I told you so

Paul Krugman writes an "I told you so" column in the New York Times and well he should for, unlike the now disgraced Judy Miller, who famously said this (ironically in a matter wherein she was wrong), Krugman can accurately say: "I was proved fucking right".

I find it insufferable that people who were so wrong about so much seem to think that finally starting to "get it" now makes them somehow more credible, balanced, reasonable than those of us who had it right from the start. It's not the same as a case where someone resisted the "rush to judgment" and slowly warmed to a position after much reasoned consideration of the emerging evidence. This is a case of people who jumped on a bandwagon and who actively resisted evidence to the contrary. They were wrong in spite of the evidence.

Then, when they have finally had the facts rubbed in their faces long enough that even they start to get it, they think that they deserve more credit those they had ridiculed earlier. I think they need to apologize and give credit where credit is due. I work in a technical field where bullshit doesn't carry the day, but rather, people who evaluate and analyze better, who aren't wrong as much, who consistently get it right are considered worthy of respect. I think that we should hold pundits to the same standards. As Krugman says:

Never mind; better late than never. We should welcome the recent epiphanies by conservative commentators who have finally realized that the Bush administration isn't trustworthy. But we should guard against a conventional wisdom that seems to be taking hold in some quarters, which says there's something praiseworthy about having initially been taken in by Mr. Bush's deceptions, even though the administration's mendacity was obvious from the beginning.

According to this view, if you're a former Bush supporter who now says, as Mr. Bartlett did at the Cato event, that "the administration lies about budget numbers," you're a brave truth-teller. But if you've been saying that since the early days of the Bush administration, you were unpleasantly shrill.

Similarly, if you're a former worshipful admirer of George W. Bush who now says, as Mr. Sullivan did at Cato, that "the people in this administration have no principles," you're taking a courageous stand. If you said the same thing back when Mr. Bush had an 80 percent approval rating, you were blinded by Bush-hatred.

And if you're a former hawk who now concedes that the administration exaggerated the threat from Iraq, you're to be applauded for your open-mindedness. But if you warned three years ago that the administration was hyping the case for war, you were a conspiracy theorist.

The truth is that everything the new wave of Bush critics has to say was obvious long ago to any commentator who was willing to look at the facts

As Digby says:

People who endorsed this folly, over the objections of others with cooler analytical heads, have been discredited. It's that simple. They cannot be trusted the same way again, particularly if they fail to acknowledge that others were right and they refused to listen to them. It's very unpleasant to be wrong but mature people try to figure out where their reasoning failed and admit their mistakes. Simply "discovering" after all this time that Bush does not fit their fantasy image of him is not good enough.