March 23, 2004, 9:32 a.m.
The Intimidators
Krugman & Co. peddle fear.

Paul Krugman's New York Times column today is about the secrecy and dishonesty of the Bush administration, and how it punishes people who blow the whistle. You know, people like Richard Clarke, yet another disgruntled ex-administration official with a book to sell who appears on 60 Minutes to sell it. That's right, the "counterterrorism czar" who, the last time he appeared on 60 Minutes (when he was serving in the Clinton administration), displayed his profound grasp of the dynamics of Islamofascist terrorist operations by saying of the attack on the USS Cole: "It was a very large explosion, and did very extensive damage, and shows a great deal of sophistication with explosives."

Krugman acts shocked that the Bush administration has anything less than a kind word to say about the counterterrorism czar on duty on September 11, the man who's now taunting "I told you so" and blaming everybody in the administration but himself. Krugman quotes Vice President Cheney saying Clarke was "out of the loop," and White House spokesman Scott McClellan saying it's "more about politics and a book promotion than about policy." Krugman calls those gentle chides "character assassination."

Okay, then. If that's character assassination, then what do you call what Krugman does to former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer in today’s column? In the column's first paragraph, Krugman writes:

After 9/11, the administration's secretiveness knew no limits — Americans, Ari Fleischer ominously warned, “need to watch what they say, watch what they do.” Patriotic citizens were supposed to accept the administration's version of events, not ask awkward questions.

Fleischer said this in response to two questions from reporters at a White House press briefing fifteen days after the 9/11 attacks. The first was about disparaging remarks about Sikh-Americans made by Republican congressman John Cooksey, and the second about remarks by comedian Bill Maher that American soldiers are cowards while the 9/11 terrorists were not. Fleischer said, "it's a terrible thing to say, and it [sic] unfortunate. And that's why — there was an earlier question about has the president said anything to people in his own party — they're reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do. This is not a time for remarks like that; there never is."

The remark simply wasn't about accepting "the administration's version of events" or about not asking "awkward questions." It was about not making racist remarks in what could be a potential lynch-mob environment — and about not calling American soldiers cowards.

Does Krugman's vicious distortion of Fleischer's statement flatly run afoul of the New York Times’s ethics guidelines? Well, yes and no. They state: "In every case, writer and editor must both be satisfied that the intent of the subject has been preserved." What a wonderfully Timesian rule! How beautifully inward-looking! There's no requirement that the intent has to be preserved in an objective sense — only people who work for the Times have to be satisfied. I have no doubt that Krugman and his editor Gail Collins are mighty satisfied.

What would Times "public editor" Daniel Okrent say? Here's a clue. He wrote about the ethics of quotations on January 4, after a Times story caused a furor by eliminating a few key words from a Bush statement on gay marriage. He said: "We just have to hope that quotations are rendered accurately and fairly. (Is this a shot across the bows of columnists, editorial writers and the public editor? You bet it is.)"

That means it's only a matter of time (and we hear it will be a very short time indeed) until Okrent comes out with his long-anticipated commentary on the matter of fairness, accuracy, and corrections on the Times editorial page.

What, we may wonder, has taken Okrent so long? Maybe it's because the Times plays as rough with anyone who criticizes its sacred-cow columnists as Krugman says the Bush administration does with its enemies.

Times executive editor Bill Keller publicly called Okrent's January 4 column "an ill-informed swipe." By Krugman's standards, that's character assassination.

But what about what Krugman himself said about me on national television — that I "stalked" him "personally"? That's character assassination by anyone's standards.

And how about the Times’s allegedly sending an FBI agent to intimidate a harmless female limo driver in Cincinnati, a woman who sent Krugman an e-mail criticizing him, an e-mail she described to me as "a 'nasty' letter with, however, ZERO threats"?

And how about the Times’s using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to shut down a webpage put up by Krugman Truth Squad member Robert Cox of the National Debate blog? The page was a perfect trompe l'oeil replica of the Times’s web corrections page — but listing all the corrections of errors by columnists that the Times is afraid to publish (including a number of Krugman howlers that you read here first). The page is back, now bearing text that declares it is a parody.

Does it seem like a corporate policy of fear-mongering and intimidation might be emerging here?

It's just as Paul Krugman said in a recent interview on Australia’s Lateline television show. He was asked to react to my trademark characterization of him as "America's most dangerous liberal pundit." He said, "Well, look, this is good … let them hate as long as they fear."

Sound familiar? It should. It's a quote from Emperor Caligula. And it was the title of Krugman’s March 7, 2003, Times column. Krugman called it the “perfect description of George Bush’s attitude toward the world.” His reaction a year ago? “ ... what I feel, above all, is shame.” But now, when the fear is on the other foot? "Well, look this is good … ”

— Donald Luskin is chief investment officer of Trend Macrolytics LLC, an independent economics and investment-research firm. He welcomes your comments at don@trendmacro.com.