Days of Reckonings

PAUL KRUGMAN is probably the smartest man ever to have a regular column on the op-ed page of the New York Times. A professor of economics who has taught at Yale, Stanford, MIT, and now Princeton, Krugman is widely expected to win a Nobel prize some day. It’s a rational expectation: Though not yet 50, Krugman has made major, even revolutionary, contributions to international-trade theory and to economic geography. So why is his column so extraordinarily awful?

It isn’t that he’s a liberal. He is one, but that does not distinguish him at the Times, which employs no conservative columnist (William Safire, who imagines himself to be a libertarian, is too ideologically confused to count). Besides, Krugman has been tough on his fellow liberals in the past. Early in the Clinton administration, for example, he was a vocal critic of the then-fashionable notion that countries compete with one another the way companies do. His criticism helped to demolish the intellectual pretensions of advocates of protectionism and of federal aid for “cutting edge” industries, both of which were said to be necessary to improve American “competitiveness.”

About the Author

Ramesh Ponnuru

Ramesh Ponnuru is the editor of National Review, a columnist for the Washington Post, and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

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PAUL KRUGMAN is probably the smartest man ever to have a regular column on the op-ed page of the New York Times. A professor of economics who has taught at Yale, Stanford, MIT, and now Princeton, Krugman is widely expected to win a Nobel prize some day. It’s a rational expectation: Though not yet 50, Krugman has made major, even revolutionary, contributions to international-trade theory and to economic geography. So why is his column so extraordinarily awful?

It isn’t that he’s a liberal. He is one, but that does not distinguish him at the Times, which employs no conservative columnist (William Safire, who imagines himself to be a libertarian, is too ideologically confused to count). Besides, Krugman has been tough on his fellow liberals in the past. Early in the Clinton administration, for example, he was a vocal critic of the then-fashionable notion that countries compete with one another the way companies do. His criticism helped to demolish the intellectual pretensions of advocates of protectionism and of federal aid for “cutting edge” industries, both of which were said to be necessary to improve American “competitiveness.”