The Ballad of David "The Stenographer" Broder and Fred "The Lump" Thompson

[BurtWorm]

David Broder lets his toadying slip show in yet another mind-bogglingly inane column:


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/25/AR2008012502592.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

...

My personal experience with Thompson illuminated one of the real puzzles of the past year. Last summer, as word circulated that he was about to join the campaign, a member of his staff phoned with an invitation to lunch.

I readily accepted; I had not interviewed Thompson since he left the Senate in 2003. We met at a restaurant in McLean, and the candidate arrived alone, with no press aide in tow.

We visited for two hours and he answered every question, outlining plans for a campaign that would be notable for its boldness. Repeatedly, he emphasized that the only reason he saw to run was to raise issues that the other candidates were too timid to address. Those issues, he said, included the need to expand military manpower and increase the Pentagon budget, while attacking the "unaffordable" entitlement programs that dominate domestic spending.

Thompson was particularly critical of farm subsidies, and when I asked if he was really going to take that message to Iowa, he said, "Yes, but I'd like to keep that off the record until I announce out there." I agreed to omit that detail from my column but reported that he was going to enter the race with rhetorical guns blazing, and that was his reason for running.

Then I sat back and waited -- and waited. In time, Thompson unveiled a serious proposal to attack the long-term deficits in Social Security -- another of the major entitlements. But I never heard the speech on the farm subsidies. When I asked for a follow-up interview with Thompson, his new press secretary found reasons to put me off.

Would a bolder campaign delivered with some of the personal passion I saw in Thompson at that lunch have produced a different result? I don't know, but given what he said about his motives, I suspect that Thompson would feel better today if he had followed his instincts instead of becoming a more conventional conservative.

...


:eyes:

(Gee, David. Did it ever occur to you you might be being used? Does it ever occur to you, you jackass?)

[gratuitous]

1. So, once Old Fred announced . . .

You were right there, weren't you David? Announcing to the world what Old Fred had said at your intimate little lunch? Oh, I guess the answer was no. Way to put it out there, Dean David. You little bought-off chickenshit.

[tularetom]

2. Wouldn't you like to get into a poker game

with a gullible asswipe like david broder?