Kurtz on Krugman: Nice Guy

Monday, 27 September 2010 | by Pat's Picks

He may be a “prophet of doom,” writes Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post, but when you meet him, Paul Krugman is actually a very nice guy. Though his characterization of President Obama as “timid leader too willing to play nice with the Republicans” is now widely accepted, Krugman continues to pound away says Kurtz, “establish[ing] a counter-narrative against what everyone else is saying.”

And according to his Times colleague, Gail Collins, that’s what makes him great: “That’s what great columnists do—pick great themes and go at them and not feel, ‘Oh, my God, I’ve already written about this’.” Kurtz traces Krugman’s outrage back to the “mendacity of the Bush administration.”