Round 3!

Do you remember the squabble I mentioned between Niall Ferguson and Paul Krugman? It’s entered round 3.

Round 1 began with Dr. Ferguson’s Newsweek/Daily Beast article. Round 2 was the exchange of charges among Paul Krugman, Niall Ferguson, and a cast of characters from the American Left Blogosphere. Niall Ferguson has responded with a counter-attack on Paul Krugman in particular and the Left Blogosphere in general.

I think that some of his responses are rather weak, viz. his retort to Matthew O’Brien’s observations on the likelihood of China’s GDP surpassing ours:

Well, there you have it. It “doesn’t really matter” that for the first time since the 1880s the United States is about to cease being the world’s largest economy. Fact checked, found to be correct, and countered with an utterly naive opinion.

However, I think that some of his criticisms are quite strong, particularly his statement of the problems that President Obama has in running on his record:

Notice, then, that my central critique of the president is not that the economy has underperformed, but that he has not been an effective leader of the executive branch. I go on to detail his well-documented difficulties in managing his team of economic advisers and his disastrous decision to leave it to his own party in Congress to define the terms of his stimulus, financial reform, and health-care reform. I also argue that he has consistently failed to address the crucial issue of long-term fiscal balance, with the result that the nation is now hurtling toward a fiscal cliff of tax hikes and drastic spending cuts.

I don’t find his extending that argument into foreign policy nearly as telling if only because I don’t believe that American foreign policy can be understood solely through the prism of presidential activity or leadership.

All in all Dr. Ferguson’s counter-attack is an interesting and entertaining exercise in polemic. IMO Americans are not by temperament, education, or experience so skilled at polemic as Brits and we should avoid entering the lists with them in that particular area. Our press is not nearly as rough and tumble as theirs and the rules of decorum for both houses of our Congress, which set the stage for our political discourse, more closely resemble the patrician Lords than the more confrontative Commons which sets the tone for theirs.