Dancing With Them What Brung You

Over at Ezra Klein's House of Many Graphs, Tyler Cowen shares his feelings about Andrew Sullivan:

How Andrew Sullivan changed America

Updated by Tyler Cowen on January 31, 2015, 9:30 a.m. ET

Who is the most influential public intellectual of the last 20 years?

This designation should go to someone who actually has helped change the world, rather than just changing lots of minds. It also should go to someone who has embodied key trends of the time, noting that for both standards I am focusing on the United States.

Based on those standards, I am inclined to pick Andrew Sullivan, who is most recently in the news for his announcement that he is quitting after fifteen years of blogging...

Sure, there might have been a few glitches and missteps along the way --

In any case Sullivan has lots of failings, even if we cannot all agree on exactly which ones they are. Those shortcomings, by the way, often reflected our time. Imperfections are a part of influence, too.

-- but what are a few wars, conspiracies and hysterical overreactions among friends, right?

Here is Andrew Sullivan sharing his feelings about Tyler Cowen back when his blog was a column in The Atlantic:

"Hail Tyler Cowen" 

THE DAILY DISH

OCT 21 2010, 5:58 AM ET

This is as astute an explanation as you'll find of how a blogger can make his mark:

Tyler Cowen is under-appreciated. Not as a blogger of course, he writes the most popular blog in economics and one of the most popular blogs full stop. It may sound strange, especially to readers of Marginal Revolution, but Tyler Cowen is an under-appreciated economist...

But we all read Marginal Revolution. And we all know that Tyler Cowen is smarter, broader, more knowledgeable, more intuitive than most of us and our colleagues...

Mr. Cowen is a conservative/libertarian economist who David Brooks believes is once of the most influential bloggers on the Right, and upon whom Mr. Sullivan visits many solid-gold links every week.

Here is Mr. Cowen back in 2013, once again on the subject of Andrew Sullivan:

Who is the most influential public intellectual of the last twenty-five years?

by Tyler Cowen on June 27, 2013 at 5:07 pm

A while ago I asked a related question.  But my answer blew it on one major possibility.  Doesn’t Andrew Sullivan have a reasonably strong claim to that title, especially after the recent Supreme Court decisions on gay marriage?

...

Once again, sure, there have been a few boo-boos and hiccups way back there in the past -- 

Many of you will complain about his “war blogging,” his connection to Obama, and perhaps other matters, but no matter what you think on these issues it still seems to me he holds the lead.

-- but what sort of party pooping pedant brings their history homework to a circle jerk?