Matt Yglesias

Why is Charles Krauthammer a New Republic Contributing Editor?

I’ve noted previously that many New Republic writers seem to have an appropriately low opinion of Charles Krauthammer. Jonathan Chait, for example, once wondered “why Obama didn’t pick some conservatives with a bit more intellectual integrity than, say, [Bill] Kristol and [Charles] Krauthammer” to have dinner with. Today, Christopher Orr refers to “characteristic lawyerly sophistries that Krauthammer tries to sneak past readers.”

The weird thing about this is that Krauthammer is on The New Republic’s masthead as a contributing editor.

Now everyone should understand that contributing editor titles don’t imply that the person bearing them plays any actual role in the production of the magazine. And I don’t think Krauthammer has contributed any pieces to TNR since 2002 or 2003. But these titles are honorific—magazines often bestow them upon people who used to work there, as Krauthammer did, with whom they wish to be associated. That’s why Ryan Lizza and Peter Beinart and Robert Wright are all there on the masthead. But if folks at the magazine understand that Krauthammer is dishonest, then why this interest in associated themselves with him? There are very few things that can be done in the world to hold prominent media celebrities accountable once they ensconce themselves firmly in the bosom of the conservative movement. But denying them “contributing editor” titles at magazines that aren’t part of the conservative movement is one of those things.

Hertzberg on Charles Krauthammer

I’ve only been reading Charles Krauthammer on a regular basis since I moved to Washington, DC in late 2003. And he’s been consistently one of the very most repugnant writers out there—locked in perennial competition with Fred Barnes to win the coveted “America’s Worst Columnist” award. Rick Hertzberg, by contrast, is one of my favorite columnists. And yet they both worked in the Carter administration and both worked for the 1980s version of The New Republic (IIRC, they still list Krauthammer, but not Hertzberg, as a contributing editor). And I’m somewhat obsessed with Krauthammer, yet I take it that he can’t have always been such a rancid rightwinger given that background. Now Hertzberg writes what’s practically a blog post just for me—some reflections on the origins of Krauthammerdom.

Obama’s Opportunity

For another take on the whole “socialist” thing, it’s useful to look at Rick Hertzberg’s take on Friday’s Krauthammer column:

If Barack Obama succeeds, his joint address to Congress will be seen as historic—indeed as the foundational document of Obamaism. As it stands, it constitutes the boldest social democratic manifesto ever issued by a U.S. president.

Obama sees the current economic crisis as an opportunity. He has said so openly. And now we know what opportunity he wants to seize. Just as the Depression created the political and psychological conditions for Franklin Roosevelt’s transformation of America from laissez-faireism to the beginnings of the welfare state, the current crisis gives Obama the political space to move the still (relatively) modest American welfare state toward European-style social democracy.

Hertzberg remarks: “From your keyboard to God’s ear”

For a more fleshed-out positive take on this, read my former boss Bob Kuttner’s book Obama’s Challenge: America’s Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency. I’m actually not so certain that this “crisis = opportunity” perspective is correct. The opportunity rests in the election results. And the election results are clearly related, in part, to the collapse of the economy. But the opportunity would actually be much greater if the economic problems were much less severe than they actually are. The ideal scenario would have been a panic lasting a few months that turned out to have relatively little real bite. Otherwise, bad times both open the conceptual window and narrow the fiscal window with it being hard to say which will win out in the end.

I would also say that, contra Krauthammer, Obama has been pretty clear about his overall vision since at least the winter of 2007-2008. New investments in education and infrastructure, health care that’s affordable for all, and a move to a more sustainable carbon emissions regime have always been the agenda of all the major Democratic presidential contenders and so the odds of someone winning on platform like that have looked quite good for a long time now, back before most people believed there was any kind of crisis.