When you get mildew, it's never just one plant. Whatever rotted Broder's sensibility and conscience infests everything. Take a look at this front page teaser today from Pravda on the Potomac:

It's all here, isn't it? All wrapped up in one little compact package.

The gentle art of teabagging is not dead.

David Broder’s Moonlighting: Post columnist benefits from corporate speaking deals

So it’s surprising to see that Broder, who recently took a buyout, but will continue to write his Post column, appears to be a regular presence these days on the business lecture circuit, and has even spoken to major health care groups. Do a Google search and you’ll see that Broder is represented by a number of speaker’s bureaus, including Grabow, which says it is “your David Broder booking agent for private corporate events.”

Broder is identified (in various promotional and other online materials I found) as a featured speaker at events such as these:

Well, today:

More than 100 Washington Post reporters, editors, photographers, artists and other journalists will take early retirement packages offered by the company as a way to cut costs, reducing the newsroom staff by at least 10 percent.

Great. I always thought we had too much news.

Political dean David Broder took the package...

Except...

Via Digby, Bloomberg, some Village Broderites, and a bunch of 80s retreads are calling for a "government of national unity." Can we get a grip, please? On something besides all the levers of power? Google it. Governments of national unity are for countries that have undergone huge trauma, like apartheid in South Africa or decades of civil war in the Sudan. You don't proclaim a government of national unity because there might be a change in government from one party to another, or because the cocktail wienies and jumbo shrimp won't always be there to glom onto, or because somebody's winger operative girlfriend is going to be forced to enter the dreaded private sector, or because a DFH or two is going to become a deputy assistant undersecretary of this, that, or the other. And you especially don't proclaim one because Washington, DC is your place. Eh?

Because that would be just too, too transparently a totally Villageous and deeply bogus cynical maneuver.

And I think we know where, don't we?

From everything I have heard on the campaign trail, it's obvious that they are the pair who have earned the widest respect among the eight Republican candidates themselves. McCain is the eldest and the most honored, not only for what he endured as a Vietnam prisoner of war but as a principled battler for what he considers essential on Iraq and other national security issues.

Huckabee, who previously was known only to those of us [Broderella blushes modestly] who cover state government and governors, has been the surprise discovery of the campaign season. His combination of religious principle, good humor, tolerance and clear passion on education and health care complements McCain's muscular foreign policy and aversion to wasteful domestic spending.

Take the package, Dave! Take the package!

Broder on the Republican debate:

Mr. Nasty and Mr. Nice
Well, sure, Willard Mitt may have strapped his dog on top of his car on a family trip, and left it up there until a brown liquid ran down the back window, but at least he didn't bill the taxpayers for trysts in his love nest with Judy in the Hamptons like Rudy did.

So, they're both great candidates.

Really?

Now I can die happy:

Philadelphia: Would you say that a press (in the person of Fred Hiatt) that cheers on an attack on Iran; a president who refuses accountability for Iraq; a Congress that is unable or unwilling to hold him accountable; and consultants who focus on tiny triangulations and meaningless sound bites; together all signal the complete collapse of the Beltway as a functional ruling class? [See here--Lambert]. Or do you believe the collapse is only partial?

David S. Broder: I would say the disability is partial, not complete. There ares till independent voices and still people working within the system to try to make it function and meet its responsibilities. But the problems you cite are real, and I do not minimize them.

Well, yes, you do.

Wipe that liquid off your chin, Dave. You're embarassing yourself and the paper

Broder somehow gets through a whole encomium on Rove without once mentioning the words "frenum ladder" (NSFW). But this paragraph at the end caught my eye:

Michael K. Deaver, Ronald Reagan's gentle adviser and friend, who died last week, was a model of Civility and good humor, a loyal servant of the president but also a help to legions of reporters seeking to understand Reagan's way of leading.

Yeah, civility. Gee, I knew if I checked Deaver's bio I'd find something:

Surprise! Fighting imperial wars in a democracy is very difficult. What to do?

The Man in the Grey Turtleneck has, once again, conferred the coveted honor of Wanker of the day on David Ignatius. And how well-earned! However, there's an aspect to the column that has been insufficiently highlighted:

But we go to war with the democracy we've got ...

Future military planners will have to recognize that American democracy, in which political mandates must be renewed in two-year increments, makes us uniquely unsuited to fight protracted counterinsurgency wars. Petraeus likes to observe that it takes, on average, at least nine years to prevail in such a war. If that measure is correct, Petraeus must know there is little chance that a frustrated and angry American public will grant him enough time for success. So [?] the question is: How to extricate ourselves in a way that minimizes the damage to the United States, its allies and Iraq?

Except, that's not the question that Ignatius, a fully paid up member of the Court at Versailles on the Potomac, is really asking, is it?

Take the package, Dave! Take the package! You're embarassing yourself, and the Depends aren't helping:

A particularly virulent strain of populism has made official Washington altogether too responsive to public opinion.

Er, Dave--If I may call you "Dave"--it's called electoral politics.

'Cause, you know, I didn't see Our Dave clutch his pearls and head for the fainting couch when the Republicans controlled all three branches of government, got us into a war based on lies, let the city of New Orleans drown, sanctioned torture, and trampled on the Constitution through signing statements, warrantless surveillance, and by eliminating habeas corpus.

Wanker of the Many Decades David Broder opines in a revealing paragraph stuck way down in his oh-so-balanced commentary:

Where I thought, mistakenly, that it would be a great advantage to Bush to have a White House partner without political succession in mind, it has turned out to be altogether too liberating an environment for a political entrepreneur of surpassing skill operating under an exceptional cloak of secrecy.

"A White House partner without political succession in mind..."

Hmmm... Let me try to translate that. Yes, I think little chunk of Broderese could best be rendered as "A White House partner with no accountability in a democractic system," right?

As predictable and predicted, Broder's lost bladder control, now that there's a chance that Bloomberg might enter the 2008 race.

Anything, anything but a Democrat. If the Republicans can't, than Vanity08 must. You know, I almost hope Hillary's our nominee, so Broder's forced to sniff her panties for eight long years. And I wouldn't mind Broder acting the straight-out partisan shill like Brooks or Safire if he didn't pose as the above-it-all and very serious Wise Man: The Dean of Beltway journalism.

Dean Floater: The gaseous turd that just keeps circling the bowl, refusing to go down.

Once again, Broder makes Sunday Fun Day:

[Bloomberg] now looks more and more as if he will have a chance. In what appears to have been a carefully orchestrated series of events, Bloomberg dominated the political news last week.

No, Bloomberg didn't. Bloomberg dominated the vacant space between Broder's ears. The guy who did dominate the political news was Shooter, the Vice Presidential Entity, and that's why WaPo's running a four-part series on him this week.

First, he turned up on the cover of Time magazine along with Schwarzenegger. A flattering article suggested that the two men embodied the pragmatic, problem-solving approach that Washington conspicuously lacks in these final dispiriting months of the Bush presidency.

Sweet Jeebus. We've got a Vice Presidential Entity who thinks he's a fourth branch of government and wants to go to war with Iran, and a Presidential Entity who's rewriting the laws with signing statements and getting obeyed by the Christianist sleeper cells down in the bureaucracy. We aren't living in a Constitutional system anymore, and Broder wants to talk about pragmatism?
WTF?

No.

I just don't have the heart to pick on Broder. He's obviously lost it. Why, it takes him six paragraphs to work in a reference to The Clenis!

Anyhow, the headline, just to give you the flavor:

The Democrats' Gonzales

And who does Dean Floater have in mind?

Dean Floater's circling the bowl. Here's His latest little effort to subvert Constitutional government and weaken Democrats:

A chance for unity on Iraq

I'd say 60/30
against Bush's plan--that is, everyone but the KoolAid drinkers--is about as close to unity as you get in a represenative Democracy. Eh?

But oh, wait. Lil David's talking about "unity" in the Beltway. Sorry. Read on:

And how delicious that it's "Dean" Broder's name that's being blackened...

After I threw my copy of The Purpose Driven Life at the radio during the Iraq Studly Group NPR coverage, it squawked, went dead, and then began to emit the material I have transcribed below:

Announcer: Are you embarrassed easily? I am. But it's nothing to worry about. It's all part of growing up and being a pundit. This course is designed to eliminate embarrassment, to enable you to talk freely around real subjects, to deny inconvenient and embarrassing truths, and to sniff Hillary's panties. The course has been designed by David Broder, Dean of The Institute of Large-footed and Pasty White Men in Arlington, Virginia. Here, he himself introduces the course. Broder: Hello, my name is David Broder. Thank you for inviting me into your home. My method is the result of six years work here at the Institute, in which subjects were exposed to simulated embarrassment predicaments, over a prolonged fart - period! time! (fart) ...Sorry. Lesson 1: Words. Do any of these words embarrass you? Voice over:   Teabag. Wurlitzer. Cocktail weinies. Broder: Now let's go on to something ruder: Voice over: Wankel rotary engine Broder: Now lesson 2: Noises. Noises are a major embarrassment source. Even words like "my pet goat", "potent tool" and "eight-inch, cut" cannot rival the embarrassment potential of sound. Listen to this, if you can:

[embarrassing sound]

How do you rate your embarrassment response?

1. High.
2. Heil!
3. Dolchstosslegende!

If C, you are loosening up, and will soon be ready for this:

[more embarrassing sounds]

Well! How did you rate?

1. Embarrassed.
2. Foily!
3. Dolchstosslegende!

Now lesson 3, in which these rude and dirty sounds are combined with  visual suggestions into a embarrassment simulation situation. You are the waiter at this table:

Cindy: George, I've got something to show you...

[Unzipping body bag, thud of bloody corpse]

Broder: Score 5 for no embarrassment, score 3 for slight embarrassment, and 1 for...

Now that the Democrats have control of both houses of Congress, why does Dean Broder keep servicing Republicans? You'd think Broder's readership would want to know about winners, not losers, and national parties, not regional ones. Some would say it's because The Dean of Beltway Bigfeet is just a Republican shill. The more charitable would chalk Broder's increasingly pitiable behavior up to institutional factors: After a decade of Republican rule, Republican sources are the only sources in Dave's rolodex. Or maybe Broder just genuinely enjoys doing these guys. Whatever. Get a load of this: