Krauthammer Got it Wrong

I don't say this lightly. I have the utmost admiration and respect for Charles Krauthammer. He is a gifted thinker and has a way with words that is virtually unparalleled. The man can turn a phrase like no other. I don't always agree with Charles, but on those few occasions that he drifts from orthodoxy, which is to say, whatever I believe to be true, his reasoning for it is always well thought out.

I direct your attention to today's Quote du jour, taken from his best selling "Things That Matter":

"It's hard to blame this state of affairs on a fickle public. Blame also belongs to the idiot politicians who decided 30 years ago to abandon the moon and send us on a pointless and endless journey into low-Earth orbit. President Bush has sensibly called an end to this nonsense and committed us to going back to the moon and, ultimately, to Mars. If his successors don't screw it up, within 10 years NASA will have us back to where we belong - on other worlds."

-Charles Krauthammer, Aug. 3, 2007

That was written seven years ago this month. Raise your hand if you seriously think we will return to the Moon or go to Mars in the next three years, with our space program focused more on Muslim self esteem than going where no man has gone before.

Can you see his error? Can you see what was unfathomable and unthinkable in 2007?

 If his successors don't screw it up

He used the plural: "successors". In retrospect, how could he have known that it would not take more than one successor to "screw up" and decimate the space program?

Because he is a man of integrity, he allowed this glaring error to be republished in his book. It only took one successor to George W. Bush to screw up the space program (along with the economy, race relations and foreign affairs) and deny us access to the heavens. Unless you consider the outrageous amounts we pay one of our biggest geopolitical enemies to ferry us to the space station, at their whim, which, hamstrings us to an extent in standing against their earthly aggression.

In retrospect, I can see how Charles could have made the error. Few people, even those who were certain that Obama would be disastrous for our country, could fully envision the magnitude of that disaster. Who knew?

Cross posted at LCR