Hertzberg: Krauthammer's Politics, Then And Now

At least one reader of my last post, in thanking me for drawing her attention to Charles Krauthammer’s characterization of Obama’s joint-session speech (“the boldest social democratic manifesto ever issued by a U.S. president”), assumes that Charles is as fervent a supporter of the President as she is. Alas, this is not exactly the case, though one wouldn’t necessarily know it from the portions I quoted. There are a couple of subtle hints, e.g., the faintly mocking coinage of “Obamaism” and the line “He has said so openly”—as if seeing a crisis as an opportunity were somehow evidence of shameless rascality. But these are nuances only a trained Krauthammerologist would notice.