Clive Crook has a Bloomberg View column about New York Times columnist Paul Krugman:
He's enormously influential with those who need no persuading, which is to say not very influential at all. He would have more influence where it would actually make a difference if he developed -- or at least could feign -- some respect for those who aren't his disciples.
Krugman says his opponents are motivated by politics. "Am I (and others on my side of the issue) that much smarter than everyone else? No. The key to understanding this is that the anti-Keynesian position is, in essence, political. It's driven by hostility to active government policy and, in many cases, hostility to any intellectual approach that might make room for government policy."
Talk about lack of self-awareness. Does Krugman imagine that he isn't motivated by politics? His own views are equally driven by support for active government policy; in many cases, they are also driven by support for any intellectual approach that might make room for such government policy. Like any politician, he expresses certainty where he knows there is doubt. He's more than happy to simplify and exaggerate as the cause demands…. Krugman's weary disdain for roughly half the country is self-defeating…. if Krugman got out of his bubble a bit more, he'd find that the other half of the country contains no more than its fair share of knaves, fools and lunatics -- and a lot of thoughtful, public-spirited Americans whose views on the proper scale and scope of government are different from his, yet worthy of respect.
It's a good column, but Mr. Crook manages to undercut his own point by including a line dismissing Rush Limbaugh as "a talk radio clown."