From a Washington Post editorial
Of all the epitaphs that might fit him -- commentator, teacher, student of politics -- we think our friend and colleague Dave Broder, who died Wednesday at age 81, would probably be most pleased with the one-word description we offer above.
Broder was a columnist for many years, but he started out as a reporter and remained one for a lifetime.
Like most reporters, he clearly learned, from the time of his first job on the Bloomington (Ill.) Pantagraph, a basic lesson of the business: that the story you expect to write when you set out on an assignment never quite matches up with the one you find when you get there.
In more than half a century as a Washington political writer, Broder traveled to places in every region of the country. He was supremely gifted at listening, whether his sources were senators or unemployed machinists.
Among his colleagues at work, Broder was not given to holding forth. He was mostly listening and learning.
Until he could no longer do it, he kept up the daily rounds -- the routine breakfast meetings with officials and operatives, the news conferences and congressional hearings. He treated life as an education.
Broder was often called "the Dean," a position now likely to go unfilled in the Washington press corps. His detractors used the term sarcastically; they came mostly from the political left and found him much too moderate.
