When silly meets predictable

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When a rock band’s creativity grows stale, their songs become formulaic. They take an old hit, change the key, alter the lyrics a little, and voila. A new single.

When a newspaper columnist’s creativity grows stale, the same problem emerges. Take David Broder, for example, who’s been having a rough year. The formula is surprisingly straightforward: praise a politician who seems to break with a party’s orthodoxy, throw in some kind words for Michael Bloomberg and Arnold Schwarzenegger, allude to “post-partisan” politics, and express some disdain for “politics as usual,” and presto — another gem from the “dean” of the DC media establishment.

Today’s piece fits the mold.

Today, that tide may be carrying him away from his Republican Party and toward a third-party or independent ticket with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg — a development that could reshape the dynamics of the 2008 presidential race.

Next month, Hagel will make a threshold decision — whether to run for a third term in the Senate. He gave me no definitive answer, but my guess is that he will say that 12 years of battling the institutional lethargy of Capitol Hill will be enough. Certainly he is under no illusions about how much he can achieve as one of 100 lawmakers.

On the contrary, while Washington is gridlocked in partisan battle between two equally spent parties, the country is moving rapidly, he thinks, to the conclusion that neither Republicans nor Democrats have the answers to the problems people see.

Broder seems to believe that a Bloomberg-Hagel ticket would meet some pressing national demand. Do they agree with one another on policy matters? Well, no. Do they have a shared vision on how government is supposed to work? Actually, they’re polar opposites. Does Broder see a scenario by which these two can win a national election? Not so much.

But, Broder says, they have “leadership” qualities. I wish I knew what Broder means by this; unfortunately, his column doesn’t tell me. It apparently has something to do with “national purpose,” though this, too, is just another vague platitude.

The column reads like a daydream of a writer who believes a liberal independent and a very conservative Republican will join forces, solve all of our problems, and “get something done.” Get what done? It doesn’t matter; it’ll be something.

It’s hard to see how this kind of analysis should be taken seriously.

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