Paul Krugman speaks at Northshire

Paul Krugman and The New York Times — which hired him in 1999 to write a regular column primarily about economics — both seem a little surprised to find that he has become a leading counterbalance to the presidency of George W. Bush.

“The 2000 campaign was a revelatory experience,” Krugman said during a recent telephone interview of the presidential contest that happened soon after he began writing for the paper. The national press was reporting on the election, but not adequately questioning the economic and tax data Bush was presenting, Krugman said.

“It was clearly visible to anyone with a hand calculator and nobody would report it,” he said. “That was a radicalizing experience.”

Krugman, an economics professor at Princeton University, has since become a leader of what could be called a fact-driven opposition to American conservatism. If a Republican argues that Social Security should be privatized for its own good, Krugman replies that the program is healthy. If someone suggests that state-run health care is inefficient, Krugman responds with examples of where it works.

So what is a liberal like Krugman doing following in Barry Goldwater’s footsteps by entitling his newest book “The Conscience of a Liberal”? Simple, Krugman said. He is trying to invoke Goldwater’s success in using his 1960 book — “The Conscience of a Conservative” — to launch or at least rechristen a political movement.

“His book turned out to be the harbinger of a big change,” Krugman said. “I want to emulate his achievement, although not his policies.”

If you listen to Krugman — who will speak at Northshire Bookstore in Manchester Center Saturday night — the country is ready for a similar political shift in the opposite direction.

“A reaction to the reality of an increasingly unfair economy,” will be that Americans will reawaken to the “necessity of taking care of each other,” he said.

Krugman’s book is a review of changing distribution of wealth and inequality in the country, with particular attention to what he calls “the great compression” of the 1940s when the difference in wealth in the Unites States became dramatically less extreme.

But his book begins with something unusual for Krugman — a personal description of what it was like growing up in 1950s America.

“My normal writing is pretty heavy on statistics and documentary evidence,” Krugman said. “These lurid inequalities of wealthy were not the country I grew up in. In some ways the most compelling thing is to say ‘I grew up in a place that was not that way and it was called America’,” Krugman said. “I don’t think a democratic political system will accept a society that has the inequality we have been seeing.”

Between his jobs at Princeton and the Times and book royalties he himself no longer fits his own definition of middle class, Krugman said. For instance he personally would qualify for benefits from the tax cuts supported by Bush.

But he finds it “weird” that someone who is comfortably off is considered somehow inauthentic if they argue for higher taxes on the wealthy, Krugman said.

And he remains more comfortable in middle-class circumstances.

“I am still somebody who would rather take the subway than be chauffeured,” he said.

Krugman has become one of the best known voices arguing that Social Security is not on the verge of collapse. “There is a possible long-run shortfall in funding,” he said. “We are talking about a gradual rise of spending on Social Security of about 2 percent of (gross domestic product). Social Security is way down the list of things you should be worried about.”

And that the United States should look towards a European single-payer health care system he calls “Medicare for all” — even if it gets there through an intermediary public/private step (similar in certain ways to Vermont’s Catamount Health program).

“The question is do you hold out for that or accept a compromise that is a transition?” he said. “The politics are many people are still reasonably satisfied with their health coverage as it is. You want something that allows them to keep the coverage you have (and) you want them to have the choice of buying into a public plan.”

Krugman does not shy away from the fact that most people who seek out and read his column probably already agree with him.

But he might give his supporters some ammunition, he said.

“People who broadly agree with me often need the words, need the arguments,” he said. “I don’t think there is a large middle ground in American politics to reach out to.”

And — beyond the obvious goal of selling books — appearances like the one he will make in Manchester Center help him, he said.

“I like reaching out to people and I do think I can change a few people’s minds,” he said. “It is a tremendously selfish thing, it is an incredibly encouraging experience to talk to an audience and find people agreeing with you. The book tour has been a little bit like a series of revival meetings,” he said.

The back-and-forth with more conservative writers that Krugman has been at the center of has even led to a breach of usual Times etiquette. Normally one thing is by genteel tradition if not by rule off-limits for direct attack by the paper’s herd of columnists, and that is other columnists.

But, as the trade publication Editor & Publisher noted recently, Krugman has recently been involved in two almost simultaneous battles with other columnists.

On the one hand Krugman and a Washington Post columnist traded barbs over the health of Social Security.

As Krugman wrote in his Times web journal or blog:

“Wow. Early in my tenure at The NYT, I was advised that it’s a bad idea to devote a column to attacking another columnist — not just at The Times, but anywhere. Why? Because it makes you look small — as if you have nothing better to do than snipe at other commentators, rather than trying to deal with real problems.”

That was shortly after Krugman — with Bob Herbert as his second — was taken to task by David Brooks and Lou Cannon for saying that Ronald Reagan and other Republicans tapped into subterranean racisms to win elections.

Brooks, after a Krugman column on the issue, wrote that “people” were sloppily perpetuating a slur against Reagan.

“But still the slur spreads. It’s spread by people who, before making one of the most heinous charges imaginable, couldn’t even take 10 minutes to look at the evidence,” Brooks wrote.

“David wrote a column that was pretty clearly a response to me,” Krugman said. “If you read his it was pretty intemperate, actually.”

Krugman said is aware of being careful in what he does so as not to provide an avenue of attack for someone who disagrees with him and would like to discredit him.

“They have tried to do everything they could but I am a fairly boring guy,” he said.

Generally conservatives have had a more successful and effective campaign to do so than liberals, according to Krugman.

“There is a lot more effective harassment from the right than the left,” he said. “If you say something that is unflattering, even if is true, about a conservative you will face organized torrents of hate mail. There is nothing comparable on the left.”