Which is it?

This is a case of dueling columnists.

Paul Krugman says in his column today that “most of the venom is coming from supporters of Barack Obama, who want their hero or nobody. His campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality.”

Writing a day earlier, Krugman’s fellow liberal on The New York Times Op-Ed page, Frank Rich, said “Hillary Clinton’s show on the Hallmark Channel was a preview of how nastily the Clintons will fight, whatever the collateral damage to the Democratic Party.”

As commenter Todd Drew of Yankees for Justice pointed out, Krugman uncharacteristically failed to offer any examples of how the Obama campaign and supporters were doing what he said they were doing. Rich, meanwhile, cited chapter and verse about the Clintons’ perfidies, along with refutations from numerous and credible sources.

“The campaign’s other most potent form of currency remains its thick deck of race cards,” Rich wrote, adding later: “Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign’s attempt to drive white voters away from Mr. Obama by playing the race card has backfired. His white vote tally rises every week.”

These are good men, Rich and Krugman. Are they caught in the same dilemma facing every other voter in the nation, specifically figuring out who to chose among two equally competent candidates who, despite the similarities of their positions, have different attributes and different vision how to go about governing the nation?