B-b-b-broder

For being the Dean of Whatever, David Broder sure seems to have missed a pretty substantial part of the last 13 or so years, arguing that, "as we learned with both Clinton and Bush, mastery of a state legislature does not transfer to mastery of Congress."

Huh? See here's the thing. Those two presidents' relationship with their Congresses bear almost no resemblance to each other. Clinton, for one, presided mainly over a divided Congress with particularly partisan Republican leaders in the House. Bush, on the other hand, has spent most of his presidency with the entire Congress deep in his pocket. When Clinton failed to get his initiatives through Congress, it was more often than not because of the excessive partisanship of (in my opinion) the Gingriches of the world. Until this year, when Bush failed to get things through Congress, it was mainly because Bill Frist was a total idiot.

As for Broder's larger idea, that a Richardson/Huckabee face-off would be a great thing for politics, I actually am in total agreement.