Master saboteurs

You've got to hand it to Mitch McConnell and the Republicans generally: Basically every aspect of their strategy and execution since Obama was first elected has been effective. Poison public perception of effective legislation like the stimulus and the ACA? Check.  Block all constructive legislation since winning the House, and blame Obama for inaction?  Check. Inhibit economic growth with savage austerity during a demand slump?  Check. Outmaneuver the president on budget issues by proving willing, or seeming willing, to shut down the government, default on the national debt, and pull the trigger on spending cuts beyond what anyone would have dreamed a few years ago? Check.  Depopulate the executive branch by slow-walking all appointments (until the filibuster rule change this year)? Check. Disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of black and Hispanic voters with voter suppression measures? Check. Flood the airwaves with dark money supplied by their corporate and ideological masters? Check.

It's all worked. Some say the victories are Pyrrhic and will be short-lived. But if they can keep Obama's approval numbers in the low 40s or worse, and keep economic growth at a steady sputter, they may win control of the only branch and level of government they don't dominate.

In which Paul Krugman gets cutesy with causality

ICYMI, this week serious questions were raised about a controversial and influential paper by Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff that purported to show -- or at least has been taken to show -- that when a country's national debt reaches about 90% of GDP, that debt acts as a significant drag on growth.  On April 15, Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash and Robert Polin published a paper alleging that Reinhart and Rogoff's paper contained, along with various methodological errors, a coding error in an Excel spread sheet. In response,  Reinhart and Rogoff acknowledge the error, but defend their methodology and  maintain that the error does not materially affect their conclusions. They also claim that they never stated categorically that higher debt caused lower growth. It's that question of how a politically freighted point is communicated and received that interests me here.

On his blog, Paul Krugman cried "casuistry" on that last point:

And the everyone hyping Reinhart-Rogoff very much included Reinhart and Rogoff themselves. Matt O’Brien has the goods. It’s true that their papers never said outright that the relationship was causal, but they weren’t anywhere near that scrupulous in op-eds and other media presentations. And the truth is that the papers may not have stated causation flatly, but it was clearly insinuated. By trying to claim now that they never meant to imply such a thing, R-R are falling down seriously in the menschhood test.

Today, Krugman, austerity's most stalwart enemy, devoted a whole column to the kerfuffle. And while I'm happy to see him hammer away at the foundations of the case for austerity, I must say that he replicates the alleged rhetorical error. That is, he gets cutesy with causality. The whole essay is set up to convey a conclusion that he somewhat airily dismisses in the final sentence.

The opening paragraph poses a pretty grandiose premise: