PAUL KRUGMAN certainly isn't on board with my call to nonchalance. The breathless Mr Krugman looks past next week's rout and espies a nation in ruin:

I doubt it. I mean, will historians exist in the future? Won't the unlucky survivors of the 2010 election be too busy sifting through the charred rubble of our wrecked civilisation to etch with sticks into the barren dust their harsh judgements of the past?

But seriously, Mr Krugman's attempt to raise the stakes fails utterly. He spends most of his column-inches noodling about the ways in which our imminent divided government will not resemble the one that reigned in the fondly-remembered Clintonian golden age. In his last paragraphs, Mr Krugman finally arrives at the only really pertinent question: How would the Democrats' holding their House majority save us from the terrible fate he now foresees? Here's what he says:

Right now we very much need active policies on the part of the federal government to get us out of our economic trap. But we won't get those policies if Republicans control the House. In fact, if they get their way, we'll get the worst of both worlds: They'll refuse to do anything to boost the economy now, claiming to be worried about the deficit, while simultaneously increasing long-run deficits with irresponsible tax cuts — cuts they have already announced won't have to be offset with spending cuts.

Mr Krugman implies that if Democrats continue to control the House, we'll get the expensive "active policies" that will save us and avoid the expensive tax cuts that will prolong our woes. Of course, Democrats control the House now. This has not spared us Mr Krugman's vein-popping fits over the current Democratic government's disinclination to enact a second budget-busting stimulus. And won't the tax cuts Mr Krugman fears (because he's such a deficit hawk!) need to get the approval of what is likely to remain a Democrat-controlled Senate as well as a Democratic president? If Mr Krugman really believes tax cuts are in the cards, it must be because he believes a number of Democrats, including the president, will support them. In that case, aren't those Democrats just as much a part of the alleged problem? Indeed, aren't those Democrats the ones already aggravating Mr Krugman's dyspepsia by resolutely ignoring his valuable free advice?

Mr Krugman offers no reason to believe that if Republicans fail to capture the House, Democrats will deliver the policies he thinks we need to avoid "years of political chaos and economic weakness". It's a little sad, isn't it, when even our most eminent public intellectuals waste so much of their time, and ours, on baseless partisan freakouts?

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