When Charles Krauthammer died on June 21, 2018, the country lost a true master of his craft. For more than three decades as a columnist for the Washington Post, Krauthammer always delivered the best, managing in fewer than 800 words to craft a story that was always interesting no matter the topic.
Whether it was politics, sports, religion, or even chess, Krauthammer had a gift for maintaining simplicity with his writing that, while light on polemic, was heavy on argumentation, forcing readers to think about what he was saying. His audience always knew where Krauthammer stood. During a 2013 interview, he said, “You’re betraying your whole life if you don’t say what you think — and you don’t say it honestly and bluntly.”
Anyone who watched Krauthammer during his many appearances on Fox News knew that he did not pull punches. He didn’t suffer fools, regardless of whether it was a president, a member of Congress, or a fellow Fox News contributor. At the same time, Krauthammer never took himself too seriously, never a missing a chance to engage in self-deprecation if the moment called for it.
All of those qualities shine through in the posthumously released book, The Point of It All: A Lifetime of Great Loves and Endeavors.
Edited by his son, Daniel, the tome is somewhat of a sequel to the book Things That Matter, a collection of columns and writings published in 2013. The Point of It All also features several speeches in addition to a long, previously unpublished essay called “The Authoritarian Temptation,” which was the foundation of what was supposed to be a book project dedicated to foreign policy.
The introduction to the book features Daniel telling the story of how it came to be, how he and his father set up a makeshift planning station in the Atlanta hospital room where his father recovered from surgery. Then, there was the enormous responsibility Daniel took on when they learned that Charles would not be alive to finish the project. He told his son, “If it’s not worthy, don’t publish it.”
Thankfully for us, it did get published, and the introduction serves as a guide to how Daniel went about making sure the book was worthy of his father’s memory. At the conclusion of the book, Daniel eulogizes his father, writing: “Everyone who came into contact with him — whether it was through a close friendship or just reading and watching his thoughts from afar — felt the power of his personality.” Daniel goes on to say that his father was always more interested in learning about the person he was speaking to than in talking about himself.
The book is divided into five parts, with 18 chapters featuring anywhere from one to eight pieces in addition to the edited speeches. The chapters are thematic instead of chronological, so it’s possible to choose topics and read about them before moving on to something else, all the while jumping back and forth without missing anything.
The topics run the gamut from foreign policy to abortion. In one column about abortion, Krauthammer covers many of the catchphrases associated with the issue, including “terminating a pregnancy,” “pro-life,” and “pro-choice.” He argues that the issue “remains politically hot, but is intellectually spent. Everyone seems to know both sides of the argument backward and forward.” It’s no small irony that he wrote the piece in 1985, and yet here we are over 30 years later, still engaging in the same arguments.
Daniel points out his father favored the logos method of persuasion — the use of reason, evidence, and logical argumentation to convince others — described in Aristotle’s treatise, On Rhetoric. Krauthammer uses this to great effect in a 2013 piece called “The Bush Legacy.” He wrote: “With Bush’s legacy being reassessed … it’s important to note that he did not just keep us safe. He created the entire anti-terrorist infrastructure that continues to keep us safe.” He goes on to argue that Bush’s successor, Barack Obama, assailed Bush’s antiterror policies as a candidate but found them to be “indispensable” once in office.
Plenty of those pieces made their way into the book, but so did others on topics such as Daniel’s birth and wondering where on his newborn knee will be “the little mark that records his first too-hard slide into second base.” He writes of baseball, golf, and the difficulty of what it is like to lose in the world of sports. Charles Krauthammer is no longer with us, but his legacy will continue to live on.
Jay Caruso is deputy editor of the Washington Examiner magazine.
