WEEKLY STANDARD contributing editor Charles Krauthammer seeks a research assistant for a one- or two-year term. Send résumé to job@charleskrauthammer.com.
Last night, Charles Krauthammer weighed in on the controversy surrounding Newt Gingrich's criticism of the House Republican's budget. "This is a big deal," Krauthammer said on Fox News. "He's done. He didn't have a big chance from the beginning, but now it's over. Apart from being contradictory and incoherent...calling the Republican plan--which all but four Republican members of the House have now endorsed and will be running on--calling it radical and 'right-wing social engineering' is deadly."
In his column today, Charles Krauthammer sizes up the potential GOP presidential candidates and concludes by noting there's a chance Paul Ryan could end up running in 2012:
The New York Times has published a piece on Charles Krauthammer's love of chess:
Charles Krauthaammer, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post, occasionally takes up his pen and instead of lashing liberal causes writes about one of his passions: chess.
Krauthammer, in a recent interview, said he had written many columns on chess, including one each year for 20 years in Time magazine. When he was nominated for the Pulitzer in 1986, he said one of the 10 columns submitted to the judges was about one of the world championship matches between Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov. (He did not win the Pulitzer until the following year, when all of the submitted columns were political commentary.) [...]
Rep. Keith Ellison: "The fact is, we're honoring a great American novelist, but we have to divert that important conversation…the Republican caucus wants to go toe-to-toe on health care."
Congressman Jim Matheson responded to the story about his brother's nomination to the federal court--just as President Obama is trying to persuade the congressman to switch his vote from No to Yes on health care--with this statement to Fox News:
"I am happy for my brother... The federal 10th Circuit Court will gain a judge devoted to judicial integrity, fairness and knowledge of the law. The Weekly Standard's piece is rubbish."
By pretending that the issue is whether or not Scott Matheson is qualified to be a judge, Congressman Matheson and Jonathan Chait are deploying a "weapon of mass distraction," to quote another estimable Democrat, Alan Grayson. No one has questioned Scott Matheson's qualifications; my original post included his sterling credentials, as detailed in a White House press release.
The real question is whether or not the White House used the nomination to influence Congressman Matheson's vote on health care. Did the White House engage in an explicit quid pro quo, i.e., did someone in the administration threaten to hold up the nomination until Matheson agreed in private to vote for the bill?
Niall Ferguson had a fascinating op-ed in the February 28 Los Angeles Times:
If empires are complex systems that sooner or later succumb to sudden and catastrophic malfunctions, what are the implications for the United States today? First, debating the stages of decline may be a waste of time -- it is a precipitous and unexpected fall that should most concern policymakers and citizens. Second, most imperial falls are associated with fiscal crises. Alarm bells should therefore be ringing very loudly indeed as the United States contemplates a deficit for 2010 of more than $1.5 trillion -- about 11% of GDP, the biggest since World War II.
These numbers are bad, but in the realm of political entities, the role of perception is just as crucial. In imperial crises, it is not the material underpinnings of power that really matter but expectations about future power. The fiscal numbers cited above cannot erode U.S. strength on their own, but they can work to weaken a long-assumed faith in the United States' ability to weather any crisis.
Ferguson's larger essay, from which the op-ed is adapted, is available to subscribers of Foreign Affairs here. Whether Ferguson is an American declinist is an open question. For what it's worth, I think Josef Joffe and Joel Kotkin are right and the pessimists are wrong: the evidence shows that America isn't going anywhere.
The prevailing opinion in Washington is that President Obama's debate last week with the House Republicans was a big success. Whether you are an E.J. Dionne liberal ("The Q&A was a smash success, and we need many more") or a Charles Krauthammer conservative ("I do think it should be something we ought to consider institutionalizing"), you probably enjoyed the opportunity to watch the president and his congressional opponents go at it in a civil manner. I did too!
This was one of the best national political debates in many years. Citizens who watched the event were impressed, by many accounts. Journalists and commentators immediately responded by continuing the conversation of the ideas put forward by the president and his opponents — even the cable news cycle was disrupted for a day.
America could use more of this — an unfettered and public airing of political differences by our elected representatives. So we call on President Barack Obama and House Minority Leader John Boehner to hold these sessions regularly — and allow them to be broadcast and webcast live and without commercial interruption, sponsorship or intermediaries.
The White House seems eager to repeat the Baltimore experience with the Senate Republicans. But before we go about institutionalizing an American version of question time, let's consider a few things:
(1) America is not a parliamentary democracy. The president is half-king, half prime-minister. He is separate from and coequal to the Congress. The Constitution stipulates only that he make an annual report to the Congress. He does not have to make an overly long televised speech that serves to buck up partisans and set the agenda for the year. He does not have to regularly submit to questions from his opponents. Why?
