Unfit to Print.(Book Review)

The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century, by Paul Krugman (Norton, 320 pp., $25.95)

It is fitting that the first words in this collection of Paul Krugman's New York Times columns offer thanks to disgraced former Times executive editor Howell Raines. Krugman's meteoric rise -- he is now one of America's most influential political columnists -- could not have happened without the New York Times, and it could not have happened without the New York Times of Howell Raines.

Krugman's columns are blisteringly, bitterly, and relentlessly partisan. The column, which he started in 2000, quickly evolved from coverage of business and markets to pure politics -- and not a single column has ever either praised Republicans or criticized Democrats. Krugman's attacks on President Bush are intensely personal. Any Bush statement that differs from Krugman's views is, ipso facto, a lie. Krugman compares Bush to Caligula and Captain Queeg, and mocks him for being a recovering alcoholic. His columns are also sloppily researched -- often a grab bag of out-of-context factoids from obscure websites and leftist think tanks. And they frequently contain errors, distortions, and misquotations so egregious that they must be assumed to be intentional.

Yet on the pages of the New York Times, Krugman's columns are devastatingly effective, providing talking points for liberal pundits and politicians that resonate in the media echo chamber for months after Krugman issues them (" . . . according to Paul Krugman in the New York Times . . ."). In part this is because they are written with a tone of supreme self-assurance, developed over Krugman's years as an Ivy League economics professor; mostly, though, it's because they are printed in the prestigious and authoritative pages of "the newspaper of record." Krugman is right to thank Howell Raines for allowing him to exploit the power and the glory of the Times to lend credibility to what would otherwise be little more than partisan jeremiads.

Krugman's work represents a new Rainesian paradigm for newspaper columns: opinions presented as fact, supported by evidence often drawn from dubious sources far less credible than the Times, yet granted the authority of the Times by virtue of being published there.

The new book -- and the promotional blitz that inevitably accompanies it -- may seem to be Krugman's moment of greatest triumph. Yet this is a risky venture for Krugman, because it requires that his columns stand on their merits at a distance from the imprimatur of the Times, and that columns originally written as ad hoc potshots at partisan targets of opportunity be knitted together into a coherent worldview.

Krugman's basic argument is that the Bush administration represents a "revolutionary power," a "radical political movement" whose goal is to "destroy much of what is best in our country" and "possibly" make it a place "in which elections are only a formality." In the mathematics of Krugmanomics, disagreement = lie, and two disagreements = conspiracy. That may well resonate with leftists seeking words to match their inchoate feelings of loathing for the president; but the reality of the columns in the book is that they are little more than extremely effective demonstrations of the obvious -- that Krugman's idea of "what is best in our country" is different from that of George W. Bush.