David Broder’s Golden Anniversary: Commemorating a Quarter-century of Hackery

By Ken Silverstein

The Washington Post went into red-alert ass-covering mode yesterday when its “Outlook” section published “expert” commentary on Senator Harry Reid’s recent remark that the war in Iraq is “lost.” This was clearly an attempt to salvage some dignity for columnist David Broder, who recently rebuffed Reid for making that charge; Broder compared Reid to Alberto Gonzalez, saying that both repeatedly make embarrassing remarks, and claimed that numerous Democratic senators were fed up with Reid’s performance as Majority Leader and wanted to see him replaced. Almost immediately, every Democratic senator signed a letter to the Post calling Reid “an extraordinary leader who has effectively guided the new Democratic majority through these first few months with skill and aplomb.”

The view that the Iraq war is lost is now mainstream opinion, even inside the beltway, and from what I understand the Post had to go trolling far and wide to find people to state the contrary. In the end it managed to dredge up the likes of Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, an architect of the “surge” strategy, Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser, and Victor Davis Hanson of the Hoover Institution, a conservative military historian. This is the equivalent of seeking opinion on the World Series from one side’s coaching staff and pawning it off as independent analysis.

As to Broder, he’s so predictable that he’s well beyond caricature, as my colleague Scott Horton has documented. But some younger readers may imagine that there was a Golden Age of David Broder, when he offered penetrating analysis about national politics.

There was not. I went back a quarter-century, to Broder’s columns from 1982, and he was just as hilariously ill-informed then as he is today, and for the same reasons: he mistakes the views of a narrow range of insiders for public opinion. (Because Broder’s columns weren’t always available, I have sometimes quoted his work as others cited it at the time.)

Consider a few examples:

In early 1982, Broder was touting the presidential campaign of former Florida Governor Reuben Askew. The Askew juggernaut came to a halt two years later, when he finished last in the New Hampshire Democratic primary. In March of that year, Broder had an amazing scoop. “The contrast between the stumbling of the National Government and the improving performance of State and local government is a largely unreported story,” he wrote. “Individual States have moved out ahead of the Federal Government, justifying again their claim to be ‘laboratories of democracy.’” This echoed the Reagan Administration’s rhetoric about states’ rights, and that month the president approvingly cited Broder’s remarks.

“At a time when 9 million Americans are unemployed,” Broder wrote in another column from the period, “and millions more are worried about making ends meet, it seems at first glance absurd, if not obscene, that the U.S. Senate has been engaged in serious debate about the desirability of televising its own proceedings. The inclination is to think the debate proof that the senators really are a self-indulgent crew, out of touch with the real world.”

Indeed, it might look like senators were out of touch given the severe economic recession of early 1982, but Broder found the debate to be a stimulating one. He was deeply concerned about the negative impact that broadcasting senate proceedings might have on American democracy. “That role is to be a deliberative body, a bit removed from the currents of public opinion,” he wrote. “Television, by its nature, shapes stories in a dramatic line—with a tight time frame to hold the viewers' interest. It is intolerant of delay, even when delay serves a useful purpose.” Despite Broder's astute analysis, C-SPAN proved without a doubt that a television network could offer programming that lacks drama, that does not hold the viewers' interest, and that is supremely “tolerant of delay.”

As a whole, Broder’s current work is virtually indistinguishable from the drivel he was producing a quarter-century ago. In February of this year, Broder reported that President Bush might be primed for a political comeback. “Bush now shows signs of renewed energy and is regaining the initiative on several fronts,” he wrote. “More important, he is demonstrating political smarts that even his critics have to acknowledge.” Last week came the Wall Street Journal poll that found support for Bush at 28 percent, the lowest of his presidency.

In July of 1982, Broder wrote a similar column suggesting that support for Reagan may have “bottomed out” and that the president “may even be on a mild upturn.” This was part of a column that challenged the “prevailing view among Democrats . . . that the 1982 election is in the bag and there is nothing the Republicans can do to avoid at least a mild rebuke at the polls.” Broder doubted polls showing that the Democrats would pick up as many as 20 seats in that fall’s House races, citing Richard Bond, deputy chairman and campaign director of the Republican National Committee, as saying that political forecasters were underestimating the “the Reagan factor” and predicting that “the Republicans will fight the Democrats to a standoff in House elections.” The Democrats, indeed, failed to win 20 seats; they picked up 27.

The definitive Broder column came in December of 1986, a month after the Iran/contra scandal broke, when he was already mounting Ronald Reagan’s defense against impeachment. “The continuing crisis in the Reagan Administration is having one beneficial side-effect,” he wrote. “It is sorting out the grownups from the juveniles in the nation's capital. The juveniles are jubilant; they haven't had so much fun in years; they'd like it to go on forever, or at least until they've settled all their old scores. The grownups recognize this disaster as the calamity it is, and would do anything in their power to put it in the past.”

The grownups were Senators Bob Dole of Kansas, Richard Lugar of Indiana, Paul Laxalt of Nevada, and Pete Domenici of New Mexico, who “have offered Ronald Reagan their strong support, but also have said that he must get to the heart of this scandal and clean house . . . [T]hey are offering Reagan calm, sensible counsel—and saving their rage for those who deserve it.”

The nasty juveniles were those “waiting around to see another President get his lumps . . . I don't know what a long orgy of Reagan-bashing would bring in its wake. But I do know what came after the effort at president-breaking in Nixon's time. It drove him into the secret police operations which in turn led to Watergate.” In other words, Nixon was not to blame for Watergate, George McGovern and the Democrats were.

“Spare us these juveniles who won't learn or can't understand that the presidency is too damn important for their mock-war games,” Broder said in closing. “Let the children go out to play ‘sticks-and-stones’.” Indeed, spare us. It's terrifying to consider the power yielded by such a decrepit pen.