predefining History?

In today's New York Times Paul Krugman writes about the prettification of the 2000 Presidential election and suggest that the origins of the war in Iraq will undergo a similar transformation.

Krugman opines: "More broadly, the story of the 2000 election remains deeply disturbing - not just the fact that a man the voters tried to reject ended up as president, but the ugliness of the fight itself. There was an understandable urge to put the story behind us.
But we aren't doing the country a favor when we present recent history in a way that makes our system look better than it is. Sometimes the public needs to hear unpleasant truths, even if those truths make them feel worse about their country.
Not to be coy: election 2000 may be receding into the past, but the Iraq war isn't. As the truth about the origins of that war comes out, there may be a temptation, once again, to prettify the story. The American people deserve better. "

So Krugman writes for a real important MSM outlet and thus deserves close analysis. He begins with the premise that the story of the 2000 election remains deeply disturbing. I don't think I have noticed any evidence of that. I don't think it is the story that is disturbing to anyone. It may be that some democrats are deeply disturbed about the outcome of the election, but not by the story.

As an example of a disturbing element Krugman cites the infamous butterfly ballot. To the best of my memory, this was in a county where all of the election officials were democrats. Is the disturbing part to Krugman that democrats could not pull off a victory when they controlled the mechanism of the election or that they were unable to get the witless voters to comply with their nefarious but complicated scheme?

Krugman proceeds from this premise to conclude that the story of the election has somehow been prettified, and that a similar methodology will be applied to the "origins" of the Iraq war. I am sure the origins of the war are not and cannot be made to be pretty, but Saddam Hussein had something to do with them. He did not have to play along with the game. He could have complied with the sanctions regime and the ceasefire protocols.

Who will be doing the prettifying. Who indeed. I don't expect to see it in the New York Times or any other MSM outlet. Either Krugman is making the argument that the MSM is no longer relevant to the framing of history, or he is suggesting that he and his cohorts at the Times are the ones America deserves better of. Ah truth at last.