I’ve held off saying anything about Kathryn’s career change. She’s joining the ranks of NR/NRO editors-at-large. Since WFB’s passing, I believe there are only three of us in the NR universe, John O’Sullivan, yours truly, and now Kathryn. I have every confidence that Kathryn will do more with that title than me and Johnny O combined.

Anyway, one reason for my silence was that I was consumed with a deadline earlier in the week and I didn’t want to rush saying something about her move. But an even bigger part of it was that even if I had all of the time in the world, I still wouldn’t know exactly what to say. While I have many good friends at NR, I am deeply, deeply grateful to two. One is Rich Lowry, who took a flier on me back in the old days and then took another chance when he (and Ed Capano) asked me to start a little enterprise called National Review Online. Rich was always very involved in the product, to be sure. But he put a lot of trust in me and I’ll always be grateful to him for that, and I’ll always be proud of what I did with NRO and what it has become.

But it’s that second part — what it has become — that brings me to Kathryn. It has been nearly seven years since I formally stepped down as editor, and longer than that since Kathryn became the alter rex (alter regina?) of NRO. When I was at the helm, she did more than I can recount to make my tenure successful. But unlike with me, giving Kathryn the reins was never a flier. She’d proven that she was the hardest working woman in show business, if by show business you mean conservative journalism or carbon-based life. Still, more than we could have imagined Kathryn became an indefatigable and zealous champion of our shared dream of making NRO the Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu waza Banga of the worldwide web (the all-powerful rooster who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, will go from conquest to conquest leaving fire in his wake). She is responsible for so much of NRO’s success — and my own — that I will be forever in debt to, and in awe of, her.

Whatever successes NRO has in its future, they will be growing from the soil Kathryn tilled for so long. Congratulations to her on a job well done and all best wishes for ever greater success in the future. She ain’t leaving of course — we wouldn’t let her — but it won’t be the same without her, either.