Fighting the Left and Winning
Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer just marked his 25th year as a columnist. This is significant because 25 years is itself a long time, and also because Krauthammer is one of the truly great columnists. He certainly is the single most trenchant and insightful critic of the Obama administration.
Krauthammer, moreover, is a model of intellectual rectitude and rigor; his thoughts and pronouncements command respect and recognition. The Right would do well, therefore, to emulate his example as it does political battle with the Left.
What accounts for Krauthammer’s success? Well, for starters, it’s not that Krauthammer is some delicate diplomat who pulls his punches: because he’s not and he doesn’t. Krauthammer is, instead, a tireless and withering critic of the president. Indeed, his rhetorical gun is always loaded; and he is always firing away.
But unlike many on the Right, Krauthammer is an excellent shot and a superb marksman, who, no matter the distance, almost always hits his target.
This is in part because Krauthammer doesn’t waste shots on foolish and self-destructive issues. Unlike the Birthers, for instance, he doesn’t go after Obama’s birth certificate; and unlike Rush Limbaugh, he doesn’t say that he wants the president to fail.
(Yes, I know Rush meant that he wants the president to fail at enacting his left-wing agenda; but that distinction was lost on most ordinary people, who heard only that Rush wants the president -- and, by extension they think, America, the country that the president leads -- to fail.)
Krauthammer instead focuses his tremendous intellectual firepower on legitimate issues and, in so doing, completely destroys the intellectual foundations of the Left, while laying waste to the Obama administration’s pretense to greatness.
In other words, Krauthammer is an intellectual Marine sniper. You want him on your team, and you want him covering your back. He’s that good.
Consider, for instance, last summer’s healthcare reform debate and the vexing issue of “death panels.” Krauthammer, of course, entered the fray and used his superior rhetorical incision to explain what the Democratic healthcare bills really said and meant for aging seniors. He began by eschewing the overheated rhetoric sometimes used by the activist Right.
We might start by asking Sarah Palin to leave the room. I’ve got nothing against her. She’s a remarkable political talent. But there are no ‘death panels’ in the Democratic health-care bills, and to say that there are is to debase the debate.
But then in a remarkable demonstration of sheer intellect and clear and lucid reason, Krauthammer showed conclusively that although there were no “death panels” per se in the Democratic healthcare bills, there were, nonetheless, unmistakable legislative and financial entrapments which might pressure the infirm elderly to die a premature death.
It’s surely not a death panel. But it is subtle pressure applied by society through your doctor. And when you include it in a health-care reform whose major objective is to bend the cost curve downward, you have to be a fool or a knave to deny that it’s intended to gently point the patient in a certain direction, toward the corner of the sickroom where stands a ghostly figure, scythe in hand, offering release [from life].
Soon thereafter, the Democrats dropped end-of-life “counseling” provisions from their healthcare bills.
Obama and the Democrats, after all, could rightly and heatedly deny that their bills contained any “death panels.” However, they could not so easily dismiss the cool and powerful reasoning of Krauthammer, who showed that the Democrats had designed legislation which incentivizes doctors and other providers to nudge the infirm elderly “ever so slightly toward letting go” -- letting go, that is, of life.
The problems that afflict the Right are as much stylistic as they are substantive. Stylistically and rhetorically, we are sometimes too hot and overwrought; and this can frighten voters. We need to take a page from Obama, who, despite his far-left ideology, projects an image of cool and reasoned moderation.
Charles Krauthammer understands this. He knows how to fight, and he knows how to win.