Economist and NYTimes columnist Paul Krugman was speaking at Town Hall last night. We were going to do this thing where we pretended to mistake him for Jack Klugman and then complained the whole post about him never mentioning acting with Tony Randall or Quincy. Luckily, we thought better of it.

We were inspired by Krugman himself, though, who turned out to be a very droll fellow, or at least acts that way on cold medicine. It's not that he's not serious as a heart attack where it matters -- and Town Hall's Great Hall was packed with sober salt-and-pepper-haired Seattleites who gave him a long ovation as he walked on stage. Here's a review of his book The Conscience of a Liberal that touches on why Krugman is so admired -- "...persuasion of people with very different views is at best of secondary interest to him. What is of interest to him is describing things as he believes they are." In that spirit, here are some Krugman portraits:

The New Gilded Age: People argue that income inequality is primarily related to higher education, the knowledge workers thesis. So Krugman compares two sets with about the same amount of higher education: "The highest paid hedge fund manager made as much last year as all of New York's 80,000 teachers will make for the next three years."

The Great Compression: from about 1935 to 1945, the New Deal compressed income inequality with progressive taxation that soaked the rich and created a bottom floor for poverty. Krugman was fascinated by this because the social norms drove economic policy for decades after (rather than the other way around). Labor unions created a strong middle class, but today unions make up only 8% of the private sector workforce.

After the jump, healthcare, dog whistle politics, Ronald Reagan, why whitey's scared, and how seven minutes refute Building 7 theorists.

Vast Right Wing Conspiracy: Krugman distinguished "movement conservatism" -- who want to dismantle every trace of the New Deal -- from old-school fiscal conservatives who wanted accountability. From the Heritage Foundation to Fox News, there's a manufactured right-wing culture, paid for by the same wealthy suspects. Speaking of the right's obsession with George Soros, Krugman said, "One of the reasons people on the right think there's an evil billionaire coordinating the left is because that's the way it works in their world." He said a friend calls an element of it "Wingnut Welfare," and pointed to Rick Santorum's new job as evidence.

Grover Norquist, Bill Kristol: "We like Grover Norquist," admitted Krugman. "He's like the evil James Bond villain who explains his evil plans in great detail for you." Norquist and Kristol are what passes for thought leadership on the right, men of principle who believe that poverty is a great moral education. Kristol opposed the Clinton healthcare plan on the grounds that if it succeeded, it could reinvigorate the New Deal agenda.

Universal Healthcare: It's the new New Deal, claimed Krugman. As the movement conservatives fear, it could turn out to be something -- like Social Security -- that the government does well and people come to rely on. He prefers a single-payer system, but none of the Democratic front-runners' plans look like deal-breakers. (In an aside, he noted that the Edwards campaign has a history of setting bold policy and making the rest of the field match it.) We could have universal healthcare by 2010, said Krugman -- the question is whether we elect another FDR or a Grover Cleveland -- a "talks the talk" Democrat in the pocket of moneyed interests.

Dog Whistle Politics: at the Q&A, someone asked what on earth "compassionate conservatism" means. Krugman took the opportunity to talk about how the right uses cultural codewords that sound like one thing to the general public, but signal another thing to the movement. Compassionate conservatism, to a true believer, means dismantling public assistance so that poor people will have to go to religious charitable institutions to get their soup and gospel.

Kindly Old Ronald Reagan: Michael Tomasky's review sums up Krugman's disdain.

Reagan officially opened his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where James Cheney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner had been murdered in 1964, avowing his support for states' rights... [Krugman] discusses Reagan's "remarkable callousness" in joking, in a famous speech, also in 1964, that "we were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night.... Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet." And most egregious of all, he quotes Reagan on his promise to repeal California's fair housing act when he was running for governor in 1966: "If an individual wants to discriminate against Negroes or others in selling or renting his house, he has a right to do so."

The Right and Race: Krugman argues that the Republican party, since the Civil Rights movement in the '60s, has reliably played the race card to win the votes of Southern whites. Thus Reagan's states' rights speech, thus Willie Horton. But since that voting bloc's influence is diminishing, the elections of 2002 and 2004 have focused on national security (though we think it would naive to say that racism doesn't underlie that approach, either). The right has been casting about for a substitute (immigration, with its race overtones has figured largely), but voters, Krugman argued, just aren't as responsive to the race card.

9/11 Skeptics: These people pop up in the oddest places. Krugman's an economist. Why ask him? But the guy did, his voice tight and quavering, trying to disguise the question a little by calling it a "false flag" theory. Krugman responded with the best comeback we've heard. "The dazed look on Bush's face as he kept reading The Pet Goat for seven minutes should be indication to anyone that he had no idea what was going on." Downplaying the "blood for oil" position, Krugman pointed out that "we've already spent more on this war than Iraq's proven oil reserves are worth."