Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (It's Another David Broder/Washington Post Edition)

I must say David Broder outdoes even himself here:

• May 25, 2006: "[T]he drama of the Clintons' personal life would be a hot topic if she runs for president..."
• September 6, 2007: "[Hillary Clinton's] marriage is the central fact in her life..."
• November 9, 2007: "I plan to leave both subjects [the Giuliani marriages and the single Clinton marriage] alone..."

Why the switch? Greg Sargent opines:

Horses Mouth November 12, 2007 10:15 AM: So Broder won't be writing about the Clinton and Giuliani marriages going forward? Wow, how impressively high-minded of him!... This is kind of funny, because he hasn't shown any such reticence in the past when it comes to looking at the Clintons' union -- far from it.... [B]ack when it really counted -- when the GOP tried to impeach Bill Clinton over his affair -- Broder thought the Clinton marriage was completely fair game. He wrote multiple columns at the time arguing that his affair threw his entire character and even fitness for the Presidency into question.

Yet now, suddenly, when a questioner asks Broder whether he sees serial adulterer Rudy's marriage as fodder for judging his fitness for the Presidency, Broder effectively dodges the allegation of his and the media's double standard by suddenly going all high-minded and saying he won't be discussing the marriages of Rudy or Hillary. The obvious hypocrisy here aside, I propose that we hold Broder to his promise.

Comments

[pgl]

Didn't Broder already break his pledge to leave the Clinton marriage alone?

[Omark]

Um, Brad? He's already gone back on his word. See his piece in the Wash Post on Thursday, Nov. 15 here:
tinyurl.com/3xa345

To wit: "The former president's intervention -- volunteered during a campaign appearance on her behalf in South Carolina -- raised the second, and largely unspoken, issue identified by my friend from the Clinton administration: the two-headed campaign and the prospect of a dual presidency.

In his view, which I share, this is a prospect that will test the tolerance of the American people far more severely than the possibility of the first female president -- or, for that matter, the first black president."

[piotr]

I am not sure if we should go to a high dudgeon over Guliani's adultery. Was it extraordinary? Who knows.

What is a matter of public record, however, that he was an extraodinary cad, tramping to all kinds of official functions with his flame, while his undivorced wife was raising kids in mayoral mansion.

[low-tech cyclist]

I know bringing up Fred Hiatt is like shooting fish in a barrel on this score, but the WaPo has a subset of its unsigned editorials where it comments on what it calls "the ideas primary."

Five of the last seven Ideas Primary editorials have been on the Social Security 'crisis.' There have been 15 editorials in this series. One has been on global warming - the greatest crisis of our era - and two have been on our greatest domestic crisis, the lack of universal health care and the upcoming crisis in the Medicare trust fund. None have been on Iraq and the power vacuum we've created in the center of the Middle East.

Interesting set of priorities, huh?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/
linkset/2007/04/27/LI2007042701687_1.html

(make sure you take out the carriage return when you use the link.)

[wood turtle]

Just out of fairness, I think that the candidate who gets if first should win.