So on that historic day, Oct. 19, 1781, in a place called Yorktown , a satisfied George Washington sat upon his beautiful white horse and accepted the surrender of Lord Cornwallis, effectively ending the Revolutionary War.

Brief bio of Charles Krauthammer:

Winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary, Charles Krauthammer writes a syndicated column for the Washington Post that appears in over 150 newspapers worldwide. He is also a monthly essayist for TIME magazine, a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and The New Republic, a political analyst for FOX News and a weekly panelist on Inside Washington.

For two decades, his influential writings have helped frame the very shape of American foreign policy. He coined and developed "The Reagan Doctrine" (TIME, April 1985), defined the structure of the post-Cold War world in "The Unipolar Moment" (Foreign Affairs, 1990/1991), and outlined the principles of post-9/11 American foreign policy in his much-debated Irving Kristol Lecture, "Democratic Realism" (AEI Press, March 2004).

Born in New York City and raised in Montreal, Krauthammer was educated at McGill University (B.A. 1970), Oxford University (Commonwealth Scholar in Politics) and Harvard (M.D. 1975). While serving as a resident and then chief resident in psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital, he published scientific papers, including his co-discovery of a form of bipolar disease, that continue to be cited in the psychiatric literature.

In 1978, he quit medical practice, came to Washington to direct planni ng in psychiatric research in the Carter administration, and began contributing articles to The New Republic. During the Presidential campaign of 1980, he served as a speechwriter to Vice President Walter Mondale. He joined The New Republic as a writer and editor in 1981. His New Republic writings won the 1984 National Magazine Award for Essays and Criticism, the highest award in
magazine journalism.

In 2001, he was appointed to the President's Council on Bioethics. He has been honored by many organizations, from the Center for Security Policy (Mighty Pen Award) to People for the American Way (First Amendment Award).
In 2003, he was a recipient of the first annual Bradley Prize. In 2004, he received the American Enterprise Institute's Irving Kristol Award.

Krauthammer lives in suburban Washington with Robyn, an artist. Their son, Daniel, is a student at Harvard University.

Article by Charles Krauthammer

Washington Post

The Audacity of Vanity

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, July 18, 2008; A17

Barack Obama wants to speak at the Brandenburg Gate. He figures it would be a nice backdrop. The supporting cast -- a cheering audience and a few fainting frauleins -- would be a picturesque way to bolster his foreign policy credentials.

What Obama does not seem to understand is that the Brandenburg Gate is something you earn. President Ronald Reagan earned the right to speak there because his relentless pressure had brought the Soviet empire to its knees and he was demanding its final "tear down this wall" liquidation. When President John F. Kennedy visited the Brandenburg Gate on the day of his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech, he was representing a country that was prepared to go to the brink of nuclear war to defend West Berlin.

Who is Obama representing? And what exactly has he done in his lifetime to merit appropriating the Brandenburg Gate as a campaign prop? What was his role in the fight a gainst communism, the liberation of Eastern Europe, the creation of what George Bush the elder -- who presided over the fall of the Berlin Wall but modestly declined to go there for a victory lap -- called "a Europe whole and free"?

Does Obama not see the incongruity? It's as if a German pol took a campaign trip to America and demanded the Statue of Liberty as a venue for a campaign speech. (The Germans have now gently nudged Obama into looking at other venues.)

Americans are beginning to notice Obama's elevated opinion of himself. There's nothing new about narcissism in politics. Every senator looks in the mirror and sees a president. Nonetheless, has there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime achievements?

Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted "present" nearly 130 times. As pre sident of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself.

It is a subject upon which he can dilate effortlessly. In his victory speech upon winning the nomination, Obama declared it a great turning point in history -- "generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment" -- when, among other wonders, "the rise of the oceans began to slow." As Hudson Institute economist Irwin Stelzer noted in his London Daily Telegraph column, "Moses made the waters recede, but he had help." Obama apparently works alone.

Obama may think he's King Canute, but the good king ordered the tides to halt precisely to refute sycophantic aides who suggested that he had such power. Obama has no such modesty.

After all, in the words of his own slogan, "we are the ones we've been waiting for," which, translating the royal "we," means: " I am the one we've been waiting for." Amazingly, he had a quasi-presidential seal with its own Latin inscription affixed to his lectern, until general ridicule -- it was pointed out that he was not yet president -- induced him to take it down.

He lectures us that instead of worrying about immigrants learning English, "you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish" -- a language Obama does not speak. He further admonishes us on how "embarrassing" it is that Europeans are multilingual but "we go over to Europe, and all we can say is 'merci beaucoup.' " Obama speaks no French.

His fluent English does, however, feature many such admonitions, instructions and improvements. His wife assures us that President Obama will be a stern taskmaster: "Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism . . . that you come out of your isolation. . . . Barack will never allo w you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."

For the first few months of the campaign, the question about Obama was: Who is he? The question now is: Who does he think he is?

We are getting to know. Redeemer of our uninvolved, uninformed lives. Lord of the seas. And more. As he said on victory night, his rise marks the moment when "our planet began to heal." As I recall -- I'm no expert on this -- Jesus practiced his healing just on the sick. Obama operates on a larger canvas.

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