In a short jab at Paul Krugman last month, ABC’s The Note encapsulates everything I hate about the DC insider journalist perspective:

Paul “Pauly One-Note” Krugman of the New York Times looks at international examples of privatizing retirement funds and says he isn’t buying the Administration’s arguments, saying that privatization cuts benefits and leaves more retirees in poverty. LINK

Not only is The Note obviously uninterested in actual policy issues like Social Security (the reason we have politics in the first place), but it dismisses Krugman with casual disdain as “Pauly One-Note”. This attitude is why Slate tries so desperately to be counter-intuitive — because elite journalism prizes being unpredictable above all else. Krugman is consistently anti-Bush; therefore his writing is dismissed as partisan hackery even when it’s not. What’s sad about this is the press has a pitiful level of understanding of Social Security, and they could learn something from Krugman, one of the top economists alive (who has written a nice primer on the issue for the online-only Economists’ Voice [196K PDF]). Here’s a case in point: numerous reporters can’t even understand the percentage of income that would be diverted into private accounts. It’s certainly true that Krugman sometimes bangs the drum too hard or fails to find fault with liberals, but there’s nothing wrong in principle with being a forceful and consistent advocate for your views.

(For the best in-depth look at this issue, see Nick Confessore’s 2001 profile of Krugman for Washington Monthly.)

Update 1/25: I’ve written a response to criticism of this post by Ken Waight and Donald Luskin.