Yesterday on the Politico website, Andrew Glass posed a query about Washington Post columnist David Broder, who is known as "the dean of the Washington press corps" because his early columns about how he could see good arguments on both the Loyalist and Whig sides during the revolution set the template for evenhanded analysis that exists to this day. Glass' question is, in fact, related to that evanhandedness. Why, if Broder is so "relentlessly centrist," do so many people hate his fucking guts and vomit blood every time they read his meandering advocacy of the status quo?

Glass has a couple of theories, one of which is, naturally, the irate outsider explanation. The misfits accuse Broder of "defending at all costs what these critics perceive to be Washington's permanent ruling class. Broderism allegedly covers up for the establishment, whatever its failings, lest the voters, as one angry blogger recently put it, 'lose faith in and deference for their betters.'"

Wow, that does sound kind of angry and ill-informed! Does anyone really believe that a Washington establishment still exists in these highly partisan times? Certainly not Glass, who notes that Broder has once or twice dared to stake out a position that might be slightly at variance with the powers of the day. Also noted: "I am a Broder fan. We are members of the Gridiron Club, a select covey of journalists who are to the Washington news fraternity what Skull and Bones is to Yale."

See, it's a fraternity, not an establishment. That's much more inclusive.

Why can't we all practice Broderism? [Politico]