DAVID BRODER

Opinion: A no-pretense guy bites the dust

WASHINGTON — This is not the way Sandy Levin would have wanted it.
The Michigan Democrat became acting chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee last week after its former chairman, Charlie Rangel of New York, stepped down — temporarily, he says — because he was censured by the House ethics committee for going on a corporate-financed junket.

March 10, 2010

Opinion: Politicians can get bad advice from journalists

WASHINGTON — In the space of 10 days, thanks in no small part to my own newspaper, The Washington Post, the president of the United States has been portrayed as a weakling and a chronic screwup who is wrecking his administration despite everything that his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, can do to make things right.

March 04, 2010

Opinion: A great effort for the Great Lakes

WASHINGTON — If you want to be a stickler for journalistic ethics, I shouldn’t even be writing about the Great Lakes, because I have a huge bias — especially when it comes to Lake Michigan.
The highlight of my youthful summers were the few weeks my family shared a cottage atop a sand dune at Miller Beach, east of Gary, Ind. Many were the days we would pack a picnic lunch and carry it down the beach to Burns Ditch, where we could splash in the waves, then have our sandwiches and hike back home. A steel mill stands there now.

February 25, 2010

Opinion: For governors, there are no easy choices

WASHINGTON — As the nation’s governors gather in Washington for their annual winter meeting, the states they lead are facing what one knowledgeable authority calls “a lost decade” of stagnant or declining revenues and budget crises.
Ray Scheppach, the man who used that phrase, has the credentials to call the situation “almost unprecedented.” A veteran federal budgeteer, he has served as executive director of the National Governors Association for the last 27 years.

February 22, 2010

Opinion: Bayh not alone in turning his back to Congress

WASHINGTON — The last time Sen. Evan Bayh was the subject of this column was back in October, when he organized a letter from 10 moderate Democrats informing Majority Leader Harry Reid that they would oppose any increase in the statutory debt ceiling unless it was accompanied by a serious move to rein in the national debt.

February 18, 2010

Opinion: Recent poll results: Warning signs ahead

WASHINGTON — There are warning signs to both parties in the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, and this should be a help as President Obama tries to spur a rebirth of bipartisanship in Washington.
Democrats have not felt secure in their congressional majorities since Scott Brown beat their candidate last month in the special election for the Massachusetts Senate seat. But the poll finding that Democrats have lost all of the 12-point lead over the Republicans they enjoyed four months ago — and now are tied with the GOP at 46 percent each in support — certainly confirms that more losses may come in the November midterm election.

February 15, 2010

Opinion: Palin: Populist, but with a pitch

WASHINGTON — The snows that obliterated Washington last week interfered with many scheduled meetings, but they did not prevent the delivery of one important political message: Take Sarah Palin seriously.
Her lengthy Saturday night keynote address to the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville and her debut on the Sunday morning talk show circuit with Fox News’ Chris Wallace showed off a public figure at the top of her game — a politician who knows who she is and how to sell herself.

February 11, 2010

Opinion: President Obama finds himself at crossroads

WASHINGTON — It was toward the end of President Obama’s riveting visit on Jan. 29 with the House Republicans in Baltimore — a rare 90 minutes of candor on both sides that produced the most fascinating and revealing politics in memory — when Rep. Peter Roskam of suburban Chicago was called on for a question.

February 08, 2010

Opinion: Reform’s option, amid the ruins

WASHINGTON — The economic collapse of 2008 and 2009 did so much damage to the United States that only now can we begin to measure the devastation.
A sentence buried in the budget that President Obama submitted to Congress this week screamed for attention. “Household net worth fell from the third quarter of 2007 to the first quarter of 2009,” it said, “by $17.5 trillion or 26.5 percent, which is the equivalent to more than one year’s GDP.”

February 05, 2010

Opinion: Obama sets stage for battle over political ads

WASHINGTON — The sober, sprawling State of the Union address President Obama delivered last week was marked by one extraordinary moment.
It came when the president looked down at six robed members of the Supreme Court, seated directly in front of him, and criticized their recent 5-4 decision that he said “will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections.”

February 01, 2010

Opinion: Last, best hope to avert catastrophe recently scuttled

WASHINGTON — On the very same day this week when the Congressional Budget Office warned that the succession of previously unimaginable trillion-dollar- and-more budget deficits could inflict ruin on the United States, the Senate faced a moment of truth.

January 28, 2010

Opinion: For Obama, it’s about economy

WASHINGTON — As Barack Obama nears the first anniversary of his inauguration as president, a faculty friend of mine renders what strikes me as the right assessment: “If he were a student, I’d have to give him an incomplete.”
That’s no surprise, and it is certainly no cause for embarrassment.

January 20, 2010

Opinion: Chris Dodd shows he’s a straight shooter

WASHINGTON — During the last three decades that I have been covering politics in Washington, there was never a time when I could not reach Chris Dodd to check what was happening. It didn’t matter whether the question was about a House race in Connecticut or someone’s presidential chances or the prospects of a big bill in the Senate, the answers always came back — straight, quick and informative.

January 13, 2010

Opinion: Obama gets his own 9/11

WASHINGTON — Was Christmas Day 2009 the same kind of wake-up call for Barack Obama that Sept. 11, 2001, had been for George W. Bush?
The near-miss by a passenger flying into Detroit plotting to blow up an American airliner seems to have shocked this president as much as the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon did the last.

By David Broder , January 08, 2010

Opinion: Napolitano adds some flavor to administration

WASHINGTON — Most Americans got their first prolonged look at Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, last weekend. After a passenger on a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam ignited a concealed fuse as the plane approached Detroit for a landing, apparently intending to blow it up and kill all aboard, it fell to Napolitano to take charge of the federal response.

By David Broder , January 04, 2010