The 'Dean' Still Laying Shoe Leather

By: Joe Strupp It was November 1955 when David Broder first came to work in Washington, D.C. With less than three years of daily newspaper experience, he approached his new job at Congressional Quarterly with a simple plan: do the reporting.

Fifty years later, after covering 10 presidents and 25 political conventions, Broder is considered the dean of Washington politics. But his style hasn't changed ? he still does the reporting.

"It is what I've practiced and what I enjoy," says Broder, now a twice-weekly columnist for The Washington Post, about his nationally syndicated pieces. "It is a reporting-based column because that is all I can do."

At a time when most political pundits fill their allotted space with often overhyped views in place of fact, Broder remains old school. He admits little interest in a straight opinion column. "When you do it as long as I have, you want that face-to-face," he says about his preference for shoe-leather newsgathering. "You can guess how people will react, but until you ask them, you do not know."

At 76, the Illinois native is on the road as much as ever, spending about half his time outside of D.C, he estimates. This year alone, he's visited Oregon, Florida, Illinois, Arkansas, California (three times), Washington state, Massachusetts, and Iowa, as well as Australia and New Zealand. "No reporting is too small for him, and no fact is too minimal to check," says Leonard Downie Jr., the Post's executive editor and a longtime colleague.

That work has paid off. After first syndicating in 1970, Broder followed three years later with a Pulitzer Prize and has since become a sought-after commentator who appears regularly on TV panel shows. "He is the gold standard for interpreting Washington politics," says Bruce Davidson, editorial page editor of the San Antonio (Texas) Express-News, one of 300 newspapers that carry Broder's column. "He does his spade work all over the country."

Tim Russert, host of NBC's Meet The Press, says Broder has been on the Sunday morning show more than any guest, with nearly 400 appearances. In addition, "He is also a superb analyst," the host tells E&P.

Born in Chicago Heights, Ill., Broder is a University of Chicago alum and a U.S. Army veteran who spent two years in the service (1951 to 1953). His first reporting job came at The Pantagraph in Bloomington, Ill., which runs his column today. His Congressional Quarterly gig came about after then-Post Editor Ben Gilbert declined to use someone of his limited experience, saying, "we don't hire people like you."

After five years at CQ, Broder moved to The Washington Star in 1960, then to The New York Times for a year before joining the Post in 1966. "It was probably in lieu of money that I made him a columnist," his former editor there, Ben Bradlee, jokes today. "He was the best young political reporter at the time."

Looking back, Broder points to one of the 1960s' worst events as among his most memorable, the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963. As reporter for the Washington Star, Broder found himself in a press bus about a block behind Kennedy's car when the shooting occurred in Dallas. "I can tell how shook up I was because I can barely read my notes from that day," says Broder, who has kept the notebook.

Still, it is the purely political stories for which Broder is most remembered. Colleagues contend his coverage of political conventions sets the bar high for all other reporters. "To walk on the floor of a national convention with David Broder is like going to the Oscars with George Clooney," says Downie. "He's a rock star." Adds former columnist Jack Germond of The Sun in Baltimore, "he understands the process."

Broder cites the 1980 Republican Convention in Detroit as the best he's covered for real news, recalling the excitement when Ronald Reagan was toying with choosing former President Gerald Ford as his running mate. "It was wild," he remembers. "Television went crazy with it, but we were working our sources and being cautious because it was not a done deal, and it ended up not happening."

Few if any working journalists today can boast of covering 10 presidents. Broder contends that no two have been similar. "Jerry Ford was probably the closest to being a normal human being," the columnist says. "Eisenhower was very imposing and he didn't conceal his emotions." He calls Lyndon Johnson "the most overwhelming, larger than life," Kennedy "his own best press secretary," and Richard Nixon "so ill at ease you wonder why he'd choose politics." When asked about George W. Bush, Broder notes his self-confidence. "He trusts himself so much, trusts his instincts and the group who are his advisors," Broder adds. "Sometimes it has not served him well."

Since he first arrived in the Beltway, Broder admits the beat ? and the capital city ? have changed: "When I first came here, Washington was pretty much a small town, and culturally it was a backwater." These days, Broder owns partial season tickets to both the National Symphony and the Washington Nationals baseball team. He is married with four grown children.

Broder contends that one of the biggest changes in 50 years is the political mood in the country. "The level of partisanship and the meanness," he says. "It's now gotten worse, the tension between the politicians and the press, between Republicans and Democrats. This makes it harder for us to keep a kind of straight-and-narrow coverage, not to become partisan ourselves." He points to the explosion of competition from niche outlets, the Internet, and growing cable television options for pushing some of the overly opinionated approaches. "It does put a special challenge on those of us in the so-called 'mainstream media,'" he says. "It is something we battle every day. We need to find ways to be as attractive as we can without cheapening the product."

Broder is quick to praise today's political reporters, saying "There is no crisis in talent." The concern, he says, is in the resources and approach. "We don't need as many different polls as we have," he says, although he believes those that are done well are an asset.

He sees the future of newspapers as positive, but stresses that the Web must be taken into account when assessing a paper's success. "The fact that fewer people are buying The Washington Post in print form is offset by the fact that we have an international audience online," he says. "An audience that is literally all over the world."

When asked about the recent anonymous-sourcing debate, Broder says confidential sources need to be handled very carefully. "Every time we use them, we strain the credibility with readers by saying, 'We know something we will not share with you,'" he says. "But in politics they are a necessity, and quite helpful." He adds that he opposes "cheap shots."

Broder also believes the growing movement by many on the right to paint journalists and newspapers as liberally biased is not a major concern. "I think those complaints are inevitable," he says, recalling his days growing up in Illinois, where the Chicago Tribune was the "partisan-right" paper. "I don't expect anyone to believe me, but there are reporters I have worked with for 40 years ? and closed the bar together with many times ? and I have no idea how they voted and I don't believe they have any idea how I voted."

So what is the most important thing about political coverage today? "Recognize that these men and women are doing an important job," Broder says, stressing the value of elected officials. "There is plenty of cynicism, but we owe a degree of respect to those people."