in 1985, his son, daniel, was born. two years later, krauthammer won the biggest honor in print journalism, the pulitzer prize. not bad for someone who started in the business less than a decade earlier, without even a writing sample. he went straight from the ceremony to see his father, who had once worried about his son s jump from medicine to journalism. his father was 84 and gravely ill. i went to the hospital where he was. and i said, dad, i have something i want to give you. and i gave him the medal. and he beamed. and he showed it to all the nurses. it turned out to be krauthammer s final visit with his dad. so the last time i saw him was a time when this whole circle was closed, and he could feel that the choice had been redeemed in some way. it was a very comforting thing to remember about the last time you see your parent. krauthammer called the 1990s
i made one promise to myself on day one. i was not going to allow it to alter my life. except in ways which are sort of having to do with gravity. i m not going to defy gravity, and i m not going to walk, i m not going to water ski again, that s fine. that you know. but on the big things in life, the direction of my life, what i was going to do, that would not change at all. krauthammer said he never entertained the notion that one day, whether through his own effort, or even some medical miracle, he would gain full use of his arms and legs. he resigned himself to the cold reality that wherever he went in life, he d go in a wheelchair. was that hard? i think the physical part was hard. learning to do everything again. i have a great capacity for erasing memories. so it seems very short. it was long, but it seemed very short. his teachers and classmates
about reagan. he had no need to show how smart he was. he knew exactly what i was asking. he didn t want to talk about it. and if you thought he was done, he wasn t. it would also be some time before krauthammer embraced a conservative domestic policy, taxes, welfare, small government and other reagan-esque things. i was skeptical of tax cuts, of smaller government at the beginning. and by the end of the 80s, i had begun to change. what happened? empirical evidence. as a doctor, i had been trained in empirical evidence. if the treatment is killing your patient, you stop the treatment. i began to look and read and think about whether the view i had of the social democratic society they had in europe was the right way. i moved gradually to the idea of a more limited society, smaller government. by that time, krauthammer s world was really falling into place.
conversation, something during that phone call that made you want to bring him down? it was basically because he was a psychiatrist. so we arranged for him to come to lunch. and there he was in his wheelchair, and we hit it off right away. what did you see in him, though? you know, i just enjoyed talking to him so much. i had this feeling he must be able to write this down. krauthammer gave it a shot. as the saying goes, he wrote about what he knew. his first article, the expanding shrink. protesting how psycho analysis was creeping into political discourse. for example, president carter s famous malaise speech on americans crisis of confidence. they liked it. they published it. and i got lucky again. it was republished on the op-ed page of the washington post. it was the only time an article
day you said to me, you really shouldn t wave. it s a little dangerous. yeah, the wave is a little bit hard. if somebody lets me in traffic, i m tempted to take one hand and say the thank you wave. but then, of course, i wouldn t have a hand on the steering wheel. it actually took us eight minutes to get to the stadium. when we took our seats, the nats were beating the braves 1-0. krauthammer went into analyst mode right away, as though he was breaking down a procedural move harry reid might use in a filibuster. in a 1-0 count, you want to stay on a breaking ball, because it s slower. and is he likely to throw a breaking ball? no. so he s unlikely to steal right now. strike one. now, he might go for a breaking ball. turns out nine innings with charles krauthammer is not just a day at the park. it s essentially grad school for baseball.