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A new book. Things that matter is not a confessional memoir or scandalous kissandtell. Its a collection of newspaper and magazine pieces from the pulitzer prizewinning columnist. Or maybe its more than that. Are you decoding my book . I am decoding it right now. Like its entirely about me. [ laughs ] but its all written in hieroglyphics. Well, its not quite as impenetrable as hieroglyphics. Lets start with part one of your book, and it is titled personal. And in there, the first column is really an incredibly moving piece about your brother. Marcel krauthammer died of cancer. He was 59. Charles writes this about his older brother. He taught me most everything i ever learned about every sport i ever played. He taught me how to throw a football, hit a backhand, grip a nine iron, field a grounder, dock a sailboat in the tailing wind. And how we played. It was paradise. Tell me about that. It was a paradisiacal childhood. My brother and i were inseparable. He was four years older, which is ....
That caused the largest number of canceled subscriptions in the history of the magazine, which i was very proud of. [ chuckles ] what was his writing like? it s always been extremely step by step logical. if you can read a column by charles about something and you can still disagree with him after you re through with it, then you know you must have a pretty good argument. [ chuckles ] those arguments had conservative columnists like william f. buckley wondering why krauthammer and the new republic were not supporting reagan s reelection in 1984. what buckley was writing was, why don t you give up on the democrats, and i was still one of those who wanted to sort of save the soul of the democratic party and maintain this conservative element of which the magazine really was. krauthammer fired off a letter to buckley, writing, reagan still had a lot to answer for on foreign policy, and his domestic policy was far ....
Wouldn t be able to swim, i was sure that was the end. do you think back to that day often? not really. it doesn t i kind of have a distance from it. i see it like as if it happened in a film. um. and interestingly enough, for people talk about near-death experiences, there was no panic, there was no great emotion. i didn t see a light. my life did not flash before me. you sort of get to a place where you re ready and then you re suddenly brought back to the world. so no cosmic revelation as he was rushed to the hospital, though krauthammer notes the irony of what he left behind. there were two books on the side of the pool when they picked up my effects. one was the anatomy of the spinal cord and the other one s ....
Which are sort of having to do with gravity. i m not gonna defy gravity. and i m not gonna walk, i m not gonna water ski again. that s fine. so that you know. but on the big things in life, the direction of my life, what i was gonna do, that wouldn t change at all. krauthammer says he never entertained the notion that one day, whether through his own effort or even some medical miracle, he d regain full use of his arms and legs. he resigned himself to the cold reality that wherever he went in life, he d go in a wheelchair. was it hard? i think the physical part was hard, getting learning to do everything again. i have a great capacity for erasing memories. [ chuckles ] so it seems very short. it was long, but it would seem very short. his teachers and classmates certainly thought he was rushing his decision to resume his studies immediately. you never thought about taking a year off or taking a couple ....
I tried to engage him, like, on the contras. what are you gonna do? and all of a sudden, what i m hearing from him is this story about how when he and nancy were in the guest house of president marcos of the philippines, there was a giant spider on the ceiling, and the question was how to get him off without scaring nancy. and i m thinking, i don t get it. this is the most successful president in my lifetime. he seems to be out to lunch. what s going on? he says it was only later that he realized what eluded him about reagan. he had no need ever to show how smart he was. he knew exactly what i was asking. he didn t want to talk about it. and if you thought he was a dunce, he didn t care, cause he knew that he wasn t. it would also be some time before krauthammer embraced a conservative domestic policy, taxes, welfare, small government, and other reagan-esque sins. it took me about a decade. i was skeptical of tax cuts. i was skeptical of smaller government at the beginning ....