Lunch at the Labs

Krugman vs. O'Reilly (and Luskin)

Tim Russert on CNBC 08/07/2004 had a "debate" between Bill O'Reilly of Fox News and Paul Krugman, columnist for the New York Times. O'Reilly played excerpts of it on his TV show 08/09/2004 and there is a full transcript of the original at this web page.

Donald Luskin (the author of that web page) has a column dated August 09, 2004 in the National Review Online with the subtitle "Krugman is squashed in a debate with O'Reilly". Here is an email I sent to him about it:

Hmmm, interesting. I watched the same "debate" between Krugman and O' Reilly and thought Krugman won. Reading your piece in the National Review Online (August 09, 2004), I think I might know why we came to different conclusions. Your wrote (along with a finger pointing picture):

In one case, when Krugman denied what O'Reilly accused him of having said, O'Reilly jabbed his index finger toward Krugman's face and shouted, Don't call me a liar, pal. Thats what you do all the time, and I'm not going to sit here and take it.

You think jabbing an index finger and yelling I'm not a liar is winning a debate, while I think it shows that you cannot back up your charges. Why didn't O'Reilly give some facts that proved what he said was true? O'Reilly was all emotion with no hard evidence and I'm surprised you were impressed by that. Does being a political partisan do that to someone?

Here is the reply I got back from him:

O'Reilly could have had even better evidence, but what he had was pretty good. And I think the emotion he showed in taking Krugman on was necessary to make any impact.

So he goes from "Krugman is squashed in a debate with O'Reilly" to "O'Reilly could have had even better evidence". And here is my response to his reply (which also refers to something he said in his National Review Online article mentioned above):

Thanks for your reply. How come you didn't make a statement like that in your NRO piece? I guess it doesn't make for a nice sound bite like "Krugman is squashed in a debate with O'Reilly".

And not only could O'Reilly not come up with better evidence on the spot, you can't either, even with time to think about it. Here is your "evidence" that Krugman said "the Bush tax cuts would lead to a deeper recession" (which Krugman denied):

Krugman wrote in his April 22, 2003, New York Times column that: Aside from their cruelty and their adverse effect on the quality of life, these cuts will be a major drag on the national economy. ... its clear that the administrations tax-cut obsession isn't just busting the budget; its also indirectly destroying jobs by preventing any rational response to a weak economy.

Can you point to the words in this quote which say "the Bush tax cuts would lead to a deeper recession"? In fact right now with the economy slowing and job creation grinding to a slow trickle, it looks like Krugman is more right than wrong. Nobody denies that handing out money to people and going into debt won't stimulate the economy in the short term; the question is what are the long term effects.

Mr. Luskin failed to respond to me a second time (presumably because he had no response). Methinks Mr. Luskin is more interested in getting people to read his writings than in being accurate. For another interpretation of the "debate" more in line with what I saw, see Shoot-out at the O'Reilly-Krugman Corral.