Renowned Political Correspondent Launches CPP

David Broder, AB’47, AM’51, is no expert on public-policy education, but after witnessing one success from the Harris School, he’s convinced it’s topnotch. The longtime Washington Post political reporter and columnist’s daughter-in-law, Robin Breeden Broder, AM’89, was one of the School’s first graduates. She now manages finances for the Arlington (Virginia) Street People’s Assistance Network, a homeless-persons program. “She has been a dynamo” there, Broder said in an interview before keynoting an October 1 Harris School dinner. “I think a lot of the skills she brings to that job were honed at the Harris School. It seemed to be a very good combination of both theoretical and practical” training.

Bridging the theoretical and the practical was, in fact, the reason for the visit by Broder, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973, and his wife, Ann Broder, AB’48. The 200-plus dinner crowd he addressed had gathered at downtown Chicago’s Union League Club for the annual Mentor Dinner and to inaugurate the School’s Center for Policy Practice. Housing group internships and practicums, a major-speaker series, and the Mentor Program, the new Center supports initiatives “preparing students to address real-world policy issues,” said Harris School Dean Susan E. Mayer. The Center is directed by Eileen McCarthy, MPP’93, who worked previously as budget director for the Chicago Park District, manager at Deloitte Consulting, and financial-planning director for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra before becoming special assistant to the dean at the Harris School in 2002.

At the Union League Club Broder, a Chicago Heights native wearing a baseball-patterned tie, took the podium during dessert after being introduced by King Harris, University trustee and chairman of the Harris School’s Visiting Committee. The Center for Policy Practice is important today, Broder said, because “community building remains one of the biggest challenges we face in this country.” Each day, he said, paraphrasing former Colorado Governor Roy Romer, many Americans travel from home to garage to car to office, and then return from office to home—without stepping foot in their neighborhoods. But there is now a “healthy trend,” said Broder, who’s covered every national election since 1960, “back to basics,” back to grassroots organizations and community politics, that is evident in recent political campaigns’ door-to-door and phone-call tactics rather than the straight television-ad strategy of a few election seasons ago.

Touching on Howard Dean’s Democratic presidential campaign (“a dramatic demonstration of using new technology to get participatory politics”), the California recall election (“the initiative process has become a plaything of the wealthy”), the war in Iraq (“almost daily new questions are being raised”), and the economy (“lowering incomes, increasing poverty and the number of Americans without health insurance”), Broder praised the Harris School’s mission. “I find solace when I come to places like this.”

During the question-and-answer session mentor Richard Longworth of the Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs asked if the Bush administration’s leak of a CIA agent could turn into the next Watergate. No, Broder answered, but it is “a major embarrassment to the administration.” It would take a strong shift, he added, for voters to forget the emotional bond they formed with President Bush after September 11, 2001.

A few questions later Broder was ready to catch the last few innings of Game 2 of the Cubs-Braves postseason series, but not before Mayer presented him with a gift—a 2003 National League Central Championship Cubs cap.

Amy Braverman