Poor David Broder!

I've met Washington Post columnist David Broder a few times over the years and, until fairly recently, had always admired his work. His reputation as the dean of political journalists had seemed to me to be well-deserved.

Lately, however, Broder seems to have lost it. He seems to have become stuffy and ideological, elitist and irascible. Upon noticing that his work in the past two or three years was less than stellar, I was surprised. I had not been as regular a reader of his columns over the previous decade. When critics resurrected his stuff from during that period, I was stunned to see how lame it was.

Granted, my career as a political writer isn't a pimple on the ass of Broder's. But then, I've never been hailed as the dean of anything, and my work hasn't ill-served the American public as Broder's has since the late 1990s.

The problem that David Broder has become is well-surveyed in this piece by Jamison Foser.

UPDATE (Sun., April 29): Frank Rich of The New York Times takes a swipe at Broder this morning in a column that makes other unsettling points about the failures of the mainstream media.)