Paul Krugman's moment of truthiness

I suffered cognitive dissonance this morning when I read this from Krugman:

We also all know that the reality [of how democracy in America functions] falls far short of the ideal. Voters are often misinformed, and politicians aren’t reliably truthful. Still, we like to imagine that voters generally get it right in the end, and that politicians are eventually held accountable for what they do. 

But is even this modified, more realistic vision of democracy in action still relevant? Or has our political system been so degraded by misinformation and disinformation that it can no longer function? 

He goes on to fulminate about Exhibit A: Americans do not know that the deficit has been dropping throughout the Obama years, as they did not know that the deficit was falling through Clinton's first term.

Why am I disconcerted by Krugman's consternation? Of course I share his frustration at the "outright falsehoods" that Republican leaders routinely mouth about the deficit. I agree, as he laments in this column, that our political discourse is shot through with truthiness.

But unlike Krugman (apparently), I recall what Krugman wrote..yesterday. Reacting to a recent morsel of egregious economic misinformation in a Robert Samuelson column, he opined:

Romney launches an apology tour

Romney first charged that Obama kicked off his presidency with an apology tour on June 1, 2009, and he has never stopped repeating that lie. What he meant was that Obama, in his addresses to various allies and sometime adversaries, often acknowledged some fault in past American conduct as prelude to acknowledging fault on the other side and defending overall American conduct, interests and values (see Politifact link below).  For example, in his address to the Arab world in Cairo on June 4, 2009 Obama cited legitimate causes for resentment of the U.S. and the west in Islamic countries:

More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam.