Politics, again...

Charles Krauthammer's column today warrants all our review:

Read here, "Why I'm voting for McCain" read now

For those of you unfamiliar with Mr. Krauthammer, and why we should care what he thinks (as I was until this past year or so), here is a brief summary from Wikipedia:

Krauthammer was born in New York City to parents of the Jewish religion whose citizenship was French. He was raised in Montreal, Canada where he attended McGill University and obtained an honors degree in political science and economics in 1970. From 1970 to 1971, he was a Commonwealth Scholar in politics at Balliol College, Oxford.

He later moved to the United States, where he attended Harvard Medical School. In his first year there in 1972, Krauthammer was paralyzed in a serious diving accident. Continuing medical studies during his year-long hospitalization, he graduated with his class, earning an M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1975, and then began working as a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital. In October 1984, he became board certified in psychiatry by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.

From 1975-1978, Krauthammer was a Resident and then a Chief Resident in Psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital. During this time he and a colleague identified a form of mania (a part of bipolar disorder) which they named "secondary mania" and published a second important paper on the epidemiology of manic illness. The standard textbook for bipolar disease (“Manic Depressive Illness” by Goodwin and Jamison)contains twelve references to his work.

In 1978, Krauthammer quit medical practice to direct planning in psychiatric research for the Jimmy Carter administration, and began contributing to The New Republic magazine. During the presidential campaign of 1980, Krauthammer served as a speech writer to Vice President Walter Mondale.

In 1981, following the defeat of the Carter/Mondale ticket, Krauthammer began his journalistic career, joining The New Republic as a writer and editor. His New Republic writings won the 1984 "National Magazine Award for Essays and Criticism." In 1983, he began writing essays for Time magazine. In 1985, he began a weekly column for the Washington Post for which he won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for commentary.

In 2006, the Financial Times named Krauthammer the most influential commentator in America,[10] 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’ set out a framework for tackling the post 9/11 world, focusing on the promotion of democracy in the Middle East.”

And, if only my grandma would read this before she votes: "The Comprehensive Argument Against Barak Obama".