David Broder's America

That answer would be, "yes."

UPDATE: Broder's apologies for Dick Cheney's violation of the law reminded me of what might be called The Broder Pattern, as Erik Alterman wrote last year:

Sadly, Broder's decision to avert his eyes from the distasteful and potentially criminal actions of his government is not exceptional; it's how he defines his job. Forty years ago he scolded those in the Democratic Party who challenged Lyndon Johnson's lies about Vietnam as "degrading...to those involved." Twenty years ago he attacked independent counsel Lawrence Walsh's investigation into criminal wrongdoing in the Iran/Contra scandal. (Reagan had mused that he would likely be impeached should his extraconstitutional actions ever be discovered.) Broder supported Republican efforts to impeach Bill Clinton, whose behavior he deemed "worse" than Richard Nixon's police-state tactics during Watergate because Nixon's actions, "however neurotic and criminal, were motivated and connected to the exercise of presidential power." There is a pattern here, obviously. When a president abuses his constitutional warmaking powers, he can depend on Broder not only to defend his crimes but to attack those who would hold him accountable. This, in the eyes of perhaps the most honored and admired journalist today, is the proper function of the press in a democracy.

According to Broder, lies in the service of presidential power -- and torture! -- are acceptable means of Executive branch governance. A lie in the course of a civil court case that should never have been permitted to be brought against a sitting president is "worse" than Nixon's compiling of enemy lists, using the IRS to attack perceived enemies, covering up the break in of the Democratic National Committee, taking solicited and unreported cash in paper bags for his reelection campaign, and, oh yeah, secretly carpet bombing Cambodia and Laos, are essential tools of a wartime president. So Saith the Dean.