Scott Rhee's Reviews > Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes, and Politics Paperback – Deckle Edge, May 12, 2015

I knew nothing about the late Charles Krauthammer before reading “Things That Matter”, a collection of hand-picked essays and columns he has written over the course of his 30-plus-year career as a syndicated columnist at The Washington Post, political pundit, and a psychiatrist.

The only thing I had heard about him—-indeed, what initially attracted me to his writing—-was the fact that he was a conservative who, in his few final years before his death in 2018, continually maintained a loathing and disgust for Donald Trump. (https://whyy.org/articles/rip-charles...)

That alone was enough for me to give him a try. And I’m glad I did.

While I don’t think I agreed at all with a majority of his politics, I nevertheless found him to be intelligent and humorous and compassionate in his writing. Even when excoriating people he didn’t like, such as Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, he was never mean-spirited, and he always made it clear that he disagreed with and disliked the policies and not the person.

His was a spirit of true old-fashioned gentlemanly political criticism that is not seen anymore, certainly not amongst his other conservative pundits and bigmouths like Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and the late Rush Limbaugh.

I think it’s important to read books by authors that you may not agree with or are not aligned, politically, with. It helps to broaden one’s political viewpoints and promotes intellectual growth. To my fellow liberal friends: if you are looking for a differing viewpoint, reading Krauthammer may be a good place to start.