In his Friday column, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman launches into the press for failing to honor Hillary Clinton as a learner for flip-flopping on the drawbacks of trade agreements.
The press, I’m sorry to say, tends to punish open-mindedness, because gotcha journalism is easier and safer than policy analysis. Hillary Clinton supported trade agreements in the 1990s, but now she’s critical. It’s a flip-flop! Or, possibly, a case of learning from experience, which is something we should praise, not deride.
Naturally for someone favoring the Clintons in this moment, Krugman insisted "you shouldn’t care whether a candidate is someone you’d like to have a beer with. Nor should you care about politicians’ sex lives, or even their spending habits unless they involve clear corruption."
Krugman could be saying something between the lines here: a poll would probably find out not many people would like to have a beer with Paul Krugman. He continued:
No, what you should really look for, in a world that keeps throwing nasty surprises at us, is intellectual integrity: the willingness to face facts even if they’re at odds with one’s preconceptions, the willingness to admit mistakes and change course.
What Krugman actually means here is: the willingness to admit that more socialism works:
So what’s the state of intellectual integrity at this point in the election cycle? Pretty bad, at least on the Republican side of the field.....as far as I can tell no important Republican figure has admitted that none of the terrible consequences that were supposed to follow health reform — mass cancellation of existing policies, soaring premiums, job destruction — has actually happened.
Ideology is on display, for can it be said that Obama presented his case with intellectual integrity? "If you like your insurance, you can keep it?" Premiums would decrease?
This is the same Krugman that said Obama was a much more consequential president than Reagan because he squeezed through Obamacare (using insincere promises).
This is also the same Krugman who greeted Mitt Romney's nods toward the centrists in 2012 with this scorching take: "The truth is that Mr. Romney is so deeply committed to insincerity that neither side can trust him to do what it considers to be the right thing."
