[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 36 (Thursday, March 10, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Page S1517]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                        TRIBUTE TO DAVID BRODER

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, sadly, we lost David Broder yesterday. 
A lot has been said in the last 24 hours about that distinguished 
journalist. I wish to add just a brief word of my own.
  I will not pretend to have known him well, although we did talk from 
time to time over the years. I admired him greatly. One could not help 
but admire him, and a few things truly stand out. First of all, in a 
city that is full of people in a rush to make an impression, David was 
the guy who took the time to get it right, day in and day out, without 
bombast or pretense.
  He wasn't looking to make an impression as much as he was trying to 
do his job and to do it well. The notoriety, of course, took care of 
itself. He was a workhorse first and foremost--a reporter who seemed to 
enjoy the work more than any attention he got for it.
  Everyone who ever worked with him seems to have a story about 
watching him knocking on doors while he was in his late seventies or 
earnestly listening to a Midwest voter out in the cold. It all points 
to a sort of sturdiness of purpose and to the old virtues of patience, 
fairness and hard work and a sense that other people's opinions were at 
least as valuable as his own.
  Add to that a deep curiosity and thoughtfulness and a childlike 
appreciation for the mechanics of democracy, and we have a pretty good 
model for what political reporting is all about.
  I hesitate to say he was conservative in temperament, if not in his 
politics, but that is what came through.
  It became commonplace to say David Broder was the dean of American 
political reporters. But I think it is worth understanding what people 
meant by that. It doesn't mean he was the most exciting guy in the 
room--he wasn't. It doesn't mean he had the most scoops--I am not sure 
he did. I think what it means, aside from the sheer length of his 
career, was that more than most people, his life came to take the shape 
of the profession he chose in life. It became sort of an extension of 
himself.
  That is what seemed to give him so much joy and satisfaction in his 
work, along with the respect and admiration and maybe even a little bit 
of envy of so many others.
  Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, young or old, we 
could use a few more David Broders.
  I yield the floor.

                          ____________________