Paul Krugman gets it wrong

There are few people more worth reading than Paul Krugman in the New York Times. It is an unalloyed public good to have a Progressive economist writing on the nation's senior Op-Ed page.

Unfortunately, Krugman occasionally also writes about politics. Now, that's in itself nothing bad. However, his political instincts are less sure than his economic analysis. Consider this:

It is, in a way, almost appropriate that the final days of the struggle for the Democratic nomination have been marked by yet another fake Clinton scandal — the latest in a long line that goes all the way back to Whitewater.

You can essentially stop reading at that point to think about a larger issue. True enough, Whitewater was never a real scandal; there was no wrongdoing, other perhaps than by journalists against the interests of the American people. Journalists that signally include those working for Krugman's employer, The New York Times, which broke the story, such as it was.

If we posit that a public statement can become the substance of scandal - something that seems true if you consider that George Bush is still being raked over the coals for giving a speech under a banner titled 'Mission Accomplished', in short, for words that he didn't even say - then Senator Clinton's recent remarks about her enduring campaign, Senator Obama, Bobby Kennedy, and the role that assassinations play in American political life qualify.

This is not a fake scandal. It is a grievous lapse in judgment about what constitutes acceptable discourse, a lapse that calls into question Clinton's ability to serve in the office she is running for. You simply can't even appear to make the violent death of your opponent a part, however tangential or unintentional, of your campaign strategy. This is not something that's normally talked about, because it's assumed by common consent to be so far beyond the pale as to render any discussion unnecessary.

Nobody in their right mind thinks that Hillary Clinton wishes for Senator Obama's life to be cut short by violence. That does not make this episode any less disturbing, or any less deserving of censure.

But what this entire harrowing sequence of events makes abundantly clear is that any public good Senator Clinton's campaign served in the past is insignificant next to the damage she is causing to the party and herself. For better or for worse, she is now widely perceived as running because Obama may get shot. It's hard to discern how the public interest is served by that perception.

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