Man, just a few days ago I was saying David Broder looked like the grandpa from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and today he uncorks a scathing editorial about the limpness of our commander in chief. Check it out:
But after the fiasco of the Harriet Miers nomination and the other reversals of recent days and weeks, the Alito nomination inevitably looks like a defensive move, a lunge for the lifeboat by an embattled president to secure what is left of his political base. Instead of a consistent and principled approach to major decision making, Bush's efforts look like off-balance grabs for whatever policy rationales he can find. The president's opponents are emboldened by this performance, and his fellow partisans must increasingly wonder if they can afford to march to his command.That's gonna hurt come winter! But that's not all.
[Bush's supremo nomination follies] made a shambles of any consistent claim that Bush employs serious principles in picking judges. A system that veers from an accomplished and studiously nonideological John Roberts to a marginally credentialed and often confused-sounding Harriet Miers to an intellectual and experienced Samuel Alito with pronounced ideological views is no system at all.I think Broder imagines himself the archetypal moderate, the voice of Joe Sixpack. I don't know about that; my guess is he wouldn't know a sixpack from Tupac. And I can't say I'm a huge fan of his writing style (how can you use the word "fiasco" to describe the same thing twice in one essay?). But it just may be that Broder has discovered that - gasp! - there is no method to Bush's madness.
(Yeah, I know this op-ed is already highlighted at kos and elsewhere. I just wanted to put up the Grandpa Chainsaw/Broder pics.)
4 comments:
I will never be able to look at Broder the same way again. Love the Grandpa thing -- so much creepier than Leatherface.
I don't think this is a conversion for Broder. Every other month he looks over his columns and thinks, "Wow, I sound just like a conventional apologist for the administration. Gotta crank out something contrary!" And everyone gets excited for a couple days. Then it's back to the usual "Democrats should stop obstructing the Republican majority" column.
Yeah, I hear ya. Broder must have his Outlook calendar programmed to give him a "Be Contrary!!" alert once a month.
Grandpa really was creepy. That pic (I went back and fixed it up a little since the original posting) is actually from TCM2's poster; I couldn't find a good shot of him from the first movie.
And your wife wonders what you'd do as a kept man. It's obvious -- you'd surf the web for geriatric porn.
Actually, I think Broder's ideal president is Broder. Remember his outraged complaint about how the Clinton crew ran around the White House like they deserved to be there?
If he weren't still in the rotary ages, he'd have "Hail to the Chief" as his ringtone.
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