I hate reading the New York Times’ Paul Krugman and do it as infrequently as possible. But I had a momentary lapse of judgment when I read this column. Here’s Krugman explaining what he thinks didn’t happen during the first year of The One’s Presidency [emphasis mine]:

It’s instructive to compare Mr. Obama’s rhetorical stance on the economy with that of Ronald Reagan. It’s often forgotten now, but unemployment actually soared after Reagan’s 1981 tax cut. Reagan, however, had a ready answer for critics: everything going wrong was the result of the failed policies of the past. In effect, Reagan spent his first few years in office continuing to run against Jimmy Carter.

Mr. Obama could have done the same — with, I’d argue, considerably more justice. He could have pointed out, repeatedly, that the continuing troubles of America’s economy are the result of a financial crisis that developed under the Bush administration, and was at least in part the result of the Bush administration’s refusal to regulate the banks.

But he didn’t.

Jonah Goldberg wonders about this too [emphasis from original]:

I have to wonder what planet Krugman is on when he suggests that Obama hasn’t been blaming Bush, repeatedly…Krugman’s perfectly within his rights to say Obama didn’t do this enough, but the suggestion that Obama didn’t spend much of the last year trying to do precisely that is nuts.

I’m wondering if Krugman is trying to ingratiate himself with the Obama administration in order to get a job after the Times goes belly up after they start charging Internet users for reading their articles. Apparently, they’ve forgotten their experiment of a couple years ago when they charged readers for accessing their columnists, including Krugman; that worked out well, didn’t it?

Krugman may have known a thing or two about economics in years past, although most of his current rantings about economics seem to be a forlorn look backwards at FDR’s New Deal. His recollection of history, coupled with a thoroughly nasty partisanship, isn’t an area he seems to have kept abreast of.

(Hat tip: Memeorandum)