Dueling Post columns on Rahm Emanuel

Pow!

That was the general reaction around town to David Broder's column yesterday.

The so-called dean of the Washington press corps -- not everyone considers that a compliment -- is usually gentle with his jabs. So when he took a couple of whacks at journalists who happen to be on The Washington Post payroll, some folks acted like there was blood on the floor.

A pundit taking on his fellow pundits -- horrors!

Forgive me for not hyperventilating over this. What are we, some kind of Victorian debating society? Columnists should feel free to challenge each other, regardless of where they work. Newspapers need to be more provocative, not less. As long as there's no eye-gouging, let it rip.

The subject is Rahm Emanuel and whether he has mounted an offensive in the press that is making him look good and his boss look bad. The chief of staff is a central figure in this administration, so it's not a trifling subject.

Nor should we be shocked if Emanuel's allies are talking him up at a time when he's under fire for the administration's lack of progress. This happens every hour or so in the nation's capital. It's the job of journalists to sift through the spin and try to present a reasonable approximation of reality.

I have just one problem with the Broder offensive, which we'll get to in a second. Here's the column:

"In the space of 10 days, thanks in no small part to my own newspaper, the president of the United States has been portrayed as a weakling and a chronic screw-up who is wrecking his administration despite everything that his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, can do to make things right.

"This remarkable fiction began unfolding on Feb. 21 in the Sunday column of my friend Dana Milbank, who wrote that 'Obama's first year fell apart in large part because he didn't follow his chief of staff's advice on crucial matters. Arguably, Emanuel is the only person keeping Obama from becoming Jimmy Carter,' i.e., a one-term failure. . . .

"And on Tuesday, The Post led the paper with a purported news story by Jason Horowitz saying that a president with Obama's 'detached, professorial manner' needed 'a political enforcer' like Emanuel to have a chance of succeeding, 'because he [Emanuel] possessed a unique understanding of the legislative mind.' Unfortunately, the story said, 'influential Democrats are -- in unusually frank terms -- blaming Obama and his closest campaign aides for not listening to Emanuel.' "

A purported news story? That's unfair. Horowitz's piece was an extensively reported effort at analyzing what is going on inside the White House that quoted 11 people on the record, most of them members of Congress as well as Obama aide Valerie Jarrett. Broder may disagree with the story's thrust, but that doesn't make it faux news.