Gotta admire Krugman’s chutzpah

In today’s NY Times Paul Krugman writes: In his recent book “Steal This Vote” – a very judicious work, despite its title – Andrew Gumbel, a U.S. correspondent for the British newspaper The Independent, provides the best overview I’ve seen of the 2000 Florida vote. And he documents the simple truth: “Al Gore won the 2000 presidential election.”

Two different news media consortiums reviewed Florida’s ballots; both found that a full manual recount would have given the election to Mr. Gore.

Hmmmm…With very little effort, Jon Podhoretz found this report from the NY Times, November 12, 2001 (remember, a huge, huge article) Study of Disputed Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote

“A comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots from last year’s presidential election reveals that George W. Bush would have won even if the United States Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward. Contrary to what many partisans of former Vice President Al Gore have charged, the United States Supreme Court did not award an election to Mr. Bush that otherwise would have been won by Mr. Gore. A close examination of the ballots found that Mr. Bush would have retained a slender margin over Mr. Gore if the Florida court’s order to recount more than 43,000 ballots had not been reversed by the United States Supreme Court.

“Even under the strategy that Mr. Gore pursued at the beginning of the Florida standoff — filing suit to force hand recounts in four predominantly Democratic counties — Mr. Bush would have kept his lead, according to the ballot review conducted for a consortium of news organizations.”

Only at this point in the piece does the consortium recount allow for the possibility of a Gore victory: “But the consortium, looking at a broader group of rejected ballots than those covered in the court decisions, 175,010 in all, found that Mr. Gore might have won if the courts had ordered a full statewide recount of all the rejected ballots. This also assumes that county canvassing boards would have reached the same conclusions about the disputed ballots that the consortium’s independent observers did.”

A pretty broad assumption but one upon which Krugman, and Andrew Gumbel wish to hang their assertions.

Podhoretz wonders if Krugman is “lazy or a spectacular liar.” I just think he’s got chutzpah to spare.