WASHINGTON — David Broder, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post political columnist whose even-handed treatment of Democrats and Republicans set him apart from the ideological warriors on the nation’s op-ed pages, died Wednesday. He was 81.
Post officials said he died of complications from diabetes.
Broder, an Illinois native, was familiar to television viewers as a frequent panelist on NBC’s “Meet the Press. He appeared on the program more than 400 times, far more than any other journalist in the show’s history.
To newspaper readers, he was one of the nation’s most prominent syndicated columnists. A September 2007 study by the liberal media watchdog group Media Matters found that Broder was second only to George Will among columnists in the combined circulation of newspapers in which his column appeared. He was the only one of the top five that the group did not label as either conservative or liberal.
“His even-handed approach has never wavered. He’d make a good umpire,” wrote Alan Shear, editorial director of the Washington Post Writers Group, which syndicated Broder’s column.
