David Broder Really Needs to Hang it Up

by: tremayne

Sat Apr 25, 2009 at 23:21


David Broder has wasted some valuable space in the Washington Post urging President Obama to hold firm against torture investigations. No wait, that's wrong. Space in the Post isn't valuable anymore. That explains why they're willing to publish this brilliant conclusion:

Suppose that Obama backs down and Holder or someone else starts hauling Bush administration lawyers and operatives into hearings and courtrooms.

Suppose the investigators decide that the country does not want to see the former president and vice president in the dock. Then underlings pay the price while big shots go free. But at some point, if he is at all a man of honor, George W. Bush would feel bound to say: That was my policy. I was the president. If you want to indict anyone for it, indict me.

Is that where we want to go?

Yes. That's exactly where we want to go. But Broder, like Peggy Noonan, just wants to look the other way. So the precedent would be this:

President wants to do something illegal. Wants to really bad. Compliant legal aides rewrite rules for him to do so. Underlings break laws based on said legal advice.

No one gets punished.

David Broder turns 80 this year. He should use the occasion to retire and the Washington Post should use the occasion to put something more insightful in the vacated space.
tremayne :: David Broder Really Needs to Hang it Up

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David Broder Really Needs to Hang it Up | 26 comments
Can't bring myself to read that column (4.00 / 7)
The WaPo once had a role in bringing down a law-breaking president - Nixon - who only avoided prosecution because of a pardon by his successor.

And yet now the WaPo's top columnist is arguing that a law-breaking president - Bush - should not be investigated, much less prosecuted. We should just keep walking, as Peggy Noonan says.

This is such a horribly disgusting mindset. I seem to remember Broder was all in favor of investigating Bill Clinton over a blow job. Yet when it comes to war crimes, he cries that it would be too divisive to see what laws were broken.

Do these people have souls?

No!!! .... (4.00 / 5)
Do these people have souls?

This has been another example of simple answers ......

[ Parent ]
lol (4.00 / 2)
It was a rhetorical question, but thank you nonetheless :)
[ Parent ]
My concern is.... (4.00 / 2)

 ...that David Broder's opinion is one Barack Obama cares very deeply about.

 I hope not. But I fear so.

 

"We judge ourselves by our ideals; others by their actions. It is a great convenience." -- Howard Zinn

[ Parent ]
this is easy (4.00 / 4)

the Washington Post should use the occasion to put something more insightful in the vacated space.

"Something more insightful" than David Broder, huh?  This is a very long list.  

it is come to this (4.00 / 5)
in the sunset of his life, Broder is defending torture.  
Tradition (4.00 / 4)
The US has traditionally prosecuted the people in the middle or towards the bottom, not the top.  Henry Wirz, the commandant of Andersonville was hanged for murder.  Higher officials like Jefferson Davis or the Governor of Georgia or Wirz's military superiors were never tried.  At My Lai, an even lower officer, William Calley, took the blame.  So far, at Abu Gharab most of the hit has fallen on enlisted personnel. The Blackwater creeeps and the DoD and DoJ creeps and cabinet level folks haven't been targets.

Does Broder really feel that W would a) take the blame (no way) or b) actually be indicted?

It seems like Bush could safely take the "blame" (4.00 / 1)
as long the corporate media continues to keep the American public in the dark about the realities of torture: how it hinders intelligence gathering, how it endangers our own soldiers, how it only creates more terrorists, why having the reputation for not torturing helped us so much during WWII, why it doesn't even work, etc.

So long as a Americans continue to buy into the frame that we need to use "enhanced interrogation" to keep us "safe", Bush very likely could come out as smelling like a hero in contrast to that wimpy Democrat currently occupying the White House. I suppose some of this could be mitigated if Americans were allowed to see actual photos or video footage of the "enhanced interrogation" (it's not really torture, don't you know), but I think most of that evidence has been destroyed. And even if it wasn't, we probably wouldn't get to see it anyway.

[ Parent ]
He's corrupt ... this is not some kind uncle who has gone crazy (4.00 / 5)
He's a bastard.  His mind does not wander on what he is promoting: a ruling class that can treat this country like their banana republic with us fanning them with our money.  What meanders is his logic used to justify why there should be a ruling class and a government unaccountable to the American people.  He knows what he is doing, just like he knew what he was doing when he took those speaking fees.  And knew when he lied to his employers about it.  Because he thinks he is part of that class also that shouldn't be held accountable.  

So, Crazy David Broder ... oh no ... Evil David Broder: a paid pro-authoritarian plutocrat propagandist working under the cloak of a columnist.  That's much more accurate.

Z          

Broder thinks Bush has more spine than Nixon? What a nutcase! (4.00 / 3)
And since Broder has been in the job since half an eternity, it would be interesting to dig up what he wrote about Watergate way back when. Was he against prosecuting those crooks, too???
Acid review of Broder's carrer at Harper's (4.00 / 4)
The story is from 2007, but Broder hasn't changed at all, so it's still an interesting read:

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 [2007], 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.


http://www.harpers.org/archive...

It's really a strange phenomenum, that opinion hacks who have been proven constantly wrong can still cling to their jobs. Every blue collar worker would have long been fired for such a "performance".
8-/

Oops! It gets even even better, Broder defending Reagan AND Nixon... (4.00 / 2)
in the next paragraphs:
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.


http://www.harpers.org/archive...
Btw, there will be improvement at WaPo! Ezra Klein will join them. (0.00 / 0)
The news is true: On May 18th, I'll be moving about two blocks east and two blocks south to the Washington Post's massive building. I will have part of a desk rather than much of an office. I will not have natural light. This blog, too, will change its home, moving to the "columnists and blogs" area of the Post's Business section.

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/b...
What a surprise (0.00 / 0)
WaPo hires still another hack.
[ Parent ]
If you have any question (0.00 / 0)
about what I'm referring to, you might check out some of the shameless regurgitation of Obama WH talking points Klein engaged in, as pointed out by Glenn Greenwald.

No doubt WaPo saw this whoring behavior and figured he would be a perfect fit.

[ Parent ]
Here's a link (0.00 / 0)
to one such post by Greenwald discussing this problem with Klein.
[ Parent ]
Ridiculous! Whom do you trust, Klein or Brooks? (0.00 / 0)
The answer should be obvious! And even more so because Brooks' statement makes no sense. Why should Obama think about a reform of social security? It isn't an urgent topic, it isn't a popularity winner with Dems, and he never said anything abotu such a reform during the campaign. Short: It's a fairy tale, told to Brooks qzuite probably by some rethuglican officials who made it into the Obama administration.

And say what you will about Klein, he's a steadfast liberal, a great blogger, and you, Sirs, aren't worth binding his boots. Really, actually it's the attitude of folks like you which is becoming a increasing problem for the Dems: "Hollier than thou" folks who engage in damaging infighting against other liberals because of simple disagreements about policy issues.

[ Parent ]
Why does he think it's up to investigators to decide (4.00 / 2)
who the American people do or do not want to see in the dock?

The "Versailles" metaphor has never seemed so apt.

Montani semper liberi

broder (0.00 / 0)
died a long time ago, he just didn't get the notice yet.  
If George W Bush is at all a MAN OF HONOR!? (0.00 / 0)
LOL!!!

I hope Broder isn't gonna hold his breath waiting for W to "take responsibility" for any effing thing. The little schmuck's never done so before in his life and I don't think he's gonna start now that we're talking about potential war crimes and crimes against humanity.


David Broder Really Needs to Hang it Up | 26 comments
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