposition nominee, precisely because he's *not* going to get away with it! John Kerry can not only center his message around the deficit, Bush is giving him a few extra easy points about his deficit deceitfulness! There's nothing Orwellian about being an idiot.
agrajag: "Bush's many layers of dishonesty are fundamentally different from past presidents."
Are they? They seem pretty routine to me. When John Kerry stands up at the Dem convention and says, "the focus of our education policy is to do what's best for every child," it will strike me as precisely the same kind of thing as when Bush stands up at the Rep convention and says "the focus of our budget policy is put the nation's fiscal house in order."
agrajag: "Being upset equals the desire to police thought? I mean, what, is Krugman supposed to just politely agree with everything Bush says?"
Let's say that Krugman has a choice between a scholarly approach or a prosecutorial approach. It's fine if he chooses the latter - I don't expect that he is going to give as much prominence to data that tell in Bush's favor, if his fundamental conclusions are hostile to Bush. I'm not expecting his NYT column to be a macroeconomics seminar.
But my problem with PK is not so much that he's chosen the prosecutorial role, it's his performance in the role. To me, his column often has very little in the way of information, except for telling me that he has contempt for the Bush administration. I find this completely uninteresting, and not something that gets any more interesting with repetition. I think he should spend more time telling me why he has contempt for the Bush administration.
And of course I think he does this best when he adopts a more scholarly, dispassionate tone, and gives us the facts, as (his Slate columns proved) he is uniquely qualified in American journalism to do. When he gets shrill, my gut feeling is that the facts must not be so clear....
Posted by: Joe Mealyus on February 8, 2004 08:23 PM