David S. Broder, 81, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post and one of the most respected writers on national politics for four decades, died Wednesday at Capital Hospice in Arlington of complications from diabetes. 
 
 Mr. Broder was often called the dean of the Washington press corps - a nickname he earned in his late 30s in part for the clarity of his political analysis and the influence he wielded as a perceptive thinker on political trends in his books, articles and television appearances. 
 
 In 1973, Mr. Broder and The Post each won Pulitzers for coverage of the Watergate scandal that led to President Richard M. Nixon's resignation. Mr. Broder's citation was for explaining the importance of the Watergate fallout in a clear, compelling way. 
 
 As passionate about baseball as he was about politics, he likened Nixon's political career to an often-traded pitcher who had "bounced around his league." 
 
 He covered every presidential convention since 1956 and was widely regarded as the political journalist with the best-informed contacts, from the lowliest precinct to the highest rungs of government. 
 
 Former Post executive editor Benjamin C. Bradlee called Mr. Broder "the best political correspondent in America. David knew politics from the back room up - the mechanics of politics, the county and state chairmen - whereas most Washington reporters knew it at the Washington level." 
 
 Mr. Broder was praised at the highest echelons of political power. The White House issued a statement from President Obama that called him a "true giant of journalism" and added that he "built a well-deserved reputation as the most respected and incisive political commentator of his generation." 
 
 Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) said in a statement, "In his thoughtful and probing questions based on decades of scholarship and on-the-scene observations, David Broder set the modern 'gold standard' for those of us engaged in political life as we sought to persuade others, to legislate and to administer the successful progress of our country." 
 
 Asking tough questions 
 
 
 
 Balding, sporting horn-rimmed glasses and measured in his speaking style, Mr. Broder was once likened to an MIT professor in appearance. He was a frequent and instantly recognizable panelist on TV news-discussion shows, a penetrating questioner who often put politicians on the spot and a clear-eyed analyst who could cut to the heart of an issue. 
 
 On "Meet the Press" in 1987, he probed whether then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, the GOP front-runner in the next year's White House race, was too much an Eastern patrician to understand average Americans. 
 
 Mr. Broder asked the candidate whether he knew how many Americans lacked health insurance and how many U.S. children were born into poverty. 
 
 Bush said he didn't know, adding: "We have the best medical-attention system in the world, and I don't want to see it go into the mode of England or this whole concept of socialized medicine where the government provides absolutely everything. You are going to break the government." ||||| Having grown up in the Chicago area, rooting for years for the luckless Cubs and more recently for the hapless Washington Nationals, I feel particularly qualified to comment on the Obama administration's struggles to find a useful role to play in the crisis racking Egypt and the wider Arab world, let alone the blizzards in the Midwest and New England. 
 
 I know that sports analogies - as well as weather anecdotes from one's youth - are dangerous and sometimes misleading. But in this case, they are irresistible. 
 
 The simple fact is that there is little Washington can do about the impact of successive years of terrible winter weather or the upheaval in Cairo, which threatens America's interests in the Middle East. 
 
 Let's deal with the latter first. America has a long history in Egypt - too long a history. It goes back to King Farouk, a name that means nothing to many people these days. Nobody younger than my generation can summon a mental picture of the chain-smoking playboy emperor of Cairo. But he was our man for a time in the early 1950s, and the Egyptian people have neither forgotten nor forgiven. 
 
 We did business with Egypt because of our interest in the Suez Canal, the vital waterway where much of the world's oil supply is transported from the Persian Gulf. That interest was so great that President Dwight D. Eisenhower rebuffed two of our staunchest allies, Britain and France, when they decided to try to wrest control of the canal from Egypt. 
 
 This made us briefly popular with the people in Cairo, but it did not last. Subsequent leaders who supported us, culminating in Hosni Mubarak, have been increasingly unpopular with their own populace. 
 
 Which brings me back to my analogy. 
 
 As a Cubs fan and more recently a Nationals supporter, I am accustomed to spending Septembers reading about other teams' pursuit of the World Series. Whether it is the Red Sox fending off the Yankees, or the Giants five months ago trying to gain entry for the first time since the 1989 earthquake, those who share my history have learned that it's no fun watching other teams at such historic events. 
 
 You know that something big is happening and that it will inevitably affect you. But you don't know whom to root for, and ultimately you realize that events will unfold and you have almost no influence on the outcome. 
 
 That is the reality that confronts President Obama today. His hands are tied while Egypt erupts. 
 
 At first he expressed support and sympathy for the democratic forces filling the streets and appreciation for the Egyptian military holding fire. But when it became clear that Mubarak was on his way out, sooner or later, it dawned on everyone that the Muslim Brotherhood might seize on the resulting power vacuum and chaos to erect a hostile regime on the banks of the Suez Canal. 
 
 Whom do you root for in a situation like this? 
 
 I turn with relief to the weather. Washington was shut down by snow for a whole workweek last winter because we have no capacity to deal with even a few flakes. Aside from one nightmare evening recently, this year we have been spared. But seeing the photographs of hundreds of cars and buses stranded on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago on Tuesday evening brought back memories of other blizzards that made it an adventure even to cross the Midway from Burton-Judson Courts to Cobb Hall for a history class at the University of Chicago. 
 
 I have so often driven Lake Shore Drive, either to its exit on Sheridan Road or partway north to Addison, where all roads lead to the Friendly Confines of Wrigley Field, that I could feel for the drivers and passengers who could not reach the nearest exit ramp because of all the stalled vehicles. Lake Shore Drive, better known as the Outer Drive, terminated at the Edgewater Beach Hotel, whose pristine beach was rarely populated by its elderly residents. But it stopped traffic from going straight into Evanston, the home of the two most elitist institutions in the area, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and Northwestern University, even when there was no blizzard raging. On Tuesday you couldn't even get to the Edgewater. 
 
 There was nothing you could do about it. Just like the United States in Egypt. 
 
 davidbroder@washpost.com
– Longtime Washington Post political columnist David Broder is dead at age 81 from complications of diabetes. The Post offers a lengthy obit for him here and his final column here. Broder covered every presidential election since 1956 and won a Pulitzer in 1973 for his Watergate coverage. The newspaper's Ben Bradlee called him "the best political correspondent in America" because he knew the system "from the back room up" and not just at the highest levels in DC.