Deviant economics.

BARACK OBAMA and Hillary Clinton spend a lot of time railing against the Bush tax cuts. Listen to their stump speeches on the topic and you come away with the sense that President Bush, with his irresponsible cuts, has nearly bankrupted the nation. Supporters of the cuts, meanwhile, have viewed them as reasonable, prudent, and fully justified by the latest economic research.

It would be possible to dedicate an entire issue of this magazine to discussing that research and still make little progress toward changing the minds of even the most economically savvy Obama supporters. People who believe that the tax cuts were bad policy tend to put more weight on studies that question the merits of supply-side economics, and less weight on studies that conform to the predictions of Mr. Laffer and his many fans.

But what of the general public? As reporters sort through these debates, they must write at a far lower level of sophistication than that of the studies in question. Since New York Times readers don't know econometrics, they are instead offered pseudo-analysis. The economists who agree with supply-side economics are generally described in terms to suggest that they are nut jobs. Those who disagree with supply-siders are "distinguished professors" or "senior fellows" at "nonpartisan" institutes. We are invited to judge, not the arguments, but the reasonableness of those who make them--and it is clear what our judgment is supposed to be.

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But interestingly enough, it's possible to determine with ...