Yet, while NPR and PBS have scurried farther and farther away from their earlier traditions of gutsy journalism, David Broder has long had his feet planted in the muck of mushiness.
Broder's viewpoint was that except for a few bad apples the Establishment is filled with just stellar people. He was a staunch defender of the Respected Ones, refusing to see how their personal and political corruption was eating away at the pillars of the Republic.
Often called "the Dean of the Washington press corps," Broder was more the efficient police officer who tells the public, "move along, nothing to see here." He forever made excuses for the crimes of Washington's powerful and discouraged investigations that might expose serious wrongdoing.
In 2009, for instance, he joined many of his Washington Post editorial colleagues in objecting to Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to name a special counsel to investigate crimes by CIA interrogators.
"I think it is a matter of regret that Holder asked prosecutor John H. Durham to review the cases of the agents accused of abusive tactics toward some captives," Broder wrote. "It is the first step on a legal trail that could lead to trials -- and that is what gives me pause.
"[Vice President Dick] Cheney is not wrong when he asserts that it is a dangerous precedent when a change in power in Washington leads a successor government not just to change the policies of its predecessors but to invoke the criminal justice system against them."
In other words, the torture of detainees -- while perhaps a tad unpleasant -- didn't warrant the punishment of Washington's great and powerful or their obedient underlings. Nor apparently did any other crime of state.
Often when "The System" was looking really bad, Broder posed as the American "everyman" who didn't want to hear anymore about that.
On Nov. 27, 2005, Broder appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press" to say that there was no need to examine how the Bush administration sold the invasion of Iraq by using false intelligence about Iraq's non-existent WMD stockpiles.
"This whole debate about whether there was just a mistake or misrepresentation or so on is, I think, from the public point of view largely irrelevant," Broder said. "The public's moved past that."
Similarly, Broder rallied to the defense of Bush's political adviser Karl Rove regarding the leaking of Valerie Plame's CIA identity, done as part of a revenge campaign against her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for criticizing one false WMD claim.
In an article entitled "One Leak and a Flood of Silliness," Broder declared that publications which had implicated Rove in the Plame Affair "owe Karl Rove an apology. And all of journalism needs to relearn the lesson: Can the conspiracy theories and stick to the facts."
But it was Broder who was ignoring the facts. Though Rove was apparently not the first administration official to leak Plame's classified identity, he was certainly part of the operation -- and was involved in the broader campaign to undermine Bush's war critics. [See Consortiumnews.com's "US Press Bigwigs Screw Up, Again."]
Broder's determination to protect Bush-43 on war crimes was part of a larger pattern of Broder seeing no evil in other national security cases.
When Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Indiana, led a botched investigation of the so-called October Surprise case, ignoring evidence that Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign had interfered with President Jimmy Carter's hostage negotiations with Iran, Broder hailed Hamilton as the "conscience of Congress" -- for reaching a conclusion that was bipartisan, albeit wrong.
To Broder, it didn't matter that Hamilton had mis-written a key chapter of modern American political history. Broder was just happy that the comity of the Washington Establishment hadn't been shaken. [See Consortiumnews.com's "October Surprise Cover-up Unravels."]
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