Charles Krauthammer
March 13, 1950 — June 21, 2018
Charles Krauthammer was an American political columnist, psychiatrist, and television commentator whose syndicated column in The Washington Post ran for more than three decades, earned a Pulitzer Prize, and helped define mainstream conservative thought in America.
From Medicine to Words
Born March 13, 1950 in New York City and raised in Montreal, Krauthammer attended Harvard College and Harvard Medical School. In his first year of medical school, a diving board accident severed his spinal cord at cervical level C5, leaving him permanently paralyzed from the waist down. Remarkably, after fourteen months in a hospital, he returned to Harvard, completed his medical degree on schedule, and went on to train as a psychiatrist. He was involved in the development of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders III, published in 1980. His extraordinary intellectual resilience in the face of catastrophic injury became a central part of his public story and, for many readers, enhanced the authority with which he wrote about human will and political conviction.
Political Voice and the Pulitzer
Krauthammer entered the Carter administration in 1978 as a director of psychiatric research and became a speechwriter for Vice President Walter Mondale in 1980 — a period when his political views were still broadly liberal. Over the following decade he moved toward conservatism, writing with sharp clarity about American foreign policy, the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the philosophical foundations of a hawkish internationalism he called the "unipolar moment." His column for The Washington Post launched in 1984 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1987. Syndicated to more than 400 publications worldwide, it became one of the most widely read opinion columns in American journalism. He was simultaneously a fixture on Fox News's Special Report with Bret Baier, where his panel commentary was consistently cited as among the most substantive on television.
Did You Know?
Despite his conservative reputation, Krauthammer coined the term "Reagan Doctrine" — the policy of supporting anti-Soviet resistance movements worldwide — in 1985. He was also one of the few prominent conservative voices to oppose the Iraq War's management and to openly criticize aspects of Bush-era foreign policy, demonstrating an intellectual independence that sometimes frustrated partisan colleagues.
Final Years and Legacy
In June 2018, Krauthammer disclosed publicly that he had terminal cancer and had weeks to live. His farewell letter, published in The Washington Post, was notable for its stoicism, gratitude, and lack of self-pity — qualities that had defined him since his paralysis. He died on June 21, 2018 at age 68. The response from across the political spectrum was remarkable: liberals and conservatives alike acknowledged that American intellectual life had lost one of its most honest and disciplined voices. His collected columns have been published as Things That Matter , which spent more than a year on the New York Times bestseller list.