Anyone who is or ever has been anyone in Washington DC journalism has probably been to dinner at the home of Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn, so it is to be expected that Bradlee’s death would bring out a waterfall of laudatory reminiscences and unrestrained praise.
Personally, for all Bradlee’s accomplishments, and he had many, I find it impossible to divorce him and his salon from some of the worst pathologies of our nation in the postwar era. It’s hard to express how much contempt I have built up over the years for the Beltway consensus on American power and American politics, and Bradlee was literally the eye of that hurricane, the figurative lodestar around which that consensus condensed and revolved.
The way I feel right now, I want to honor people’s legitimate grief and acknowledge Bradlee’s greatness in many respects, but I also feel like something contrary needs to be said.
The permanent leadership in Washington has been failing us on a pretty consistent basis for so long that I can only wish that the passing of Bradlee might mark some kind of end point for hubris and banality.
Sadly, the Washington Post is a shell of the paper that Bradlee created, meaning that things have devolved far beyond the point that Bradlee could even be justly held responsible. Everything good he built has died, leaving us with a legacy of only his worst contributions.
I’ll let others praise him. I hope to bury him and find something arising from the ashes.
