It's important to get history right — and economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has gotten it maddeningly wrong.

Krugman recently wrote a column arguing that the decline of double-digit inflation in the 1980s was the decade's big economic event, not the cuts in tax rates usually touted by conservatives.

Actually I agree with Krugman on this. But then he asserted that President Ronald Reagan had almost nothing to do with it. That's historically incorrect. Reagan was crucial.