I am second to no one in my admiration for Paul Krugman, the almost lone voice of reason among the elite punditry. But as someone who, each day, tries to think of something fairly original to say to differentiate myself from the thousands of other blogging types, I must say that Krugman has it easy. Consider this morning’s column, Played for a Sucker, in which Krugman observes:
Inside the Beltway, doomsaying about Social Security — declaring that the program as we know it can’t survive the onslaught of retiring baby boomers — is regarded as a sort of badge of seriousness, a way of showing how statesmanlike and tough-minded you are.
Consider, for example, this exchange about Social Security between Chris Matthews of MSNBC and Tim Russert of NBC, on a recent edition of Mr. Matthews’s program “Hardball.”
Mr. Russert: “Everyone knows Social Security, as it’s constructed, is not going to be in the same place it’s going to be for the next generation, Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives.”
Mr. Matthews: “It’s a bad Ponzi scheme, at this point.”
Mr. Russert: “Yes.”
But the “everyone” who knows that Social Security is doomed doesn’t include anyone who actually understands the numbers. In fact, the whole Beltway obsession with the fiscal burden of an aging population is misguided.
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How has conventional wisdom gotten this so wrong? Well, in large part it’s the result of decades of scare-mongering about Social Security’s future from conservative ideologues, whose ultimate goal is to undermine the program.
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Social Security isn’t a big problem that demands a solution; it’s a small problem, way down the list of major issues facing America, that has nonetheless become an obsession of Beltway insiders. And on Social Security, as on many other issues, what Washington means by bipartisanship is mainly that everyone should come together to give conservatives what they want.
Krugman has the luxury of reading the blogs, absorbing what is conventional wisdom, almost cliches, thereon, and regurgitating it to an audience for whom it represents a new and piercing insight. This column appeared today, Friday. The stuff about Russert and Matthews was so Monday to us internet junkies, and the remark about beltway “seriousness” is standard fare.
By no means am I disparaging Krugman. He is doing yeoman service. These are ideas that need to be put before a wider public, not to mention into the faces of the beltway media. We can all be thankful that the Editors of the Times hired the man, a move they might now regret. Still, I have more than once felt quite sure that he has recycled his internet reading, an option foreclosed to those of us who are writing for an audience that is not otherwise fed a diet of beltway wisdom. In any event, he has a way with words, and has become something of an expert in distilling a lot of substance into the few paragraphs with which he has to work. I’m looking forward to reading his book, which is sitting upstairs in my Christmas stack.
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