David Broder

Liberal journalists are forever trying to dismiss the idea that when conservative candidates win, the voters who sent them to Washington sent them for conservative goals -- to restrain relentless government growth. In Thursday's Washington Post, columnist David Broder declared, in the face of all evidence, that the defining campaign of 2010 was....the egocentric write-in campaign of moderate Republican Lisa Murkowski in Alaska. It was not the year of the Tea Party, or repealing ObamaCare. It was the year that the voters said they wanted non-ideological bipartisanship. He quoted her interview with the PBS NewsHour: 

"I think that's what voters are looking for. I don't think that most are looking for somebody that is going to follow the litmus test of one party or another, and never deviate from it. I think they want us to think, and I think they want us to work cooperatively together. So, that's my pledge to all Alaskans, regardless of whether you are the most conservative Republican or the most liberal Democrat, I'm going to try to find a way that we can find common ground to help the state and to help our country."

With immigration reform back on the front page thanks to Arizona's new controversial law, it's going to be very interesting to see how the Obama-loving press report what he did concerning this issue when he was a junior senator from Illinois in 2007.

For instance, David Broder's "How Congress Botched Immigration Reform" published in Thursday's Washington Post didn't even mention Barack Obama's name.

This seems particularly odd given this paragraph (h/t Jennifer Rubin):

But once the bill hit the floor, it was attacked from both flanks. The most conservative Republicans -- Jim DeMint of South Carolina, David Vitter of Louisiana and Jeff Sessions of Alabama -- led the assault. They were joined by some civil libertarians and allies of organized labor who were dissatisfied with the bill's protections for guest workers. Democrat Byron Dorgan of North Dakota repeatedly tried to gut the guest-worker program before finally succeeding by one vote on his third effort. 

Broder curiously chose to ignore the fact that Barack Obama was, for all intents and purposes, the fateful deciding vote as reported by the late Robert Novak in June 2007:

An airplane didn’t explode over Detroit because the Islamic jihadi was incompetent. But Washington Post columnist David Broder decided he would start the New Year by making a fool of himself. He suggested on Friday that the incident showed Janet Napolitano’s excellence. The headline read "Napolitano’s ‘no drama’ competence shows her potential."

Does Broder think he’s writing for The Onion?

Most Americans got their first "prolonged look" at Napolitano in the aftermath of the bumbled terrorist attack, he wrote. That’s true enough. But then she went on the Sunday shows and bizarrely claimed "The system worked," which any truly skeptical journalist would see as embarrassing spin. But it was Broder who followed with embarrassing spin:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Saturday said the Senate shouldn't "focus on a man who has been retired for many years and writes a column once in a while."

This comment was directed at Washington Post columnist David Broder whose article to be published Sunday and already available online was harshly criticial of the healthcare bills in both chambers of Congress.

Given Broder's well-known stance as a left-leaning writer, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) referred to the piece in his opening remarks to Saturday's healthcare legislation debate noting that the Post's "distinguished senior columnist, certainly not a political conservative, expresses his reservation as a citizen about the steps that we could be about to take."

This led Reid to make his disparaging remark moments later (video embedded below the fold, relevant sections at 1:00 and 8:45):

On Monday, NewsBusters asked, "How do you know when an extraordinarily liberal politician is failing badly?"

Tuesday's answer is: When an extraordinarily liberal journalist like the Washington Post's Richard Cohen not only notices, but is willing to write about it AND get his critique published.

As if coordinated, Cohen followed Newsweek columnist Howard Fineman's "The Limits of Charisma: Mr. President, Please Stay Off TV" with a well-timed smackdown of his own called "Time to Act Like a President":

If you want to get an idea of the kind of rose-colored microscope Obama will be scrutinized with by journalists now that he's headed to the White House, you need look no further than David Broder's column in the Washington Post Thursday which actually began:

The first week of Barack Obama's transition to the presidency has gone about as well as anyone could imagine. 

Hmmm. I guess no one could have imagined president-elect Obama being greeted by a bullish show of confidence from Wall Street in the week following his coronation rather than an historic stock market collapse.

For some reason Broder chose to ignore the 14 percent decline in equity values since Election Day, but the Wall Street Journal didn't: 

In a recent visit to Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, Washington Post political editor David Broder told students that he believes there is no such thing as media bias. He claims that too many confuse talk radio with journalism and imagines the bias is predicated on that basis.

Speaking also to WOAI radio, Broder said, "I have spent almost fifty years of my life covering campaigns with other people. I don't think there is a serious problem with ideological or political bias."

According to WOAI, Broder claimed not to see any bias in reporters of his generation nor in younger journalists. "I don't find a problem with bias among my younger colleagues at all," Broder said. "That's not a concern of mine."

So, what is the problem with the pervasive feeling from so many that there is media bias? Blame it on talk radio.

My colleague Tim Graham brought to my attention earlier today that WashingtonPost.com's front page today teased two opinion pieces on the late Sen. Jesse Helms. The first was by a former Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer who lauded the late North Carolina Republican as a champion of liberty and staunch opponent of Communist repression. The second was a rehashed column from seven years ago accusing Helms of being an "unabashed racist."

David Broder's "RePost" of his August 29, 2001 column -- "Jesse Helms, White Racist" -- was nowhere to be found in the dead tree edition of the July 7 Washington Post, but it was included online as a counterweight to Marc Thiessen's "The Jesse Helms You Should Remember."

What readers would find in Thiessen's piece was one heartwarming account of how the fiercely anti-Communist senator stood up against his good friend and the leader of his party, President Ronald Reagan, in an attempt to save one Soviet sailor from returning to the USSR against his will (emphasis mine):

Wha-h-h-h? This has to go down as one of the stranger non sequiturs from a pundit of national standing.  Responding to a study that concludes that burgeoning multiculturalism threatens national unity, David Broder takes solace in the fact that 34 years ago, the American body politic booted Richard Nixon from office.  

In his column of today, One Nation No More?, Broder comments on the study, E Pluribus Unum, recently released by the The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.

Is Barack Obama beginning to wear out his welcome with some of the mainstream media's old guard, or are the nation's more seasoned journalists just getting fed up with the obvious love affair most press members are having with the Democrat presidential nominee?

Before accusing me of drinking the Kool-Aid, consider that two of the country's most venerable and high-profile liberal pundits -- the Washington Post's David Broder and syndicated columnist Mark Shields -- turned on the junior senator from Illinois in a fashion that would have been unthinkable before Hillary Clinton dropped out of the race.

For instance, here's what Shields said on Friday's "News Hour" (video embedded right, h/t Hot Air):

You pathetic little people of the blogosphere. You're nothing more than "nitwits at home with [your] computers" who've deluded yourselves into imagining you're "part of the news media." Just ask Mike Barnicle. The former Boston Globe columnist broke the tough truth to us on today's Morning Joe. WaPo editorial writer Jonathan Capehart was "so glad" to agree.

Capehart was in full courtier mode to Mika Brzezinski, anchoring the show during Joe Scarborough's extended absence awaiting the birth of a child home in Florida. When executive producer Chris Licht read a viewer email critical of Mika, Capehart leapt to her defense, and it was then that Barnicle and he sniffed at the pretenders of the pajamahadeen.

View video here.

For a moment, let's step away from the commentary, per se, and focus on the commentators. Liberals love to chide Fox News for its alleged conservative bias. So why don't we see, when it comes to being fair and balanced, how this morning's Fox News Sunday panel stacked up against that of its main competitor, Meet the Press?

Here are the line-ups—you be the judge.

MEET THE PRESS

Host–Tim Russert

Panel

• David Broder–Washington Post columnist
• John Dickerson–Slate
• Gwen Ifill–PBS
• Andrea Mitchell–NBC
• Richard Wolffe–Newsweek

After publishing an astoundingly positive column about Republican presidential candidate John McCain Thursday, the Washington Post's David Broder must have felt the need to bash some conservatives or risk being excommunicated by his liberal friends.

Looking to make amends, Broder went on Sunday's "Meet the Press," and disparaged CPAC attendees as being "aginners" with "a limited constituency."

Yet, moments later, he returned to his McCain love-fest.

But, before we get there, here's what Broder had to say about CPAC (video available here):

"A camel is a horse designed by committee." -- ascribed to Sir Alexander Arnold Constantine Issigonis.

Perhaps the only thing more likely to yield ungainly results than a committee designing a horse is a Democrat designing a Republican presidential ticket. David Broder tries his hand at it in his WaPo column today, "Principles Amid the GOP Pack. The result is a double-humped dromedary known as McCain-Huckabee.

Washington Post reporter and columnist David Broder, known as the “dean” of the Washington press corps, perfectly encapsulated, on Friday's Washington Week on PBS, the media establishment's more government spending is the answer to everything attitude when he acted bewildered as to how anyone could oppose a massive expansion of a federal health insurance program. When host Gwen Ifill raised how “Congress would like to double the number of children covered” by the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), Broder marveled at how “the President has threatened the veto, and everybody I've talked to in the administration this past week says take that threat seriously.” Broder equated federal spending with resolving a problem as he wondered: “I mean, who can be against providing health insurance for kids?” Talking over him, Ifill, a veteran of the New York Times and NBC News, echoed, “yeah.” Neither Ifill nor Broder noted the amount of the proposed additional spending Bush would veto: $50 billion.

On June 3, NBC’s “Meet the Press” marvelously demonstrated how wonderful a panel discussion can be when there are an equal number of liberal and conservative pundits present as reported by NewsBusters here.

Three weeks later, host Tim Russert stocked his panel exclusively with liberals: David Broder of The Washington Post, John Harwood of The Wall Street Journal and CNBC, Gwen Ifill of PBS’ Washington Week, and syndicated columnist Roger Simon.

As a result of there not being one conservative present, the discussion was the usual twenty minutes of Bush-bashing, Hillary sycophancy, and attacks on all politicians with an “R” next to their names.

In fact, the liberal bias this Sunday morning came early and often immediately after Russert’s first question: (video available here with relevant segment beginning at minute 22:45):

In case you haven't heard, the entire Senate Democratic caucus sent a letter to the Washington Post complaining about a column that David Broder, the paper's respected moderate liberal columnist wrote criticizing Democratic leader Harry Reid for saying the Iraq war is "lost."

We've talked about it quite a bit here at NB (here and here for some of our coverage) but today's New York Sun makes a point worth posting today:

"The episode illuminates how thin-skinned and intolerant the left is in this country of a press corps that is anything less than completely pliant. It began with the Democratic presidential candidates refusing to participate in a presidential debate that would be aired on the Fox News Channel, a network so reflexively right-wing that its regular paid contributors include Michael Dukakis's campaign manager Susan Estrich, National Public Radio's Mara Liasson, and the 2006 Democratic candidate for Senate in Tennessee, Harold Ford Jr. First they came for Fox News Channel, then they came for David Broder."

That's exactly right. The problem Broder is encountering is that even though he is a liberal, the fact that he has crossed the far left on its most important agenda item (surrendering in Iraq) has made him anathema. Same with Joe Lieberman.

Days after the liberal blogosphere was enraged by a Washington Post column by David Broder concerning Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada), it only seems fitting that an unnamed Democrat strategist would be quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle with negative things to say about the Netroots.

For those that have forgotten, in September, Broder wrote about “vituperative, foul-mouthed bloggers on the left.”

Months later, as California Democrats gathered in San Diego at their annual convention – with their presidential candidates present and accounted for – an anonymous strategist had rather unflattering things to say about bloggers on the left side of the political aisle (h/t Hot Air, emphasis added):

Better secure your computer from all combustibles, potables, and sharp objects, sports fans, for the Washington Post published a Letter to the Editor on Friday that is guaranteed to elicit uncontrollable fits of laughter.

Are you ready? Good.

In response to David Broder’s Thursday column about the horrible job Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada) is doing as Majority Leader – a sentiment likely an overwhelming majority of Americans share – Senate Democrats actually wrote the Post a complaint letter.

I kid you not.

As the Post didn’t feature this correspondence on the front page – instead including it with the other four “letters” published that day on page A22 – and since Broder wasn’t asked to make a correction or retraction, it doesn’t seem that this puff piece, hysterically titled “Sen. Reid’s Fine Leadership,” was taken very seriously (emphasis added throughout):

One of the most marvelous aspects of today’s liberal media is how members of “the club” better not say or write anything bad about another member or risk excommunication.

Such is clearly the mantra of CNN’s Paul Begala, who published a scathing rebuke of the Washington Post’s David Broder on Thursday.

In it, he referred to the clearly left-of-center columnist as “a gasbag,” “the Hindenburg of pundits,” who has been “downright venomous lately,” especially with his most recent "bed-wetting tantrum."

And you thought Begala reserved such contempt exclusively for Republicans.

What got Paul in such a snit? Well, Broder had the gall, in a column also published Thursday, to criticize Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada):

I would never suggest that the presidential campaign isn't Page One material, but it's not exactly a compelling news story when the summary of a Democratic debate (in today's WashPost) is "Candidates Unite In Criticizing Bush." How is that notably different than any other day of the Bush presidency? Readers ought to see in this an undercurrent of It's-Our-Party politeness, as in "we wouldn't want any of our plausible contenders to be nicked up this early."

But the real puffery came in David Broder's "analysis" on page A6, headlined "Democratic Hopefuls Show Political Heft." These were no eight "dwarves," but a bevy of better-than-Bush giants: "the overall impression from the first formal debate from this early-starting campaign is that the Democrats have a field of contenders that, by any historical measure, matches in quality any the party has offered in decades."

The trial of Scooter Libby is providing some pretty revealing insight into the mindset of the Washington press. This Sunday's Meet the Press featured an unabashed series of self-glorifications that make it no wonder the general public is turning elsewhere to get its news. The pedestal that the press places itself upon has grown so high now that they appear to believe themselves, at last, above the law.
Tim Russert’s disastrous dance with Libby attorney Theodore Wells last week left him gun-shy enough to allow Howard Kurtz to frame the discussion. Kurtz began by expressing sympathy for Russert’s position on the witness stand, describing Russert as ‘cautious, hesitant, as anybody would be.’ There was no criticism of Russert’s failed memory, no suggestion of the responsibility of a journalist whose statements may end up sending a man to prison. Instead, Kurtz chastised those outside the beltway that have become deluded with the idea that the Washington press is in fact part of the political game:

"And I think that the people out there who don’t follow this all that closely think that we have become part of the club, too much the insiders. And that is a problem for journalism."

Listen closely to what Kurtz doesn’t say- he doesn’t say that becoming ‘part of the club’ is a problem for journalism. He says that the misconception on the part of those out of the loop that journalists have become part of the club is a problem for journalism. So apparently all they have to do is let us all know the truth, and the problem disappears. Precise work from the author of a book called Spin Cycle.

The VRWC is apparently even vaster than we realized.

In a fund-raising email today David Brock, President of Media Matters, the organization that some might consider the left-wing counterpart to NewsBusters, claimed [emphasis added]:

"Media Matters has already exposed more than 6,000 instances of conservative misinformation in just two years -- and not just from right-wing news outlets such as Fox News Channel, but from sources like CNN, The Washington Post, and The New York Times."

Brock cites two instances in which Media Matters corrected errors at the Washington Post. But might the conservative rot run deeper? Could Paul Krugman be a deep RNC mole? Christiane Amanpour a conservative agent provocateur? E.J. Dionne perhaps a catspaw for Karl Rove?

It’s surprising that this column by the Washington Post’s David Broder on Thursday fell so far below the fold. After all, Broder had unkind things to say about virtually everybody that would have pleased and enraged both Democrats and Republicans alike. For instance, Broder didn’t have nice things to say about President Bush:

The country thought Bush was a pleasant, down-to-earth guy who would not rock the boat. Instead, swayed by some inner impulse or the influence of Dick Cheney, he has proved to be lawless and reckless. He started a war he cannot finish, drove the government into debt and repeatedly defied the Constitution.

Don’t mince words, David. Tell us what you really think. Fortunately, Broder’s attack wasn’t just on Bush:

During today's Live Discussion at WashingtonPost.com, columnist David Broder took heat from liberal readers who asked him to explain why he said the press should apologize to Karl Rove for the stink it made over the non-issue of Valerie Plame.

It's remarkable how overwhelmingly liberal the questions are that make it to Broder's attention, but perhaps conservatives readers have given up on the Washington Post.

Washington, D.C.: Mr Broder, if you feel Karl Rove is owed an apology from the pundits and writers over Valerie Plame, did you also call for an apology to the Clintons after Ken Starr, the Whitewater investigation and the failed attempt to impeach President Clinton? If not, why not?

David S. Broder: As best, I can recall,I did not call for such an apology. My view, for whatever it is worth long after the dust has settled on Monica, was that when President Clinton admitted he had lied to his Cabinet and his closest assoc, to say nothing of the public, that the honorable thing was for him to have resigned and turned over the office to Vice President Gore. I think history would have been very different had he done that.

In his Washington Post column today, David Broder takes on the government-press relationship, but predictably, only the government side is evaluated. In Broder's eyes, it's suspicious government vs. idealistic press corps:

This is a troubling case for those of us in journalism. Our view is that it's the government's responsibility to keep its secrets secret and that it's our responsibility to ferret out information so the public is aware of the actions being taken in its name...But we also know that administrations of both parties tend to restrict information -- and that the only way for the public to learn of questionable policies or actions is for conscientious individuals to break that official code of silence.

In a little half-hour online chat Friday at Washingtonpost.com, WashPost columnist/reporter David Broder complained about the "fiscal profligacy" of the federal government, but specifically against the Bush tax cuts. He sounded the familiar refrain that Americans should be having to "sacrifice" more for the war, even as his questioners pointed out tax cuts are popular.

Ontario, Calif.: David, A recent NBC poll disclosed that nearly 60 percent of the American people "strongly" or "somewhat strongly" support "making the President's tax cuts of the past few years permanent." Do you think that in the face of this much popular support, the Democrats will be able to stand on principle and display the political will and unity necessary to defeat this questionable plan?

On the Washington Post op-ed page today, Colbert King snidely protests the conservative feeling that liberals turned the Coretta Scott King funeral into a bit of whooping political theater. "The fuss over the funeral is probably the silliest snit of all."

King raised several straw men. First, how could you expect a funeral for a political icon like Coretta not to raise issues of racism, poverty, and war? (But we didn't expect it to be free of political themes. We did expect it to be free of whooping ovations of sentences that seemed designed to embarrass the President as he sat there.) Second, he claims this is the way black Baptist funerals are. (But the "mourners" were not worshiping Jesus, saying Amen to their Lord in loud voices. They were whooping at liberal anti-Bush sentiments. If that's a black Baptist funeral, then it IS as much a campaign event as a religious event.) King concludes:

It’s probably not the first time it has happened, but with the exception of ABC’s George Will – who, of course, has been a regular on that network’s “This Week” for many years – the networks’ Sunday political talk shows had no established conservative guests to participate in their weekly panel discussions. Joining George Stephanopoulos and George Will this morning were Democratic political strategist Donna Brazile, TIME magazine’s Jay Carney, and ABC’s Claire Shipman. NBC’s “The Chris Matthews Show” featured Katy Kay of the BBC, Michael Duffy of TIME magazine, Norah O’Donnell of MSNBC, and Terry Neal of the Washington Post. CBS’s “Face the Nation” did its annual Thanksgiving “historians” program.

The most left-leaning of the panels was on NBC’s “Meet the Press” where Tim Russert invited Judy Woodruff, formerly of CNN’s “Inside Politics,” David Broder of the Washington Post, Eugene Robinson also of the Washington Post, and David Gregory of NBC News. While the “This Week” and “Matthews” panels actually engaged in a comparatively well-rounded discussion, the “Meet the Press” group spent the bulk of its half-hour talking about the “disaster” in Iraq. For instance, Robinson said, “I think that there's general agreement now that there will be a mess in Iraq when U.S. troops finally withdraw and it certainly won't be an Athenian democracy, as the administration said it was out to create.” Gregory agreed, “And unfortunately, perhaps the only outcome is a kind of low-level civil war that's akin to the Arab- Israeli situation with U.S. soldiers in the way.”

Woodruff then joined in by paraphrasing a recent article in the Atlantic Monthly: