News

Next generation can't come soon enough, Broder says

Posted October 18, 2007 11:00 pm

Bernard Schoenburg

The so-called "Baby Boom" generation has a special problem in providing leadership because the scars have not healed from the "terribly divisive times" in which its members came of age, Washington Post political columnist David Broder said Thursday night.

An example, Broder said, is the 2004 presidential race between Republican George Bush and Democratic U.S. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts. A full month of that campaign, Broder said, was spent arguing about what each man did or did not do during the Vietnam War.

"We just keep tearing the scabs off those old wounds," Broder told about 650 people at Sangamon Auditorium in Springfield, where he spoke as part of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation's Jim Edgar lecture series. His topic was, "Where have all the leaders gone?"

He said post-World War II "boomers" who grew up during ideological struggles that split the country - Vietnam, civil rights, women's rights and abortion - have included former President Bill Clinton, former vice presidents Al Gore and Dan Quayle, the current President Bush, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. They all, he said, "flourished for a time as a national leader" but then "spectacularly flamed out."

Broder said a previous string of seven presidents all came out of times that helped foster strong leadership. He said those presidents, from Democrat John F. Kennedy to the current president's father, George H.W. Bush, grew from the eras of the Great Depression and WW II. The great lesson from those episodes in the nation's history, Broder said, was that "only as a united country could the United States survive. … Either we pull together or we are lost."

Broder said the country is beginning to see a new generation of leader that is "post-boomers," and U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., a presidential candidate, is "probably one of the advance guard" of politicians who do not carry scars of the 1960s. As a result, Broder said, they tend to be "much more inclusive and less doctrinaire."

Others he mentioned as possibly fitting that new mold are U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner; and GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota.

"I think the next generation cannot arrive too soon," Broder said.

He said he thinks most voters want leaders - Republican, Democratic or independent - who will "work on the problems facing the country and not just the politics of the problems."

As a Washington Post political reporter, he said, he spends a lot of time interviewing voters across the country, and he finds people hungry for leadership from Washington.

Main problems people worry about these days, he said, are illegal immigration, rising health-care costs, energy prices and most of all, the war in Iraq.

But regular people generally reply "not very much" when asked what they think Washington has done to deal with those problems, he said.

He said the nation's capital seems to be "consumed by an orgy of partisan quarreling" and a "meanness of spirit," using as an example this week's fight in Congress over a program to "protect more children from diseases" that turned into a "battleground" between Republicans and Democrats.

Broder noted that U.S. Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Peoria, worked to organize a series of annual bipartisan retreats to try to build cooperation between the parties in Washington. But that series of events "has died for lack of interest and support," he said.

In addition to rifts left over from the '60s, Broder said the near-even division of power has fueled partisanship. He noted that when Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont switched a few years ago from being a Republican to an independent, it switched the power in the Senate - including committee chairmanships - from Republicans to Democrats.

Broder didn't say who he supports for president in 2008, but he did say there is a "talented field on both sides." He said he thinks the current process for choosing a president is "an insane and inhuman system" because it is so long and grueling.

He said he'd like to see a presidential primary system shift to one pushed by the late U.S. Rep. Morris Udall of Arizona, who thought states should be able to choose primary dates from four - the first Tuesday in each of March, April, May and June. He said that would create a random sprinkling of states in each contest, eliminate the "irrational factor of momentum" now at play, and perhaps keep the country from knowing who the nominees for president are until June in some presidential years.

Broder, 78, writes a twice-weekly column in the Washington Post, and in 1973, won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary.

Former Gov. Jim Edgar, who chairs the presidential library's foundation, introduced Broder as "the pre-eminent political reporter in the United States." He noted that Broder was from Illinois. He's a native of Chicago Heights and worked from 1953-55 at The Pantagraph of Bloomington.

"I loved the time there," Broder said of his years working in central Illinois.

Bernard Schoenburg can be reached at (217) 788-1540 or bernard.schoenburg@sj-r.com.

Article Categories
News