Charles Krauthammer for President. Bill O’Reilly for . . . something. Really?
O’Reilly is the easy one. Being rich, famous, a writer who sells a lot of books, and a guy who thinks he is the savviest (if not necessarily the smartest) guy in any room, he has everything except a bigger pulpit. It is clear he thinks he knows more about the things a President should know about, than Bush 43 did or Obama does. It is clear he has a gigantic ego. He probably knows he is unelectable because he is so polarizing, but that might not stop him. One suspects he daydreams about the possibility that no Republican will be the jammer to emerge from the 2016 pack, and that a weary GOP will turn its eyes to him.
Krauthammer is the interesting one. He has everything O’Reilly has, other than physical mobility, but he actually is the smartest guy in most rooms – certainly in more rooms than is either O’Reilly or the incumbent President. Also, he is probably way-less polarizing, mainly because he is that rara avis, the public figure who is able and willing to let the other guy talk without interruption – and, as a special bonus, the one who can give a direct, responsive, and persuasive answer to a question, occasionally an answer as concise as “yes” or “no.” I mean, can you think of any other Republican who can actually persuade people to change their mind about anything? He is a very hard guy with whom to argue. From the perspective of an old-fashioned liberal (i.e., someone who is considered to be either a conservative or a right-wing nut-job), Krauthammer is correct on just about every issue that matters, certainly on the economy, national security, and even most of the social issues. Suspect he has few remaining skeletons in the closet (as though there were such a concept in these libertine times), and now that we have done the African-American thing and toyed with the Female thing, the times might be perfect for doing the Wheelchair thing, maybe with some FDR photoshopping.
I agree that his opinions are consistently intelligent and well thought out. Sadly, he’s not the kind of person we elect to major offices in this country, much less the presidency. He might get away with the wheelchair, given that the recent PBS series on the Roosevelts may have awakened many voters to the fact that FDR did pretty well from a wheel chair. He even managed some presidential adultery. However a rather unattractive Jew who has to punctuate his sentences with puffs of oxygen could only make it as a political Cyrano whispering in the ear of a more glamorous candidate.