(FORTUNE Magazine) – The debate about U.S. economic policy is usually heated--sometimes even rancorous--and more than a little political. But recently it's also been nearly devoid of economic analysis. The arguments from both sides of the politico-economic spectrum about fiscal stimulus tend to follow the same format: First, impugn the motives of your opponent; second, assume the very thing you ought to be proving; and finally, don't bother with any data or analysis to support your position. Of course, when all else fails, suggest that the other side is unpatriotically using the tragedies of Sept. 11 to line its own pockets.

This kind of cheap rhetoric has long been the coin of the congressional realm, and it has also become pervasive on television. But over the past few months, it's practically all we're hearing from institutions and individuals who should know better, and who in the past have sought to provide economic analysis and insight as well as sound bites.

The editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, for instance, is the most prominent font of conservative economic opinion. The Journal remains obsessed with the narrow brand of supply-side economics that it popularized a quarter-century ago, but in the past it featured long, reported editorials that cited data and theory to make their cases. One might disagree with the conclusions and dispute the analysis, but they were at least essays in persuasion.

These days the Journal's editorial writers just can't be bothered, and instead of arguing, they've adopted a tone of dismissive scorn. They recently derided the idea of giving rebate checks to low-income individuals as "Max Baucus' fifth-term reelection stimulus" (the Montana Democrat is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee) and rejected cursorily another idea favored by Baucus and many others: temporary tax cuts to stimulate corporate investment.

The Journal prefers permanent tax cuts, and a case can certainly be made for them. But you looked in vain for an analysis of how the competing ideas might affect the economy over the next few years. Is the idea of temporary stimulus so stupid that it isn't even worth debating? After all, if the government gives $50 billion to poor people in a year when the GDP is $10 trillion, that will increase GDP by 0.5%, which might seem reasonable if there's a chance that GDP growth could otherwise be, say, zero. And while temporary investment incentives may not result in a permanent change in corporate behavior, if they induced corporations to spend $25 billion in 2002 that they might otherwise spend in 2003 (when the economy should be in better shape), well, mightn't that be something to think about?

The rhetoric on the left is, if anything, even crummier. The most prominent critic of Republican economics these days is Paul Krugman, a Princeton professor and a columnist for the New York Times (and a former Fortune contributor). Krugman has been celebrated in the past as a rising star in academic economics, but since the Bush Administration took office he's sounded a lot more like James Carville than John Maynard Keynes. New York magazine, in fact, recently identified Krugman, incorrectly but aptly, as a "political columnist."

Krugman accused the other side of economic treason just a week after Sept. 11, and recently claimed that President Bush had revealed himself as "really the candidate of...a small group of companies with a quite specific set of business interests," since some of the Republican tax-cutting ideas would benefit energy companies. As for the Republicans' proposals for encouraging capital investment, Krugman states that they "don't make sense in terms of either demand-side or supply-side economics."

But of course they make perfect sense to supply-siders--and to others, including many Democrats. Tax cuts that decrease the marginal cost of capital should in theory encourage capital spending. You can argue about how well they'll do it, but you have to argue it. And since the current recession was caused by a collapse in business investment, reasonable people might think that improving investment incentives is an idea worth discussing.

The debate about economic stimulus never exactly caught the public fancy. Perhaps that's because the issue pales beside such others on the national agenda as war and terrorism. But maybe the reason has to do with the fact that the debate itself has been so cheapened and dumbed down. When the most prominent economic commentators tell us that the various approaches to a piece of legislation are nothing more than venal charades and that the proposals themselves are not even worth analyzing, who can blame a citizen for saying, "Okay. Screw it."

ROB NORTON, a former FORTUNE executive editor, is a freelance writer, editor, and consultant in New York City. He can be reached at rob@robnorton.com.