Top ten most left-biased American journalists - #3: Paul Krugman, the New York Times

By Warner Todd Huston

Number three on our list almost violates the criteria that I set up in the first piece I wrote for this series. I said then that denizens of the Old Media that are too much a "cartoon of journalism" would not be included on my list. Yet despite my dismissal of such Old Media clowns, in the number four slot on the list you'll find Paul Krugman of The New York Times.

Given this week's revelations about the JournoList, we now know Krugman either participated in a media conspiracy to get Obama elected or at least witnessed it first hand and did nothing to stop it. Consider this fact merely the latest insight into a man who's done more consistently left-biased journalism than nearly anyone in America.

Krugman is indeed quite a cartoon of modern liberalism. He is hidebound and far from a new or even a very free thinker. But he makes the list simply because he is not only a Nobel Prize winner but is one of the leading media figures in America today. So, despite that he is not an original thinker and is steeped in liberal orthodoxy, his prominence argues for his inclusion here.

And besides that he is a true liberal loon.

Krugman's January 17 piece is a perfect example of the nonsense that he tries to pass off as political analysis. In his piece headlined "What Didn't Happen," Krugman seriously tried to claim that one of Barack Obama's biggest failings was that he doesn't blame Bush enough for his own failings.

Yes, you read me right. Krugman was saying that Obama doesn't blame Bush enough.

Amazingly after claiming that not enough of the taxpayer's money was wasted on the stimulus to nowhere, Krugman said Obama was not blaming Bush enough.

Mr. Obama didn't... shelter himself from criticism with a narrative that placed the blame on previous administrations.

Unfortunately for Krugman, the facts are clear and the facts show that blaming Bush has been a mainstay of nearly every policy speech and press conference Obama has made since he took office if not before.

In March of '09, for instance, Washington Post reporter Scott Wilson wrote a piece that noted that, "Obama has reminded the public at every turn that he is facing problems "inherited" from the Bush administration..." In that piece Wilson notes how time and again Obama blamed everything he faced on Bush.

And it didn't stop in March. In May Obama defended his counterterrorism policies by saying that he was cleaning up a "mess" left by the Bush administration.

In June, even the New York Times was reporting that the main tactic that the Obama administration was using to avoid blame was in "blaming the guy who came before."

In October Obama claimed that he was using a "mop" to "clean up somebody else's mess."

"Another way of putting it is when I'm busy and Nancy (Pelosi) is busy with our mop cleaning up somebody else's mess — we don't want somebody saying you're not holding that mop right. Why don't you grab a mop? Why don't you help clean up?"

Later another columnist, this time Mona Charen, noted as late as Dec of 2009 that Obama was still blaming everything on Bush.

So, just what was Krugman talking about? The blame Bush strategy had been preeminent since Obama took office, if not before that. Anyone with a simple Internet search engine can easily track down dozens of examples of Obama's penchant for blaming Bush for every failing. One can also find members of the Administration following along with their boss with the meme. So, how is it that Krugman had missed it all of this time? Perhaps he's missed it just like he's missed that mountain of evidence that discredits his pet economic theories. He just doesn't want to acknowledge reality.

His skewed vision isn't just employed to cover for Obama, either. In order to push the liberal perspective, Krugman isn't above a little dissembling in his work at The New York Times. Back in 2007, for instance, Krugman wrote a piece dismissing as nonsense the worry that Social Security was becoming insolvent.

But the "everyone" who knows that Social Security is doomed doesn't include anyone who actually understands the numbers. In fact, the whole Beltway obsession with the fiscal burden of an aging population is misguided.

To prove his case, Krugman used the work of Peter Orszag, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, who had at that time released a report titled "Addressing Rising Health Care Costs." By including Orszag's report in his discussion on Social Security, he mislead his readers into imagining that Orszag was claiming Soc. Sec. Was not in danger. The problem is that Orszag's report was not about Soc. Sec. at all. It was about Medicaid and Medicare.

As it happens the only folks "played for a sucker" was any of Krugman's readers who were foolish enough to believe his column.

But you'd better not call Krugman on the carpet for his deceit. He's already warned one and all that he'll punch the next guy that calls him out "in the kisser" for being so bold as to disagree with him.

Like all liberals, Krugman is not comfortable with dissent or that whole "free speech" thingie.

Let us hope that Paul Krugman doesn't meet Brett Barkley at a cocktail party any time soon. Barkley, an economics student at George Mason University, conducted a study of American economists and found that Krugman is the most partisan of them all.

Barkley found that Krugman's ideas on economics changed with each presidential administration seesawing back and forth depending on who held office. "Krugman has changed his tune in a significant way regarding the budget deficit when the White House has changed party," Barkley wrote.

Barkley found that on one hand Krugman attacked Republican presidents for not reducing the deficit, yet during Clinton and Obama's terms Krugman dismissed the importance of deficit reduction.

Krugman is also well known to dismiss any ethics violations that are perpetrated by Democrats. When Charlie Rangel (D, NY) was finding that his multiple ethics violations were giving him trouble in the House of Representatives, Krugman waved his hand and pronounced the violations as having "no national significance." One wonders if Krugman would be so dismissive if similar ethics violations were perpetrated by a Republican?

And that isn't the only example of his partisan hypocrisy. Some may remember in 2005 when the media discovered that a conservative radio commentator named Armstong Williams was paid by the Bush Administration to advocate for Bush's No Child Left Behind legislation. This was seen as a great evil by the left and Krugman wrote disparagingly of it at the time. Yet in 2010 when it was revealed that MIT health care economist Jonathan Gruber had been a paid Obama operative unbeknownst to those using his advocacy for Obamacare as "news," Krugman found no reason to get as upset over it as he did with Williams.

"The truth is that this is no big deal," Krugman said dismissively of Gruber's subterfuge. What was evidence of great corruption for a Bush operative was dismissed as no problem at all in an Obama operative as far as partisan hack Krugman was concerned.

Even though his claim to fame is economics, Krugman is also not above throwing the race card. In 2009, at the height of those angry townhall meetings facing Democrats across the nation resulting from the Obamacare debate, Krugman weighed in with the opinion that anyone that stood against Obamacare was... you guessed it... a racist.

Of those angry townhall participants, Krugman was sure that they were "reacting less to what Mr. Obama is doing, or even to what they've heard about what he's doing, than to who he is."

Krugman claimed that those against Obamacare were not mad at Obama's policies, but were instead mad that Obama is a black man. So as far as Krugman was concerned anyone standing against Obamacare is a raaaaaaacist.

There's so much more that we'd be here for years exploring it all, so I'll have to close here. Still, even as Krugman is a prosaic thinker prone to boring, left-wing rhetoric and high-strung hyperbole he's considered a big name on the left. And because of all this, Krugman deserves a spot on the top ten most left-biased American journos.

There's only two more spots left, so please check back tomorrow for left-biased journalist number two as our series begins to wind down.

© Warner Todd Huston