'Tis better to have lied, than to have never planned at all

[lsanderson]

Kid Gloves
Paul Krugman
August 12, 2010

Oy. So the Times has a profile of Paul Ryan, sort of — you’ll notice that there is hardly any information about what’s actually in his plan. What we get is:

Paul Krugman, the New York Times Op-Ed columnist, recently derided Mr. Ryan as a “flimflam man,” arguing that the tax cuts in his plan would ultimately make the debt worse.
Is that remotely an adequate summary of what I said? I don’t think so. And notice, by the way, that the tax cut problem is implicitly presented as some kind of long-run issue, when the reality is that it turns the plan into a deficit-increasing venture from day one.

But what really bothered me was this:

Let’s leave aside for now the debate over the viability of the road map, which, as a practical matter, doesn’t stand a chance of being enacted as is, anyway. The more pertinent question is whether Mr. Ryan is the kind of guy who just wants to make a point — or whether his road map represents the starting point in what could be a serious negotiation about entitlements and spending.

That’s completely wrong-headed. My experience — very much based on Bush 2000 — is that a politician’s policy proposals offer the best clue to what “kind of guy” he is. Back then, all the professional political reporters were hanging out with W and reporting what a swell guy he was, while I was looking at the flimflam in his tax and Social Security plans, and reaching the conclusion that he was a scammer. Who was right? More