Charles Krauthammer - Life and Career

Life and Career

Krauthammer was born on March 13, 1950, in New York City and raised in Montreal, Quebec, where he attended McGill University and obtained an honors degree in political science and economics in 1970. The following year, he was a Commonwealth Scholar in politics at Balliol College, Oxford, before returning to the United States and entering Harvard Medical School. During Krauthammer's first year of medical school, he was paralyzed in a diving accident and was hospitalized for a year and two months. However, he continued his medical studies and was able to graduate with his class, earning his Doctor of Medicine in 1975. From 1975 to 1978, Krauthammer was a resident and then a chief resident in psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital. During his time as chief resident, he and a colleague proposed a new form of mania based on a concomitant medical illness, rather than a primary inherent disorder, termed "secondary mania" and co-authored a chapter on the epidemiology of manic illness for the first edition of the textbook Manic Illness; referenced in the 2007 textbook Manic-Depressive Illness, a standard reference for bipolar disorder.

In 1978, Krauthammer moved to Washington, D.C., to direct planning in psychiatric research under the Carter administration. He began contributing articles about politics to The New Republic and in 1980 served as a speech writer to vice president Walter Mondale. In January 1981, Krauthammer joined The New Republic as both a writer and editor. In 1983, he began writing essays for Time magazine, one of which first brought him national acclaim for his development of the "Reagan Doctrine." In 1984, he became board certified in psychiatry by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. The same year, his New Republic essays won the "National Magazine Award for Essays and Criticism". In 1985, he began a weekly column for The Washington Post, which in 1987 was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for commentary. In 1990, he became a panelist for the weekly PBS political roundtable, Inside Washington and for the last decade, he has been a political analyst/commentator for Fox News.

In 2006 the Financial Times named Krauthammer the most influential commentator in America, saying "Krauthammer has influenced US foreign policy for more than two decades. He coined and developed 'The Reagan Doctrine' in 1985 and he defined the US role as sole superpower in his essay 'The Unipolar Moment,' published shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Krauthammer's 2004 speech 'Democratic Realism', which was delivered to the American Enterprise Institute when Krauthammer won the Irving Kristol Award, set out a framework for tackling the post 9/11 world, focusing on the promotion of democracy in the Middle East." In 2009, Politico columnist Ben Smith wrote that Krauthammer had "emerged in the Age of Obama as a central conservative voice," a "kind of leader of the opposition...a coherent, sophisticated and implacable critic of the new president." The New York Times columnist David Brooks says that today "he's the most important conservative columnist." Former congressman and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough called Krauthammer "without a doubt the most powerful force in American conservatism. He has for two, three, four years." Krauthammer's other awards include the People for the American Way's First Amendment Award, the Champion/Tuck Award for Economic Understanding, the first annual Bradley Prize, and the Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism, an annual award given by the Eric Breindel Foundation. Former president Bill Clinton called Krauthammer "a brilliant man" in a December 2010 press conference. Krauthammer responded, tongue-in-cheek, that "my career is done" and "I'm toast". Krauthammer is a member of the Chess Journalists of America and the Council on Foreign Relations. He is co-founder of Pro Musica Hebraica, a not-for-profit organization devoted to presenting Jewish classical music – much of it lost or forgotten – in a concert hall setting.