Princeton history professors and Berkeley economic professors: which is worse?

Julian Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University and he writes like this: “Although President Ronald Reagan was mocked by some as an actor in the White House who followed his script, Reagan was like Gingrich in that he spent much of his early adulthood deeply immersed in journals such as Human Events and in reading some of the prominent thinkers of the time.”

If you are saying to yourself, “gee, why aren’t I a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton too,” consider these points:

1) Human Events was not founded until 1944, at which time Ronald Reagan was already 33 years old. As late as the 1948 election, Ronnie was still a hemophiliac liberal (his term), rejoicing in the election of both Harry Truman and a Democratic Congress. “Now we’ll have national health insurance for sure!” Ronnie crowed to a friend.*

2) Reagan first subscribed to Human Events in 1961, when he was 50 and already a frothing at the mouth reactionary, laying into the TVA so vigorously that GE told him to lay off the goddamn customers.

You know, professor, there’s this new thing. It’s called the Internet. You ought to check it out!

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, Brad DeLong comes up with this whopper: “The Wages of AFDC Repeal Is Children Living in Cars.”† Yes, in 1996 Clinton signs a welfare reform bill, and in 2011, only 15 years later, kids are living in cars. That’s almost as absurd as the theory that changes in federal housing policy made by Clinton in 1994 resulted in the 2008 meltdown on Wall Street. Brad, when your grasp of causality is almost as lame as the shitheads at AEI, you need a vacation.