Why Charles Johnson Is Not An Indefatigable Investigator,...

You WOULD NOT want Charles Johnson to look into your background, not if you had anything to hide. He is an indefatigable investigator, who, at the campus conservative magazine, the Claremont Independent - and at his own rollicking blog -for four years kept Claremont McKenna College buzzing with revelations about affirmative action, politically tendentious speakers, and abuses in student government. He held college administrators feet to the fire, and they got singed. It was easier to condemn than to refute him, and his critics soon gave up on the latter. Outside CMC, more disinterested judges quickly discovered the boldness of his reporting and commentary. Soon he had been awarded virtually every prize a young journalist of conservative disposition could receive: the Robert L. Bartley Fellow ­ ship at the Wall Street Journal, the Eric Breindel Award, the Robert Novak Award from the Phillips Foundation, and a Publius Fellowship at the Claremont Institute. Hitting the trifecta is ha rd, but what Charles achieved is so remarkable as to be nameless: hitting - what, the quadrifecta? While leading his very public life as a student journalist, Charles pursued, more quietly but just as intrepidly, the study of politics. His senior thesis, a precocious work of political biography, became the starting point for the book (his first) you are now reading. Why Coolidge Matters marks the appearance of a major new conservative talent - and the reappearance of a major old one. We