Woodshedding Broder

It has become fashionable to bash Washington Post columnist and occasional TV talking head David Broder as a semi-senile Bush sychophant. As one entering my semi-senility myself, I prefer the term "clueless sychophant," but, whatever. One of the hazards of membership in the punditocracy in the age of the intertube is the ease of dredging up the evidence of prophecies past, as Joe Klein recently learned to his sorrow. Josh Marshall finds a good one from a Broder column six days after Hurricane Katrina (quote is from Broder's column):
It took almost no time for President Bush to put his stamp on the national response to the tragedy that has befallen New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, a reminder that modern communications have reshaped the constitutional division of powers in our government in ways that the Founding Fathers never could have imagined.
Because the commander in chief is also the communicator in chief, when a crisis emerges the nation's eyes turn to him as to no other official. We cannot yet calculate the political fallout from Hurricane Katrina and its devastating human and economic consequences, but one thing seems certain: It makes the previous signs of political weakness for Bush, measured in record-low job approval ratings, instantly irrelevant and opens new opportunities for him to regain his standing with the public.

We have seen this before. Bill Clinton was foundering in his third year in office when the destruction of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City shocked the nation and set the stage for his flawless performance of the symbolic rites of healing and comfort for the victims.

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