Until now, I've avoided bashing Paul Krugman for his recent string of anti-Obama columns, because well.. I just didn't see the point. Some of his criticisms of Barack were fair, others less so, but the man's got a right to his opinion, so it didn't much bother me one way or the other. I mean, sure, given that the string began almost immediately after the Obama campaign directly attacked Krugman in a press release, it did seem a bit vindictive, but still... compared to what else passes for punditry these days, I wasn't all that pressed.
But today's column is so over the top it demands a response. First, an excerpt:
In 1956 Adlai Stevenson, running against Dwight Eisenhower, tried to make the political style of his opponent’s vice president, a man by the name of Richard Nixon, an issue. The nation, he warned, was in danger of becoming “a land of slander and scare; the land of sly innuendo, the poison pen, the anonymous phone call and hustling, pushing, shoving; the land of smash and grab and anything to win. This is Nixonland.”
The quote comes from “Nixonland,” a soon-to-be-published political history of the years from 1964 to 1972 written by Rick Perlstein, the author of “Before the Storm.” As Mr. Perlstein shows, Stevenson warned in vain: during those years America did indeed become the land of slander and scare, of the politics of hatred.And it still is. In fact, these days even the Democratic Party seems to be turning into Nixonland.
The bitterness of the fight for the Democratic nomination is, on the face of it, bizarre. Both candidates still standing are smart and appealing. Both have progressive agendas (although I believe that Hillary Clinton is more serious about achieving universal health care, and that Barack Obama has staked out positions that will undermine his own efforts). Both have broad support among the party’s grass roots and are favorably viewed by Democratic voters.
Supporters of each candidate should have no trouble rallying behind the other if he or she gets the nod.
Why, then, is there so much venom out there?
I won’t try for fake evenhandedness here: most of the venom I see is coming from supporters of Mr. Obama, who want their hero or nobody. I’m not the first to point out that the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality. We’ve already had that from the Bush administration — remember Operation Flight Suit? We really don’t want to go there again.
What’s particularly saddening is the way many Obama supporters seem happy with the application of “Clinton rules” — the term a number of observers use for the way pundits and some news organizations treat any action or statement by the Clintons, no matter how innocuous, as proof of evil intent.
This is just off the charts, nonsensically stupid. Because Clinton is being subjected to unfair treatment in the media, Obama's people are turning the Democratic Party into the land of Nixon. Are you kidding me? He can't be serious. Can he?
His column first blames Obama's supporters for "most of the venom" he sees in the campaign, and then compares their support for Obama's campaign to a "cult of personality" reminiscent of the way so many mindlessly supported Bush.
And his evidence for all this? Media coverage of Whitewater, the media's over-reaction to Hillary Clinton's LBJ+MLK riff, David Shuster's "pimped out" comment about Chelsea, and the endless repetition of Al Gore's alleged statement claiming he had once invented the Internet. Of the four, only one is even tangentially related to Obama, and none directly involve him or his supporters. Nevertheless, it is all Obama's fault. Or something.
Krugman doesn't have to like Obama, nor does he have to support him. But if he really is opposed to "the land of sly innuendo" and "the poison pen," must not he at least be fair to him?
Very late update: Krugman's readers seem to agree with me.
Subscribe to this blog's feed
