Keep it up Matt. Most of your critics seem to have gone through college without ever encountering the difference between analysis and opinion.

You are right, of course – it is chauvinistic to claim that what we do here is “higher” in some sense. I should have worded that differently. Krugman’s work is valuable – not least because he’s one of the most prominent and erudite flame bearers for the liberal cause. My point is simply to remind folks that what he does is different than what we do here – he’s using data to further a particular political viewpoint. Here, in contrast, we try to let the data speak for itself, regardless of where it takes us, although I wouldn’t for a moment claim that means the views expressed here are more “objective”. But they aren’t driven by a particular political viewpoint (which I know drives some of you batty.) I used Krugman because more than one person responding to my last post (and most of the critical comments were posted on the Salon website) cited his column to prove that I was wrong. But that misses the point of what I was trying to do in my blogs: I told you what Obama was going to do, and why – not whether it was good or bad. Krugman has a different purpose – he wants to tell you why what Obama did was wrong. I don’t pretent to know if it was wrong. I just know why he did it (or at least I think I do). Perhaps Krugman is right that the debt deal was a catastrophic failure – but take that up with him, not me.

The one thing I want to say against this post – and I hope I’m not falling into the very trap you’re rejecting here – is that I think you’re being unfair to Krugman. On the altruistic side of things, I think he’s keenly aware that he’s one of very few unapologetic lefties working for a major news organization with mainstream pedigree (distiuishing, say, Mother Jones, which has a very strong leftist pedigree, from the NYT) and feels it’s important to hold the banner high. On a more cynical note, he knows how hungry his audience is for the kind of polemic he offers, and he makes sure to give it to them. But speaking as one of those people, that’s no small service, cynically offered or not. (Besides, if he’s faking, he does it well enough as makes no nevermind.)

Either way, I suppose I feel it’s a bit academically chauvinist to say that what you do is “higher” than what he does. He’s on the activist side of journalism; you’re on the (academically) analytic side. Both are valuable.