Last Call

Doug at Balloon Juice nails my thoughts on the passing of David Broder:

I went through a long stage of disliking David Broder for being an establishment dispenser of Beltway conventional wisdom. Why he couldn’t he be smarter and more fact-based, like, say, Paul Krugman?

Then I realized that was the wrong comparison. There is not much place for smart, fact- based argument in our system. Broder should be praised for having been smarter and more diligent than Cokie Roberts and Richard Cohen.

The problem with the Village was never David Broder, it was the system that made somebody like David Broder the "Dean of the Washington press corps" and treated him as its high priest for 45 years.  It's the same system that views John McCain as a serious policy wonk, Paul Ryan as an economic genius, and always rewards access, access, access.

Broder appeared on Meet The Press some 401 times in his career.  That's close to eight years of consecutive Sundays' worth, or once a month every month for 34 years, which is pretty much what he did.  And yes, the fairest thing I can say about him is he was better than Cokie Roberts.