Broder believes candidates lack ‘a real-world clue’

June 7, 2007

Oh dear. Another post criticizing David Broder? I’m afraid so. Today’s column is particularly egregious.

Both parties are blessed with a multitude of contenders with attractive personalities and impressive resumes — people it’s easy to imagine in the Oval Office.

But the dynamic on both sides is trending toward extreme positions that would open the door to an independent or third-party challenge in 2008 aimed at the millions of voters in the center.

Wait, you mean David Broder devoted a column to complaining about both parties not being close enough to a Broder-defined middle? Who could have imagined it?

In this case, what are the “extreme positions” that generated Broder’s ire? As he explained it, Dems want to “cut off funding for the troops in Iraq” as part of a “precipitous withdrawal.” Republicans, meanwhile, “were casual about contemplating the use of nuclear weapons against Iran.”

Let’s take a step back. Dems support a withdrawal policy embraced by the public, a majority of both chambers, and a variety of policy experts. Republicans are open to using nuclear weapons in Iran. Both sides, Broder would have us believe, are equally “extreme” and ignorant of “real-world consequences.”

Wait, it gets worse.

The danger may be greatest for the Democrats, even though President Bush’s failings have put them in a favored position to win the next election. Prodded by four long shots for the nomination and threatened by the rhetoric of former senator John Edwards, a serious contender, the two front-runners, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, have abandoned their cautious advocacy of a phased withdrawal of U.S. forces and now are defending votes to cut off support for troops fighting insurgents in Iraq.

They are able to escape the charge of abandoning U.S. combat troops only because they knew when they voted that their Republican colleagues in Congress, joined by a few Democrats, would keep the funds flowing at least for a few more months. But if Clinton or Obama is nominated, that vote is certain to loom large in the general election campaign.

You know, I could slice and dice these two paragraphs, and write yet another piece highlighting why the Clinton and Obama votes weren’t anti-military, and explaining why their position on the funding bill was both right and popular, and noting why the entire premise of Broder’s argument is based on faulty assumptions, but let’s just skip it.

Broder just doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He seemed to want to go after Republicans on their Middle East and immigration policies, but felt compelled to take some misplaced shots at Dems in the same piece. Why? Because he’s David Broder, and if one side is wrong, the other side needs criticism, too.

I’m beginning to think we could come up with a fairly straightforward computer program that could write Broder’s columns for him. We’d just feed news item through the Pox-On-Both-Houses-O-Meter 3000, and voila — instant, predictable column.

Fair and balanced doesn’t mean making shit up about the other side to appear objective. Try to please everyone pleases no one.

Poor Brodie. I’m thinking hemmorhagic stroke, but then his spelling would have deteriorated along with his logic.

  • I wish Bill Maher would establish the following new rule: The term “Dean” [of the Washington political press corps] can only be used in reference to someone who has actually been correct on at least one issue or item this century. More than one would be nice, but at least one should be required.

  • Why invent criticisms when two are obvious and real: the Republicans have lost their direction and the Democrats have no collective spine?

  • While POBHOM software might easily generate pap as indigestible as Broder’s, it’s difficult to program the proper level of faulty logic, elitism and pomposity into a software program.

    You would need a computer that could average zero and infinity to produce an L Ron Romney null set or divide the number of casualties in Bush’s failed Iraqi occupation by zero to produce a rational answer from any of the candidates.

  • “Why? Because he’s David Broder, and if one side is wrong, the other side needs criticism, too.”

    I would go even further than CB does. Broder may, when writing a piece that is intended to criticize the GOP, feel it necessary to throw in some criticism of Dems. However, it is my humble opinion that he makes sure that his criticism of GOPers is couched in a way that really will not hurt any one individual or the party, but that the criticism of the Dems is in fact intended to try and specifically harm Dem candidates/party/pols. It is never really equal pox on both houses and a bit more malicious than that.

  • CB, can you start some kind of Broder list? The McCanine list is a huge hit, but I bet a Broder list would be even more popular.

  • I hear CB’s point that another post about why Clinton and Obama’s vote would be repetitive and, really, preaching to the choir. I think that Clinton and Obama (and this applies to a lot of issues) need to deal with is how they will handle it in the general election when the Repubican candidate and his minions start the attack ads saying that Clinton/Obama/Edwards was willing to cut off funding for the troops. We all know that on this side, we generally agree with the vote. The issue will be when it starts getting talked about with Broder’s Middle and all they hear day in and day out is that the Dem candidate is soft on defense, soft on terror and doesn’t support our troops.

  • So let me make sure I understand…

    The desire to bring our troops home from Iraq is somehow equivalent to the desire to kill millions of innocent people in Iran with an atomic weapon?

    That’s just plain retarded.

    The good news is that smart people like the Carpetbagger will rule the day long after dinosaurs like David Broder are dead and buried.

  • Would Mr. Broder object if I were to “casually contemplate the use of nuclear weapons against…Mr. Broder?” Given that he’s become “the spleen of the DC media,” one could imaghine such an action to be merely a “surgical procedure.” Such procedures might adequately reign in other maladies afflicting the human ecosystem. “Irradiating the festering foxnoise” is an example. “Bombarding the lymphomaic Limbaugh” would be another.

    Such, in the mind of Broder, can be no worse than contemplating the end of a corporate tax loophole….

  • “The good news is that smart people like the Carpetbagger will rule the day long after dinosaurs like David Broder are dead and buried.”

    Haik, I wish I shared your optimism. Seems to me this same play has been running on repeat loop for thousands of years. New dinosaurs arise, and the majority of the public remains intentionally ignorant.

  • look,

    it’s just another case of senile dementia.

    broder thinks its june, 1964.

  • On NPR yesterday, a Republican Congressman was railing at how the “big spending liberals” in Congress were trying to spend so much money on the troops that Bush and other “fiscal conservatives” were protesting. (Funny how no Dems were intreviewed to provide any balance to the report, but that’s another issue.)

    If the Dems are spending too much money on the troops, where does Broder get off on saying the Dems are trying to cut off funds for the troops?

    And this BS about “abandoning” the troops makes it sound as if Dems were going to cut off funds and leave the troops in Iraq with no way home. What an extraordinary pile of crap from a guy whose piles of crap we’re used to.

    The whole tone of Broder’ piece is that people in Washington should be listerning to him. Anyone who doesn’t is therefore “extreme.” According to Broder, politicians will come and go, but Broder is the guy who really runs the place.

  • You just don’t understand what Broder means by the middle. He subscribes to the Humpty Dumpty school of meaning:

    `When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

    `The question is,’ said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

    `The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master — that’s all.’

  • Broder has become the “Dean Martin” of the press corps, making as much sense as some drunk, but doing it at work.
    While it was cute for Dean Martin, it is unbecoming when dealing with matters of life and death, as politics often does.
    If any presonal friends of Broder are reading this, please stage an intervention. Get him off the sauce, and perhaps he may become coherant again.

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