The Range of Opinion
The media herd is not very discerning (wikimedia)
Paul Krugman observes that “During the initial discussion of the stimulus, the debate was framed almost entirely as a debate between Obama and those who said the stimulus was too big; the voices of those saying it was too small were largely frozen out” which is odd given that there were lots of totally respectable people saying this. Krugman wonders: “Who makes these decisions?”
I think the answer is that largely the President does. When you have a progressive president make a proposal, and then you have conservative politicians attack him, the political debate becomes defined as a polarized debate between Obama and his conservative detractors. It’s a dynamic that I think you can understand a politician having trouble adjusting to immediately. It’s extremely helpful during a campaign to seek an image as “different” from a conventional member of your party, a much more “reasonable” and “pragmatic” figure. But once you assume office, unless you take great care with it the extreme position is just by definition the one you espouse. People in the White House say that if they’d come out of the gate talking about a $1.5 trillion stimulus there would have just been sticker shock and outrage on the Hill. But in retrospect maybe the best idea would have been for the White House to initially lay low, let some block of congressional liberal propose a $2 trillion stimulus package, let everyone freak out, then have Obama judiciously ride to the rescue with a $1.2 trillion compromise proposal.
Even better, of course, would be a DC press corps that took issues seriously on their own merits without trying to squeeze every policy debate into a talking heads cable news segment.
33 Responses to “The Range of Opinion”
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July 8th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Matt buries the answer to Krugman’s question at the very end of the post. There’s nothing in natural law or politics which requires the President’s position to define one end of the political spectrum. Our supposed mainstream, centrist press chooses to define it that way, and the President is perfectly willing to play along because he’s much more willing temperamentally and politically to compromise with conservatives than he is to compromise with liberals.
July 8th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
So what you’re saying, if I’m getting this right, is that Democrats need more money to do whatever it is they want to do, including saving the world and the little children.
Ah, now I understand perfectly.
July 8th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Even better, of course, would be a DC press corps that took issues seriously on their own merits without trying to squeeze every policy debate into a talking heads cable news segment.
Also, can I have a pony, while we’re at it?
July 8th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
The plutocrats spend tons of money to make sure the debate is framed to their advantage.
They have the major media, think tanks and academic whores all on their payrolls.
July 8th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
I know, I know, if only people just felt like “investing” in the future prosperity of our country, and entrusted their livelihoods to ignorant Democrats unfortunately thwarted by nefarious Republicans who forced them to pass a pork-laden stimulus that hasn’t increased public construction spending, then we would all be better off and smiling right now.
Face it, the Left is pulling off the neoconservative’s right’s tricks on 9/11 and the Iraq War. Stop posing stupid counter-factuals that we will never be able to answer. Surely we should be seeing some economic benefit from the limited stimulus thus far? (And please, no tedious anecdotes.)
Why, oh why can’t we have a better press corps and fewer clueless bloggers?
July 8th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Pot, meet kettle. Kettle, meet pot.
Using simpleminded cliches to describe, and decry, the use of simpleminded cliches might get you irony points but loses you points for intellectual honesty.
July 8th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Lonewacko called. He wants to know if the one on the right is single, and a virgin.
July 8th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
I question the premise, at least in the extreme form. OK, Media Matters documented that the stimulus-is-too-small argument was underrepresented in network evening news. But Paul Krugman has a New York Times column and blog. And I recall Obama being asked at a press conference what answer he had for critics like Krugman who thought the stimulus was too small.
So, that side of the debate wasn’t completely missing. On the other hand, I agree it was underrepresented, and I agree that happened because the media likes to frame things in Democrats versus Republicans terms wherever possible.
But in retrospect maybe the best idea would have been for the White House to initially lay low, let some block of congressional liberal propose a $2 trillion stimulus package, let everyone freak out, then have Obama judiciously ride to the rescue with a $1.2 trillion compromise proposal.
Maybe. But maybe the stimulus would have been killed entirely. Or maybe it would have gotten whittled down to less than the actual package.
There is actually very little evidence to support the view that the stimulus amount could have ended up anything more than something under $1 trillion, which imples that the real game was making sure it happened at all. But that won’t keep people like Matt from imagining how with a wave of a magic wand, the stimulus amount could have been whatever Matt wanted.
July 8th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Can anyone think of an example of this happening differently during the Bush administration?
On an issue that was Bush and the Republican leadership vs. the Democrats, an example of the Republicans who attacked Bush from the right getting covered by the press?
I can’t come up with any. I think this is a media phenomenon that has nothing to do with party.
July 8th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
YGLESIAS…I think I will continue to post this in the comments of all of your posts until an apology appears on this blog.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124699072588807121.html
July 8th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Since Krugman has been completely and totally eviscerated, it’s clearly a positive thing that our unserious Keynesian press does not take the ludicrous idea of an additional dose of monetary dilution plus mindless spending and debt very seriously.
Since Keynesianism, along with “stimulus”, is a hoax bound to fail, all that is happening here is CYA for when it does.
Perhaps the press is finally worried about the judgment of history. Krugman and Yglesias haven’t thought that far ahead.
July 8th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Man, the crazies are active today!
July 8th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
The press is worried about the judgment of the rich guys who pay their salaries and are therefore quite eager to parrot the views of their employers as zealously as possible.
July 8th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
The press is worried about the judgment of the rich guys who pay their salaries and are therefore quite eager to parrot the views of their employers as zealously as possible.
This is how I see it. Krugman was talking about Media Matters which followed ABC, NBC, CBS, which are corporations owned by larger corporations. Krugman probably know this but is just being contrary.
July 8th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
“Can anyone think of an example of this happening differently during the Bush administration?”
Yes, on Bush’s immigration plan. He had a fairly moderate plan and got attacked from both sides. The press mainly covered the attacks from the right. The right yells louder.
July 8th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
The idea that the press is taking a free market/anti-Keynesian/anti-Obama line is absurd.
Perhaps next year when it is clear that the “stimulus” is a hoax only making things worse and worse, public outrage might force the press to come to its senses. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Tom Woods smacks down the new GM.
July 8th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
fostert,
joe specified “an issue that was Bush and the Republican leadership vs. the Democrats”, and that wasn’t really the case on immigration reform.
I think Harriet Miers may be closer to the mark, but even in that case, at a certain point the Democrats actually consciously stepped back and let the conservatives tear her apart.
So I think joe has a point.
July 8th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
… because the bill we got has been used so well. The way states are using the money for short term hole filling is actually counter-productive: rather than addressing the root of their problem (whether you think it’s over spending or not high enough taxation), they are just pushing thumbs into the dike.
When parents do this with children it’s called “apoiling them”.
July 8th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Well, I misspelled spoiling, and here’s the link I missed
July 8th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Boy, these new crazies are going to be awfully disappointed when they realize how little time Yglesias spends reading these comments.
July 8th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
maybe the best idea would have been for the White House to initially lay low, let some block of congressional liberal propose a $2 trillion stimulus package, let everyone freak out, then have Obama judiciously ride to the rescue with a $1.2 trillion compromise proposal.
I disagree. If a liberal block proposed a $2 trillion dollar stimulus they would be ignored by the press and other members of congress. If Obama came in with a $1.2 trillion dollar package he would be portrayed as siding with the “loony leftist” because both proposals have the word trillion in them.
July 8th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
Krugman’s whining is frankly bizarre. He has a column in the NYT and wants to compare his situation with that of an ‘unperson’. I’d assume that he’s just consciously trying to shift the Overton window.
Yes, on Bush’s immigration plan. He had a fairly moderate plan and got attacked from both sides. The press mainly covered the attacks from the right.
This was also the example that sprang to mind for me. But the explanation here is that illegal immigration is really quite unpopular in general; it’s not something that only the hardcore 20% of Republicans are against. Thus Bush’s position was actually left of center and it would have been fairly difficult to pretend that the views held by a majority of Americans didn’t even exist. But the media did do a good job of portraying the attacks from the right as being primarily the work of fringe elements like the Minutemen.
July 8th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
What Krugman is saying is pretty simple, as a classic Keynesian he holds what he considers a fairly middle-of-the-road viewpoint, and many respected economists, many of them Nobel laureates, hold similar views. Yet as a group they are almost completely shut out of the national debate.
There is no doubt that 65 years ago Krugman would have been part of this country’s political center. Now Krugman and other Americans who share his positions are considered part of the leftist fringe.
As he asks on his blog. “Who makes these decisions?”
July 8th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
As we all now know, Krugman prescribed a housing bubble as a good thing in 2002.
He prescribed a new Fed induced bubble in 2009:
Krugman should be considered part of the leftist fringe. He quotes “The Onion” for his policy prescriptions. He shouldn’t be taken seriously at all by anyone.
July 8th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
By the way, I don’t think it is fair to our beloved sheep friends to compare them to the media. Yes sheep are loyal to fault, and they often prove susceptible to the big mistake -like following each other blindly to a collective woolly doom.
But sheeps are not ruthless careerists, who care not a wit for the fleecy fellow next to them. And if you believe in the central premise of the movie “Babe,” which I do, sheep will, when direly pressed, resist the Fascist dogs with every laniferous fiber of their being -which is more than I can say for the media.
July 8th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
he holds what he considers a fairly middle-of-the-road viewpoint, and many respected economists, many of them Nobel laureates, hold similar views
But they’re only ‘middle of the road’ in an academic sense. In the real world where a third stimulus would take us into completely uncharted territory (in terms of of deficit-as-%-of-GDP or for that matter stimulus-as-%-of-GDP), the conservatism (by which in this case I just mean caution or prudence) of the electorate means that this idea is, rightly or wrongly, viewed as a radical experiment.
By way of analogy I think you could likewise line up a (probably even larger and more august) body of economists in favor of drug legalization. But that idea is similarly marginalized.
July 8th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
I keep wondering if those purporting to believe that Krugman was really arguing in favor of another bubble actually do believe what they’re saying. If so, isn’t one of the signs of a developmental disability the inability to recognize sarcasm?
July 8th, 2009 at 9:02 pm
You can keep saying this; it won’t actually turn his description of Alan Greenspan’s motivations into a prescription.
July 8th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
To: Slag and Joe
After reading these previously posted items here, here and here and reading all of the Krugman quotes contained therein, there is no question that:
a. Krugman called for a housing bubble in 2002 without sarcasm; and
b. Krugman always calls for continuous monetary dilution via artificially low interest rates with its associated economic dislocations and impoverishment in order to create bubbles which he deems to be the magic cure for economic slumps. Of course, there is no historical, evidentiary nor logical basis for any of this.
However, he’s a Keynesian. What else would one expect?
July 8th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
Bob lives in his own world where, Humpty Dumpty like, he simply refuses to agree to use words with the definitions everyone else has agreed to use. Sad, but you see it a lot.
You wouldn’t be a libertarian would you Bob?
July 9th, 2009 at 2:11 am
Seriously, the idea that Krugman was calling for a housing bubble is just bizarre. Key giveaway — he uses the word “bubble”.
An economist who was actually supporting the bubble would say something like “growth in the housing market” or “housing boom” or some such. “Bubble” clearly has negative connotations. The piece pretty clearly describes the motivations of the Fed — hide the problem by buttressing one house of cards with another.
July 9th, 2009 at 9:43 am
It’s funny to see so much reaching.
Krugman’s point was that the only way out was no way at all.
July 9th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
“Even better, of course, would be a DC press corps that took issues seriously on their own merits without trying to squeeze every policy debate into a talking heads cable news segment.”
Of course, if we had that, Obama wouldn’t be President.