Where you start has a lot to do with where you end up.

There's been quite a lot of response to today's bizarre David Broder column today, in which he excoriated Harry Reid -- the same Harry Reid who, as Minority Leader, ran rings around Bill Frist in 2005 and 2006, took his party from minority to majority status in the 2006 elections, and has maintained an amazing level of party unity on votes like today's on an Iraq supplemental bill mandating withdrawl from Iraq -- for his "ineptitude." It's the latest in a series of terminally clueless pronouncements from on high, like his February column that predicted George W. Bush -- he of the perpetual thirtysomething approval rating -- was poised for a rebound. But when Broder speaks, people in Washington listen -- after all, he's the "dean" of the press corps!

Much of the reason Broder enjoys that status, no matter how many foolish or downright wrong pronouncements he makes, is his 1968 column predicting that Richard Nixon would pick Spiro Agnew -- then the governor of Maryland -- as his running mate. That feat of political prognostication made him a legend among reporters and the Washington establishment.

Only problem is, Broder himself admitted not long afterward that the whole column was a plant. See this excerpt from Timothy Crouse's campaign journalism book The Boys on the Bus:

Broder's fame and reknown stems from his decision to carry water for one corrupt Republican. Perhaps he's decided to close his career out the way it began.