I suggested the other day that the Washington Post’s David Broder, generally considered the “dean” of the DC political establishment, has been off his game lately. As of today’s column, Broder seems to be playing a new game altogether.
Here’s a Washington political riddle where you fill in the blanks: As Alberto Gonzales is to the Republicans, Blank Blank is to the Democrats — a continuing embarrassment thanks to his amateurish performance.
If you answered “Harry Reid,” give yourself an A. And join the long list of senators of both parties who are ready for these two springtime exhibitions of ineptitude to end.
This is little more than hackery and one has to assume Broder will look back at writing such nonsense with regret.
Gonzales has been exposed as an incompetent and dishonest Attorney General, who has undermined the Justice Department, politicized federal law enforcement, lied to Congress, and possibly helped obstruct justice. Harry Reid said something vaguely intemperate about a failed war policy. If anyone’s an “embarrassment” here, it’s Broder for equating the two.
What’s more, for Broder to suggest there are Senate Dems who are ready to remove Reid as Majority Leader is completely ridiculous. As Nico noted, Broder’s own newspaper reported 48 hours ago, “In a closed-door meeting, Reid acknowledged that he had a [White House] target on his back, and Democratic senators responded with a standing ovation.” It doesn’t sound like they’re ready to “end” Reid’s leadership role.
What are all of the horrible, “amateurish” gaffes that make Reid Gonzales-like? Broder notes the personal and the policy-oriented.
Hailed by his staff as “a strong leader who speaks his mind in direct fashion,” Reid is assuredly not a man who misses many opportunities to put his foot in his mouth. In 2005, he attacked Alan Greenspan, then chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, as “one of the biggest political hacks we have here in Washington.”
He called President Bush “a loser,” then apologized. He said that Bill Frist, then Senate majority leader, had “no institutional integrity” because Frist planned to leave the Senate to fulfill a term-limits pledge. Then he apologized to Frist.
A couple of days ago, Broder said these intemperate remarks lead to new apologies from Reid “every six weeks.” In his column, he found a whopping three examples, one of which came a year and a half ago. For that matter, Reid’s criticisms of Greenspan, Bush, and Frist may have been kind of harsh (and not necessarily false), but is that so unusual in Washington? Should we start tallying up the equally harsh comments from DC Republicans to see whether Broder thinks any of them have become “embarrassments”?
Reid’s verbal wanderings on the war in Iraq are consequential — not just for his party and the Senate but for the more important question of what happens to U.S. policy in that violent country and to the men and women whose lives are at stake.
Given the way the Constitution divides warmaking power between the president, as commander in chief, and Congress, as sole source of funds to support the armed services, it is essential that at some point Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi be able to negotiate with the White House to determine the course America will follow until a new president takes office.
To say that Reid has sent conflicting signals about his readiness for such discussions is an understatement. It has been impossible for his own members, let alone the White House, to sort out for more than 24 hours at a time what ground Reid is prepared to defend.
Nonsense. Bush has said publicly (and repeatedly) that he will not negotiate with Dems under any circumstances. Reid, in contrast, has done the opposite. Even after saying the war is “lost,” Reid clarified to explain he was referring to the failure of Bush’s current policy. If Broder thinks Reid is mistaken on policy grounds, he should say so. He didn’t.
Broder went on to lash out at Reid because of the way Chuck Schumer defended him.
On “Fox News Sunday,” Schumer offered this clarification of Reid’s off-the-cuff comment. “What Harry Reid is saying is that this war is lost — in other words, a war where we mainly spend our time policing a civil war between Shiites and Sunnis. We are not going to solve that problem. . . . The war is not lost. And Harry Reid believes this — we Democrats believe it. . . . So the bottom line is if the war continues on this path, if we continue to try to police and settle a civil war that’s been going on for hundreds of years in Iraq, we can’t win. But on the other hand, if we change the mission and have that mission focus on the more narrow goal of counterterrorism, we sure can win.”
Broder mocked this as incoherent. I don’t know why; it sounded pretty sensible.
The problem is not that Broder has become some kind of Fox News pseudo journalist, hoping to publicize the GOP’s talking points, it’s that he seems to be struggling with reality and relevance. In early February, for example, Broder smeared Democratic activists, baselessly suggesting that they’re anti-military. A week later, Broder said Bush had begun to turn his presidency around and was on the comeback trail. A few weeks after that, he argued that Dems shouldn’t take the prosecutor purge scandal too seriously, because it may not pay political dividends. More recently, Broder recommended a “compromise” between the White House and congressional Dems over war funding, in which Bush would get everything he wants.
This just isn’t the work of a respected professional. It’s time for a new “dean.”