Paul Krugman: evaluation

Transcript context

…Hayek wrote a famous essay, “Why the Worst Get to the Top in Politics.” At the time, he seemed to think it was a fairly universal tendency, which maybe in the 1940s was a reasonable thing to believe. But there seems to be a lot of variation. What’s your underlying model for why the worst sometimes do or do not get to the top? I think there was a time — think about being a US senator — there was a time when, I think, voters cared about someone who wanted to be a US senator seeming senatorial, seeming to have some gravity, some strength of character. Now, often that may have been an illusion, but there was still some sense that you wanted a person of high character to be representing you in that august body. Over time, with increasing partisanship and tribalism, that matters less and less. The kinds of things that come out of the mouths of senators . . . I obviously don’t think the parties are the same. I think that you can find a lot more I-can’t-believe-he-said-that things from the Republicans than the Democrats. The point is that, for the most part, voters don’t care because they’ve become so polarized that, really in a lot of places, as long as the guy is a Republican, it doesn’t matter what he says. Are there potentially beneficial changes you think we should at least consider making to the US Constitution?…

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