Jonathan Alter's column today reminds me of a comment I wanted to make about Paul Krugman's Dec 17th tirade against Barack Obama. Krugman wrote:

O.K., more seriously, it's actually Mr. Obama who's being unrealistic here, believing that the insurance and drug industries - which are, in large part, the cause of our health care problems - will be willing to play a constructive role in health reform. The fact is that there's no way to reduce the gross wastefulness of our health system without also reducing the profits of the industries that generate the waste.

As a result, drug and insurance companies - backed by the conservative movement as a whole - will be implacably opposed to any significant reforms. And what would Mr. Obama do then? "I'll get on television and say Harry and Louise are lying," he says. I'm sure the lobbyists are terrified.

How ironic: Krugman wants America's president to sit at the "big table" and negotiate with our enemies and foreign dictators, but when it comes to having a discussion with American corporations about healthcare he says anything less than "bitter confrontation" is "naive" and "unrealistic."

Why is Krugman a compromising internationalist on foreign affairs but a muscle-flexing John Wayne at home? I wouldn't quite call this letting the cat out of the bag (since we know the cat is in there and the bag is fairly transparent) but in an interview with Greg Sargent of TPM yesterday, Krugman made it plain that it's all about putting the finishing touches on and revitalizing the welfare state:

Health care is the gaping hole in the welfare state. We all agree that the system is deeply flawed. And health care has political spillover. If Democrats get major health care reform, then it kind of re-legitimizes the idea of activist government policies. Even conservatives say that.