Well, since you asked, the answer is YES!

Can you believe that David Broder, the dean of DC twitdom, actually asks the following question?

Ultimately, do we want to see Cheney, who backed these actions and still does, standing in the dock?

I believe the answer to Broder's question is:


Broder is so out of touch - with the times, with the American People, and with reality.

Here is the whole paragraph.

Looming beyond the publicized cases of these relatively low-level operatives is the fundamental accountability question: What about those who approved of their actions? If accountability is the standard, then it should apply to the policymakers and not just to the underlings. Ultimately, do we want to see Cheney, who backed these actions and still does, standing in the dock?

As for his penultimate sentence here - "If accountability is the standard, then it should apply to the policymakers and not just to the underlings." - I say, "hear, hear!" It SHOULD apply to the policymakers, the principal architect being Dick Cheney. Broder should have stopped there before typing what he - mistakenly - considers a rhetorical question.

Broder boasts precisely where he should be slinking off in shame.

When President Ford pardoned Nixon in 1974, I wrote one of the few columns endorsing his decision, which was made on the basis that it was more important for America to focus on the task of changing the way it would be governed and addressing the current problems. It took a full generation for the decision to be recognized by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation and others as the act of courage that it had been.

Courage, schmourage, it was one of the greatest mistakes in modern American democracy because it undercut accountability and laid the groundwork for the lawlessness of the GWB gang of thugs. By shifting the focus to "addressing the current problems," the pardoning of Nixon left us vulnerable for the same issues to bite us in the ass, as they have done and are doing. The entire nexus of Bush Administration wrongdoing is integrally related to Dick Cheney's smoldering resentment of any restrictions on an imperial presidency and his determination to restore presidential power to the Nixon days and take it even further. Obama is not moving fast enough to reverse engines on this by any means. I believe many of us despair that he will reverse it and language about "moving forward" is just a means to keep us from dealing with the political cancer we are afraid or unwilling to face and, untreated, may well kill us.

The "high broderism" in the Thursday article stinks so bad it could knock a fly off a shit wagon. Broder thinks Attorney General Holder is wrong. I think Broder is wrong. Again. As usual. I find it amazing that he is still not only published but revered in the Beltway. But the Village looks after its inbred own. Their cocktail circuit mentality is all that exists and all that matters.

--the BB

In case you have never heard of "high broderism" here is an April 2007 post by Atrios:

We normally think of "High Broderism" as the worship of bipartisanship for its own sake, combined with a fake "pox on both their houses" attitude. But in reality this is just the cover Broder uses for his real agenda, the defense of what he perceives to be "the establishment" at all costs. The establishment is the permanent ruling class of Washington, our betters who know better. It is their rough agenda which is sold as "centrism" even when it has no actual relationship with the political center in a meaningful way. Democracy's messy, in Broder's world, and passionate voters are problematic. It is up to the Wise Old Men of Washington to implement the agenda, and the job of the voters to bless them for it. When the establishment fails, the most important issue is not their failure, but that the voters might begin to lose faith in and deference for their betters. Thus, people must always be allowed to save face, no matter what their transgressions, as long as they're a part of his permanent floating tea party.

While this basic attitude isn't unique to Broder, his apparent lack of interest in the actual details of policy makes him a more absurd figure than some. For him it's not about results, but about the right people being in the right places. It is terribly elitist in all the wrong ways. Arguments can be made for certain types of elitism - you do want a brain surgeon conducting brain surgery - but Broder's elites are simply aristocrats. It's their town.