Why is David M. Kennedy so scurrilously condemning the Dem Party and Paul Krugman in the NY Times?

[FreeStateDemocrat]

What is this guy's agenda/politics that he spins this type of BS?

"And as for national security — well, as Krugman sees things, it was not Democratic bungling in the Iranian hostage crisis or humiliation in Somalia or feeble responses to the first bombing attack on the World Trade Center or the assault on the U.S.S. Cole, but the runaway popularity of the Rambo films (I’m not making this up) that hoodwinked the public into believing that the party of Carter and Clinton (not to mention McGovern and Kucinich) might not be the most steadfast guardian of the Republic’s safety."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/books/review/Kennedy-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1


corrected name

[Aviation Pro]

1. A history lesson for Brinkley....

...under which administration was the Shah installed?

...under which administration did the Somalia crisis start?

...which administration found, tried and convicted the Blind Sheik?

Gee, Brinkley, you must be a weak girly man.

[piedmont]

2. Did you know this post is the #1 Google entry for "David M. Brinkley?"

http://www.google.com/search?q=David+M.+Brinkley&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1

I searched that because I was thinking of David Brinkley, who is currently indisposed to writing columns in the New York Times. DU must have some SERIOUS Google-juice.

[cali]

3. A lesson for you: The review was written by this man:

David M. Kennedy, who teaches history at Stanford University, won the Pulitzer Prize for “Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945.”

I haven't read Krugman's book, so I can't comment on the review. I like Krugman as a columinst a great deal, but that doesn't mean he's infallible.

[hfojvt]

7. infallible? Of course he's not

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=2052715&mesg_id=2052715


But why does Kennedy feel the need to mention McGovern? Unlike Nixon, McGovern was a decorated veteran of WWII.

[hfojvt]

13. the man is supposed to be a historian, but seems more like a liar

He quotes Francis Amasa Walker, the first President of the American Economic Association, but I swear that quote is out of context. That Walker, more than likely was arguing against the definition that Kennedy touts. Although I remembered Walker as an Institutionalist, like most of the founders of the AEA, a biography says this about him:

"Walker grew increasingly conservative with age. He became an outspoken apologist of the Gilded Age and a formidable opponent of Henry George, socialists, populists and immigrants."

However, Charles Howard Hopkins writes in "The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism 1865-1915" (written in 1940)

"The interest of many ministers in sociology and the demand that Protestantism develop a scientific technique for carrying into effect the second commandment led to the participation of certain social gospelers in the founding of the American Economic Association in 1885. Professor (Richard T) Ely, who was perhaps the leading spirit in the group, found generous support for his new historical school of economics among the clergy who as we know had joined the "revolt against the laissez-faire theory" - in which attitude the Association found its chief raison d'etre."

So that does not fit with this, from Kennedy:

"And yet maybe Krugman is not really an economist — at least not according to the definition offered more than a century ago by Francis Amasa Walker, the first president of the American Economic Association, who wrote that laissez-faire “was not made the test of economic orthodoxy, merely. It was used to decide whether a man were an economist at all.”"

It was only later, with a sort of business backlash, abetted by WWI probably, that the neo-classical economists took over the AEA.

[earthside]

4. Who is David M. Brinkley?

The article is by David M. Kennedy.

[AlCzervik]

5. is he doing it via a ouija board?

[Malikshah]

6. His Agenda is his own ego. He's an academic who began to believe

he could walk on water.

I know a few folks who mention him as an example of what *not* to become.

In other words, a hack.

[CTyankee]

8. Well, after reading his review I question Kennedy's bona fides as an academic.

He must know that what he is saying about the historical items you cite (and which I read this morning) are at the very least debatable. I am hoping that there will be a flood of letters to the NY Times Book Review next week, correcting Kennedy's lamentable, and rather superficial, analysis.

[cali]

9. I don't think his bona fides are in question.

Whether you like it or not, he's a professor at a prestigious university and a pulitzer prize winner.

[CTyankee]

10. All the more reason that it would have been helpful for him to offer up some evidence to

support those statements. I think he was being irresponsible for not making his case better. THAT is what I would expect "a professor at a prestigious university and a pulitzer prize winner."

[Malikshah]

15. Well Friedman is a multiple Pulitzer Prize winner

And when one looks in the dictionary for "Hack"

we find a centerfold of the hirsute hack.

Ambrose was a prestigious scholar back in the day...

Awards and position mean nothing when it comes to one's actions these days.

[TomClash]

11. What a stupid review

This is particularly egregious nonsense: " . . . it was not Democratic bungling in the Iranian hostage crisis or humiliation in Somalia or feeble responses to the first bombing attack on the World Trade Center or the assault on the U.S.S. Cole . . . "

The humiliation in Somalia was started by Bush 41 - Clinton ended it. Nothing would not have solved the Iranian hostage crisis without getting the hostages killed - in the end, the Iranians released the hostages to Carter and got virtually nothing in return, except war with Iraq.

The assault on the USS Cole required a military response - which the bush Administration did not take until after 9/11. Both bush and Clinton claimed it was not clear it was Al Qaeda.

Here's flash to "Professor" Kennedy - the LAST WAR THE US WON WAS WON BY A DEMOCRAT - the war in the Balkans.

[Frances]

12. The last successful war president was a Democrat, FDR

[opihimoimoi]

14. Them GOP er guys have a really DISMAL RECORD of protecting the USA

Bush in particular is anything but successful...

The Dems would do much better...any of them would be better than any PUB..

Vote BLUE