If liberals are sincere when they say that they wish conservatives were more independent-minded, intellectual and civil — and many liberals do indeed say this, both in private and in public — than we need to recognize and mourn for the void that has been ripped into our public discourse by the death of Charles Krauthammer.
This is the part where I must mention that I more often than not disagreed with Krauthammer. You name the issue: His championing of neoconservative foreign policy, his skepticism toward global warming, his seemingly unequivocal support for Israel, his much more understandable opposition to euthanasia (Krauthammer was a paraplegic, although he rarely brought it up). Of course, given that Krauthammer started out his career as a liberal with conservative tendencies and ended it as a conservative with liberal tendencies, there were also many issues where I shared Krauthammer's opinions — particularly, during the Trump era, his willingness to call out the president's team for colluding with the Russian government.
Take this editorial from July 2017 in which Krauthammer reacted to the news that Donald Trump Jr. and other top ranking Trump campaign officials had met with a Kremlin-connected lawyer to obtain dirt on Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
For six months, smoke without fire. Yes, President Trump himself was acting very defensively, as if he were hiding something. But no one ever produced the something.
My view was: Collusion? I just don’t see it. But I’m open to empirical evidence. Show me.
The evidence is now shown. This is not hearsay, not fake news, not unsourced leaks. This is an email chain released by Donald Trump Jr. himself. A British go-between writes that there’s a Russian government effort to help Trump Sr. win the election, and as part of that effort he proposes a meeting with a “Russian government attorney” possessing damaging information on Hillary Clinton. Moreover, the Kremlin is willing to share troves of incriminating documents from the Crown Prosecutor. (Error: Britain has a Crown Prosecutor. Russia has a Prosecutor General.)
Donald Jr. emails back. “I love it.” Fatal words.
Once you’ve said “I’m in,” it makes no difference that the meeting was a bust, that the intermediary brought no such goods. What matters is what Donald Jr. thought going into the meeting, as well as Jared Kushner and then-campaign manager Paul Manafort, who were forwarded the correspondence, invited to the meeting, and attended.
There I go: Talking about how much I admire Krauthammer despite the fact that I often disagreed with him, and then going on to extensively quote his words in a piece in which his views happened to align with mine.
That was the thing about Krauthammer, though, and for that matter about all great writers: While any old schmuck can agree with your opinions, a truly talented essayist can articulate the exact language that perfectly captures your own thoughts and feelings. It's hard to pinpoint exactly what separates a mere commentator from a producer of belles-lettres, but you know it when you read it. If you ever found yourself on the same side as Krauthammer on an issue, you instantly recognized the quality of his writing and the sharpness of his mind.
Of course, when you disagree with someone with those same qualities, the effect can be infuriating. Take this condemnation of President Barack Obama's social policy agenda penned by Krauthammer in 2009. Like many conservatives, Krauthammer described Obama's Affordable Care Act as radical, an attempt at fiscally unsustainable social engineering that was just a few steps away from socialism. The fact that it was modeled after a policy implemented by Republican Mitt Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts, and that it is leagues removed from the actual socialized health care systems which exist throughout Europe, seems not to matter very much.
Health-care rationing is taking its place — which is why Obama, the consummate politician, knows to offer the candy (universality) today before serving the spinach (rationing) tomorrow.
Taken as a whole, Obama's social democratic agenda is breathtaking. And the rollout has thus far been brilliant. It follows Kaus's advice to "give pandering a chance" and adheres to the Democratic tradition of being the party that gives things away, while leaving the green-eyeshade stinginess to those heartless Republicans.
It will work for a while, but there is no escaping rationing. In the end, the spinach must be served.
Has rationing happened? No. Do I think any of Krauthammer's ominous predictions came to pass? Again no: Although Obamacare has its flaws, it has still provided health care coverage to over 20 million people and made our health care system more humane overall, which is why Trump and congressional Republicans have resorted to sabotaging it in order to justify their thus-far unsuccessful repeal efforts.
And yet, while I disagree with Krauthammer on health care reform and the deeper philosophical underpinning of "Obamaism," I can't deny that his contribution to our political discourse was still welcome. No legislation as sweeping as health care reform should be passed without being challenged, and we're better off as a society when those voices can present their case in a reasoned, civil and articulate manner, whether coming from the left (Bernie Sanders) or the right (Krauthammer).
In the end — and this is a point where I hope all liberals will agree with me — we as a society are better off with conservative voices than without them. Even if what we believe happens to be absolutely right, we are still better off with people out there who will tell us that we're wrong, both because they make our minds sharper and they prevent us from atrophying into tyrannical behavior.
Because Krauthammer could alienate both sides with his opinions, he provided that invaluable service to virtually everyone who read enough of his columns to eventually disagree with him. And that made the nectar one derived from the occasions when his views were the same as your own all the more sweet.
I suppose the best way to close this article is by pointing out that Krauthammer once argued that he thought "atheism is the least possible of all theologies." If he was correct about that, then perhaps there is an afterlife... and if so, I hope that Krauthammer is there, talking with his heroes like Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein and continuing to learn, and teach, and expound upon his own views.
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