Following -up on yesterday’s column, I think it’s fair to say that among respectable elite journalists there are two kinds of Bush-haters. The first find things wrong in the world and then work backward to find a way to blame Bush. And the second kind don’t. Krugman’s certainly the former and Chait’s for the most part the latter. I should have said that Chait deserves considerable credit for supporting the war and denouncing its critics despite his odd loathing of George Bush. As for Krugman, today’s column simply reveals that he’s so obsessed with Bush, so sure of his rightness, and so outrageously arrogant that he can’t even see when he’s making a fool of himself. His assertion, last week, that Mahatir’s anti-Semitism was Bush’s fault simply made no sense just as a matter of logic and established facts — as the New Republic itself notes in the current issue. That Krugman thinks he’s some sort of martyr for daring to speak the truth about Bush makes it almost impossible to take him seriously.