Coordinates	55°45′06″N37°37′04″N
name	National Mall
location	Between Independence and Constitution Avenues from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial
architect	Pierre (Peter) Charles L'Enfant; McMillan Commission
added	October 15, 1966
governing body	National Park Service
refnum	66000031 }}

The National Mall is an open-area national park in downtown Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. The National Mall is a unit of the National Park Service (NPS), and is administered by the National Mall and Memorial Parks unit. The term ''National Mall'' commonly includes areas that are officially part of West Potomac Park and Constitution Gardens to the west, and often is taken to refer to the entire area between the Lincoln Memorial and the United States Capitol, with the Washington Monument providing a division slightly west of the center. The National Mall receives approximately 24 million visitors each year.

History

In his 1791 plan for the future city of Washington, D.C., Pierre (Peter) Charles L'Enfant envisioned a garden-lined "grand avenue" approximately in length and wide, in an area that would lie between the Capitol building and an equestrian statue of George Washington to be placed directly south of the White House. The National Mall occupies the site of this planned "grand avenue", which was never constructed. The Washington Monument stands near the planned site of its namesake's equestrian statue. Mathew Carey's 1802 map is reported to be the first to name the area as "The Mall."

During the early 1850s, architect and horticulturist Andrew Jackson Downing designed a landscape plan for the Mall. Over the next half century, federal agencies developed several naturalistic parks within the Mall in accordance with Downing's plan. In addition, railroad tracks crossed the Mall on 6th Street, west of the Capitol. Near the tracks, a large market (Central Market) and a railroad station rose on the north side of the Mall. Greenhouses belonging to the U.S. Botanic Garden appeared near the east end of the Mall.

In 1901, the McMillan Commission's plan, which was partially inspired by the City Beautiful Movement and which purportedly extended L'Enfant's plan, called for a radical redesign of the Mall that would replace its greenhouses, gardens, trees and commercial/industrial facilities with an open space. The plan differed from L’Enfant’s by replacing the wide "grand avenue" with a wide vista containing a long and broad expanse of grass. Four rows of American elm (Ulmus americana) trees planted fifty feet apart between two paths or streets would line each side of the vista. Buildings housing cultural and educational institutions constructed in the Beaux-Arts style would line each outer path or street, on the opposite side of the path or street from the elms.

In subsequent years, the vision of the McMillan plan was generally followed with the planting of American elms and the layout of four boulevards down the Mall, two on either side of a wide lawn. In accordance with a plan that it completed in 1976, the NPS converted the two innermost boulevards (Washington and Adams Drives) into gravel walking paths. The two outermost boulevards (Jefferson Drive Southwest (SW) and Madison Drive Northwest (NW)) remain paved and open to vehicular traffic.

In 1918, contractors for the United States Navy's Bureau of Yards and Docks constructed the "Main Navy" and "Munitions" Buildings along nearly a third of a mile of the south side of Constitution Avenue (then known as B Street), from 17th Street NW to 21st Street NW. Although the Navy intended the buildings to provide temporary quarters for the United States military during World War I, the reinforced concrete structures remained in place until 1970. Much of the buildings' area then became Constitution Gardens, which was dedicated in 1976.

On October 15, 1966, the National Mall was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1981, the NPS prepared a National Register nomination form that documented the Mall's historical significance. More recently, the 108th United States Congress enacted the Commemorative Works Clarification and Revision Act of 2003, which prohibits the siting of new commemorative works and visitor centers in a designated reserve area within the cross-axis of the Mall.

Dimensions

From the Capitol steps to the Lincoln Memorial, the Mall runs 1.9 miles (3.0 km).

From the steps to the Washington Monument, the Mall spans 1.2 miles (1.8 km).

From Ulysses S. Grant Memorial to Lincoln Memorial, the Mall covers 309.2 acres (125.13 ha).

Boundaries of the National Mall

The official boundaries of the National Mall (National Mall proper) are Constitution and Pennsylvania Avenues on the north, 1st Street NW on the east, Independence and Maryland Avenues on the south, and 14th Street NW on the west, with the exception of the section of land bordered by Jefferson Drive on the north, Independence Avenue on the south, and by 12th and 14th Streets respectively on the east and west, which the U.S. Department of Agriculture administers and which contains the Jamie L. Whitten Building (U.S. Department of Agriculture Administration Building). However, people often consider areas outside of these boundaries to be part of the Mall.

Purposes of the National Mall

The National Park Service states that the purposes of the National Mall are to:

Provide a monumental, dignified,and symbolic setting for the governmental structures, museums and national memorials as first delineated by the L’Enfant plan and further outlined in the McMillan plan.

Maintain and provide for the use of the National Mall with its public promenades as a completed work of civic art, a designed historic landscape providing extraordinary vistas to symbols of the nation.

Maintain National Mall commemorative works (memorials, monuments, statues, sites, gardens) that honor presidential legacies, distinguished public figures, ideas, events, and military and civilian sacrifices and contributions.

Forever retain the West Potomac Park section of the National Mall as a public park for recreation and enjoyment of the people.

Maintain the National Mall in the heart of the nation’s capital as a stage for national events and a preeminent national civic space for public gatherings because it is here that the constitutional rights of speech and peaceful assembly find their fullest expression.

Maintain the National Mall as an area free of commercial advertising while retaining the ability to recognize sponsors.

Landmarks, museums and other features

The National Mall (proper) contains the following landmarks, museums and other features: {| style="background: none;" |valign="top"| 2. National Museum of American History 3. National Museum of Natural History 4. National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden 5. West Building of the National Gallery of Art 6. East Building of the National Gallery of Art 8. Ulysses S. Grant Memorial 10. National Museum of the American Indian |width="40"|  |valign="top"| 11. National Air and Space Museum 12. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden 13. Arts and Industries Building 14. Smithsonian Institution Building ("The Castle") 15. Freer Gallery of Art 16. Arthur M. Sackler Gallery 17. National Museum of African Art |width="40"|  |valign="top"| Union Square Capitol Reflecting Pool (see United States Capitol Complex) Peace Monument James A. Garfield Monument Andrew Jackson Downing Memorial Urn Smithsonian Carousel |} With the exception of the National Gallery of Art, all of the museums on the National Mall (proper) are part of the Smithsonian Institution. The Smithsonian maintains a number of gardens near its museums. These gardens include: {| style="background: none;" |valign="top"| Mary Livingston Ripley Garden Enid A. Haupt Garden Kathrine Dulin Folger Rose Garden Butterfly Habitat Garden |width="40"|  |valign="top"| Victory Garden at the National Museum of American History Heirloom Garden at the National Museum of American History, Behring Center Native Landscape at the National Museum of the American Indian Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden |} As popularly understood, the Mall also contains landmarks and features that are east of 1st Street, such as the United States Capitol and its grounds (#7 on image) and some that are south of Maryland Avenue, such as the United States Botanic Garden (#9 on image). Many people also believe that the Mall contains landmarks and features that are west of 14th Street NW, including the Washington Monument (#1 on image), the Monument's grounds and the following: {| style="background: none;" |valign="top"| Constitution Gardens Sylvan Theater Lincoln Memorial Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool National World War II Memorial |width="40"|  |valign="top"| Korean War Veterans Memorial Vietnam Veterans Memorial The Three Soldiers Statue Vietnam Women's Memorial District of Columbia War Memorial |width="40"|  |valign="top"| John Ericsson National Memorial John Paul Jones Memorial Lock Keeper's House
Jefferson Pier |width="40"|  |}

The Smithsonian Institution is planning to construct the National Museum of African American History and Culture on a site between the grounds of the Washington Monument and the National Museum of American History. The boundaries of the museum site are Constitution Avenue on the north, Madison Drive on the south, 14th Street NW on the east, and 15th Street NW on the west. Construction is expected to begin in 2012.

The population of American elm trees planted on the Mall and its surrounding areas in accordance with the McMillan Plan has remained intact for the past 70 years because of disease management and immediate tree replacement. Dutch elm disease (DED) first appeared on the Mall during the 1950s and reached a peak in the 1970s. The NPS has used a number of methods to control this fungal epidemic, including sanitation, pruning, injecting trees with fungicide, replanting with DED-resistant American elm cultivars and combatting the disease's local insect vector, the smaller European elm bark beetle (Scolytus multistriatus), by trapping and by spraying with insecticides. Soil compaction and root damage by crowds and construction projects also adversely affect the elms.

Other nearby attractions

Other attractions within walking distance of the National Mall include the Library of Congress and the United States Supreme Court Building east of the Capitol; the White House (on a line directly north of the Washington Monument), the National Archives, the Old Post Office Pavilion, the National Theatre, Ford's Theatre, and the Albert Einstein Memorial to the north; the National Postal Museum and Union Station to the northeast; and the Jefferson Memorial, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, the George Mason Memorial, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to the south.

The Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial is located in West Potomac Park on a site south of the Mall on the northwest corner of the Tidal Basin. The Memorial is within the sightline between the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials. After construction began in December 2009, the Memorial opened to the public on August 22, 2011. A ceremony dedicating the Memorial was initally scheduled for Sunday, August 28, 2011, but was postponed until September or October when weather forecasters predicted that Hurricane Irene would impact the Washington area around the time of the event.

Usage of the National Mall

The National Mall, in combination with the other attractions in the Washington Metropolitan Area, makes the nation's capital city one of the most popular tourist destinations in the country. However, it has uses other than as a tourist focal point.

Protests and rallies

The National Mall's status as a wide, open expanse at the heart of the capital makes it an attractive site for protests and rallies of all types. One notable example is the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, a political rally for African American civil rights, at which Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

The largest officially recorded rally was the Vietnam War Moratorium Rally on October 15, 1969. However, in 1995, the NPS issued a crowd estimate for the Million Man March with which an organizer of the event, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, disagreed. The next year, a committee of the 104th United States Congress provided no funds for NPS crowd counting activities in Washington, D.C. when it prepared legislation making 1997 appropriations for the U.S. Department of the Interior. As of 2009, the NPS had not provided any further official crowd estimates for Mall events.

On April 25, 2004, the March for Women's Lives filled the Mall. On January 27, 2007, tens of thousands of protesters opposed to the Iraq War converged on the Mall (see: January 27, 2007 anti-war protest), drawing comparisons by participants to the Vietnam War protest.

Presidential inaugurations

During presidential inaugurations, people without official tickets gather at the National Mall. Normally, the Mall between 7th and 14th Streets NW is used as a staging ground for the parade. On December 4, 2008, the Presidential Inaugural Committee (see United States presidential inauguration#Organizers) announced that "for the first time, the entire length of the National Mall will be opened to the public so that more people than ever before will be able to witness the swearing-in of the President from a vantage point in sight of the Capitol." The Committee made this arrangement because of the massive attendance – projected to be as many as 2 million people – that it expected for the inauguration of Barack Obama on January 20, 2009. Despite the arrangement, a throng of people seeking access to the event climbed and then removed temporary protective fences around the Smithsonian's Mary Livingston Ripley Garden, six blocks from the site at which Obama took his inaugural oath. Hordes then trampled the garden's vegetation and elevated plant beds when entering and leaving the event. Others could not find a way to enter the Mall in time to view the ceremony. More than a thousand people with tickets missed the event while being stranded in the I-395 Third Street Tunnel beneath the Mall after police directed them there (see Purple Tunnel of Doom). The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies subsequently announced that ticket holders that were not admitted would receive copies of the swearing-in invitation and program, photos of Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, and a color print of the ceremony.

Other events and recreational activities

The National Mall has long served as a spot for jogging, picnics, and light recreation for the Washington population. The Smithsonian Carousel, located on the Mall in front of the Arts and Industry Building, is a popular attraction that operates seasonally. The carousel was constructed in Gwynn Oak Park near Baltimore, Maryland, in 1947 and was moved to the Mall in 1975.

Annual events

A number of large free events recur annually on the Mall. A kite festival, formerly named the "Smithsonian Kite Festival" and now named the "Blossom Kite Festival", usually takes place each year on the Washington Monument grounds during the last weekend of March (the first weekend of the National Cherry Blossom Festival). The 2011 Blossom Kite Festival took place on Sunday, April 10, 2011.

An Earth Day celebration takes place on the Mall each year around April 22. A week-long series of rallies, exhibits, observances and performances occurred on the Mall from April 17 to April 25, 2010 to commemorate Earth Day's 40th anniversary. The final day's events featured performances by Sting, Mavis Staples, The Roots, John Legend, Jimmy Cliff and others. In 2011, the United States Environmental Protection Agency sponsored a two-day Earth Day event on the Mall that featured more than 40 interactive exhibits and activities.

A four-day exhibition usually takes place each year on the Mall during Public Service Recognition Week (the first full week of May). Government agencies participating in the event sponsor exhibits that display the works of public employees and that enable visitors to learn about government programs and initiatives, discuss employee benefits, and interact with agency representatives. However, the 2011 United States federal budget (Public Law 112-10), which was belatedly enacted on April 15, 2011, contained no funding for that year's event, forcing the event's cancellation.

The National Symphony Orchestra presents each year its ''National Memorial Day Concert'' on the west lawn of the United States Capitol during the evening of the Sunday before Memorial Day (the last Monday of May). The National Gallery of Art hosts a ''Jazz in the Garden'' series each year in the museum's Sculpture Garden on Friday evenings from late May through mid-September.

Components of the United States Navy Band, the United States Air Force Band, the United States Marine Band and the United States Army Band perform on the west steps of the United States Capitol on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday evenings, respectively, during June, July and August. The Marine Band repeats each Wednesday Capitol performance on the following evening (Thursday) at the Sylvan Theater on the grounds of the Washington Monument. Components of U.S. military bands also provide evening concerts at the National World War II Memorial from May through August.

The Smithsonian Folklife Festival takes place on the Mall each year for two weeks around Independence Day (July 4). On that holiday, the ''A Capitol Fourth'' concert takes place in the late afternoon and early evening on the west lawn of the Capitol. This and other Independence Day celebrations on and near the Mall end after sunset with a fireworks display between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial.

On Monday nights during July and August, the annual Screen on the Green movie festival takes place on the Mall between 4th and 7th Streets. The free classic movies are projected on large portable screens and typically draw crowds of thousands of people.

The National Symphony Orchestra presents each year its ''Labor Day Capitol Concert'' on the west lawn of the United States Capitol during the evening of the Sunday before Labor Day (the first Monday of September). The National Book Festival takes place on the Mall each year in late September or early October.

Other events

On Sunday, October 9, 1979, Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass on the National Mall during a visit to Washington. The celebration took place after an appellate court denied a motion for an injunction that atheists Madalyn Murray O'Hair and Jon Garth Murray had filed to prevent the event from occurring.

From 1980 through 1982, The Beach Boys and The Grass Roots performed Independence Day concerts on the Mall, attracting large crowds. However, in April 1983, James G. Watt, President Ronald Reagan's Secretary of the Interior, banned Independence Day concerts on the Mall by such groups. Watt said that "rock bands" that had performed on the Mall on Independence Day in 1981 and 1982 had encouraged drug use and alcoholism and had attracted "the wrong element", who would mug individuals and families attending any similar events in the future. Watt then announced that Las Vegas crooner Wayne Newton, a friend and supporter of President Reagan and a contributor to Republican Party political campaigns, would perform at the Mall's 1983 Independence Day celebration. During the ensuing uproar, Rob Grill, lead singer of The Grass Roots, stated that he felt "highly insulted" by Watt's remarks, which he called "nothing but un-American". The Beach Boys stated that the Soviet Union, which had invited them to perform in Leningrad in 1978, "obviously .... did not feel that the group attracted the wrong element". Vice President George H. W. Bush said of The Beach Boys, "They're my friends and I like their music". When Newton entered an Independence Day stage on the Mall on July 4, 1983, members of his audience booed. Watt apologized to The Beach Boys, First Lady Nancy Reagan apologized for Watt, and in 1984 The Beach Boys gave an Independence Day concert on the Mall to an audience of 750,000 people.

On September 4, 2003, Britney Spears, Mary J. Blige, Aretha Franklin, Aerosmith and others performed in a nationally-televised "NFL Kickoff Live from the National Mall Presented by Pepsi Vanilla" (see National Football League Kickoff game#Pre-game concerts). Preceded by a three-day National Football League "interactive Super Bowl theme park", the event had primarily commercial purposes, unlike earlier major activities on the Mall. Three weeks later, the United States Senate overwhelmingly passed legislation that was intended to limit displays of commercial sponsorship on the Mall.

On July 7, 2007, one leg of Live Earth was held outdoors at the National Museum of the American Indian on the Mall. Former Vice President Al Gore presented, and artists such as Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood performed.

On June 12, 2010, Tareq and Michaele Salahi, a couple under investigation for allegedly crashing a White House state dinner for the Prime Minister of India in November 2009 (see: 2009 U.S. state dinner security breaches), hosted an America's Polo Cup match between the United States and India on the Mall. The advertised ticket price for this event was $95 per person. Reports of the event stated that the players who represented India were actually of Pakistani origin and were from Florida. A spokesman for the Embassy of India stated that neither the Embassy nor the government of India had any association with the event. The event's website reportedly identified an Indian company, Kingfisher Beer, as a sponsor. However, Kingfishers' chief executive denied that the company had sponsored the event. Yashpal Singh, the president and chief executive of Mendocino Brewing Company, Kingfisher's parent company, reportedly stated, "We are not sponsoring this event and have informed the people managing this event of that, .... We have sent legal notices to this effect, and he keeps on advertising us as a sponsor. I don't know what world he's living in."

The inaugural USA Science and Engineering Festival Expo took place on the National Mall and surrounding areas on October 23 and 24, 2010. More than 1,500 free interactive exhibits reportedly drew about 500,000 people to the event, which had over 75 performances. The next Expo is scheduled to take place in Washington, D.C., on April 27-29, 2012.

Occurring once every two to three years on the Mall in the early fall from 2002 to 2009, the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon displayed solar-powered houses that competitive collegiate teams designed, constructed and operated. Igniting a controversy, the Department of Energy (DOE) decided to move the 2011 Decathlon off the Mall, claming that this would support an effort to protect, improve and restore the park. Federal officials stated that heavy equipment that had placed two-story houses on the Mall during earlier Decathlons had cracked walkways and killed grass to a greater extent than had most other Mall events. On February 4, 2011, a Washington Post editorial criticized attempts to have President Obama restore the event to the Mall. Nevertheless, by February 12, 2011, at least thirteen U.S. Senators had signed a letter asking the DOE to reconsider its decision. On February 23, 2011, the DOE and the Department of the Interior announced that the 2011 Solar Decathlon would take place in West Potomac Park, along Ohio Drive southeast of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial.

National Mall Plan

From 2006 through 2010, the NPS conducted a public process that created a plan for the future of the National Mall. On July 13, 2010, the NPS issued in the Federal Register a notice of availability of a final environmental impact statement (EIS) for the National Mall Plan. The two-volume final EIS responded to comments and incorporated changes to a draft EIS for the Plan. On November 9, 2010, the NPS and the Department of the Interior issued a Record of Decision (ROD) that completed the planning process. The ROD contains a summary of the selected alternative, which is the basis for the Plan, together with mitigation measures developed to minimize environmental harm; other alternatives considered; the basis for the decision in terms of planning objectives and the criteria used to develop the preferred alternative; a finding of no impairment of park resources and values; the environmentally preferable alternative; and the public and agency involvement.

The Plan proposes a number of changes to the Mall. The NPS would construct at the east end of the Mall a wide expanse of paved surface in Union Square to accommodate demonstrations and other events by reducing the size of the Capitol Reflecting Pool or by replacing the pool with a fountain or other small water feature. Additional proposed changes include the replacement of the Sylvan Theater on the Washington Monument grounds with a facility containing offices, restaurants and restrooms.

On December 2, 2010, the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) unanimously approved the final National Mall Plan at a public hearing. The NCPC's approval allows the NPS to move forward with implementation of the Plan's recommendations. According to the NCPC, a possible next step is the development of a design competition for Union Square, the area connecting the National Mall with the U.S. Capitol complex.

Transportation

Public transportation

The National Mall is accessible via Washington Metro, with the Smithsonian station located on the south side of the Mall, near the Smithsonian Institution Building between the Washington Monument and the United States Capitol. The Federal Triangle, Archives–Navy Memorial–Penn Quarter, and Union Station Metro stations are also located near the Mall, to the north. The L'Enfant Plaza, Federal Center Southwest and Capitol South Metro stations are located several blocks south of the Mall. Metrobus and the DC Circulator make scheduled stops around the Mall.

Bicycles

The NPS provides parking facilities for bicycles near each of the major memorials as well as along the National Mall. From March to October, an NPS concessionaire rents out bicycles at the Thompson Boat Center, located near the intersection of Virginia Avenue NW and Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway, north of the Lincoln Memorial along the Potomac River-Rock Creek Trail.

Motor vehicle parking

General visitor parking is available along Ohio Drive SW, between the Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson Memorials. Bus parking is available primarily along Ohio Drive, SW, near the Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson Memorials and along Ohio Drive SW, in East Potomac Park. There is limited handicapped parking at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt and World War II Memorials and near the Washington Monument and the Thomas Jefferson, Lincoln, Korean War Veterans, and Vietnam Veterans Memorials; otherwise, parking is extremely scarce in and near the Mall.

See also

National Register of Historic Places listings in Washington, D.C.

Operation Fast Forward

Notes and references

Further reading

External links

Category:National Mall and Memorial Parks Category:National squares Category:Requests for District of Columbia peer review

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Coordinates	55°45′06″N37°37′04″N
name	Charles Krauthammer
birthname	Charles Krauthammer
birth date	March 13, 1950
birth place	New York City, New York
education	McGill University (BA)Harvard University (MD)
occupation	Physician, Columnist, Journalist, Commentator
religion	Jewish
credits	''The New Republic'' (1981–present)''The Washington Post'' (1985–present)''Weekly Standard''''Time magazine'' (1983)''Fox News''
url	http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/opinion/columns/krauthammercharles/ }}

Charles Krauthammer, MD (; born March 13, 1950) is an American Pulitzer Prize–winning syndicated columnist, political commentator, and physician. His weekly column appears in ''The Washington Post'' and is syndicated to more than 275 newspapers and media outlets. He is a contributing editor to the ''Weekly Standard'' and ''The New Republic''. He is also a weekly panelist on the PBS news program ''Inside Washington'' and a nightly panelist on Fox News's ''Special Report with Bret Baier''.

Life and career

Krauthammer was born on March 13, 1950 in New York City. He was raised in Montreal, Quebec, where he attended McGill University and obtained an honors degree in political science and economics in 1970. He was a Commonwealth Scholar in politics at Balliol College, Oxford, 1970–1971. He later moved back to the United States, where he attended Harvard Medical School. Suffering a paralyzing diving accident in his first year of medical school, he was hospitalized for a year, during which time he continued his medical studies. He graduated with his class, earning a Doctor of Medicine from Harvard Medical School in 1975, and went on to complete a residency in psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital. In 1984 he became board certified in Psychiatry by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology

From 1975 to 1978, Krauthammer was a resident and then a chief resident in Psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Whilst chief resident, he co-discovered a form of mania resulting from a concomitant medical illness, rather than a primary inherent disorder, which he named "secondary mania" and co-authored an important chapter (with Gerald Klerman) on the epidemiology of manic illness for the first worldwide textbook of Manic Illness edited by Baron Shopsin. Frequent reference to his work appears throughout the 2007 textbook Manic-Depressive Illness, edited by Fred Goodwin and Kay Jamison, a standard reference for bipolar disorder.

In 1978, Krauthammer quit the practice of psychiatry and came to Washington to direct planning in psychiatric research under the Carter administration. He began contributing articles about politics to ''The New Republic'' and in 1980 served as a speech writer to Vice President Walter Mondale. In January 1981, Krauthammer joined ''The New Republic'' as both a writer and editor. In 1984, his ''New Republic'' essays won the "National Magazine Award for Essays and Criticism". In 1983, he began writing essays for ''Time'' magazine, one of which first brought him national acclaim for his development of the "Reagan Doctrine"...a term that endures to date (see below herein under "Cold War"). In 1985, he began a weekly column for ''The Washington Post'', which in 1987 was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for commentary. In 1990, he became a panelist for the weekly PBS political roundtable, Inside Washington. For the last decade, he has been a political analyst/commentator for Fox News.

In 2006, the ''Financial Times'' named Krauthammer the most influential commentator in America, saying "Krauthammer has influenced US foreign policy for more than two decades. He coined and developed 'The Reagan Doctrine' in 1985 and he defined the US role as sole superpower in his essay, 'The Unipolar Moment', published shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Krauthammer's 2004 speech 'Democratic Realism', which was delivered to the American Enterprise Institute when Krauthammer won the Irving Kristol Award, set out a framework for tackling the post 9/11 world, focusing on the promotion of democracy in the Middle East."

In 2009, ''Politico'' columnist Ben Smith wrote that Krauthammer had "emerged in the Age of Obama as a central conservative voice," a "kind of leader of the opposition...a coherent, sophisticated and implacable critic of the new president." ''The New York Times'' columnist David Brooks says that today "he's the most important conservative columnist." On July 29, 2011, former congressman and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said that Krauthammer "is, without a doubt the most powerful force in American conservatism. He has [been] for two, three, four years."

Apart from the Pulitzer Prize and the National Magazine Award for Essays and Criticism, Krauthammer has received numerous other awards, including the People for the American Way's First Amendment Award, the Champion/Tuck Award for Economic Understanding, the first annual ($250,000) Bradley Prize, and the Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism, an annual award given by the Eric Breindel Foundation.

Former president Bill Clinton called Krauthammer "a brilliant man" in a December 2010 press conference. Krauthammer responded, tongue-in-cheek, that "my career is done" and "I'm toast".

Opinions and ideas

Foreign policy and interventionism

Cold War

Krauthammer first gained attention in the mid-1980s when he first used the phrase "Reagan Doctrine" in his ''Time'' magazine column. The phrase was a reference to the American foreign policy of supporting anti-communist insurgencies around the globe (most notably Nicaragua, Angola and Afghanistan) as a response to the Brezhnev Doctrine and reflected a U.S. foreign policy that went beyond containment of the Soviet Union to rollback of recent Soviet influence in the Third World. The policy, which was strongly supported by Heritage Foundation foreign policy analysts and other conservatives, was ultimately embraced by Reagan's senior national security and foreign policy officials. Krauthammer's description of it as the "Reagan Doctrine" has since endured.

In "The Poverty of Realism" (''New Republic'', February 17, 1986), he developed the underlying theory "that the end of American foreign policy is not just the security of the United States, but what John Kennedy called 'the success of liberty'. That means, first, defending the community of democratic nations (the repository of the liberal idea), and second, encouraging the establishment of new liberal polities at the frontier, most especially in the Third World." The foreign policy, he argued, should be both "universal in aspiration", and "prudent in application", thus combining American idealism and realism. Over the next 20 years these ideas developed into what is now called "Democratic Realism".

Post–Cold War

In the lead article in ''Foreign Affairs,'' titled "The Unipolar Moment" Krauthammer coined the term "unipolarity" to describe the world structure that was emerging with the fall of the Soviet Union. Conventional wisdom of the late 1980s was that the bipolar world of the Cold War would give way to a multipolar world in which the U.S. was one of many centers of power, co-equal to the European Union, Japan, China, and others. Krauthammer predicted that instead, a unipolar world would emerge dominated by the United States with a power gap between the most powerful state and the second-most powerful state that would exceed any other in history. He also suggested that American hegemony would inevitably exist for only a historical "moment", lasting at best for three or four decades.

Hegemony gave the United States the capacity and responsibility to act unilaterally if necessary, Krauthammer argued. Throughout the 90s, however, he was circumspect about how that power ought to be used. He split from his neoconservative colleagues who were arguing for an interventionist policy of "American greatness". Krauthammer wrote that in the absence of a global existential threat the United States should stay out of "teacup wars" in failed states, and instead adopt a "dry powder" foreign policy of nonintervention and readiness.

Krauthammer opposed purely "humanitarian intervention" (with the exception of overt genocide). While he supported the 1991 Gulf War on the grounds of both humanitarianism and strategic necessity (preventing Saddam Hussein from gaining control of the Persian Gulf and its resources), he opposed American intervention in the Balkan wars on the grounds that America should not be committing the lives of its soldiers to purely humanitarian missions in which there is no American national interest at stake.

9/11, Iraq and the War on Terror

He laid out the underlying principle of strategic necessity restraining democratic idealism in his controversial 2004 Kristol Award Lecture: "We will support democracy everywhere, but we will commit blood and treasure only in places where there is a strategic necessity—meaning, places central to the larger war against the existential enemy, the enemy that poses a global mortal threat to freedom."

The 9/11 attacks, Krauthammer wrote, made clear the new existential threat and the necessity for a new interventionism. On September 12, 2001 he wrote that, if the suspicion that al Qaeda was behind the attack proved correct, the United States had no choice but to go to war in Afghanistan. He supported the Iraq war on the "realist" grounds of the strategic threat the Saddam regime posed to the region as UN sanctions were eroding and of his alleged weapons of mass destruction; and on the "idealist" grounds that a self-sustaining democracy in Iraq would be a first step towards changing the poisonous political culture of tyranny, intolerance and religious fanaticism in the Arab world that had incubated the anti-American extremism from which 9/11 emerged.

In October 2002, he presented what he believed were the primary arguments for and against the war, writing, "Hawks favor war on the grounds that Saddam Hussein is reckless, tyrannical and instinctively aggressive, and that if he comes into possession of nuclear weapons in addition to the weapons of mass destruction he already has, he is likely to use them or share them with terrorists. The threat of mass death on a scale never before seen residing in the hands of an unstable madman is intolerable – and must be preempted."

"Doves oppose war on the grounds that the risks exceed the gains. War with Iraq could be very costly, possibly degenerating into urban warfare".

"I happen to believe that the preemption school is correct, that the risks of allowing Saddam Hussein to acquire his weapons will only grow with time. Nonetheless, I can both understand and respect those few Democrats who make the principled argument against war with Iraq on the grounds of deterrence, believing that safety lies in reliance on a proven (if perilous) balance of terror rather than the risky innovation of forcible disarmament by preemption."

On the eve of the invasion, Krauthammer wrote that "[r]eformation and reconstruction of an alien culture are a daunting task. Risky and, yes, arrogant." In February 2003, Krauthammer cautioned that "it may yet fail. But we cannot afford not to try. There is not a single, remotely plausible, alternative strategy for attacking the monster behind 9/11. It’s not Osama bin Laden; it is the cauldron of political oppression, religious intolerance, and social ruin in the Arab-Islamic world—oppression transmuted and deflected by regimes with no legitimacy into virulent, murderous anti-Americanism." Krauthammer in 2003 noted that the reconstruction of Iraq would provide many benefits for the Iraqi people, once the political and economic infrastructure destroyed by Saddam was restored: "With its oil, its urbanized middle class, its educated population, its essential modernity, Iraq has a future. In two decades Saddam Hussein reduced its GDP by 75 percent. Once its political and industrial infrastructures are reestablished, Iraq's potential for rebound, indeed for explosive growth, is unlimited."

In a speech to the Foreign Policy Association in Philadelphia, he argued that the "Arab Spring" that had brought the beginnings of democratization in the Arab world had been met in 2006 with a "fierce counterattack" by radical Islamist forces in Lebanon, Palestine and especially Iraq, which witnessed a major intensification in sectarian warfare. In late 2006 and 2007, he was one of the few commentators to support the surge in Iraq.

Ideology

Within the American political spectrum, Krauthammer has been called a conservative, as well as a neoconservative on matters of foreign policy. However, on domestic issues, Krauthammer is a supporter of legalized abortion; an opponent of the death penalty; an intelligent design critic and an advocate for the scientific consensus on evolution, calling the religion-science controversy a "false conflict;" a supporter of embryonic stem cell research using embryos discarded by fertility clinics with restrictions in its applications; and a longtime advocate of radically higher energy taxes to induce conservation. Meg Greenfield, editorial page editor for ''The Washington Post'' who edited Krauthammer's columns for 15 years, called his weekly column "independent and hard to peg politically. It's a very tough column. There's no 'trendy' in it. You never know what is going to happen next."

Hendrik Hertzberg, a former colleague of Krauthammer's at ''The New Republic'' during the 1980s, said that when the two first met in 1978, Krauthammer was "70 per cent Mondale liberal, 30 per cent 'Scoop Jackson Democrat,' that is, hard-line on Israel and relations with the Soviet Union;" while in the mid-80s, he was still "50-50: fairly liberal on economic and social questions but a full-bore foreign-policy neoconservative." Hertzberg now calls Krauthammer a "pretty solid 90-10 Republican."

Krauthammer's major monograph on foreign policy, "Democratic Realism: An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World," is critical both of the neoconservative Bush doctrine for being too expansive and utopian, and of foreign policy "realism" for being too narrow and immoral; instead, he proposes an alternative he calls "Democratic Realism." In a 2005 speech (later published in ''Commentary Magazine'') he called neoconservatism "a governing ideology whose time has come." He noted that the original "fathers of neoconservatism" were "former liberals or leftists". More recently, they have been joined by "realists, newly mugged by reality," such as Condoleezza Rice, Richard Cheney, and George W. Bush, who "have given weight to neoconservatism, making it more diverse and, given the newcomers’ past experience, more mature." In "Charlie Gibson's Gaffe" in ''The Washington Post'', September 13, 2008, Krauthammer elaborated on the changing meanings of the Bush Doctrine in light of Gibson's controversial questioning of Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin regarding what exactly the Bush Doctrine was, as if there was a single definition. Palin was criticized for her response. Krauthammer states in the article that "The Bush Doctrine" has had "four distinct meanings, each one succeeding another over the eight years of" the Bush Administration. Krauthammer states that the phrase "Bush Doctrine" originally referred to "the unilateralism that characterized the pre-9/11 first year of the Bush administration." He states that "There is no single meaning of the Bush Doctrine. He also states "the fourth and current definition of the Bush doctrine, the most sweeping formulation of the Bush approach to foreign policy and the one that most clearly and distinctively defines the Bush years: the idea that the fundamental mission of American foreign policy is to spread democracy throughout the world."

Religion

Krauthammer describes himself as Jewish but "not religious." In a ''Jerusalem Post'' interview he reflected on how he had been influenced by his study of Maimonides at McGill with Rabbi David Hartman, head of Jerusalem's Hartman Institute and professor of philosophy at McGill during Krauthammer's student days, to see the grandeur of Jewish culture.

Krauthammer is a critic of intelligent design, and wrote several articles in 2005 likening it to "tarted-up creationism."

He has received a number of awards for his commentary related to religion, including the People for the American Way’s First Amendment Award for his ''New Republic'' essay "America's Holy Wars" in 1985, and the Guardian of Zion Award of Bar-Ilan University in 2002.

Krauthammer opposed the Park51 Islamic community center project in Manhattan for “reasons of common decency and respect for the sacred. No commercial tower over Gettysburg, no convent at Auschwitz - and no mosque at Ground Zero. Build it anywhere but there.”

Medicine

President's Council on Bioethics

Krauthammer was appointed to President George W. Bush's President's Council on Bioethics in 2002. He supported relaxing the Bush administration's limits on federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research. But he has opposed human experimentation, human cloning and euthanasia. He has warned that scientists were beginning to develop the power of "creating a class of superhumans." A fellow member of the Council, Janet D. Rowley, insists that Krauthammer's vision is still an issue far in the future and not a topic to be discussed at the present time. In March 2009, he was invited to the signing of the executive order by President Obama at the White House but declined to attend due to the "door being left open" as to the cloning of human embryos and the creation of normal human embryos solely for purposes of research. He also contrasted the "moral seriousness" of Bush's stem cell address of August 9, 2001 with that of Obama's address on stem cells.

End of life care

Krauthammer is critical of the idea of living wills and the current state of end of life counseling in the U.S. He has written: }}

Miers nomination

Krauthammer criticized President George W. Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to succeed Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. He called the nomination of Miers a "mistake" on several occasions. He noted her lack of constitutional experience as the main obstacle to her nomination.

On October 21, 2005, Charles Krauthammer published "Miers: The Only Exit Strategy," in which he explained that all of Miers' relevant constitutional writings are protected by both attorney-client privilege and executive privilege. This presented a unique face-saving solution to the mistake: "Miers withdraws out of respect for both the Senate and the executive's prerogatives". Six days later Miers withdrew, employing that argument. She stated her respect for "the strength and independence of our three branches of government" and noted that the "protection of the prerogatives of the Executive Branch and continued pursuit of my confirmation are in tension." Therefore, "I have decided that seeking my confirmation should yield."

The same day, NPR noted that "Krauthammer's scenario played out almost exactly as he wrote." Columnist E.J. Dionne wrote that the White House was following Krauthammer’s strategy "almost to the letter." And a few weeks later, the ''New York Times'' reported that Krauthammer's "exit strategy" was "exactly what happened" and that he "has subsequently gotten credit for giving [the Bush administration] a plan."

Israel

Krauthammer strongly opposed the Oslo accords, predicting that Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasir Arafat would use the foothold it gave him in the West Bank and Gaza to continue the war against Israel which he had ostensibly renounced in the Israel – PLO Letters of Recognition. In a July 2006 essay in ''Time'', Krauthammer asserted that the Israeli–Palestinian conflict was fundamentally defined by the Palestinians' unwillingness to accept compromise.

During the Israel–Lebanon war in 2006, Krauthammer wrote a column, "Let Israel Win the War," saying: "What other country, when attacked in an unprovoked aggression across a recognized international frontier, is then put on a countdown clock by the world, given a limited time window in which to fight back, regardless of whether it has restored its own security?" He later criticized the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's conduct, arguing that he "has provided unsteady and uncertain leadership. Foolishly relying on air power alone, he denied his generals the ground offensive they wanted, only to reverse himself later."

Krauthammer supports a two-state solution to the conflict. Contrary to many conservatives, he supported Israel's Gaza withdrawal as a step toward rationalizing the frontiers between Israel and a future Palestinian state. He believes the importance of a security barrier between the two states' final borders will be an important element of any lasting peace.

Krauthammer called Richard Goldstone’s U.N. report on the 2008 Gaza war, which states that Israel deliberately targeted and then killed Palestinian civilians, "a blood libel, ranking with the libels of the 19th century in which Jews were accused of ritually slaughtering children in order to use the blood in rituals."

References

External links

Krauthammer's Weekly Column in ''The Washington Post''

Krauthammer Archives at ''Jewish World Review''

Krauthammer's biography at The Washington Post Writers Group website

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