NYTimes biz section needs to run column from Democrat

Felix Salmon of Conde Nast Portfolio writes Sunday that the column by Ben Stein in the New York Times shows that the paper’s business section needs a counter column written by a Democrat.

Salmon writes, “Putting the substance of the column aside for one minute, I’ll concede at the outset that this is an explicitly partisan column from an unabashedly Republican pundit. I did hear, once, second-hand, that NYT business editor Larry Ingrassia, when questioned, defends the inclusion of Ben Stein in his paper specifically because he’s a Republican who somehow ‘balances out’ the more left-leaning tendencies of fellow Sunday columnist Gretchen Morgenson.

“But Morgenson is no party-political hack, and indeed has shown far more sense during the present economic crisis than the crazed populist rantings of Stein. She doesn’t accuse Goldman Sachs of deliberately trying to profit by bringing down the US economy; instead, she’s much more likely to file a boring-but-important reported story like her column this week on municipal bond disclosures.

“As political thermometer ratchets up between now and November, I’m sure we’ll see many columns about Obama’s economic policy written by Republicans. This one is probably a reasonably good expectation of what to expect: there will be better, and there will be worse. But it’s quite clearly a column that only a Republican could ever write. If the NYT business section really thinks that it’s a natural home to such animals, it should really start running similar columns from Democrats too. I’m sure Brad DeLong would be happy to oblige.”

Read more here.