Charles Krauthammer’s legacy will live long after he’s gone

Krauthammer published his last column Friday. Writing from the hospital, 46 years after his diving accident, he delivered devastating news in matter-of-fact prose. “My doctors tell me their best estimate is that I have only a few weeks left to live,” he wrote detailing his cancer diagnosis and declaring his year-long fight officially over.

His impact on the world, however, is not done. His millions of words remain, vast archives made more impressive the life of an author unable to hold his own pen. His art is not only a revolt against his fate, it is a revolt against humanity’s mean fate.

Meg Greenfield, the late editorial page editor of the Washington Post, once called Krauthammer’s column “independent and hard to peg politically. It’s a very tough column. There’s no ‘trendy’ in it. You never know what is going to happen next.”

His early writing is full of medical jargon because Krauthammer returned to medical school after the accident and graduated with a doctor of psychiatry. His studies can still be found in the Archives of General Psychiatry. But Krauthammer would quit research in 1978 to direct planning for psychiatric research under President Jimmy Carter. Two years later, he was writing for Vice President Walter Mondale and then, for the first time officially as a journalist, for the New Republic.

Greenfield said he was unpredictable. Krauthammer was also iconic and prolific.

Writing in 1985 for Time magazine during the Cold War, Krauthammer coined the term to describe the opposite corollary of the Brezhnev Doctrine:

Writing in 1990 for Foreign Affairs after the Berlin Wall became rubble, Krauthammer contextualized the new world. Would the globe be made up of many little powers or would the globe be made up of one? He said the latter and again he invented his own vocabulary:

With his definition of “the Reagan Doctrine,” his recognition of “the Unipolar Moment,” and later his framing of “Democratic Realism” after Sept. 11, 2001, Krauthammer best described the U.S. as superpower. It is was no surprise that the Financial Times would name him the most influential commentator in America in 2006, writing that more than any other, “Krauthammer has influenced US foreign policy for more than two decades.”

His writing is not all academics or geopolitics.

He found meaning in the tragic space shuttle Columbia explosion, reminding readers that they were “winners of the most miraculous intergenerational lottery” and that “we have the unique privilege of living in a time when man has the capacity to travel to other worlds.”

He recorded world and chess history when an IBM computer defeated the undefeatable Garry Kasparov at the chess board. His good-humored prediction after machine bested man? “Be Afraid.”

He all but settled the cats v. dogs debate with his tear-jerking eulogy of a black lab his boy had named “Chester.”

Krauthammer found himself on top of all the important lists of the most influential journalists in the D.C. press corps. He racked together the First Amendment Award from the People for the American Way, the Bradley Prize, and, of course, the Pulitzer Prize. Perhaps the most interesting award came in the form of an apology.

Krauthammer first reported that President Obama had removed a bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office. The White House denied it. An administration frat-bro, who now podcasts for a living, accused him of making “patently false” claims. After his reporting was confirmed and he received an official apology, the writer would quip that he was “the only entity on earth, other than rogue states, that has received an apology from the White House.”

Krauthammer, of course, will be greatly missed. Perhaps none more than by his friends at Fox News and his family at the Washington Post.