Dan and Mark, Paul Krugman and Newt’s shared interest in Asimov’s Foundation trilogy is indeed noteworthy. However, it may be nigh impossible to avoid some psychohistorians influencing the next president: Harvard economics professor, Bush CEA chief, and Romney adviser Greg Mankiw is also a fan.

I have a vague memory of him mentioning this in the first lecture of his introductory economics course at Harvard (“Ec 10”), and saying something quite similar to Krugman’s statement that “economics is as close to psychohistory as you can get.” In a Harvard Crimson article, Mankiw included it among a list of favorite works:

3) “Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov.” I was mesmerized by this science fiction classic when I read it in high school. I was drawn to Asimov’s fictional field of psychohistory, which now reminds me a lot of economics.

I’d agree with Dan that concept of “laws” and “hidden forces,” rather than individuals, isn’t wholly unconservative, but assuming we can model them well, as economists or psychohistorians, is. At least we can assume a (mostly) free marketer like Mankiw is more skeptical of our ability to shape and predict society than Krugman is.