Krauthammer, Christie and the Way Forward

Although it is a passion of mine and it also usually garners more response than most other category of post, I’ve avoided politics here at GNABB of late. It is not due to a lack of interest on my part. And this past year has definitely presented some important topics for discussion. Perhaps I find it easier to talk about music or Christmas television specials than to unravel the complexities of the world. Perhaps it is also that I am constantly evolving, politically, constantly considering and reconsidering my stances. My views on the greatness of Springsteen are pretty set in stone by this point, regardless of the mediocrity of his recent output. But how do I feel about possible Syrian intervention? I’m not so sure.

I think I did set out a fairly consistent political ideology in our epic discussion/debate over on ANCIANT’s site awhile back. While I do listen to talk radio rather frequently in my car on the way to and from work most days, I don’t necessarily agree with them. Michael Medved comes across as the most reasonable to me out of all of the nationally syndicated guys that I listen to. If you had to peg me somewhere, I guess you could call me Center-Right. Deep down, if they really understood their own beliefs, I think you would find that most of the tax-paying country is there too. That’s why Reagan was so popular. That also explains our success as a country.

But I am excited now because I think that I have found someone who really reflects my own beliefs and presents them in the most brilliant way that I have heard in a long time. I was listening to talk radio one afternoon last month (I don’t even remember which show), and the guest was columnist Charles Krauthammer. I listened to a rather long segment, and found myself nodding and agreeing with almost everything he said, even saying “yes!” out loud in my car to nobody in particular. This is who I have been looking for. I also was immediately drawn into the way that he made his arguments. He was promoting his new book ‘Things That Matter,’ which is a sort of Greatest Hits collection of his columns from the past 30 years or so that have appeared in Time, The Washington Post and The New Republic. Most are relatively short editorials (a couple of pages), although he also includes several longer essays adapted from lectures that he’s given over the years. Needless to say, I rushed out and grabbed a copy. What a brilliant book.

It is divided into four sections, “Personal,” “Political,” “Historical” and “Global.” The personal essays are fun and good, ranging from heartfelt obituaries, to reflections on his former career as a psychiatrist, the intricacies of chess, dog shows, astronomy and the joys of being a fan of a mediocre sports team (in his case, the Washington Nationals, in an editorial entitled “The Joy of Losing”). There was only one essay where I disagreed and felt he was off base, the one where he is a bit dismissive of the natural childbirth movement (both of my children were born naturally), and uses an extreme case to make his point. But that aside, they were all enjoyable.

The meat of his writing, though, deals with politics and history. He tackles topics such as the legacy of the French Revolution, Angry White Men, affirmative action, Newtown, immigration policy and social security reform (in “Of Course It’s a Ponzi Scheme,” where he argues for its importance, but also makes crucial suggestions to keep it solvent, saying “When FDR created Social Security, choosing 65 as the eligibility age, life expectancy was 62. Today it is almost 80. FDR wanted to prevent the aged few from suffering destitution in their last remaining years. Social Security was not meant to provide two decades of greens fees for baby boomers.”) He also tackles euthanasia, stem cell research, religion in public life, 9/11, Middle East policy and the Iraq wars (arguing convincingly in several columns that Obama has squandered a historic opportunity in Iraq with his withdrawal. Regardless of the wisdom of entering the conflict, we were in a hard fought position to really influence the Middle East for the better, but Obama lost all of that opportunity. Why did Obama let it go? A mixture of wanting to fulfill a campaign promise, an inability of the Left to make a decision that might shed some positive light on anything initiated by George W. Bush and Obama's own ideological worldview, which I will address in more detail below). All of these topics he tackles with sharp reason, compassion and rock solid logic.

There are 85 total editorials/articles in the book, so obviously I cannot discuss in depth all of them or even many of them here. But I will discuss two of them that had a particular effect on me.

Krauthammer is Jewish, and he has about six or seven essays relating to being Jewish and the state of Israel. I found these to be particularly interesting, especially the 15 page essay, “Zionism and the Fate of the Jews,” where he traces the entire history of the Jewish people, argues for why the diasporas have actually saved them historically as a people, gives grim demographic data showing why Jews are soon to be an endangered species, and makes the best argument I have ever seen for supporting and sustaining Israel against Middle Eastern aggression. It is an absolute must read.

But I guess the most prescient essay/article is the final one, appropriately entitled “Decline Is a Choice.” Here he brings together many of the points he has made over the years, both dealing with foreign policy and domestic policy, and makes a fascinating argument for how they are inextricably connected, and how what Obama has been doing both with health care and internationally makes perfect sense due to his ideology. I agree with Krauthammer that Obama has done long term damage to this country, but it is not due to him being stupid or him “hating America,” as so many ignorant Tea Partiers and loud talk show hosts argue. It is due to what Krauthammer calls Obama’s worldview of Liberal Internationalism (and he goes into much detail as to what that means), and therefore a withdrawal of American hegemony and simultaneously the building up of the welfare state are ideologically and logically (for Obama) connected. Krauthammer (and I) disagree with that ideology, and the requisite destiny that must follow from that ideology, but it has an internal logic nonetheless, and Krauthammer explains it. American decline is actually the goal, but not out of hatred of America or even being unpatriotic. It entails some arguments that I intuitively have felt for some time now but have never been able to articulate to my satisfaction (and some additional arguments that never occurred to me), but once again Krauthammer lays it out here, as well as the reasonable, conservative alternative.

What I like about Krauthammer is that he seems to be the Center-Right, “reasonable conservative” voice that I argued for so passionately in our debates on ANCIANT’s site. I knew they were out there!

His ideas and arguments offer a way forward, not the decline of Obama’s agenda and not the shrill, suicidal cliff-jumping of the Tea Party either. (I think, ironically enough, the likely candidate that would follow a Krauthammerian worldview is Chris Christie, which is why the “elephant in the room” has my early support for 2016).

It is not that some Tea Party darlings like Ted Cruz are idiots. Cruz is no Palin. Cruz graduated cum laude from Princeton, attended Harvard Law School and has argued multiple cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. He is a lot brighter than I am. But he is either wrong or dangerous or both. He knew that his faux filibuster and spearheading of the government shutdown would not kill Obamacare. So why did he do it? Why is Cruz dangerous? He shut down the government of the United States to position himself in the primaries for 2016. That is utterly Nixonian. Cruz is dangerous, smart and an ideologue (Nixon was also dangerous and smart, but crucially he wasn’t an ideologue, he was the ultimate American practitioner of realpolitik). Do not underestimate or sleep on Cruz. Our path to national recovery and continued international hegemony (and I do not use that word in the negative), our path in between the equally dark futures of Obama liberalism leading to European social democratic malaise and the harsh Cruz Tea Partiers (who may be correct on some of the most crucial issues, but their tactics are uncompromising and counterproductive), is the way of Krauthammer and Christie. I firmly believe that.

‘Things That Matter’ by Charles Krauthammer, 2013: ***** out of *****