Paul Krugman is, as ever, interesting. His latest column via Mark Thoma. The essential point? Bush is a dolt and he and his buddies have never achieved anything.

The unwritten addition is that if only the American public were clever enough, as clever, say, as a Yale Professor and winner of the John Bates Clark Gold Medal, then they would have elected the Democrats and we would indeed have paradise upon earth. For Democrats, you see, are perfect and unsullied, specifically not vulnerable to any of the perverse incentives, poltical pressures, institutional failings, that economists, like those who are Professors at Yale and winners of the John Bates Clark Gold Medal and very clever men, even those slightly (and possibly unfairly over-recognized) cleverer people who have gone on to win the Nobel Prize, oooh, people like John Buchanan for example, identify as what is wrong with the American body politic.

Actually, that’s something of a breakthrough for the Good Professor. Might get him that Nobel he so richly deserves. Rowing against the current, going against the grain of current accepted theory in a subject is the way to get noticed. If you’re right of course. You see, Paulie has it that institutions don’t matter. Only people do. So replace the Republicans with Democrats and everything with be just dandy.

Right on! Clenched fist salute! Must be true. Dan Rostenkowski, Fernand St. Germain, Tip O’ Neill, Ted Kennedy, all Republicans, right?

Tags paul krugman Bush New York Times Krugman

So President
Bush’s plan to reduce imports of Middle East oil turns out to be no more
substantial than his plan — floated two years ago, then flushed down the memory
hole — to send humans to Mars. But what did you expect? After five years in
power, the Bush administration is still — perhaps more than ever — run by
Mayberry Machiavellis, who don’t take the business of governing seriously. …

In the State of the Union address Mr. Bush suggested that "cutting-edge
methods of producing ethanol" and other technologies would allow us "to replace
more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East." But the next day,
officials explained that he didn’t really mean what he said. "This was purely an
example," said Samuel Bodman, the energy secretary. And the administration has
actually been scaling back the very research that Mr. Bush hyped Tuesday
night…

Why announce impressive sounding goals when you have no plan to achieve them?
The best guess is that the energy "plan" was hastily thrown together to give Mr.
Bush something positive to say. For weeks administration sources told reporters
that the State of the Union address would focus on health care. But at the last
minute the White House might have realized that its health care proposals, based
on the idea that Americans have too much insurance, would suffer the same
political fate as its attempt to privatize Social Security. ("Congress," Mr.
Bush said, "did not act last year on my proposal to save Social Security."
Democrats responded with a standing ovation.)

So Mr. Bush’s speechwriters were told to replace the health care proposals
with fine words about energy independence, words not backed by any actual
policy. What about the rest of the speech? The State of the Union is normally an
occasion for boasting about an administration’s achievements. But what’s a
speechwriter to do when there are no achievements?

One answer is to pretend that the bad stuff never happened. The Medicare drug
benefit is Mr. Bush’s largest domestic initiative to date. It’s also a disaster
… So drugs went unmentioned in the State of the Union. Another answer is to
rely on evasive language. In Iraq, said Mr. Bush, we’ve "changed our approach to
reconstruction." In fact, reconstruction has failed. … So now, having
squandered billions … America’s would-be Marshall Plan in Iraq, reports The
Los Angeles Times, "is drawing to a close this year with much of its promise
unmet …" I guess you can call that a change in approach.

There’s a common theme underlying the botched reconstruction of Iraq, the
botched response to Katrina (which Mr. Bush never mentioned), the botched drug
program, and the nonexistent energy program. John DiIulio, the former White
House head of faith-based policy, explained it more than three years ago. …
"There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this
one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. … I heard many, many staff
discussions but not three meaningful, substantive policy discussions. There were
no actual policy white papers on domestic issues."

In other words, this administration is all politics and no policy. It knows
how to attain power, but has no idea how to govern. That’s why the
administration was caught unaware when Katrina hit, and why it was totally
unprepared for the predictable problems with its drug plan. It’s why Mr. Bush
announced an energy plan with no substance behind it. And it’s why the state of
the union — the thing itself, not the speech — is so grim.