The annual ‘goofs’ column

  • David Broder / Washington Post columnist
  • Saturday, December 29, 2001 9:00pm
  • Opinion

WASHINGTON — The past year got off to a flying start in terms of supplying items for the annual "goofs" column, that exercise in self-humiliation that has become a tradition here.

In the very first column of 2001, about notable retirees, I mentioned that Marc Racicot of Montana was "possibly the only governor whose home number was listed in the phone book and who answered calls from constituents himself." The next mail brought word from Mike Johanns, the governor of Nebraska, saying his is and he does. Any other claimants?

On Inauguration Day, contrasting the new President Bush with his father, I wrote that the "son inherits a peaceful world in which communism exists only in such threadbare places as Cuba and North Korea." Barry Mackintosh of Potomac, Md., wondered how I could have overlooked a rather large and decidedly communist country called China. A senior moment, perhaps?

The past year had few elections — a lucky thing, since I managed to be wrong on many of those that did occur. I virtually elected Antonio Villaraigosa as mayor of Los Angeles before the voters decided they preferred Jim Hahn. I did elect Mark Green in New York City — "almost a cinch to win in that Democratic city," said I, especially since opponent Michael Bloomberg "has committed so many gaffes." Amazingly, Bloomberg survived that put-down and is the new mayor.

I also screwed up a column about the new Democratic primary calendar two different ways. First, I failed to make it explicitly clear that Democrats were moving onto the accelerated schedule Republicans already had adopted. And second, I completely bollixed the Democrats’ rule on winner-take-all vs. proportional allocation of delegates. As old friend and rules maven Donald Fowler of South Carolina (along with Rob Richie of the Center for Voting and Democracy) gently reminded me, Democrats have required since 1984 that delegates be apportioned among candidates who receive at least 15 percent of the primary or caucus votes. I’m obviously a slow learner.

Those were not the only misjudgments. After visits to San Diego and Salem, Ore., last spring, I exaggerated the imminence of the energy crisis — but it still worries me that we have no national energy policy to reduce our dependence on Persian Gulf oil.

These were not the columns that caused the most controversy or brought waves of criticism, however. The largest and most vituperative response was triggered by my description of retiring North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms as "the last prominent unabashed white racist politician in this country." The reaction was no surprise; I knew I would hear from the Helms fans. But the judgment stands.

More surprising was the response to one phrase in a column written the morning after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I wrote: "As in the past, in times of national tragedy, it fell to the president to express the public’s sense of loss and to affirm the nation’s determination to respond. After a shaky start, when Bush seemed to be seeking a hideaway from both unknown enemies and his own nerves, he gathered the strength to do just that in his brief Oval Office address Tuesday night and again on Wednesday morning."

I thought I was describing a leader who had been momentarily shaken — as all of us were — but recovered quickly. Many readers, seeing the column days later, thought it a "cheap shot." Many referred to reports that Air Force One itself had been targeted — a claim the White House quickly withdrew.

In subsequent days, like many others, I lavished praise on the president, drawing ire from Democratic partisans for comparing his rhetoric in simplicity and force to Lincoln’s. Unfortunately, the Lincoln "quote" which John F. Kennedy used repeatedly in the 1960 campaign, and which I ascribed to both Lincoln and Kennedy, turns out to have been spurious, according to William Lee Miller, the University of Virginia’s Lincoln scholar. That means I have been complicit in that fraud for 41 years now.

How to atone? One thing for which I need not apologize. From Jan. 31 onward, when the concept was suggested to me by two former Republican congressional staffers, Steve Hofman and Ed Kutler, and entered public debate through this column, I argued repeatedly that it would be far more prudent to rebate a portion of the existing budget surplus to taxpayers than to legislate large, permanent tax-rate reductions on the basis of a theoretical future budget surplus.

Congress enacted a rebate, but made it an add-on, not an alternative, to the Bush 10-year, $1.3-trillion tax cut. Now, the surplus is gone, and next year we will start paying the price for that folly in a return to deficit spending. I’ll take my goofs over theirs.

David Broder can be reached at The Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071-9200.

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