Maybe Broder’s watching a different race than the rest of us

April 27, 2007

I had no intention of returning, once again, to pointing out still more errors of fact and judgment from the WaPo’s David Broder. But the “dean” of the DC media establishment can’t seem to help himself lately, and given this, neither can I. Consider today’s love letter to John McCain.

Credit John McCain with one thing: When you’re 70 years old, are running for president a second time and have been stumping through the country for many months, it’s difficult to spring any surprises in your formal announcement speech.

The Arizona senator came up with one: He is running as the anti-Bush.

If so, McCain has a funny way of showing it. McCain’s basic campaign platform is trying to convince voters that a) he’ll follow through on Bush’s war policy; b) he’ll keep Bush’s tax cuts (that he’d previously voted against); and c) follow Bush’s lead on most domestic policy issues, including abortion rights, entitlements, and immigration.

If any of the leading Republican candidates is running on a four-more-years platform, it’s McCain.

Now, to be fair, Broder notes, accurately, that McCain’s coziness with Bush has become a problem for his campaign. Broder highlighted the latest NBC/WSJ poll that found “that more Republicans believe that McCain would follow Bush’s policies closely than believe Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney would,” and that this was dragging McCain down with voters.

So, Broder argues, McCain has started to distance himself from the president. As proof, Broder points to … not much.

Here’s the evidence of McCain running as the anti-Bush:

* McCain says he wants to increase government efficiency and cut its size;

* He still supports campaign finance reform (though Broder neglects to mention that McCain has flip-flopped on the particular provisions of his policy);

* McCain is willing to criticize, without naming names, the handling of the war in Iraq.

This is pretty thin. Given that McCain still plans on following Bush’s lead on practically every policy that matters, including the war in Iraq, none of this makes McCain look like the “anti-Bush.”

Indeed, Broder’s campaign analysis seems oddly disconnected.

McCain, recognizing that neither Giuliani nor Romney is likely to challenge him from the right, is risking the ire of Bush fans.

Romney is already challenging McCain exclusively from the right, and given Giuliani’s vote-Dem-and-die nonsense this week, it’s unlikely he’s going to challenge McCain from the left.

I just don’t know what’s gotten into Broder lately. His facts have been garbled, his analysis has been bizarre, and his predictions have been wrong. He seemed to slip shortly after the new Congress went into session in January, and has gotten progressively worse.

Is there a new “dean” of the media establishment waiting in the wings?

at a certain point, you have to start to wonder if the dean is showing early signs of alzheimer’s, because even by his modest standards (even at his peak, i thought he was an empty vessel of centrist thought), he has, as you note, been apallingly wrong lately about everything.

  • Broder has been spreading bullshit for 40 years. Far from being the “Dean” of the Press Corpse, he’s the gardener. Click my name below and go over to That’s Another Fine Mess and read his 1969 defense of Richard Nixon, that could have been written yesterday about Bush.

    Broder is the “dean” because he’s been the one most willing to suck and swallow in public for his entire “career.”

  • When the WaPo not renew his contract. I mean do they really want people on their staff that smoke that much crack or how as that serious deluded and/or stupid? Seriously. Has living in DC so seriously compromised/rotted his intelligence? He needs help.

  • “McCain is willing to criticize, without naming names, the handling of the war in Iraq”

    … Oh, please. Going around saying, “Mistakes were made” is beyond being disingenuous. McCain still thinks it’s a good idea to be in Iraq in the first place. Anyone with that logic doesn’t deserve to have the power of the presidency.

    The only way McCain will differ substantively with Bush is that McCain will rip out Bush’s “optimistic” Oval Office rug and replace it with a bitter, spiteful rug. Aside from that, McCain bows to the same idols, kisses the same butts and would be as rueful of Democrats as his BFF George. I think he’d even keep Rove on.

  • Maybe it’s not Broder’s fault, afterall. It’s hard to tell what McCain is saying with his lips stuck on Bush’s ass.

  • It occurs to me that journalists like Broder have the exact same intellectual flaw as Bush: they begin with their conclusions, then gather the evidence. When the Republican Party is inundated with corruption probes across the country, a Broder decides first what would be a great column: taking a pot-shot at the other side, tit-for-tat. Then, gathers the evidence to back that up. DC loves McCain, and the public hates Bush, therefore, McCain is the “anti-Bush”. This appeals to Broder, who would like to keep the Republican establishment in Washington intact, in the face of an anti-Republican mood. So, he goes about gathering the evidence.

    It seems that producers and editors come up with what angle needs to appear, and sends a reporter out to get that story. We’ve been too harsh on Iraq — show me something good we can report. Imagine what coverage would be like if reporters investigated and gathered the facts, then reported on what they found?

  • Tom Cleaver the Broder piece you’ve dug up is a gem. It would appear that Broder’s problem is that he is afraid of mob rule or in Digby’s wonderfully coinage Dirty Fucking Hippies or more to the point the people.

    But he cannot. And that is the point the protesters seem to overlook. Assume that they and the President are both right when they assert the time has come to end this war. Assume that the protesters know better than the President how to do so — despite the conspicuous absence of specific alternatives to the President’s policies in their current manifestos.

    There is still a vital distinction, granting all this, to be made between the constitutionally protected expression of dissent, aimed at changing national policy, and mass movements aimed at breaking the President by destroying his capacity to lead the nation or to represent it at the bargaining table.

    The point is quite simple. Given the impatience in this country to be out of that miserable war, there is no great trick in using the Vietnam issue to break another President, you have broken the one man who can negotiate the peace.

  • I am very sorry Mr. Broder has lost it. From his last two items alone, I wonder if he may be on a few too many pharmaceuticals while he writes these days. -Kevo

  • Can we (meaning non-dumb fuck right-wing wackos) make a joint announcement to the “Dean” that no matter how embarrassing the incriminating photos the RNC is blackmailing him with…we don’t care. We won’t judge him by it. The photos simply can’t be as embarrassing as his shameful columns these past few years (Bush leadership during Katrina, Bush Comeback, and these last two).

  • Calling Broder the “dean” of the DC media has jumped the shark. He’s not the “dean” anymore, he’s the “crazy uncle in the basement”. McCain lays out another whopper in his announcement speech: “…We have changed the strategy that failed us, and we have begun to make a little progress…”

    So Broder barfs up this hairball: “…That statement by itself will not appease those who think McCain has been wrong in supporting the war…”

    Funny how statements by themselves, coupled with actions that directly oppose the will of the people, fail to “appease” the public. Especially when those people represent a growing majority of the voters. No, Broder thinks the majority of Americans are just a bunch of idiots who only wish to be “appeased”.

    Broder refers to a line in McCrazy’s opening salvo, saying “When he said, in summing up his indictment of present-day Washington, that he wants to change “a bloated, irresponsible and incompetent government,” no one could have doubted whose record he meant.”

    Oh really? Can we get McCain to tell us he was referring to Bush’s record, or is McCain such a wimp he can’t say what “no one” could doubt? I’m betting on the latter.

    But the crazy uncle provides some fun anyway…:

    Broder:

    While Bush remains highly popular among Republican voters, GOP consultant Steve Lombardo pointed out this week that “in no issue area does the [overall] public approve of the president’s performance. This is likely to be a ‘change’ election,” in which the majority of voters seek a new direction, whoever becomes the next president.

    Heh.

    And we’re supposed to believe that the Toxic Texan’s legacy isn’t going to cling to every single candidate with an (R) by their name, including “the anti-Bush” McCain?

  • ***He is running as the anti-Bush.***

    Given all the ReThug faithful who see Bu$h as their “messiah,” does this mean that Broder is allowing that I should refer to McCaca as “the AntiChrist?”

    Broder might be on to something here….

  • When I read Broder this morning, my first thought was “uh oh – two of Steve’s favorite topics collide: the fall of Broder and the use of ‘Straight Talk’ in conjunction with McCain.”

    It takes a certain pro-McCain desparation to look at one largely ambiguous-as-to-Bush speech and declare “the return of Straight Talk.” But it does have the making of a great grad thesis in psychology about the deluding power of wishful thinking.

  • New rule:

    Anybody under 35 or over 70 CAN’T be President.

    Sorry.

    I know there are some vibrant 70+ year olds…
    And I tend to believe that age ought to engender greater wisdom…

    But you know what?
    Life doesn’t seem to often work that way.

    Indeed… here’s my analysis:

    There is no fool like an old fool.
    If you haven’t learned to be a human by 70…
    Then get the F out of the way of those who are still trying…

  • he has, as you note, been apallingly wrong lately about everything.

    No, not “of late.” Of always. Broder’s been shoveling shit and calling it diamonds for 40 years. Click my name below, go to That’s Another Fine Mess, and see what he was writing about poor old Richard Nixon and his terrible lefty enemies way back in 1969. He’s just recycling his shit nowadays, using stuff he wrote when most of you weren’t born, let alone running around in plastic pants, in the expectation you won’t know it.

  • Broder and MCain both need MRI’s and evaluations by competant neurologist to diagnose what their mental disorder really is. McCain was a great candidate in 2000 but somehow has become a confused old man lately. He makes no sense what so far and the only way I would ever vote for him now is if he ran against Bush or Cheney. He contradicts himself and is irrational. To talk about IEDs under Jon Stewart’s desk and then tell Murtha to “lighten up” -that is ridiculous. As for Broder-he seems to be seeing things that the rest of the American public isn’t able to .The man is so full of @$#% that his eyes are brown.

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