Krugman on the Recession and the Candidates

The Shrill One weighs in with no small amount of sarcasm on both the recession and the recent campaign "reporting":

Since this is an election year, the debate over how to stimulate the economy is inevitably tied up with politics. And here’s a modest suggestion for political reporters. Instead of trying to divine the candidates’ characters by scrutinizing their tone of voice and facial expressions, why not pay attention to what they say about economic policy?

Snicker. And then he goes on to talk about the candidates, right and left. My favorite line is in response to the news that John McCain gets his economic advice from Alan Greenspan: "But shouldn’t we worry about a candidate who’s so out of touch that he regards Mr. Bubble, the man who refused to regulate subprime lending and assured us that there was at most some “froth” in the housing market, as a source of sage advice?" He is, if anything, sharper with Guiliani and Huckabee, Romney simply irritates him. Krugman's opinion is that the guy knows what he should say, but is too busy pandering to the Republican base to deal with reality.

On the Democratic side, he gives pride of place to Edwards (who he clearly supports), but gives HRC her due as well:

On the Democratic side, John Edwards, although never the front-runner, has been driving his party’s policy agenda. He’s done it again on economic stimulus: last month, before the economic consensus turned as negative as it now has, he proposed a stimulus package including aid to unemployed workers, aid to cash-strapped state and local governments, public investment in alternative energy, and other measures.
Last week Hillary Clinton offered a broadly similar but somewhat larger proposal. (It also includes aid to families having trouble paying heating bills, which seems like a clever way to put cash in the hands of people likely to spend it.) The Edwards and Clinton proposals both contain provisions for bigger stimulus if the economy worsens.

And you have to say that Mrs. Clinton seems comfortable with and knowledgeable about economic policy. I’m sure the Hillary-haters will find some reason that’s a bad thing, but there’s something to be said for presidents who know what they’re talking about.

He puts Obama at the end of the Democratic group as he did to Romney with the Republicans, and the message is the same - Obama is too busy pandering to the right-wing to address the real issues:

The Obama campaign’s initial response to the latest wave of bad economic news was, I’m sorry to say, disreputable: Mr. Obama’s top economic adviser claimed that the long-term tax-cut plan the candidate announced months ago is just what we need to keep the slump from “morphing into a drastic decline in consumer spending.” Hmm: claiming that the candidate is all-seeing, and that a tax cut originally proposed for other reasons is also a recession-fighting measure — doesn’t that sound familiar?

Anyway, on Sunday Mr. Obama came out with a real stimulus plan. As was the case with his health care plan, which fell short of universal coverage, his stimulus proposal is similar to those of the other Democratic candidates, but tilted to the right.

For example, the Obama plan appears to contain none of the alternative energy initiatives that are in both the Edwards and Clinton proposals, and emphasizes across-the-board tax cuts over both aid to the hardest-hit families and help for state and local governments. I know that Mr. Obama’s supporters hate to hear this, but he really is less progressive than his rivals on matters of domestic policy.

Ouch. When Paul Krugman compares you to Geoprge W. Bush, you're not doing too well.

Krugman did what every new reporter should be doing - ignoring the horse race and focusing on the words and the issues. Enough of the crap Obama is throwing about how racist and unfair HRC is being to him. How about looking at how unfair he is being to ordinary Americans in the face of what looks to be a very bad recession?

Anglachel