The Partisan

By Michael Tomasky

The Conscience of a Liberal

by Paul Krugman

Norton, 296 pp., $25.95

Difficult as it is to remember now, there was a time in the United States, as recently as fifteen or so years ago, when we were not engaged in constant political warfare. In those days Senator Max Cleland, who lost three limbs in a war, would not have been visually equated with Saddam Hussein in a television ad, something the Republicans did to him in 2002. The release of a declaration by, for example, the National Academy of Sciences was for the most part acknowledged as legitimate, and not attacked as a product of so-called liberal bias as its 2005 report on global warming was.^[1]

We can regret, as it is customary to do, the loss of civility in political discourse (although such laments tend to assume a golden era that wasn't quite as civil in reality as it is in the memories of those who mourn its passing).