You can be a realist or an idealist, but you cannot have it both ways.
A few weeks back, I heard Kevin Hassett being interviewed on NPR. At one point, he claimed that economics textbooks explain that tariffs do not raise prices. I’m pretty sure that Hassett knows that this is not the case, that tariffs do in fact raise prices.
So how should we think about this interview? Some might argue that an economic advisor cannot be blamed for spouting nonsense, as it is a requirement for the job. Even economically illiterate leaders need smart advisors to implement policy, and it’s no big deal if the NEC director makes a few highly dubious claims to back administration policy.
This argument might or might not be correct, but you cannot have it both ways. If an economist feels it necessary to shade the truth for consequentialist reasons, they must also accept that there will be a hit to their reputation. If I know that someone will make misleading claims to advance a policy agenda—even an agenda that I happen to agree with—I’ll tend to discount their arguments. And Hassett’s claim was unusually far-fetched, even by government spokesman standards.
Tyler Cowen recently discussed some new research on corporate taxes, coauthored by Kevin Hassett:
You might think Hassett is a biased source here, but there are several other recent results — covered in the past on MR — that point in broadly similar directions.
I tend to agree with the claim that higher corporate taxes reduce investment. Unfortunately, I now view Kevin Hassett as an unreliable policy pundit, and put no weight on his claims without independent confirmation from more reliable sources.
Our society has an unfortunate tendency to believe that as long as one can “understand” why someone behaved in a particular way, there should be no price to pay. I don’t agree—to understand is not to excuse. If I were to rush my wife to the hospital and parked illegally right out in front, I deserve to get a parking ticket, even if she were about to give birth. I should be willing to pay that price if I thought the circumstances warranted breaking a rule. A parking ticket is not a moral condemnation; it is a fee that allows resources to be allocated more effectively. If administration spokesmen who shade the truth don’t pay a reputational price, then we will get even more disinformation.
The New York Times has a very good article on Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who occasionally breaks with conservative orthodoxy on an issue before the court:
Though Justice Scalia, her mentor, is remembered as a leader of the legal right, he also surprised the public at times. He famously signed onto an opinion that said burning the American flag was protected by the Constitution.
“Justice Scalia used to say, and I wholeheartedly agree, that if you find yourself liking the results of every decision that you make, you’re in the wrong job,” Justice Barrett said in 2024. “You should sometimes be reaching results that you really dislike because it’s not your job to just be deciding cases in the way that you’d like them to be seen.”
Unfortunately, not everyone favors integrity:
Some on the right are turning her scholarly background against her, complaining that she is too fussy about the fine points of the law and sounding a rallying cry of “no more academics” for future appointments.
Some attacks are more personal:
Some of Mr. Trump’s allies have turned on her, accusing the justice of being a turncoat and calling her — a mother of seven, with two Black children adopted from Haiti — a “D.E.I. hire.” Her young son asked why she had a bulletproof vest, she said in a speech last year, and her extended family has been threatened, including with pizza deliveries that convey a warning: We know where you live.
“We had too much hope for her,” Mike Davis, a right-wing legal activist with close ties to the Trump administration, said in a recent interview. “She doesn’t have enough courage.”
This spring, on Stephen K. Bannon’s podcast, he tore into her in such crude terms, even mocking the size of her family, that Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, for whom Mr. Davis had once clerked, phoned him to express disapproval of his comments, according to people aware of the exchange.
It is relatively easy for a Supreme Court justice to avoid political pressure, as they have a lifetime appointment. So I’m not trying to make a moral distinction between people in different positions. Nonetheless, people will be judged based on their behavior. As President Truman once suggested, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” If you don’t like suffering a hit to your reputation, then don’t work for a boss that places personal loyalty above integrity.
PS. During Trump’s first term, many conservative legal scholars assumed that they were on the same team as right wing populist politicians. Over time, they will discover that they are on entirely different teams.