Bookmark this PBS profile of Paul Krugman, and keep it at the ready if you ever need a big does of sanity.
PAUL KRUGMAN: You can’t get too cynical. By and large, the people who are ranting about debt and deficits are the same people who thought it was perfectly fine for George W. Bush to cut taxes without any offsetting spending cuts.
They thought it was perfectly OK to have two unfunded wars. So deficits didn’t matter when their guy was in the White House. Now it matters because somebody else is in the White House. And, rest assured, if Mitt Romney is elected, they will suddenly find reasons why cutting taxes, even if it increases the deficit, is no problem.
PAUL SOLMAN: But that is a highly partisan remark and exactly the kind of thing that even people on your side of the spectrum say you’re too strident by constantly, constantly repeating.
PAUL KRUGMAN: Except it’s true, right? And people like me have been right so far. And that doesn’t mean we will always be right. But if you have got to choose who you’re going to believe, you might want to at least seriously consider the people who have called it right on how the economy was going to evolve these past three years or so.
It is funny to think of Krugman as “partisan” when so many Democrats have bought into the GOP’s debt crisis nonsense. So, perhaps partisan isn’t the correct word.
Definitions aside, I think Krugman has to just keep being right long enough for Democratic policy makers to start listening to him.