Hey, kids! It's Friday. Do you know what time it is? It's Paul "Line 47" Krugman bashing time! In today's episode, Paul Krugman continues his sludge-throwing crusade against the Bush Administration and once again reveals himself to be an ignorant hack.

[I] don't know if anyone has done a calculation, but it's obvious that the Bush administration has appointed a record number of corporate executives to high-level positions, often regulating or doing business with their former employers.

So, according to Krugman, it's better to have bureaucrats or ivory-tower academics running the largest business (the government) in the nation than people who have been forced to make money in the "real world."

The administration clearly doesn't worry about conflicts of interest, but you don't have to posit outright corruption to wonder. For example: The secretaries of the Navy and Air Force are both lifelong defense-contractor executives. Won't they tend in the nature of things to believe that what's good for General Dynamics is good for America? Indeed, defense stocks have soared, partly because Wall Street analysts predict that profit margins on future contracts will be far higher than was considered appropriate in the past.

I'm confident that the Bush administration's defense policy is what is in the best interests of the nation. Krugman, by suggesting that the Navy and Air Force secretaries are more concerned about defense contractors' profit lines than the U.S. military is accusing them of nothing less than treason.

Krugman, the brilliant economist, notices that defense stocks have soared recently, and attributes it to speculation of higher profit margins in the future. Unfortunately Krugman has failed to notice that there is a war going on. Maybe the prospect of more business and not necessarily larger profit margins is the reason why defense stocks have soared. I mean, we're going to need more bombs, more unmanned spy planes, more rockets, more bullets, more equipment. Somewhere in his vast education Krugman should have heard of Occam's Razor. Maybe he should consider it before he lets his vast, right-wing conspiracy paranoia run wild.

But there's a further question. Many of the business executives recently appointed to government positions first entered the private sector after prior careers in the Reagan and Bush I administrations.

Wait a second, you just said that the Army and Navy secretaries, at least, were lifelong defense contractor executives. Which is it?

As Sebastian Mallaby put it in The Washington Post, they are "political types dressed up in corporate clothing: people who got hired by business because they knew government, then hired by government on the theory that they knew business." (Dick Cheney is the quintessential example.) So are they really good businessmen, or are they just crony capitalists, men who have lived by their connections?

Well, you pick one and I'll pick the other, maybe someday we'll know which one is true.

Consider the case of Thomas White, secretary of the Army, a former general who became a top Enron executive in 1990. His behavior in office has raised eyebrows. He did not follow the rules about disposing of stock options; he and his wife are alleged to have taken a military jet to Aspen on personal business; and he sold $12 million of Enron stock shortly before the company's implosion, though he says that no inside information was conveyed in the 70-plus phone conversations he had with his former colleagues. But this stuff � which would have led to multiple investigations had he been a Clinton appointee � is actually secondary.

Krugman's right, White didn't dispose of his stock options in a timely fashion like he should have. Krugman points out that he sold $12 million worth of Enron stock shortly before it filed for bankruptcy -- and condemns him for it. But, like Krugman points out, if White had sold his Enron stock when he should have, he would have made even more money. Shortly before White sold his stock it came out in the news media that he hadn't disposed of it as he should have. That's what prompted the sale -- not any inside information.

The really important information about Mr. White is that the enterprise he ran, Enron Energy Services, was a fraud � a money-losing operation dressed up to appear highly profitable through deceptive accounting. It is possible though implausible that Mr. White was duped by his subordinates, that he honestly thought that he was doing a great job. But that only makes him a fool rather than a knave.

Krugman condemns himself out of his own mouth! Krugman too was suckered by Enron back in early 1999 and even wrote a laudatory Fortune magazine article. The old proverb "those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" comes to mind. Out of his own mouth, Krugman condemns himself as a fool.

Stories about Mr. White's questionable behavior at his current job have emerged only recently, but it has been apparent for months that he was a Potemkin executive: all facade, with nothing behind it. Given that he was hired for his supposed business skills, this means that he is like a surgeon general who turns out never to have finished medical school.

So why does this administration, which is waving the flag so hard its arms must hurt, leave the Army � the Army! � in the hands of a man who is, at best, a poseur?

White definitely has a Sununu problem. But how has his lack of management skills been apparent? I've heard little about White in the national media, most of it connected to the scandals that Krugman outlined. Krugman doesn't offer any examples, just slander. No specifics, just contentions. You've got to do better than that!

One theory I've heard is that Mr. White can't be fired: that there are facts about the administration's relationship with Enron that it doesn't want to come out, and that Mr. White knows where the bodies are buried.

My preferred explanation, however, is that Mr. White has been protected by the administration's infallibility complex. In case you haven't noticed, this administration never, ever admits making a mistake; even when it makes a policy U-turn, it tries to rewrite history to pretend that everything is still going according to plan. One recent example involved foreign aid. First the administration came out with a miserly proposal; faced with outrage from the rest of the world, it doubled its offer. But it claimed, to an incredulous press corps, that there had been no change in plan, that the proposal had simply been badly presented.

There's no evidence for the first theory, and I've apparently not been listening in the left places, because I haven't heard that one. As far as an infallibility complex, every administration suffers from that one. Bill Clinton never lied. He never flip-flopped on welfare reform. He never flip-flopped on gays in the military. Yep, short naps are nice.

If Mr. White is forced to leave, however, it would be hard to deny that in hiring him for his supposed business skills the administration was suckered, in much the same way that Enron's investors were suckered. And so he remains.

If White goes, it's because he pulled a Sununu. Nothing less, nothing more. Occam's Razor again, Krugman.

It's not hard to see why the administration hired Mr. White: on paper, his qualifications looked pretty good. But the fact that he is still in place is very bad news. Maybe there are some dark secrets here; or maybe it's just arrogance and lack of moral courage. Either way, this is no way to run an army � or the country.

It's not hard to see why the New York Times hired Mr. Krugman: on paper, his qualifications looked pretty good. But the fact that he is still writing is very bad news. Maybe there are some dark secrets here; or maybe it's just a dearth of good left-wing writers. Either way, this is no way to run an op-ed page -- or a newspaper.