Fact v. fiction

It's nice to see Paul Krugman bash his own paper:

Today’s Times asserts as fact:

Mr. Bush has spent years presiding over an economic climate of growth that would be the envy of most presidents. Yet much to the consternation of his political advisers, he has had trouble getting credit for it, in large part because Americans were consumed by the war in Iraq.

OK, I don’t want to make too big a deal of this, but although many people say this, it’s a theory, not a fact. And the evidence suggests that this theory is wrong.