Krugman: The Pundit Delusion

[shellgame26]

The New York Times Op Ed

The latest hot political topic is the “Obama paradox” — the supposedly mysterious disconnect between the president’s achievements and his numbers. The line goes like this: The administration has had multiple big victories in Congress, most notably on health reform, yet President Obama’s approval rating is weak. What follows is speculation about what’s holding his numbers down: He’s too liberal for a center-right nation. No, he’s too intellectual, too Mr. Spock, for voters who want more passion. And so on.

But the only real puzzle here is the persistence of the pundit delusion, the belief that the stuff of daily political reporting — who won the news cycle, who had the snappiest comeback — actually matters.

This delusion is, of course, most prevalent among pundits themselves, but it’s also widespread among political operatives. And I’d argue that susceptibility to the pundit delusion is part of the Obama administration’s problem.

What political scientists, as opposed to pundits, tell us is that it really is the economy, stupid. Today, Ronald Reagan is often credited with godlike political skills — but in the summer of 1982, when the U.S. economy was performing badly, his approval rating was only 42 percent.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/opinion/19krugman.html?src=me&ref=homepage

[Skittles]

1. there's a whole lotta delusion going on

it's readily apparent right here on DU

[NJmaverick]

3. Yes, yes it is

[Skittles]

4. what?

you're not gonna twist yourself into a pretzel and trash the article? :rofl:

[northernlights]

2. he's dead-on again. how long til he goes under the bus?

3...2...1

"Maybe he couldn’t have passed an adequate-sized plan, but the fact is that he didn’t even try."

I gave him the benefit of the doubt...thought they'd do the smaller, "scattershot" plan, see what worked and what didn't, and then do a 2nd plan focussed on getting the biggest bang for the buck. Silly me.