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The Wheat-Exports March on Washington   Fannie Mae's Weird Rally
May 6 2008 5:18PM EDT

Clinton vs the Economists

From the Strange Bedfellows department: Mark Thoma and Greg Mankiw on one side, versus Paul Krugman and Tyler Cowen on the other. The issue, in a nutshell: does it matter if politicians ignore economists? Thoma and Mankiw say yes, if they're willing to ignore the experts on one of the few areas where the experts agree with each other, then you can't trust that they will ever make good use of advice. Krugman and Cowen say no, there are bigger fish to fry, and economists tend to overrate their own importance.

For me, personally, this gas-tax episode has changed my opinion of Hillary Clinton quite dramatically. Yes, I've been an Obama supporter for a while, but I've been less opposed to Clinton than most Obama supporters, until now. But the gas-tax proposal reminded me of the way that she described the proposed Dubai Ports deal as a threat to national security, and I realized that I just couldn't trust her assertions. I'm pretty sure she's smart enough to know that she's pandering - what Mankiw calls "mendacity with a dash of condescension". Which means that Clinton considers working-class votes to be more important than working-class voters. And that's not a claim I'd make about either of the other two candidates.

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