Charles Krauthammer didn't so much miss his calling -- he is after all a superb spinner of petty propaganda and a supremely obnoxious obscurantist -- as he did his ideal era, one perhaps Inquisition-related. Unlike the Grand Inquisitors, however, Charles is also quite flexible, meaning he could tolerate the pointed rot, the hazy corruption and the ideological wretchedness of the last Bush administration, while President Obama's almost boy-scout professionalism and unimpeachably pragmatic relief have Charles in the clinically depressed dumps.
This should not, however, be too surprising. It was Charles who coined "Bush Derangement Syndrome"; that is, it was Charles who cast the first boomerang, which in accord with psychic physics has turned on him like a buzzsaw, decapitating all of Charles's intellectual decorum. The poor man, he is the perhaps this nation's gravest sufferer of Obama Derangement Syndrome.
And poor President Obama! He can't even quote Scripture on behalf of the poor without Charles coming at him with a grim, wrathful scythe:
His [tax] policy, he testified "as a Christian" [at the National Prayer Breakfast], "coincides with Jesus’s teaching that 'for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.' "
Now, I’m no theologian, but I’m fairly certain that neither Jesus nor his rabbinic forebears, when speaking of giving, meant some obligation to the state. You tithe the priest, not the tax man.
Well, Charles, I don't know about his "rabinnic forebears," but I'm pretty sure that either Jesus himself -- or more likely his Church interpolators, centuries later, in search of temporal accommodations with State power -- had something to say about Caesar and rendering and all that fiscal jazz.
But, not to worry, Charles. This isn't the place for a Biblical exegesis, which neither of us is qualified for anyway. No, what caught my secular eye was this dark epiphany of yours, regarding merely the most recent of greatly bugabooed hubbubs:
This all would be merely the story of contradictory theologies, except for this: Sebelius is Obama’s appointee. She works for him. These regulations were his call.
Now about that, Charles, I harbor deep, agnostic Doubt. Because, you see, I simply have a hard time Believing that President Obama sits in the Oval Office or in his private study, for hours on end, poring over HHS regulations. I'm not saying he wouldn't, but here's the thing, Charles: He can't.
Why? Because the principal object of "Bush Derangement Syndrome" bequeathed President Obama the godawfulest economy since FDR's in 1933; because Obama's predecessor stuck him with astronomic debts and deficits; because the vast indifference to working Americans paid by this particular president's "forebear" left millions of them unemployed; and because the current commander in chief, a studied and dedicated proponent of soft power, got saddled with two unforgivably hard conflicts by that forerunning warmonger, not to mention war criminal, of neoconservative fatuity.
You see, Charles, President Obama has been a trifle busy cleaning up the prodigiously clusterfucked headaches with which your idiot endowed this administration. And you know what, Charles? I do Believe Jesus would see it the same way; indeed, riffing on his celebrated Temple performance, he might, amen, even put it the same way.