I'm with Joe Klein on this one: If I didn't know better, I'd say David Broder was being facetious when he wrote:
When and if Roland Burris claims the Senate seat from Illinois formerly occupied by Barack Obama, it will represent the greatest climb-down by an incoming president since Sam Nunn turned Bill Clinton around on the issue of gays in the military at the start of Clinton's first term.
Really? Set aside the fact that we've got a sample size of two here. (It's a bit like saying the Phillies World Series victory last fall was the greatest baseball triumph since the Cardinals won in 2006.) The only way letting Roland Burris into the Senate would be analogous to the gays-in-the-military embarrassment is if Obama had dug in his heels, leading to a major dustup with a top Congressional Democrat in which he was ultimately defeated. I'm struggling to see the analogy.
--Noam Scheiber