Pulitzer Prize-Winning Columnist Charles Krauthammer Dies at 68 Conservative columnist had been told he had weeks to live By Lukas I. Alpert
https://www.wsj.com/articles/pulitzer-prize-winning-columnist-charles-krauthammer-dies-at-68-
Charles Krauthammer, the Pulitzer Prize-winning conservative columnist whose incisive critiques made him an influential voice in Washington for decades, died Thursday. He was 68.
Mr. Krauthammer had said earlier this month that he was battling an aggressive form of cancer and his doctors told him he had weeks to live.
A Harvard-educated psychiatrist, Mr. Krauthammer was paralyzed below the neck in a freak diving accident in his 20s while in medical school. He used a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
After practicing medicine for a few years, he moved to Washington to direct planning in psychiatric research during the Carter administration and became a speech writer for Walter Mondale.
He then began contributing articles and political commentary to the New Republic, where he would eventually become a full-time writer and editor. In 1984, he won a National Magazine Award and began writing a regular column for the Washington Post. The column later was nationally syndicated.
“This is a hugely sad day for me, and I know in that I’m no different than so many Post readers,” said Fred Hiatt, the Washington Post’s editorial page editor, on Thursday. “For decades Charles has written a column of unparalleled principle and integrity, not to mention humor and intellectual virtuosity. There will be no replacing him.”
In 1987, Mr. Krauthammer was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for commentary. In 2006, the Financial Times dubbed him the most influential commentator in the U.S. In 2009, Politico said Mr. Krauthammer had emerged as a “central conservative voice” against the newly elected Obama administration who served as “a coherent, sophisticated and implacable critic of the new president.”
In the 1990s, he became a weekly panelist on the PBS news program “Inside Washington” and was later a regular contributor to Fox News Channel’s “Special Report with Bret Baier.” Fox News-parent 21st Century Fox and Wall Street Journal parent News Corp share common ownership.
While his positions often stood on the conservative side of the debate—he was a staunch proponent of a hawkish foreign policy and a defender of Israel—Mr. Krauthammer’s views weren’t always doctrinaire and sometimes cut across the political divide.
He wrote regularly about medical ethics and was a supporter of embryonic stem cell research. He also opposed the death penalty. In 2016, he opposed the candidacy of Donald Trump.
But he was perhaps best known for his positions on foreign policy. In the 1980s, Mr. Krauthammer was credited with coining the phrase “the Reagan Doctrine” to describe President Ronald Reagan’s strategy for countering Soviet influence around the world. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attack, Mr. Krauthammer fell firmly into the neoconservative camp, writing forcefully in support of the invasion of Iraq.
Born in New York City on March 13, 1950, to Orthodox Jewish parents, Mr. Krauthammer and his family moved to Montreal. He graduated from McGill University and studied at Oxford University before pursuing a medical degree at Harvard. He switched to psychiatry after becoming paralyzed.
“I leave this life with no regrets,” Mr. Krauthammer wrote in a farewell note to his readers. “It was a wonderful life—full and complete with the great loves and great endeavors that make it worth living. I am sad to leave, but I leave with the knowledge that I lived the life that I intended.”
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