Readers of the Register were robbed Wednesday of a twice-a-week source of political wisdom when David S. Broder died at 81 of complications from diabetes.
Broder covered every presidential election from the 1950s on. He was author and co-author of books on national politics which were best-sellers. He appeared on several national television commentary panels frequently, including “Meet the Press” and PBS’s “Washington Week in Review.” He won a Pulitzer prize for coverage of the Watergate scandal and earned the nickname, “dean of the Washington press corps.”
Broder was chief Washington correspondent for the Washington Post , which syndicated his bi-weekly column that appeared in 300 daily newspapers — including this one.
Even though his illness sidelined him for weeks earlier this year, he continued to write when he had the strength and kept an appointment to speak at the Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas a few months ago. At that event, his mind was clear and his observations penetrating.
Broder’s authority as an interpreter of America’s politics grew from hard work as a reporter. He knew politics from the precinct level to the presidency. He had trusted sources — who knew him to be fair and accurate — by the hundreds. He also was a student of economics, U.S. history and of the personal histories of the politicians he covered.
In the story of his death in Thursday’s Post, Adam Bernstein recalled that Broder on “Meet the Press” in 1987 asked then-Vice President George W. Bush, who was the front-runner for the Republican nomination, whether he knew how many Americans lacked health insurance and how many U.S. children were born into poverty. Bush said he didn’t, and Broder explained that the questions were important because “even more than the rest of your rivals, I think you have lived in a very special world … and I wanted to try to sort of test how much you understand about some of the realities for the people in the country that you seek to lead.”
DESPITE PROBING questions such as these, Broder was never an advocate journalist. His columns presented facts and gave readers an understanding of political personalities by examples of actions they took and statements they made rather than presenting his own judgments.
It was a matter of professional pride to him that people continually asked him what party he belonged to since his writings were never partisan. He always ducked the question.
Broder entered the University of Chicago at 15 and won a master’s degree in political science there in 1951 at the age of 21, went to work and didn’t stop until he entered hospice. For decades he traveled over 100,000 miles a year to keep his understanding first hand.
He married a classmate, Ann Collar, in 1951. She and their four sons and seven grandchildren survive.
Millions of Americans gained a better understanding of how Washington worked because David S. Broder worked so diligently and well at the job of being a reporter.
Perhaps Sen. Richard G. Lugar, the Indiana Republican, said it best: “In his thoughtful and probing questions based on decades of scholarship and on-the-scene observations, David Broder set the modern gold standard for those of us engaged in political life as we sought to persuade others, to legislate and to administer the successful progress of our country.”
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
