DEBATING POLITICS, ECONOMICS AND OTHER TIMELY TOPICS WITH PAUL KRUGMAN OF THE NEW YORK TIMES

FRIDAY, AUGUST 28, 2015

PAUL KRUGMAN

BACKSTORY

When the Default Is to Classify Everything

Controversy
Over Email

The Hillary Clinton email scandal continues and there is still no

sign that she broke any rules when
she was secretary of state, and no
sign that she sent or received anything labeled classified but she
may have received and even forwarded items that were later classified, or
that should have been classified.
By normal human standards,
this is a big nothing. But in this case
Clinton Rules under which malign
behavior is the default assumption
apply: Where theres smoke there
must be fire, even if everyone knows
that the usual suspects are using big
smoke machines.
But Jeffrey Toobin at The New
Yorker recently added a further
twist: To the extent that some things
may have been classified after the
fact, its a very good guess that they
shouldnt have been because
the government classifies everything. (Read his article here: nyr.
kr/1JhSNi4.)
I know a bit about this from firsthand, if very old, experience. I was
the senior international economist
at the Council of Economic Advisers from 1982 to 1983. (Yes, Ronald
Reagan was president, but it was a
technocratic post. The senior domestic economist was a guy named Lawrence Summers. Whatever happened
to him?) In that post, I received
a lot of reports labeled SECRET
NOFORN NOCONTRACT PROPIN
ORCON (or no foreign nationals,
no contractors, proprietary information, origin controlled). I cant
remember a single document so labeled that included information that
was remotely sensitive or for that
matter, that contained stuff that you
couldnt read in The New York Times
or The Washington Post.
And pretty soon I got very casual
about the whole thing. We had a security officer who would come through
our offices at night, and if he found
classified material left out he would
grab it, put it in the safe and issue a
demerit. Luckily, the council chairman got even more black marks than
I did.

IAN THOMAS JANSEN-LONNQUIST/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, at an event in Nashua, N.H., in July.
Of course, I wasnt working in an
area of genuine security concern. But
thats kind of the point.
Carter, Reagan and Machiavelli
Rex Nutting, an editor at MarketWatch, wrote a very nice article
recently about the reality of Jimmy
Carters presidency, which has been
distorted beyond all recognition by
the myth of St. Reagan (read the
article here: on.mktw.net/1hOvdn7).
As Mr. Nutting points out, Mr. Carter
presided over faster average job

READER COMMENTS FROM NYTIMES.COM

Yes, Clinton Broke the Rules

Hillary Clinton, who was at one
point the head of the State Department, was using a private email
account while other employees were
using government accounts. She put
herself above others.
N.N., MARYLAND

My father spent many years

working for the government. He

once received a memo saying that far

too many trivial documents were being labeled as top secret, and that
the practice should stop. That memo
was also classified and labeled top
secret.
GREG PETSKO, MASSACHUSETTS

I have been baffled by friends

who are in full agreement with me

growth and lower unemployment

than did President Reagan; unfortunately for Mr. Carter, the timing was
bad. He had vigorous growth for most
of his presidency, but a recession at
the end.
Or to be more specific: The Federal
Reserve put the economy through
the wringer from 1979 to 1982 in
order to bring inflation down. Mr.
Carter presided over the first part
of that double-dip recession, and got
wrongly blamed for it. Mr. Reagan
presided over the second part, and

wrongly got credit for the subsequent

recovery.
What you see in all this is the
remarkable political dominance
of recent rates of change over even
medium-term comparisons. Real
median family income, which rose
significantly throughout 1979, was
still far from having returned to that
peak by the end of Mr. Reagans first
term. Nonetheless, Mr. Carter was
booted from office amid derision,
while Mr. Reagan won a landslide as
a triumphant economic savior.

But Machiavelli knew all about this:

Hence it is to be remarked that, in
seizing a state, the usurper ought to
examine closely into all those injuries
which it is necessary for him to inflict,
and to do them all at one stroke so as
not to have to repeat them daily, he
wrote in The Prince.
Make sure that the bad stuff happens early in your rule so that you
can claim credit when things get better, even if you leave the nation in a
worse condition than it was when you
arrived.

on most political matters, yet say

that they just dont like Mrs.
Clinton. Apparently she just rubs
them the wrong way. Of course,
almost nobody who is passing judgment on her knows Mrs. Clinton
personally. All we have to go on is
the impression that she gives via the
media.

certainly has a copy of all her correspondence, and it is very likely that
Russian and Chinese officials do as
well.

watching the network, she is basically giving that information away.

Z., MARYLAND

I am a Democrat, and I am very

disappointed with Mrs. Clintons
behavior and her contempt for government transparency.

T., NORTH CAROLINA

TIM, IOWA

Emails sent to Mrs. Clinton traversed commercial networks to

get to her private server at home.
The National Security Agency

If someone stores information on

a private server without a professional, first-class security staff

TONY D., CALIFORNIA

You must be kidding! What is the

secretary of state doing using an
insecure email account?
DAVE , FLORIDA

ONLINE: COMMENTS
Comments have been edited for clarity
and length. For Paul Krugmans latest
thoughts and to join the debate online,
visit his blog at krugman.blogs.
nytimes.com.

For much of the summer,

Hillary Clintons presidential
campaign has faced scrutiny
over her use of a private email
account for official correspondence when she served as secretary of state.
During Mrs. Clintons tenure at the State Department,
from 2009 to 2013, the use of a
private account was discouraged, but not explicitly forbidden, and Mrs. Clinton opted to
use a personal domain connected to a private server at her
home for email correspondence.
Recent reports have centered on
the possibility that Mrs. Clinton
might have divulged classified
information in her emails, which
would have gone against State
Department rules because national secrets could be vulnerable to attacks by hackers.
A few months ago, Mrs. Clinton stated that there was no
classified material in her
emails, but after news reports
surfaced suggesting that some
of the information in her correspondence was classified but
not marked as such, she clarified that she did not send, nor
did I receive material marked
classified.
Jeffry Toobin, a staff writer
at The New Yorker, explained
earlier this month in an article that Mrs. Clinton may have
discussed information that was
technically classified, but As
[former Senator Daniel Patrick
Moynihan] explained in his
book Secrecy: The American
Experience and explored during a lifetime in public service,
the definition of what constitutes a government secret has
never been clear.
Mr. Toobin continued: One
of Clintons potentially classified email exchanges is nothing more than a discussion of a
newspaper story about drones.
That such a discussion could be
classified underlines the absurdity of the current system.
Some analysts believe that
the email controversy will fizzle, and Mrs. Clinton remains
a favorite for the Democratic
presidential nomination. Still,
her poll numbers have declined
in recent months, which some
experts attribute to continuing
negative coverage of this issue
in the media.

PAUL KRUGMAN

A Place for Trump in Todays G.O.P.

As political pundits are discovering to their horror, theres probably
more to the Donald Trump phenomenon than mere celebrity.
The fact is that the central planks
of modern conservatism slashing taxes for the rich and cutting
benefits for the public at large are
deeply unpopular. In the past, Republicans have won elections only
by wrapping these policies in other
stuff. Its been all about cutting
benefits for welfare queens and
strapping young bucks (these
are Reaganisms, in case youre
wondering) buying T-bone steaks
with food stamps. And this in turn
means that there is an empty box in
American politics that is waiting to
be filled.
The matrix here shows the possible positions. A welfare state
available to all is the Democratic
position which is pretty much

Paul Krugman
joined The New
York Times in 1999
as a columnist on
the Op-Ed page
and continues
as a professor of
economics and
international
affairs at Princeton
University. He was awarded the
Nobel in economic science in 2008.
Mr. Krugman is the author or editor
of 21 books and more than 200
papers in professional journals and
edited volumes. His latest book is
End This Depression Now!

what other Western countries call

the social democratic position.
The dominant role in the modern
Republican Party is played by a
faction that links a desire to slash
social insurance with a de facto
disdain for Those People. Libertarians are also, in principle, for small

government, but without the undertones and they are also basically
absent from the existing electorate.
And then theres the empty box.
Once upon a time, that box was filled
by Southern Democrats, who preserved Jim Crow laws that enforced
segregation while they supported

the New Deal. These voters have all

since moved over to the Republican
Party, and in the process they have
developed an opposition to social
insurance. But there are plenty of
other voters who want Social Security and Medicare for people who look
like them, but not those other people.
And at some level, Mr. Trump, a Republican candidate for the presidential nomination, is catering to that
unserved population.
Of course, Trumpism is a really
bad name for this, partly because
the man isnt actually coherent,
and partly because its still likely
that hes a case of hair today, gone
tomorrow. And maybe nobody else
will make a play for that box.
But its also possible that well see
the rise of a movement that needs
a better name. Hmm. How about
National Social Democracy? Any
problems with that?

READER COMMENTS FROM NYTIMES.COM

Destroying Conservatism From Within

Donald Trump recently delivered
a speech in which he claimed that
the silent majority was supportive of his policies.
Of course, this appeal to the silent
majority always centers on the
belief that other people are not pulling their weight, and that its time
for someone to stand up and say
enough. The demagogue saying
that the loudest today is Mr. Trump.
And its important that he remains
in the race until the bitter end. After
all, the silent majority is neither
silent nor a majority. It is a loud and
ignorant minority that has been

manipulated by conservative demagogues who have realized that they

can gain power by scaring people
with imaginary enemies.
Its hard to tell whether Mr. Trump
is destroying conservatism purposefully, or whether conservative
policies are loudly and obnoxiously
coming to their logical conclusions
on their own.
Nevetheless, Mr. Trump is the
Pied Piper of modern conservatism,
and he will lead the core of the that
movement to irrelevance, where it
belongs.
KYLE REISING, GEORGIA

Mr. Krugman, as a lifelong

moderate conservative, I find it
insulting that you would infer that
racism has anything to do with
conservative philosophy.
There are, and have been, racial
bigots who also identify themselves
as conservatives, Christians, Democrats or Republicans. That certainly
does not mean that most, or even a
significant fraction, of these groups
are fundamentally racist.
G. STEGEN, WASHINGTON

Can we please stop calling

this nonsense conservatism?

KAL/CARTOON ARTS INTERNATIONAL/NEW YORK TIMES SYNDICATE

Theres nothing conservative

about proposing policies that either
havent been tried, or have been
tried and empirically shown to have
failed. This is all just anarchic radicalism, for lack of a better term. It
has nothing to do with conservative
principles or philosophies.
NAME WITHHELD, NEW YORK

Mr. Trump, who has never held

public office, doesnt seem to have
an understanding of the American
system of government and of
checks and balances in particular.
He says that hes going to get
things done the way he did in the private sector, which probably means
that he will bypass government and
behave like a dictator.
SONJA, MINNESOTA

I suspect that Mr. Trump is on

the payroll of a consortium of
news outlets that need something
to write about.
GLENN SILLS, FLORIDA

Is anyone else afraid of a Trump

administration? We would be the
United States Inc.
If the corporate raiders control the
presidency, we are toast.
NAME WITHHELD, CONNECTICUT

Mr. Trumps television experience is paying off with great sound

bites and succinct interviews. His
campaign staff is offering sharp advice, and he is following it.
Meanwhile, his opponents are
stuck in the clown car.
MICHAEL KITTLE, FRANCE