Broder Today, Broder Yesterday
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.”
The disparity in outrage is really amazing. The above Broder quote comes from an infamous 1998 piece in The Washington Post by Sally Quinn in which many D.C. establishment figures expressed raw shock about how Bill Clinton had despoiled what Quinn called their “town.” In that piece, Chris Matthews summed up the emotional reaction of the townies by saying: “I resent deeply being constantly lied to.”
By any measure, there hasn’t been anything close to this level of emotion or recrimination about the past administration during this transition. Why not? There’s the argument that D.C. has been wired for Republican rule for a long time. There’s the argument that this town is more easily outraged by sexual indiscretions than legal ones.
Or maybe the difference is also driven by changes in the D.C. establishment. These days the Beltway establishment vaguely seems more diffuse, more fractured, a bit less status-confident, and indeed harder to define than it once was, what with the crisis, the seismic shifts in the media landscape, and the generational transfer of power Obama’s arrival portends.
Whatever the cause, the difference in the emotional intensity of the reactions remains striking.
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I’ll take a small stab at this. The anger of the Washington press against Clinton was about him personally–the larger than life outsider. Being angry at an administration is inherently a more diffuse thing–particularly if that administration, regardless of policies, has an establishment cast that is the same as your own.
Broder also said he was unaware that the Brits were initiating investigations and possible prosecutions over a detainee that their intelligence services reportedly tortured at the behest of the US. I offered up a question that didn’t end up getting published (even though I didn’t curse for once) but its apparent by the number of the questions he was asked about investigating BushCo that the people of this country aren’t being led by the nose by the Villagers anymore. Brody had the nerve to agree that Ford was right not to investigate Nixon not noting that many of Nixon’s cabinet ended up with Reagan. And then when Bush41 refused to investigate Iran Contra some of those officials ended up with Bush43. All the Villagers are doing by trying to convince people to not investigate is insuring that some of the players in the Bush administration will find their way in the next Republican administration to phcuck up the country again.
good stuff both of you. It’s true that Clinton was a personal affront. There was something about the man that really rubbed DC types the wrong way. and sg, is that right that Broder opposed probes of Nixon?
Greg,
I think it was Glenn Greenwald who made the point that the Villagers are complicit in the Bush administration’s lies and scandals — the run up to the Iraq War, torture, etc. — so they aren’t anxious for these things to be investigated because such an investigation would highlight their role in these matters.
Greg
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I am talking about during the WaPo chat.
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Villager hostility to Clinton also came in part from class issues: Bill is a Bubba from Arkansas–Bush is an Ivy Leaguer from an old-line New England family (despite all the phony Texas trappings). But mostly it’s because the Vilagers are mostly Reaganites socially, if not ideologicaly.
FX — pretty sure you’re nailing the crux of it here. I do think separately that the D.C. establishment just isn’t what it was. But classs was a huge part of this, no question.
Breathtaking. Just when I thought Broder couldn’t become a more insufferable lout he hosts a forum with the masses and demonstrates he’s more so in the chat room than in the editorials.
“…than trying to settle scores for past actions”
Does Broder get paid by the word? “… to seek justice” is more concise.
Clinton and Carter came from small towns and the people they brought with them understood small town politics and never could seem to get the hang of Washington’s incestuous environment.
President Obama, on the other hand, is a big city guy whose policy has been to put people in place who know how Washington works. It’s unfortunate that he also feels the same way about Wall Street, but on the other hand it’s not like he has a lot of choices.
The Broders and the George Wills of the world are useless and obsolete and there’s no reason anyone should take them seriously at all. Same for Matthews and all the other meaningless clowns on the TV, particularly FOX News, which everyone but the brainwashed neanderthals out there “teabagging” understand is nothing more than corporate propaganda. And idiotic corporate propaganda at that.
Mainly, technology is giving people the opportunity to prove that we don’t have to accept these voices from high places as authorities. We can have our own voices heard, and while some of it is perhaps nonsense, there’s a lot that is far more cogent than what these out-of-touch dinosaurs are saying.
It’s just as the Russians used to say: Izvestia nye Pravda, y Pravda nye Izvestia. No news in the truth, no truth in the news.
Farinita X nails it. As far as the Villagers are concerned, the Clintons were White trash. Clinton’s ******** an intern just confirmed their worst class prejudices.
Imagine that information and knowledge about what goes on in a world, or in a particular community, are a kind of property, never capable so much of being objectively measured as simply felt.
We journalists — I am one — know much we can’t write about and don’t. But professionally we see ourselves as possessing the keys to the property room and are protective of our domain. That domain is, to us, real and substantial.
It is very threatening to have someone challenge how much we know, cross our property lines, impinge on our territory, or take away our keys. Retaining exclusive control of our property and its disposition inspires a kind of atavism. We have the primal instincts of gossip mongers.
David Broder’s property has been pilfered, or has simply slid away like sand or water. I think it happens to us all at some time or other. Not only is Mr. Broder unaware of the actuality of his loss, but scanning his domain he doesn’t even see the scope of it. He feels it though, oh does he feel it. His property is gone, or going.
So look at his reactions to Clinton’s and Bush’s practices. Mr. Broder knows about the former — that’s his property — and is offended by Clinton’s trespasses and can full participate in the critique. But he doesn’t know, or really understand, about Bush’s practices that beg investigation. That’s in the hands of others who have greater knowledge. And so Mr. Broder resents and steams and gets protective not so much of Bush, but of his own waning prerogatives about what is known about Bush.
Mr. Broder’s instincts in this regard are primal. They have to do with property ownership. In that sense he is the town gossip who risks being out-gossiped. His only defense is to say the topic is not worth talking about.
Didn’t Clinton leave office with 60+% approval rating, and W with <30%? That should tell you all you need to know about the disconnect between the Broder/Will-types and us mere mortals.
Tokillinda-
Well said. The irony is that Broder truly “doesn’t really understand Bush’s practices that beg investigation.” It’s as if he’s used to adhering not to the law itself but to an unwritten version in which some animals, those inside his beltway circles- are more equal than others and above not only the law but the rules that are applied harshly against the “trailer park crowds.” How can such an educated man fail to understand that these practices beg investigation?
I am an ex-public defender and the worst client I ever represented had a “IV” behind his name and had somehow been found indigent despite his family’s huge suburban residence and income, probably as a favor from the judge. Not only did the family not understand why the law should apply to him, but they wanted me to get the charges dismissed yesterday, like I was a waiter who’d delivered bad soup rather than a lawyer trying to keep their kid out of jail.
As bad as my clients could be, I had never seen this type of arrogance which seemed to be saying, “but I’m not like those other people.” That’s the same arrogance I hear from Broder, but in his case, as you point out, it’s becoming pathetic, as if his position isn’t so much about prosecuting torturers as about clinging to rapidly waning power, by proxy.
Ari Fleischer routinely lied to them and treated them with total contempt. Scott Mcclellean told them he told them lies that Rove and Bush told to him. They ignored Scott.
There is something else going on here and the truth has nothing to do with it. It is a cultural thing and culture is all those thousands of little habiits of thought leading to action based on a calculus of your status in a society. How to defer to those of higher status to advance ones own and to enforce your status on those below.
In my political culture Rove is a dirty little man, a manipulator, a flack, a company man beneath contempt. Then again I never dined on quail with him at his cabin. I am an unemployed schumck from Michigan. Dave wins, I guess.
Clinton was the best. Best precedent ever set – eating’s not cheating – words to live by my friends.
The trouble with the Villagers is that they thought that Bubba was a working class lad from a broken up: no class. But he was a Rhodes Scholar and he out thought the likes of Tweety et al. Did not go down well.
As for Sally Quinn, The Hostess in Chief at whose feet Broder learned about class: don’t forget how she got her leg up in the world of journalism. Ask Ben B.
I too was astonished that Broder did not know about the British decision to investigate allegations of torture (Post Chat). But it only goes to show how insular he is. His knowledge of American politics relies on a chat with two old gaffers in some remote Middle America town: you know where the salts of the earth live.
The fact is when Bush lied men actually died because of it. The same cannot be said of Clinton and yet people like Broder hold Clinton accountable and let Bush pass. It’s an outrage.
But Obama is continuing the lies! Why are we still in Iraq! Bring the boys (&girls) home! WHY IS IT DIFFERENT NOW! End this illegal war NOW!
Dan Balz’s article in today’s WAPO is the perfect synthesis of the memes that have driven a lot of the Plum Line’s focus in the last week. He shows his Beltway stripes every bit as much as Broder does. He talks about Obama’s problems trying to be bipartisan and how people will be alienated. He quotes Karl Rove on Obama the polarizer and mischaracterizes the Pew results. He does make a couple of small nods to the fact that the number of Republicans has shrunk and that there are mostly conservatives left but, Greg, this article ought to make you crazy.
I never thought Clinton was “all that” (the DLC’s Third Way was too clever for its own good, by half), but his populism was geniune and people liked him. Bush’s populism was carefully crafted and edited. Somehow that appealed to the Villagers far more than the real thing. To me, Bush’s smirking demeanor at the podium showed just how much contempt he truly had for ordinary Americans. The Villagers never noticed. (Tweety’s man-crush on Commander Codpiece, e.g.)
As others in this thread have noted, the Bushes are of the same class as these celebrity journalists, and thus Okay. The Clintons were the Molly Browns of D.C., and thus treated with contempt.
And as also noted elsewhere in this thread, the Villagers’ characteristic behavior extends beyond their mistreatment of the Big Dog. I almost have sympathy for them. Almost.
Anyone who’s an insider, and who fought hard to achieve such status — whether within the political discourse industry or the music industry or the publishing industry — will naturally fight hard to maintain their status against the barbarians at the gates. Call this class politics or primate politics, whatever you prefer. It’s human nature, if not an especially admirable aspect of it. They will dress it up in rationalizations, but it comes down to the fact that these insiders feel threatened by the changes in our world. The cognitive dissonance must be immense – they want to believe they are the voice of the voiceless masses, yet here they are, angry and afraid of their clients.
This class war isn’t over yet. In fact I think it’s just getting started.
The Washington establishment journalists like who they like, and they don’t like who they don’t like.
The problem is that they pretend that’s journalism.
The wapo at some point took up the conservative cause. More than anything, that makes it boring. The views expressed there are predictable conservative/neoconservative propaganda and there is really no reason to waste your time reading it if you are looking for insightful analysis and commentary.
CDW – I agree that WAPO has been all about the conservative cause editorially in recent years. But I think there’s another factor at work. There are a number of writers there who’ve never self-identified as conservative at all, but they’ve been around the political block so many times that they no longer notice anything new. (And I say that as somebody who has been around quite a few blocks myself.) They represent a particular kind of danger because a lot of block aggregators out there in the public don’t recognize that these people are lazily (and I think it’s partly that) spreading conservative talking points. They assume they’re hearing facts.
A note about the Village “journalist”: there is a writing group at WaPo that peddles its wares around the “globe”. As George Will showed: the peddling does not require accuracy or fact based op-eds. All it needs is opinion based on one’s musings and preferences, inconvenient facts be damned.
Bush And Gore Do New York
CBS reporting on Bush’s appearance at the Alfalfa Club BEFORE the 2000 Election.
“Bush gazed around the diamond-studded $800-a-plate crowd and commented on the wealth on display.
“This is an impressive crowd – the haves and the have-mores,” quipped the GOP standard-bearer. “Some people call you the elites; I call you my base.”
The crowd thought this was funny. They also knew that Bush meant every word of it, and approved of that. There is little doubt that Broder was in the room, the Alfalfa Club Dinner is where Wall Street and the Beltway get together to meet and greet and where you don’t even have to pretend to be the Common Man.
It isn’t a matter of Liberal/Conservative instead it is a matter of who is In or Out and who is Up and who is Down.
The Villagers always hated Clinton because he jumped the social queue, by virtue of his office he automatically jumped into position as the top center of society, who else has the right to have the Queen of England to dinner, and what guest can really score points by refusing to attend a State Dinner? Well no one.
All you need to see to understand the mind-set involved is to screen Caddyshack. Bill Clinton was seen exactly as the Rodney Dangerfield character was, too big and loud (and in the movie too rich) to ignore. But who doesn’t match the Club’s self-image.
Clinton just didn’t fit in, his very presence at the power center of the Village simply distorted the comfortable structure the Villagers had built up over decades.
For example Bush’s Great-Grandfather was an important industrialist, an associate of Rockefeller and Harriman, and Bernard Baruch and ultimately an advisor to Herbert Hoover. All of which made GW Bush a fourth generation Villager in good standing. Calling him out for his mistakes would have been a violation of the class rules.
No discussion of David Broder or his Village Peers is complete without a major shout-out to Bob Somerby of The Daily Howler who has been toiling, largely alone, for ten plus years to defrock the Grand Inquisitors of the DC press corps. Just go over to the Daily Howler and search “David Broder” …if you dare. Take a good bolt of Wild Turkey before you do.
Let’s be fair, now. Broder been senile for a long time.
I was just visiting the Hullabaloo website http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/
where I clicked on a link that took me here. And now I find a blog post and discussion that is about what I wrote a blog piece about earlier today. Life sure is strange. LOL
http://wwwdemocracity.blogspot.com/2009/04/pure-motives-bigger-fish-to-fry.html
By the way great post and discussion!
AllButCertain | April 11th, 2009 at 11:08 am
“Dan Balz’s article in today’s WAPO is the perfect synthesis of the memes that have driven a lot of the Plum Line’s focus in the last week. He shows his Beltway stripes every bit as much as Broder does. ”
If you think that’s bad you should the see the Broder column in today’s Post. It’s a doozy. I can’t believe the Post actually pays him to write such garbage.
ABC, you have a good point when you say that wapo pundits fail to see new ideas. But is it that they don’t see new ideas, or is it they see them but reject them out of hand. Conservatism, by definition, is resistent to change.
CDW – True that conservatism is supposed to be about maintaining the status quo. But I think there are two kinds of things going on here. One is that there are editorial writers and columnists who intentionally push a conservative agenda. The other is that many Beltway journalists–and not just at WAPO–do it by default. Whether it’s because, as Greg mentions and as Josh Marshall has talked about, the town is wired for Republicanism or whether it’s just from a sort of intellectual torpor, many of these writers rely on sources who are giving them conservative talking points. Very often they fail to look farther. It may end up being conservatism by osmosis.
Broder is more upset with Clinton because Clinton is a democrat and Bush is not. That’s it. Or to drill down a little further, Clinton raised Broder’s taxes and Bush didn’t.
Woe to Obama if he throws a candy wrapper out the window during his term.
Clinton was considered poor white trash, and they didn’t want him there. But, just like alot of other kids from tough beginnings, he became a brillant, yet imperfect soul.
While the “old money network-class warfare”hypothesis makes sense, I find it hard to believe that many members of the Blue Blood network would not detest Bush. Sure, he comes from money, but he’s the prototypical “failed scion”. He acted much less presidential than Clinton, and never amounted to anything. Surely that disgusted many in the blueblood class. Similarly, why did they give Gore and Kerry such bad images? They have just as much Old-Money cred, and they’re not perpetual screw-ups like Dubya is.
Broder’s employers are Republicans as are most of the other mainstream media outlets. Discussions of class or other factors simply are smoke to cover the truth. Simply put, Broder is highly paid to turn out what his employers want to see. It is his employer’s disconnect with reality that makes him look like he has one. He is merely a highly paid puppet, like the rest of the ridiculous “establishment” media figures.
“Just go over to the Daily Howler and search ‘David Broder’ …if you dare. Take a good bolt of Wild Turkey before you do.”
I need more than a “good bolt” of Wild Turkey to make it through Somerby’s redundant and over-wrought rants these days.
The difference is that the “Washington Establishment” was all more or less complicit in the Bush crimes, and not so with Clinton’s pecadillos.
The last thing Broder et al want is for Feith, Rove, etc. to tell John Conyers about how the Post and Times and lobbyists knew the truth but didn’t tell.
ohpoor keink – he doesnt like that somerby now skewers those on the left like Obermann who trash our media dialogue every bit as much as any FOXie.
Kevin doesnt want or care about truth – he wants a squad of lefty Rush types. Kevin is a fool.
I am of the Washington country club class (although I no longer attend for moral reasons) and I remember that all the Villagers were running around town saying that Clinton cheats at golf and that he would not be accepted into any club in town. I, a Democrat younger than most of these Villagers, bought the white trash line hook, line and sinker. I did not vote for Al Gore in 2000; I did not even vote at all for the first time in my life. I remember thinking that at least with Bush we would get a little noblesse oblige. These Villagers are rigid snobs, as was I. I am ashamed of this.
But it’s my opinion that Obama will win them over by the end of his 2 terms. He is that good. I think he will change the town into one preferring technocratic competence.
To put it metaphorically, the truth is that the town was trashed by George W. Bush’s crowd coming in and doing tacky teardowns in the Village and putting up cheap McMansions. It wasn’t noblesse oblige at all. This will become accepted wisdom in due time.
Broder was snowed by these guys and he even violated the Post’s own ethics rules by trying to line his pockets with speaking fees where he had conflicts of interest. He doesn’t think the rules apply to him either. He’s trash.
Mary – That’s all really quite interesting. But it’s a little distressing to think it will take the entire Obama presidency to clear out the cobwebs in the Village brain. Also, that’s a long time for some of these people. Maybe the change will happen as a result of attrition rather than conversion.
AllButCertain – There is room for optimism yet. Behold the latest OpEd on competence in the Executive Branch by another quintessential Villager, Richard Cohen.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/13/AR2009041301949.html?hpid=opinionsbox1