Am I the only left-leaning blogger who isn't gaga over Paul Krugman? It's not that I don't agree with him (I almost always do); but unless he's talking about economics, he hardly ever says anything new, and he never does any research. In today's column he makes generalization after generaliztion, finally bringing us to the bizarre conclusion (or does he call it a suspicion?) that Donald Rumsfeld "just didn't feel like dealing with the problem." I'm not one to defend Mr Rumsfeld, but that's hardly a probable explanation for any policy decision in the power-hungry Pentagon. The argument is simplistic, and as always Krugman wows us with research he didn't do - "according to Fred Kaplan in Slate..." and "yesterday The Washington Post printed an interview..." - did he even double-check with these sources? His journalistic instincts seem to be about as developed as mine - and I think the comparison with bloggers is pretty apt, given his sensibilities. Maybe they should do the right thing and set him up at nytimes.com?
By the way, I don't feel the same way about his economic writing - a couple of his books are excellent for the non-economist: The Age of Diminishing Expectations is a great primer on the state of the economy in the 90s, and Pop Internationalism should be required reading for anyone who's talking about globalization.
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