BuzzFlash Interviews Krugman

Paul Krugman, economist professor and columnist at the New York Times - I think Clinton's successes will be overshadowed by the scale of the disaster that followed. Not that Clinton will be blamed. I think historians will say, "Gee, there was a sensible, basically well-intentioned government that dealt successfully with a bunch of crazies."

A lot of good things happened in the 1920s, although there were a couple of really bad presidents. But all of that now, in historical memory, is colored by the realization of what followed afterwards.

I think that with the looming disasters of the budget on foreign policy –- and the things that really scare me, which I know we're not going to get into but let's just mention the erosion of civil liberties at home -– I think that, in retrospect, this will be seen in terms of how did the country head over this cliff.

I hope I'm wrong. If there's regime change in 2004, and the new man actually manages to steer us away from the disasters I see in front of us, then we'll probably be talking a lot about the long boom that was begun during the Clinton years, and how it was resilient, even to an episode of incredibly bad management.

But I don't think that's the way it's going to play out, to be honest. Whatever happens in the election, I think that we've done an extraordinary amount of damage in the last three years.

EL - What you mean WE, Kemosabe? Bush and the GOP did it all without my help.

There is no economic policy. That's really important to say. The general modus operandi of the Bushies is that they don't make policies to deal with problems. They use problems to justify things they wanted to do anyway. So there is no policy to deal with the lack of jobs. There really isn't even a policy to deal with terrorism. It's all about how can we spin what's happening out there to do what we want to do.

Now if you ask what do the people who keep pushing for one tax cut after another want to accomplish, the answer is they are basically aiming to create a fiscal crisis which will provide the environment in which they can basically eliminate the welfare state.

I was very much part of that comfortable world where the working assumptions –- the pretense, if you like -– is that we're all men of good will, and it's all intelligent and that the issues are deep. And if there are divisions, it's because there are really two sides.

And then here I am in the middle of this, trying desperately to get a few more people to notice that we have wildly dishonest, irresponsible people making policy in the world's greatest nation. And currents of abuse are coming in the mail and over the e-mails, as we saw. There are many mornings when I wake up and say, "Why am I doing this? But you got to do it."

If you work for any Murdoch publication or network [Fox, etc.], or if you work for the Rev. Moon's empire [Wash. Times, etc.], you're really not a journalist in the way that we used to think. You're basically just part of a propaganda machine. And that's a pretty large segment of the media.