David Broder's War

Dean Broder uncorks a rich defense of the People's Republic of China today, arguing that a trade war would ensue if the Obama Administration moves forward with tariffs on tire imports.

Many in business fear that this is the opening round in what could become a much larger and more dangerous trade war.

For now, the Chinese have threatened only minor retaliation, a cutback in imports of auto and chicken parts from the United States. But both sides have plenty of other, larger weapons they could deploy [...]

The danger is that once you strike the first blow against foreign competitors, you can't tell what will happen next. Obama has taken that risk, so fingers are crossed.

Oh noes, trade war! Except, no, China's consumer base offers little possibility for China to have the room to engage in retaliatory strikes.

Chinese consumers who buy $608 billion of goods from overseas are diminishing the prospects of a trade war with the U.S.

China’s imports, up 68 percent in five years, now amount to almost one-third of gross domestic product, according to World Bank data. The nation’s demand for foreign products is a boon for American companies, which exported $351 billion to China in the past five years.

U.S. President Barack Obama’s 35 percent tariff on tires from China spurred a Chinese investigation into prices of U.S. poultry and car products. Dangers of further escalation may be mitigated by the increasing benefit China provides the world economy. Poised to surpass Japan as No. 2 in GDP, its purchasing power is a lure to firms seeking new customers.

“As China depends more on domestic demand, its rise won’t be seen by the rest of the world to be as big a threat as some view it now,” said Shen Minggao, a former consultant to the World Bank who is chief economist in Hong Kong for the Greater China region at Citigroup Inc., the third-largest U.S. bank.

In fact, with respect to the one threat the PRC made, to look into "dumping" of chicken parts, the Chinese have such an appetite for chicken feet that they would practically revolt if the government tried to cut off imports.

The fact that China has demand and not just supply means that there is an equilibrium where trade laws can actually be enforced. That's all that's been done in this respect, and Dean Broder is just trying to protect the neoliberal consensus by arguing otherwise.

If Accountability Is The Standard

The Dean rides to the rescue of that poor Mr. Cheney in the most predictable way possible. He's been at this forever. I'm surprised he wasn't a John Edwards fan, since he clearly believes in Two Americas, one for the Village and one for everyone else. In 1974, Broderella wrote enthusiastically about the prospect of Nixon beating the impeachment rap and Republicans surging in the midterms. While he lies about that in today's piece, he does admit that he supported Nixon's pardon. He's been covering for Republicans for so long he must feel like an umbrella.

But there's something very interesting, if unintentionally so, in what he says today:

Looming beyond the publicized cases of these relatively low-level operatives is the fundamental accountability question: What about those who approved of their actions? If accountability is the standard, then it should apply to the policymakers and not just to the underlings. Ultimately, do we want to see Cheney, who backed these actions and still does, standing in the dock?

"If accountability is the standard." Nice.

Broder, of course, takes the wrong lesson from this, arguing that the country couldn't take such an assault on cherished criminals like Dick Cheney, and as long as everybody promises to never, ever do it again, we need to bind up our wounds and move forward. But he's giving voice to what many of us have been saying - that low-level interrogators are not ultimately responsible for an illegal policy, and that criminal culpability demands a response from the justice system. That Attorney General Holder has indemnified anyone who got a legal scribbling authorizing torture, in effect privileging the legal memos as legal regardless of what they say, is completely outrageous. Accountability should indeed apply to the policymakers. Hey, Dean Broder, don't bogart our argument!

That isn't just wrong, it's outrageous. It ratifies the most toxic aspect of the whole legal war on terror: that anything becomes permissible if it's served up with a side of memo. Paper your misconduct with footnotes and justifications—even after the fact—and you can do as you please. Prosecution of those who strayed beyond the new rules, without considering the culpability of those who strayed in creating the new rules, would mean that in America, a law degree amounts to a defense. Rep Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., put it this way earlier this month when he warned that it makes no sense to prosecute the guy who used 8 ounces of water to water-board but not the lawyer who said it was OK to water-board someone with 3 ounces of water. We must either look into both sides of the post-9/11 legal breakdown or neither. The alternative is the same kind of scapegoating that occurred after Abu Ghraib [...]

The American legal system isn't just about crime and punishment. It's a set of guideposts to direct us in the future and to send a message about our values to the rest of the world. This proposed Holder-Durham regime of semi-accountability—we're sorry for that whole torture thing but not sorry enough to investigate seriously how it happened in the first place—serves the dangerous dual purpose of allowing us to reinstate the Bush-era torture rationales, should they be necessary again in the future, and advising our allies and enemies that under desperate circumstances, they can plausibly do the same. Opting to be only halfway responsible means that torture is, going forward, only halfway reprehensible. Ta-Nehisi Coates says, "I really have no doubt that we could—indeed would—start torturing again, in the event of another terrorist attack." If we don't dismantle the foundations of the torture regime, he'll be right.

It's a pretty good rule of thumb that, if Alberto Gonzales supports your torture investigation, it's not a very good torture investigation.

This would be the reason that the prescription should not be just to "fix" everything and move forward, without providing accountability - full accountability - for those who thought they could get a permission slip to violate federal and international law and get useful idiots like David Broder to hold them harmless. The very real threat to the country lies in the breakdown of the rule of law, not the restoration of it. And it might make the authorizers and the CIA sad and gloomy, and lower their morale, but that's precisely the point. In general people ought to be deterred from breaking the law; that's what makes them think twice about doing it. If investigating and prosecuting torture has a chilling effect, that's probably because it's supposed to. Kind of the basis of the entire criminal justice system, but if you want to dismantle that for everybody, at least shoplifters and petty thieves would be on a level playing field with those who murdered prisoners in custody.

At least Broder isn't quite the monster of his "liberal" colleague Richard Cohen, who follows up his "only a fool, or a Frenchman" classic with a robust defense of torture, including a note of how Judith Miller's imprisonment was "a wee bit of torture" and closing with the image of the smoldering World Trade Center. Pitted against that shamefulness, Dean Broder's practically a civil liberties absolutist.

...my 1,000-odd words, Tom Tomorrow's six panels. He wins.

Forward, Not Backward

Leon Panetta will close those secret prisons, but let's not fight about who tortured who, right fellas?

The CIA is decommissioning the secret overseas prisons where top al Qaida suspects were subjected to interrogation methods, including simulated drowning, that Attorney General Eric Holder, allied governments, the Red Cross and numerous other experts consider torture, the agency said Thursday.

In an e-mail to the agency's work force outlining current interrogation and detention policies, CIA Director Leon Panetta also announced that agreements with the private security firms guarding the so-called black sites will be "promptly terminated," and contractors no longer will be used to conduct interrogations.

Panetta, however, said that CIA officers who were involved in interrogations using "enhanced" methods authorized by the Justice Department during the Bush administration "should not be investigated, let alone punished."

I actually thought these sites were already shuttered. And I don't want private mercenaries involved in the interrogations process, so all to the good. But we have a cancer in this country caused by failing to face up to our actions. I don't think the low-level interrogators who carried out the policies are necessarily responsible - but they can certainly tell us who gave the order, and who was next on the rung in the chain of command. That's how you build a case and seek the truth. Blanket amnesty at any level impedes the eventual reckoning, and it's wrong.

And one of the Gitmo lawyers says Obama's people are stonewalling him, too. Man, they really want to make sure nobody goes down for this? What a corrupt bargain. And it's only fitting that the highest of High Broderists doesn't see a problem at all:

David Broder today, on whether there should be an investigation of the Bush years:

“I understand the reluctance to open a wide-ranging probe of past practices. It seems to me we are better off focusing on cleaning up the policies and practices for the future than trying to settle scores for past actions.”

David Broder, famously, as Clinton’s administration wound down:

“He came in here and he trashed the place, and it’s not his place.”

Sargent, and his former colleagues at TPM, call Washington "wired for conservatism." I prefer to think of it as wired for self-protection. Getting a hummer was all Clinton's problem. But they led the cheers while their golden boy Mr. Bush was authorizing the torture of human beings. They don't want to see their friends hurt, but really they don't want to sully their beautiful minds.

The Highest Broderism

David Broder's paean to bipartisanship yesterday was pretty funny. Funny in an "what version of Earth in the DC multiverse is this guy living on" fashion.

Some consider Obama's wooing of Republicans a rookie mistake, a measure of his naivete. Others focus on the Republicans and fault them for obduracy in denying Obama all but three of their votes on the stimulus bill. The critics agree that the effort at bipartisanship should end.

I hope Obama isn't listening. It's the worst advice he has received.

It starts from a false premise: that the stimulus bill proves the failure of outreach to Republicans. In fact, had Obama not negotiated successfully with Republican Sens. Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe and Arlen Specter and met most of their terms, his bill would have died. This was a success for bipartisanship, not a failure.

Morone's history also is false. To prove that bipartisanship has never existed, he has to skip over Harry Truman's success with a Republican Congress on the Marshall Plan, Lyndon Johnson's forging the great civil rights acts with Sen. Everett Dirksen and Rep. Bill McCulloch, and Ronald Reagan's steering his first budget and tax bill through a Democratic House.

But the real reason Obama should ignore this advice is that he will need Republican votes to pass the remaining parts of his program. When it comes to energy, regional and commodity interests will inevitably divide the Democrats. They always do. Oil, coal, natural gas and consumer groups will exert their will. If Obama writes off the Republicans in advance, he will end up with a watered-down bill -- or nothing.

It's useless to argue with Broderella, but nevertheless...

Never mind the fact that he has to go far back in history, when Dixiecrats still existed and the parties were ideologically jumbled, to prove his fantasy. He really manages to define bipartisanship in this one, doesn't he? Meeting most of the terms enforced by conservatives is the new working definition. And he demands that the President give in to the terms of Republicans in the same way to pass his agenda.

Is Broder aware of the modern conservative rump faction that includes about 90-95% of elected Republicans in Washington? Their spiritual leader Rush Limbaugh said yesterday that trying to understand a Democrat is like trying to understand a murderer or a rapist. Their favorite son Jim DeMint's plan for economic recovery is to do nothing, stand still and hope everything magically bounces back. Their top legislative agenda consists of cherry-picking pieces of stimulus spending to prove that the entire bill is wasteful, a project they have ANNOUNCED TO THE MEDIA IN ADVANCE.

The parties disagree. These days they violently disagree. And the public has pretty much made their decision on who to support.

According to a new AP poll, voters are assigning blame to gridlock -- and they're blaming Republicans. Asked whether Obama was doing enough to cooperate with the Republicans, 62 percent said he was. Asked if the Republicans were doing enough to cooperate with Obama, 64 percent said they weren't.

Republicans now run the risk of being blamed for their own irrelevance. The stimulus bill passed without their votes and that's being seen as evidence of their intransigence, not Obama's. Bipartisanship is being measured by through the evident intention's of the players, not the final tally on the bill. If this normalizes -- if Americans begin to expect that the GOP won't cooperate and so Obama can't be expected to win their votes -- you'll have a situation where Obama can reach out to them on entirely on his terms because it doesn't matter if the outreach actually succeeds. If the President asked Mithc McConnell to help him pass Medicare-for-All, it's hardly the President's fault if McConnell refuses. And that will lead the GOP totally, and unsympathetically, marginalized.

In fact, Republicans are starting to actually be blamed for their own policy ideas, and are desperately trying to run away from them. Jim Tedisco, the candidate in the New York Congressional special election to replace Sen. Gillibrand, refuses to answer the question of whether or not he supports the stimulus even though the answer is obvious. Rep. Joseph Cao, who beat Dollar Bill Jefferson in Louisiana, is now facing a potential recall as a cause of his vote against the stimulus. This is not a function of whether one side or the other is bipartisan enough, it's that the public has generally discovered that they really don't like Republicans.

Parties disagree. They have a particular platform and they are expected to uphold it. The electorate looks at each side and makes a decision. If they don't like the results they can choose the alternative later. It's called democracy. I don't think David Broder believes in it.

High Priest Of The Church Of Not A Clue

There are two explanations for David Broder's pig ignorance here, falling along the same lines of wondering whether the last President was "stupid or evil".



Broder says that the last attempt at stimulus did not work. He was referring to the 2007 effort of handing out money in the form of rebate checks. That didn't work because it's well documented to be a terrible stimulus. Moody's wrote this chart over a year ago:



Broder concludes that, since the first stimulus didn't work, that "this is a gamble, and it's much better off that it includes the best thinking available in both parties, not one party."

Um, sir, WHAT DO YOU THINK THE FIRST STIMULUS WAS? It was a 100% tax rebate along the lines of the sum total of the thinking of one party. In fact, the "best thinking" of those people now is to weight the stimulus down with - wait for it - tax cuts, which would cost three times as much as the current plan because they want the tax cuts to be permanent, which is an even worse stimulus (There's also the point that the Republicans would push more people onto the Alternative Minimum Tax and actually RAISE taxes for the middle class while dropping them for the rich, but that's normal and besides the point I'm trying to make).

So, according to Broder, because a 100% tax rebate didn't work, we have to come up with a "bipartisan" approach that includes the ideas of those who prefer what amounts to a... 100% tax rebate.

This is idiocy, and suggests one of two things: either most of the Beltway is trying to protect the assets of the rich, or they actually don't know the meaning of the word "stimulus." And we are seeing this kind of confusion all over the media. If it's the latter, that's at least partially the fault of the Administration, who isn't doing the best job of explaining why exactly we need fiscal spending to make up the shortfall caused by plummeting consumer spending and private investment.

A correspondent raises an important point: there’s widespread public confusion between the fiscal stimulus plan — which should, on its face, be very popular — and the bank bailouts, which are deeply (and understandably) unpopular. Spending on infrastructure commands broad support; rescuing bankers from the consequences of their own folly, broad revulsion.

And the Obama administration hasn’t done much to make the distinction — and the result is much less public support for the stimulus plan than we should have.

Obviously the Obama folks are swimming against a biased media current in trying to differentiate the bailout from the stimulus. But whether this is because they want to appear above the fray and not make partisan statements in the middle of the negotiation or what, it would behoove them to clear up some of the muddle. The economy is on a very dangerous path, and yet the message to the public, from sources partisan and "nonpartisan", is either ignorantly or deliberately conflating handing out money to banks with investing in the country and creating jobs. For example, Republicans know well - from their own pollster - that infrastructure spending is massively popular and they would have lots of trouble voting against it. Indeed, many of the Republican amendments in the Senate are tied to increasing infrastructure spending.

If people got the idea that the stimulus plan both creates jobs and leaves a tangible asset for the future, it would be hard for even the Broderellas of the world to agitate against it. But people have to get that idea from somewhere.

Clinton Derangement Syndrome

I think the biggest reason why I've eventually come around to the idea that Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State is an excellent idea is by watching the traditional media froth at the mouth about it. David Broder is but a symbol of this consensus freak-out.

The last thing Obama needs is a secretary of state carving out an independently based foreign policy. He needs an agent, not an author.

Even if Hillary Clinton were ready to play such a subordinate role, which she might be, in return for a promise that her voice would be heard in the most serious policy debates, the presence of Bill Clinton makes that a doubly difficult assignment. The former president has, through the Clinton Global Initiative and his own extensive foreign travels and worldwide contacts, made himself a force in international affairs. It would be unfair, and unlikely, for him to shut down his own private foreign policy actions because they might conflict with his wife's responsibilities. But foreign leaders would inevitably see Bill Clinton as an alternative route toward influencing American policy. And he would be unlikely to remain silent.

I just don't know where Broder gets the idea that Clinton would be necessarily carving out an independent foreign policy, or that Obama would allow that to happen. As for Bill Clinton, there's a small amount of concern there, but I think it's overblown. Considering the enormous conflicts of interest from this President, who owed his business career to the Saudis, I think that Clinton's involvement with foreign nationals - which is to be expected from a former President - is unlikely to inform his wife's duties at State. Anyway, Bill is willing to make the necessary concessions.

It's amusing that people like Broder are throwing this fit about the return of the Clintons, while bloggers like John Aravosis - perhaps Clinton's biggest critic in the primaries - are willing to make nice:

Hillary's comportment during the primaries, as a primary contender, is a far cry from what Joe Lieberman did in actually endorsing the GOP candidate. When you are running for office you are granted a certain degree of latitude in how nasty you can be against your fellow primary contenders. Yes, we get pissed at you at the time, we strike back just as hard, but then we get over it. But running against, and criticizing, fellow Dems in a primary is not the same thing as joining with the enemy after the primaries are over.

I liked Hillary and Bill before the heat of the primaries, and I'm starting to like them all over again. I really believe Hillary would make a fantastic Secretary of State, and her husband's international ties would only benefit the Obama administration. If anyone can fix America's tattered image in the world, it's President Obama aided by a tag-team of Clintons. And I really am serious. I think this could be an incredible opportunity for America.

Quite a turn of the tide, ay?

We Need To Be Bold

Digby pointed yesterday to David Broder's none-too-subtle warning that the next President had better not get any funny ideas about investing in the future or giving those among the least of society a hand or anything. Obviously we need to get through the next 22 days and usher in a Democratic President. But this is an absolutely vital discussion that we need to be having right now.

Unsurprisingly, Broder's concern trolling about the economic downturn and the debt reflects mainstream Beltway opinion of the moment. There's a reason why the story about the US debt clock needing extra digits got so much attention. Call it neo-Hooverism, as Matt Yglesias has taken to doing. Throughout the debates serious guardians of the discourse like Jim Lehrer and Tom Brokaw have hounded the candidates about what parts of their agendas they would cut or scale back in the midst of the slowdown. Here's Michael Scherer of TIME following their lead.

Neither candidate has the courage to speak straight with the American people about our nation’s fiscal problems. Asked about the financial crisis, McCain talked about energy independence, hitting the same talking points he used in July. Obama talked about the need to give tax cuts to the middle class, and expand spending programs, a proposal he put forward last year. Both men have proposed policies that will lead to an increase in the deficit, according to independent analysts, even without a dramatic economic downturn, which looks increasingly inevitable. Neither man has shown any clear intention to tell Americans to face head on the hard economic times that await us. This is politics. The candidates are playing it safe, not telling voters anything they don’t want to hear. They choose to demagogue Wall Street instead.

This is precisely the opposite of what needs to be done in a recession. In fact, the crisis facing the states right now is emblematic of this idiotic mindset. When the economy slows, tax revenues decrease. The demand for social services increases. So more is needed while less is earned. This leads to deficits, and because of balanced budget amendments at the state level (thank God we don't have them federally), spending cuts are implemented. This shrinking of state and local spending shrinks the economy. Which prolongs the recession and prolongs the pain. That's what the Beltway chattering class is RECOMMENDING.

The federal budget is not a family budget, as Brian Beutler ably explains.

When times are hard at home, after all, you scrimp and save and avoid exorbitant expenditures. You keep working hard and hold on to the belief that prosperity will return sooner than later. Maybe under different circumstances you take out a loan and start a business and hope it's successful enough to make you rich and famous--but now you have children. You really want them to go to college. And so you can't in good conscience take on the risk.

But countries aren't like households. When times are tough the last thing they need is for their governments to freeze out discretionary spending. And, paradoxically, the Great Men of History who so badly want to be president wouldn't be doing their countrymen any favors by choosing this particular moment to suddenly restrain their vision.

In response to a recession, spending to increase job creation and investment is a completely normal, Keynesian reaction. The idea that the bankers must be bailed out at all costs but that there's no cash for the ordinary stiffs who would benefit from a thorough stimulus package is bunk. It's also dangerous to the health of the economy and our future standard of living.

If you don't start spending at the federal level, more bridges will collapse and more roads will become unpassable. More state unemployment funds will become insolvent. More catastrophic effects of the climate crisis will unfold. More Americans will lack quality access to health care. More Americans will be out of work and lost when they could be put to work for our collective future benefit.

The Beltway attack on the progressive agenda, through the lens of fiscal responsibility, is only the beginning. The Pentagon is going to demand a large payoff at the same time its defenders will call for budget austerity, because as everyone knows military spending is magic spending that doesn't exist in any temporal form.

Pentagon officials have prepared a new estimate for defense spending that is $450 billion more over the next five years than previously announced figures.

The new estimate, which the Pentagon plans to release shortly before President Bush leaves office, would serve as a marker for the new president and is meant to place pressure on him to either drastically increase the size of the defense budget or defend any reluctance to do so, according to several former senior budget officials who are close to the discussions [...]

“This is a political document,” said one former senior budget official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “It sets up the new administration immediately to have to make a decision of how to deal with the perception that they are either cutting defense or adding to it.”

If there's one place where budget hawks can go to find wasteful spending and unnecessary expenses, it's the Pentagon. But of course then "the troops" are disrespected by discontinuing weapons systems that the United States hasn't used since the mid-1950s.

Furthermore, sometime in the next year some wingnut publisher is going to release a book with a title like The FDR Depression, arguing that Roosevelt's policies actually prolonged the agony and deregulation and tax cuts would have been the proper answer to the country's woes.

This is a coordinated attack. And to fight it we're going to have to stake out some pretty solid territory right now in order to get what is desperately needed for the country and its people.

First of all, we have to have a legitimate stimulus package in place, one that's targeted to those steps which would have the best impact on the overall economy. Nancy Pelosi is already talking about something that would provide $150 billion to state and local governments for expanding public works, extending unemployment benefits and food stamps programs. That's not enough, but the targets are pretty solid. Investing in infrastructure provides a tangible benefit for the future while creating jobs now. Funneling money to the states stabilizes their budget and decreases the risk to program cuts. And the biggest "bang for your buck" in economic stimulus comes from spending increases like extending UI and food stamps and aiding state governments, not tax cuts which supposedly will trickle down. The White House thinks the luckie duckies can get their own job and shouldn't be bailed out, and House Republicans want a "stimulus" as long as it does nothing to stimulate the economy:

Rep. Roy Blunt, the Missouri Republican who serves as House minority leader, said he would support a stimulus plan if it did not include massive public works spending and budget bailouts for states that overspent on health care and other social programs.

“A stimulus plan that makes sense is something that I’ll be helpful with,” Blunt said, also on ABC television.

Furthermore, you have to find big solutions that can increase economic output, create jobs that expand the industrial base so we don't keep relying on pushing paper to make a living, and legitimately tackle the global challenges that threaten to overwhelm any short-term band-aids. Fortunately, such a solution already exists.

But in the medium to long term, once the immediate problems in the financial sector have been ironed out, we need a planned transition towards a cleaner future, not a headlong collapse into a new depression. That means – contrary to the suggestion of the "all growth is bad" school – that we need to grow our way out of this economic mess. A return to Keynesianism could be a good thing for the environment, if government-backed spending and investment drives growth in areas where it is desperately needed, especially particularly clean energy. The old days of environment versus jobs are over – we don't need to sacrifice quality of life in order to stimulate the economy.

A green recovery providing millions of jobs and avoiding the catastrophe of unchecked global warming is our only hope of maintaining our sliding global stature. The one saving grace of the past few weeks of debates has been that this question was finally asked in front of a national audience:

Sen. McCain, I want to know, we saw that Congress moved pretty fast in the face of an economic crisis. I want to know what you would do within the first two years to make sure that Congress moves fast as far as environmental issues, like climate change and green jobs?

This must happen quickly and boldly and Senator Obama needs to be pushed. His energy policies are good but insufficient. His renewable targets must be larger - his target of 10% of all electricity from renewables by 2012 has already been exceeded this year. When energy has come up on the campaign trail, Obama foregrounds with talk of "clean coal" and "safe nuclear" power, which is fine for triangulation but terrible for the planet.

Obama's four-part plan today to restore American jobs is solid, and also needs to be bigger. He supports immediate investments in rebuilding America's infrastructure to create a million new jobs, extending UI and suspending taxes on benefits, creating a two-year holiday on penalties for withdrawing from 401(k) and IRA plans, LIHEAP funding supplements, and a 90-day foreclosure moratorium, among other measures. The job creation incentives in here are fine, and relief to those who need help is crucial.

But this is a time to think big. We have to grow our way out of the economic depths. We have to use the money we'll spend wisely enough to create external benefits for the next 50 to 60 years, to wire America like we electrified America in the 1930s, to fix the roads and bridges the way we built them then, to create a new, clean energy grid to replace the old one that served us well. We can not only face the biggest challenges in the world and create a sustainable economy at the same time, but they can complement each other. And we can say "hell no" to those Wise Men of Washington and the conservatives they enable, whose ideas on budgets and fiscal responsibility and supply-side economics have been totally discredited. We need only to have courage in crisis, and a willingness to lead the way.

Who will show it, if not us?

Dean Broder's Parade Of Lies

Like most Villagers wishing to supplement their income, David Broder has taken tens of thousands of dollars, if not much more, in speaking fees from corporate groups and organizations. As Ken Silverstein at Harper's thoroughly documented, lots of these events were for groups that lobby Congress, like the National Association of Manufacturers' annual meeting and a fundraiser for a PAC for the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors. There are plenty more at the link. This is part of the Village merry go-round, but Dean Broder has a history of tut-tutting at those journalists who collect substantial fees from industry. He actually said this:

People think that we are part of the establishment and therefore part of the problem. I mean, what bothers me is the notion that journalists believe, or some journalists believe, that they can have their cake and eat it too, that you can have all of the special privileges, access and extraordinary freedom that you have because you are a journalist operating in a society which protects journalism to a greater degree than any other country in the world, and at the same time you can be a policy advocate. You can be a public performer on the lecture circuit or television. I think that’s greedy.

Some journalists named David Broder, apparently, believe that.

I wouldn't say this caused much of an uproar outside of the blogs, but it was enough for the Washington Post's ombudsman to follow up:

The Post Stylebook's ethics and standards section says only: "We freelance for no one and accept no speaking engagements without permission from department heads." Broder and Woodward did not check with editors on the appearances Silverstein mentioned [...]

Broder said he adheres to "the newspaper's strict rules on outside activities" and "additional constraints of my own. I have never spoken to partisan gatherings in any role other than a journalist nor to an advocacy group that lobbies Congress or the federal government. Virtually all of the speeches I have made have been to college or civic audiences."

The NAM, the ACCF and the national parents of the Minnesota group and Northern Virginia Realtors do lobby Congress. Broder later said he broke the rules on those speeches. He also said he had cleared his speeches with Milton Coleman, deputy managing editor, or Tom Wilkinson, an assistant managing editor, but neither remembered him mentioning them. Wilkinson said Broder had cleared speeches in the past. Editors should have been consulted on all of the speeches as well as the cruise.

"I am embarrassed by these mistakes and the embarrassment it has caused the paper,'' Broder said.

He's very, very sorry. And that's that. After all, he's the Dean.

Silverstein, by the way, is unimpressed, and we get a picture of Broder as a pathological liar.

Broder first told Howell, “I have never spoken to partisan gatherings in any role other than [that of] a journalist nor to an advocacy group that lobbies Congress or the federal government.” That turned out to be false, as Howell discovered, so Broder came back to say, “I am embarrassed by these mistakes and the embarrassment it has caused the paper.”

Broder told Howell he attended an event at the American Council for Capital Formation, “but did not give a speech.” So apparently someone at the ACCF made up this account of Broder’s speech to the group? [...]

Howell doesn’t mention this—Post reporters, it seems, will call people to ask about their actions but won’t take calls about their own. More outrageous is that Broder specifically denied to Howell that I had sought comment from him (which I know only because Howell told me during a phone conversation), even though I contacted him several times, by phone and email, beginning forty-eight hours before posting the first story [...]

So this is accountability: “We broke the rules, and we’re sorry. But as Post employees, we won’t deign to answer questions from outside reporters; we are accountable only to our internal ombudsman, if bad publicity should prompt her to address such matters.”

True dat. The Villagers demand the same amount of accountability in the politicians they cover as they do themselves, so this is no shocker. They actively participated in George Bush getting away with torture and spying on Americans, so why can't a vague and dismissive 'sorry' be anything worse? They don't mind lies that led us to war, so why not try to lie their way out of their own conflicts of interest and unethical conduct?

The Village is an accountability-free zone and has been so for a long time. They think pointing out lies or seeking justice is just terribly uncouth and inappropriate. They aren't hippies, you know.

I'm eagerly awaiting the hard-hitting Howard Kurtz article on all of this.

... from Broder's last column:

By refusing to join McCain in (town halls and public financing) in order to protect his own interests, Obama raises an important question: Has he built sufficient trust so that his motives will be accepted by the voters who are only now starting to figure out what makes him tick?

By refusing to join the Washington Post guidelines for the lecture circuit and lying to their ombudsman and outside reporters to protect his own interests, Broder raises an important question: Has he built up sufficient trust outside the Beltway so that his motives will be accepted by the readers who are only now starting to figure out that he's an unrepentant liar?

High Broderists Trot Out 2000's Election Memes

There is little chance that anyone who pays even a little bit of attention to politics could credibly claim that Barack Obama and John McCain represent similar positions on the major issues of the day. So when McCain advisor Douglas Holtz-Eakin publicly stated that Obama's budget policies would represent a third Bush term because he is “dedicated to the recent Bush tradition of spending money on everything,” it was common to suspect that he would be laughed out of the room, which even Bob Novak took the time out to do.

That is the silliest thing I have ever heard! And I won’t even dignify how stupid it is.

But Holtz-Eakin's comment wasn't meant for partisans and operatives like Novak; it was meant for that segment of the pundit class that floats above everyone in bold, bipartisan glory - the High Broderists, the revered priests of the Village temple, who are certain that the country will right itself and revert to its better nature as soon as all of this messy bickering is set aside and the two parties work together in the spirit of unity and compromise. The mere details of the policies are unimportant; what matters is that people are backslapping one another and laughing and getting along and making Washington a better place. The appeal of McCain's assumed independent streak and Obama's talk about unity and compromise is undeniable, and so it was inevitable that they would take Holtz-Eakin's statement a step further and claim that there is no difference between the leaders of the two major parties on any substantive issue. Here's the foreign policy version of that argument, from Fred Hiatt of the WaPo:

IN THE HEAT of the Democratic primary campaign, some on the left were inspired to believe that Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) offered a far-reaching transformation of U.S. foreign policy, "the most sweeping liberal foreign-policy critique we've heard from a serious presidential contender in decades," as one particularly breathless article in the American Prospect put it. Yet, when Mr. Obama opened his general election campaign this week with a major speech on Middle East policy, the substantive strategy he outlined was, in many respects, not very much different from that of the Bush administration -- or that of Republican Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). That's not a bad thing; rather, it's a demonstration that there is a strong bipartisan consensus about America's vital interests in the Middle East and that the sensible options for defending them are relatively limited [...]

The gap in Mr. Obama's Middle East policy remains Iraq. Mr. Obama has used his opposition to the war to distinguish himself politically from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and now from Mr. McCain. Yet, in doing so, he has become unreasonably wedded to a year-old proposal to rapidly withdraw all U.S. combat forces from the country -- a plan offered when he wrongly believed that the situation would only worsen as long as American troops remained. Remarkably, only a sentence or two about Iraq appeared in Mr. Obama's AIPAC speech, and advisers say he may visit the country in coming months. That would offer him the opportunity to outline a strategy based on sustaining the dramatic reduction in violence recorded this year. No, the left wouldn't like it, but it would be in keeping with Mr. Obama's pragmatic approach to the rest of the region.

And here's the domestic policy version, from an editorial that, in the print edition of the LA Times, was titled "Obamacain?":

It has been a refrain during the exhausting battle for the Democratic presidential nomination that once Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama emerged as the party's choice, we could finally dispense with the personality battles and get down to nitty-gritty policy differences. Indeed, now that Obama seems to have the position locked up, he and presumptive Republican nominee John McCain will have plenty to argue about. But some might be surprised at the breadth of issues on which they largely agree.

On McCain's side, this is understandable. With a Republican president experiencing some of the worst approval ratings ever, it's no shock that the party opted for an unusually centrist candidate. Yet Obama, too, represents a break from Democratic orthodoxy and is reaching out to the middle. This could indicate that on certain policies, something like a national consensus is developing. It at least signals a lessening of the partisan divide that has blocked progress on important changes.

As Matt Yglesias notes, this is completely absurd. On the major policy issues of the day, on Iraq, on health care, on taxes, on diplomacy, and on hundreds more, Obama and McCain couldn't be more different. On other issues where McCain has sought distance from party orthodoxy in the past, like immigration or warrantless spying or torture, he's walked back that significantly to the point that his stance is a complete muddle.

But of course, that's not really what this is about. In 2000 we had a pair of candidates that were substantially different on major issues, and yet most media accounts of the race intoned that they were completely in sync and that the contest would be played out as a battle of personalities. Then-Gov. Bush did nothing but hide those substantial differences and present an image as a compassionate conservative and a uniter, not a divider, and the Village's high priests wouldn't deign to actually analyze the policies and positions the candidates took, so they merely nodded sagely in assent. This is the same phenomenon. Because laziness is the hallmark of a modern journalist, and there's a stated agenda of bridging the partisan divide, the editoralists mistake the candidates' rhetoric for action, and pronounce them substantively similar. This makes it easier for media types to focus on trivialities and nonsense instead of the effects of those markedly different policies.

This is not the speech of a guy who has the same views on the economy as John McCain or George Bush:

But when it comes to the economy, John McCain and I have a fundamentally different vision of where to take the country. Because for all his talk of independence, the centerpiece of his economic plan amounts to a full-throated endorsement of George Bush's policies. He says we've made "great progress" in our economy these past eight years. He calls himself a fiscal conservative and on the campaign trail he's passionate critic of government spending, and yet he has no problem spending hundreds of billions of dollars on tax breaks for big corporations and a permanent occupation of Iraq - policies that have left our children with a mountain of debt.

George Bush's policies have taken us from a projected $5.6 trillion dollar surplus at the end of the Clinton Administration to massive deficits and nearly four trillion dollars in new debt today. We were promised a fiscal conservative. Instead, we got the most fiscally irresponsible administration in history. And now John McCain wants to give us another. Well we've been there once, and we're not going back. It's time to move this country forward.

I have a different vision for the future. Instead of spending twelve billion dollars a month to rebuild Iraq, I think it's time we invested in our roads and schools and bridges and started to rebuild America. Instead of handing out giveaways to corporations that don't need them and didn't ask for them, it's time we started giving a hand-up to families who are trying pay their medical bills and send their children to college. We can't afford four more years of skewed priorities that give us nothing but record debt - we need change that works for the American people. And that is the choice in this election.

I think these editorials were more like trial balloons, and expressions of personal bias - in Hiatt's case an opportunity to try and wash the blood of his cheerleading for the Iraq debacle, in the LAT's case an opportunity to push their unity hobby-horse. But it's inevitable that a modern media so uninterested in policy would allow themselves to be effectively spun by campaign advisors, blur the very defined lines between Democrats and Republicans and essentially give themselves a free pass to continue making a mockery of campaign journalism.

Michael Bloomberg, Sit Down And Shut Up

No amount of your billion dollars is going to make anyone want to vote for you.

Over on his blog, Greg Mitchell flags a new Gallup Poll that probes these questions in some detail. The poll, which surveyed roughly 2,000 adults, finds:

* A startling 84% of respondents think there's a candidate running who would make a "good president."

* Nearly three in four -- 72% -- say that the candidates are talking about issues they "really care about."

* A solid majority -- 58% -- feel that one or more candidates has come up with "good ideas for solving the country's problems," a finding that runs directly counter to Bloomberg's frequent and self-serving criticism of the other candidates.

Gallup's conclusion? "The American public does not appear to believe it is important or necessary for an independent candidate outside of the traditional two major parties to step into the race in order to save the nation." That couldn't be clearer. Are you there, Dean Broder?

To the extent that there's even minor daylight for a third-party run, it comes from the opposite pole of the Broders of the world. It would be fiscally populist and socially conservative (think Huckabee or Lou Dobbs), not fiscally conservative and socially liberal. That position is already filled. A Bloomberg third party would probably not even be so much as a spoiler.

It's not David Broder's country. Sorry.

Bring It On, Bipartisan Fetishists

David Sirota basically wrote the post I was about to write, but I'll summarize it in shorter form. This Mike Bloomberg "Old White Men For Bipartisanship As Defined By Agreeing With Us" boomlet is nothing more than a desire to save the country from the evils of a progressive agenda. The High Broderists of the world who scream for centrist bipartisan solutions don't know what they're talking about, nor do they understand how American democracy works, nor do they really want American democracy. Bloomberg is a neoconservative narcissist who wants to buy the White House for him and the Big Money boys. He has steadfastly supported the war in Iraq and some of the dregs of Washington like Paul Wolfowitz and Joe Lieberman. As Greenwald notes:

A Bloomberg candidacy would have no purpose other than satisfy his bottomless personal lust for attention and bestow the wise old men threatening the country with his candidacy with some fleeting sense of rejuvenated relevance and wisdom. His political views are conventional in every way and he's little more than an establishment-enabling figurehead. The whole attraction to his candidacy has nothing to do with any issues or substance and everything to do with an empty addiction to vapid notions of Establishment harmony and a desire to exert control, whereby our Seriousness guardians devote themselves to a candidate for reasons largely unrelated to his policies or political views, thus proving themselves, as usual, to be the exact antithesis of actual seriousness.

Digby's worried about this and thinks that Bloomberg is the kind of guy that could bamboozle a lot of so-called "independent Democrats" and swing the election to the Republicans, but I would relish shutting this guy up. Could you imagine a scenario where John Edwards faces Mitt Romney, with Michael Bloomberg as an independent? Would that not be just the perfect embodiment of Edwards' candidacy, going against two corporate suits and their billions? And I don't think that having the clueless Villagers against you would be an impediment. Worried about an Edwards nomination, you're starting to see shills like Stu Rothenberg and Joe Klein attack him for having the temerity to line up on the side of the working man. Klein's is particularly stupid because he has to lie ("NAFTA has been a wash, creating as many jobs as have been lost.") in order to get his point across, as well as magically find ordinary citizens who just so happen to parrot back his own arguments.

My sense is that the country is fed up with these gasbags who think they can do what's best for the country without interference from the rabble. I think that Sirota is right:

In my reporting over the last year I learned that things are - finally - starting to change. The Joe Kleins, Stu Rothenbergs and Mike Bloombergs still have influence, because they have lots of money behind them. But an uprising is on - one that has already impacted the 2008 presidential race, and one that will continue to seethe well past the upcoming caucuses and primaries. It is that simple fact that truly frightens the defenders of the status quo who have gotten used to the good life inside the palace walls.

Edwards' message resonates to those who've been kicked around by an economy that values the super-rich for the last three decades. He's not running against George Bush, but a system in Washington that is rigged for moneyed interests. He understands that a politics of confrontation is the only way to get a decent outcome, that only through epic fights and, yes, partisanship, have we ever made progress in this country. These bipartisan fetishists don't want anything that would disrupt a status quo that keeps real power for themselves. What's ironic is that, in the name of changing the country, they want to keep it the same.

Broder's Folly

Yes, David Broder's column today is ridiculous, as it displays this oft-reused argument that virtually any development in this country, despite the historically low Presidential approval ratings and trashed Republican brand, is a positive development for the GOP. But even taking his argument at face value, he completely misses the point.

Here's the revelant portion:

So how could (NRCC Chair Tom Cole, charged with electing Republicans in the House) be reasonably satisfied with his party's prospects? The answer: The Democrats are also looking like dogs.

The approval score for their party in Congress has sunk to 38 percent -- down 10 points since a similar poll taken just before the 2006 election that gave the Democrats their first congressional majority since 1994.

Congress as a whole rated only 29 percent approval, down 14 points from its start in January. The reason: People think it has been spinning its wheels. By 82 percent to 16 percent, those polled said it has accomplished little or nothing this year. Half blame Bush and the Republicans; a quarter, the Democrats; and a separate fifth, both parties.

Cole, who admits Republicans hurt themselves in 2006 with scandals and out-of-control spending, said the poll confirmed for him a comment he heard this week from a Republican colleague. Speaking of the Democrats, he said, "My God, they're dragging themselves down to our level."

It all adds up, Cole said, to a political environment reminiscent of 1992 -- a tough year for entrenched incumbents of both parties who suddenly saw their margins shrink or disappear. "The American people are rising up in disgust," Cole said, "and incumbents will pay. It's not anti-Republican anymore. It's anti-Washington."

OK, let's assume that the environment is anti-incumbent, and to an extent I agree that it is. You'll notice that Broder never mentions the Senate in this entire post. If he did, he'd be forced to acknolwedge that Republicans have almost TWICE as many seats up for re-election as Democrats do, by a score of 22-12. If incumbents are poised for a difficult re-election year, the prospects of a larger Democratic Senate majority is almost assured. And that's clearly where the bottleneck is happening; the significant legislation being held up in the Congress is being filibustered by Republicans in the Senate. The House is pretty much a majority rules institution, and even Cole, in this story, isn't vowing to re-take Congress. The only number brought up is a net Republican gain of 10 seats, an extremely optimistic scenario, and one that would STILL not result in a GOP majority.

So under this Broderite standard, which is really only repeating a GOP talking point, Democrats would expand their legislative majority in the Senate, where all the problems are being felt. Furthermore, he admits that the majority of the country understand that the gridlock in Congress is due to Bush and the Republicans, meaning that there will be even more pressure there. Add in the fact that there are now 5 open Republican seats in the Senate, and you have the distinct possibility that even a year with everything breaking right for Tom Cole would result in a Democratic President and a better legislative outlook for them than there currently is today.

Broder considers this good news for Republicans.

Moron.

Eye Of Newt

Newt Gingrich, who David Broder considers a visionary (considering he thinks Bush is primed for a comeback, that's like Michael Corleone kissing Fredo on New Year's Eve in Cuba), is looking for a few good suckers moneymen.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich will begin next week to seek financial commitments from donors for a presidential-nomination bid, the Georgia Republican told The Washington Times yesterday.

If he can get pledges for $30 million over the next three weeks, he will join the Republican presidential-nomination race — a prospect he had been downplaying until yesterday.

We here at D-Day strongly support a Gingrich candidacy almost as much as we supported a Keyes candidacy, and would mostt strongly support a Gingrich-Keyes ticket. Furthermore, we support adding one now candidate every week until the nominating contests begin, so that every Republican in the country is in the race and they can all tie with one vote. And given the state of the GOP, that might only take until December.

Newt Gingrich is HATED throughout America. This is the guy who tried to shut down the federal government because he was mad about getting a bad seat on Air Force One. He has support among Republican ideologues and clueless pundits like Dean Broder, but nobody else. And if he does run he's going to try and reinvent himself as some kind of post-partisan problem solver, as if people will just up and forget his universally loathed tenure as Speaker of the House.

All of which is a prelude to say, run Newt run.

Romney Calls For The Doubling of Alberto Gonzales

Des Moines (BP): Campaigning in Iowa, Presidential candidate Mitt Romney reacted to the news of Alberto Gonzales' resignation from the office of Attorney General of the United States by asking the President to "double" him.

"I was happy to have Gonzales at Justice. Some people have said we ought to fire Gonzales. My view is we ought to double Gonzales," remarked the Presidential hopeful, reminiscent of his earlier call to double the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

When asked if this stance represented a shift in Romney's already-shifting views on stem cell research and human cloning, he said, "No, not at all... I think there are ways you can double the Attorney General without destroying human life... I mean, sure, I have supported stem cell research in the past, but not now unless I'm talking to groups who appear to support it as well. I think that's a perfectly consistent position."

Romney was unclear on the science of "doubling" the Attorney General, currently an impossible task. Gonzales, who announced his resignation at a press conference today, does not have a twin brother, nor has he provided researchers a lock of hair or a saliva swab from inside his cheek. In addition, it appears to be unconstitutional to have two Attorney Generals serving at the same time.

Pundits from across the political spectrum, from David Broder to Bill Kristol, praised Romney's counter-intutitive statements and his penchant for bold solutions to petty partisan squabbles. Expanding on his remarks, Romney, the former governor of Masssachusetts, also called for the doubling of subprime mortgages for the unemployed, the number of soldiers in Iraq, and Michael Vick.

The Problem Is Obstruction

What the Broderellas of the world (and apparently, the Mario Cuomos as well) don't seem to understand is that the critical issues facing the country, the ones that practically the whole country wants the Congress to solve, are simply being held up by Republicans. They have every right by virtue of their place in the Senate to hold up those bills, but it's clear to me that they're doing it, not out of principle or considered belief, but because this whole "Congress doesn't do anything" theme is a political winner. Republicans in the Senate have already this week blocked lobbying reform, implementing the 9-11 Commission recommendations and the Employee Free Choice Act. The energy bill got through but not with everything that people wanted, because conservatives blocked major portions of the bill.

All of these "post-partisans" are interested in doing the work of the American people, yet the Democrats are clearly trying to do that as well, even on Iraq, and they're being blocked by the minority. These high Broderists seem to want to forget that there's such a thing as minority rights in the legislative arena. They act like, if Michael Bloomberg or one of their other deities were President, suddenly all conservatives would stop being conservative and start voting for major changes against all of their stated positions. This is old-fashioned Congressional gridlock, and I'm not saying it's good for the system. But there's no magic quick fix to it either. The answer is to put electoral pressure on the folks that are vulnerable, which the Democrats are doing by continuing to hold votes. If we get more and better Democrats in place, suddenly all of these things Broderites want to see will be implemented, but that won't be good for them either because the dirty fucking hippies will be in charge.

P.S. I like what Reid said about Lugar and friends making noise about Iraq. Less noise, more action was essentially his message.

Feingold-Reid To Get A Vote

It'll be interesting to see how many votes it attracts. The other proposals from the Senate are of the namby-pamby "we must withdraw by fall unless the President says he doesn't want to" variety. Then there's a group that wants to create unenforceable benchmarks that the Iraqi government must follow unless they don't follow them.

(Nebraska Sen. Ben) Nelson has drafted similar legislation that would go even further. If the Iraqis failed to make progress on certain political and security reforms, the U.S. would cut off reconstruction aid. Under the bill, the president could waive the restriction if he provides public justification.

Nelson's bill also would require the U.S. commander in Iraq to testify by Sept. 15 on whether Bush's troop buildup around Baghdad is working.

"The Senate needs to move forward," Nelson said. "The president has signaled he will accept reasonable benchmarks."

The alliance of Nelson and Warner and other moderates on Iraq is reminiscent of the "Gang of 14," a group of senators who in 2005 drafted a compromise to end a Senate fight on judicial nominations.

Gang of 14 II: The Gangening! David Broder may jump through the ceiling of his finely decorated inside-the-Beltway home!

Basically, the politicians are still way behind the American people on this one. And at least some of them are uncomfortable with even doing their job:

The staffer claims that the Senate leadership was going back and forth all weekend on whether to allow this vote. "I think there are probably some people who would prefer not to see a vote on this," the staffer says. "It forces people to take a stand."

Heaven forfend that anyone take a stand against a tragic occupation. It might make David Broder spit out his cocktail! Better to create a broad bipartisan compromise that will effectively do nothing.

I'm glad that there will be a vote on Feingold-Reid, and that everyone will be on the record. The only thing that matters, however, is that George Bush won't sign anything that includes even the smallest concession. In that case, I'd assume that he'll be ending the war himself. Because I don't think the Democrats are stupid enough to allow that.

Imperial Hubris

They should have saved that book title for David Broder. I mean, this is really incredible. After spending a week talking about how Harry Reid should resign for his "the war is lost" comment, and saying that many Democratic Senators agreed with him, not only have we found out that the whole Democratic caucus is solidly behind Reid, but today Broder said, essentially, "the war is lost":

EDWARDS: And what constituencies need to be pleased by these negotiations?

BRODER: Well, there are a whole variety of them. The Democrats have -- are being pushed by the anti-war wing of their party, which gets stronger, probably, every day. The president is -- still has the backing of most Republicans, who say that they support his effort to try to salvage something that would look like a victory in Iraq -- whether that's achievable is really doubtful.

EDWARDS: The president says timetables are defeatist. Democrats say that continuing the war just amplifies past mistakes at great cost. Who's right?

BRODER: Well, I think public opinion in this country says the Democrats are right. When Gen. Patraeus was here in Washington this past week, he was making the case that they are still something that is worthwhile doing in Iraq. And he has more troops still coming in the next two months to try to achieve something that would look like progress, at least in Baghdad and Anbar Province. He probably has until August or September to produce something that would be tangible. If he can do it, that would be wonderful, but I think the odds are against him.

See, when Harry Reid says it, he ought to be banished to the wilderness from whence he came. When the Dean of the Washington press corps, the Great Mentioner, when he says pretty much the same thing, no biggie.

David Broder has been covering for the DC establishment for decades now, and these days, the biggest ass he has to cover is his own.

Take That, Dean of the Washington Press Corps

David Broder, who is the hardest working pundit in America according to Joe Klein, is embarrasingly shown up by the Democratic caucus. Apparently not too "many" of them are ready to dump Reid like Broder ignorantly claimed:

We, the members of the Senate Democratic Caucus, contest the attack on Sen. Harry Reid's leadership by David S. Broder in his April 26 column, "The Democrats' Gonzales."

In contrast to Mr. Broder's insinuations, we believe Mr. Reid is an extraordinary leader who has effectively guided the new Democratic majority through these first few months with skill and aplomb.

The Democratic caucus is diverse, and Mr. Reid has worked tirelessly to make sure that the views of each member are heard and represented. No one ideology dominates the caucus, so that a consensus can be reached and unity achieved. It is hard to imagine a better model for leadership.

Because Mr. Reid has the support of members of the caucus, is a good listener and has an amazing ability to synthesize views and bring people together, the Senate has accomplished a great deal during his time as majority leader. Armed with his years of service in the Senate and with a mastery of procedure, Mr. Reid has led the chamber with a slim majority and a minority that is, at times, determined to stop legislation with which it disagrees.

In the first 100 days alone, we made great strides under his leadership on long-neglected legislation concerning stem cell research, the Sept. 11 commission's recommendations and the minimum wage, to name three. In addition, under Mr. Reid's leadership, we have fulfilled our obligation, left uncompleted by last year's Republican-led Senate, to fund the federal government. He has accomplished all of this in the face of stiff opposition and with a commitment to giving ideas full opportunity for debate.

Finally, in this age of scripted politicians speaking only to their base or claiming that they "don't recall" anything, the fact that Mr. Reid speaks his mind should be applauded, not derided. His brand of straight talk is honest, comes from the heart and speaks directly to the people.

It was signed by every single member of the Democratic caucus in the Senate. Even Broder's BFF Joe Lieberman.

Way to work the show leather on that one, O Dean of the Washington Press Corps. If he's the Dean, the college should be shut down. For leaving too many readers behind.

UPDATE: David Broder is, in fact, a gasbag.

UPDATE II: Beware Darkreid!

Save Me From The Stupid

I stopped seeking out the Washington Post editorial page long ago, and today's back-to-back efforts by Dean Broder and Joe Lieberman ensure that I'll never go back. They are both a compendium of half-truths, faulty asumptions, false equivalences and shoddy reasoning that represent the apotheosis of "inside the Beltway" groupthink that is divorced from reality.

Get this, Broder thinks Harry Reid is just like Alberto Gonzales because he says things the American people believe:

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.

Reid is in the same sphere as Gonzales, see, because he called Alan Greenspan a political hack and Broder's friends with Greenspan's wife Andrea Mitchell. And Reid called the President a loser. And he said the war is lost.

Such shocking words! They pierce the very soul!

Never mind the fact that the American people, those rabble, think the war is lost too.



Never mind that a solid majority want clear deadlines like the Democrats under Reid have proposed. Never mind that only 22% see the country on the right track, the lowest number since October 1992.

Reid committed a Washington gaffe: he told the truth. Something that this Administration is incapable of doing, and something that fossils like David Broder are incapable of perceiving. I mean, look at the blithe stupidity in this line:

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.

Oh, you mean the White House negotiates? Their version of negotiation is "give me everything I want and shut up." And everybody knows this except David Broder. And him perpetuating this myth of negotiation will pressure the kind of Democrats that think the Beltway chatter is wisdom into capitulation. So Broder is actually extending our stay in Iraq with this ridiculous comments.

As is Joe Lieberman, both with his votes and his deliberate ignorance.

What is needed in Iraq policy is not overheated rhetoric but a sober assessment of the progress we have made and the challenges we still face.

In the two months since Petraeus took command, the United States and its Iraqi allies have made encouraging progress on two problems that once seemed intractable: tamping down the Shiite-led sectarian violence that paralyzed Baghdad until recently and consolidating support from Iraqi Sunnis -- particularly in Anbar, a province dismissed just a few months ago as hopelessly mired in insurgency.

This progress is real, but it is still preliminary.

This is head-in-the-sand logic. Apparently the so-called "drop" in violence in Iraq is entirely due to a clerical recalibration:

WASHINGTON - U.S. officials who say there has been a dramatic drop in sectarian violence in Iraq since President Bush began sending more American troops into Baghdad aren't counting one of the main killers of Iraqi civilians.

Car bombs and other explosive devices have killed thousands of Iraqis in the past three years, but the administration doesn't include them in the casualty counts it has been citing as evidence that the surge of additional U.S. forces is beginning to defuse tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

President Bush explained why in a television interview on Tuesday. "If the standard of success is no car bombings or suicide bombings, we have just handed those who commit suicide bombings a huge victory," he told TV interviewer Charlie Rose.

Now, that takes Newspeak to a new level. "If we just act like suicide bombings don't exist, they won't!" It's just like this Administration to change how bodies are counted to prove that they're winning. And it's just like a warmongering dullard like Joe Lieberman to accept these claims at face value. And he extends this into deciding that the war in Iraq is a war against al-Qaeda, which is a complete misread:

The suicide bombings we see now in Iraq are an attempt to reverse these gains: a deliberate, calculated counteroffensive led foremost by al-Qaeda, the same network of Islamist extremists that perpetrated catastrophic attacks in Kenya, Indonesia, Turkey and, yes, New York and Washington.

Indeed, to the extent that last week's bloodshed clarified anything, it is that the battle of Baghdad is increasingly a battle against al-Qaeda. Whether we like it or not, al-Qaeda views the Iraqi capital as a central front of its war against us.

Al-Qaeda's strategy for victory in Iraq is clear. It is trying to kill as many innocent people as possible in the hope of reigniting Shiite sectarian violence and terrorizing the Sunnis into submission [...]

When politicians here declare that Iraq is "lost" in reaction to al-Qaeda's terrorist attacks and demand timetables for withdrawal, they are doing exactly what al-Qaeda hopes they will do, although I know that is not their intent.

That's simply not true. The number of foreign fighters in Iraq are miniscule, and the violence is part of a civil war. If you can't see the reality of WHAT we're fighting in Iraq, you're bound to be dishonest about WHY we're fighting.

The House OK'd the conference bill on Iraq funding last night, and the Senate plans to do so today. It's not perfect, and the President would be smart to not veto it because it gives him most of what he wants. But veto he will because he sees it as usurping his supreme authority. That's a totalitarian mindset, and both Lieberman and Broder display this tyrannical groupthink in their columns today. They are the worst kind of idiots, useful to the party in power (in fact, in thrall to it) but useless as thinking entities.

The Dean Loses His Mind

Brilliant assessment by the fossilized David Broder:

EDWARDS: White House and congressional Republicans really blasted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for saying the war in Iraq is lost. Do Republicans believe it can still be won?

BRODER: Uh, Republicans, some of them believe that, and Democrats, by and large, wish that Harry Reid would learn to engage mind before mouth opens. This has become kind of a pattern for him, and, uh, I think at some point down the road the Democrats are gonna have to have a little caucus and decide how much further they want to carry Harry Reid. They’ve got able people on the Senate side, and they don’t have to put up with this kind of bumbling performance forever.

EDWARDS: You think Harry Reid is an embarrassment to the Democrats?

BRODER: I think so. I mean, he has been a pretty effective leader but he is verbally just a real loose cannon and it seems to me, Bob, that about every six weeks or so there’s another episode where he has to apologize for the way in which he has bungled the Democratic case.

He's an effective leader, but sometimes he says mean things that offend the delicate sensibilities of old men. So given that, he should leave. That's unbelievable in its arrogance and cluelessness. Broder treats politics like they're a tea party, where if someone uses the wrong spoon for the clotted cream he suffers the tut-tuts of the other old biddies. How could anyone who is an "effective leader" be unfit to lead because of a "gaffe," broadly defined as "saying what all of the American people believe"?

I'm eagerly anticipating Broder's farewell column, scheduled for some time in 2037 before he heads into the cryogenic chamber.

P.S. A real columnist, Paul Krugman, gets this right:

"There are two ways to describe the confrontation between Congress and the Bush administration over funding for the Iraq surge. You can pretend that it’s a normal political dispute. Or you can see it for what it really is: a hostage situation, in which a beleaguered President Bush, barricaded in the White House, is threatening dire consequences for innocent bystanders — the troops — if his demands aren’t met."